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Gregg Smith ran the above ad over at Electric City Weblog, credulous as ever and thinking it to contain useful information. It’s propaganda. By propaganda, I mean … propaganda, defined as

… the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations.

“Psychological manipulation” is key here. The ad is designed to scare senior citizens.There is no hard factual basis to any of the statements in the ad other than citation of other right wing sources, like Heritage and Wall Street Journal.

There is an oblique reference at the opening that we have fifty million uninsured. Incredibly, the ad sets up the uninsured as the enemy of senior citizens!

Here are the buzzwords the ad uses to achieve its goal: hurt seniors … end Medicare as we know it … ration … limit lifesaving medications … long delays … cancer …, and of course, the usual boogeyman, long waits … Canada and England.

This, unfortunately, is just the beginning. There will not be an honest word spoken for a month now, one lie heaped atop another. I despise that about our country – lies, liars, and media that allows itself to be used for lying by liars.

The ad features an embedded ad (which rotates with others) urging people to apply for health care insurance in Montana. It’s a cherry-picking operation. They entice people to apply for health insurance and then turn away everyone but those who they think might be profitable. The rest … they dump on MCHA, which is too expensive for most of them anyway.

“The League of American Voters” does not offer its list of contributors – it is not a 501c(3) – it welcomes corporate contributions,and is likely a front for the health insurance industry. It does not publish a phone number or email address. Getting information on who they are and who backs them will take a long time, and will not emerge until this propaganda campaign is over.

It’s disgraceful. It’s shameful, deliberately trying to scare seniors and pitting them against the uninsured. These are not honorable people we are dealing with – they are insurance salesmen. They have no bottom except their own bottom line.

“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.”

“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will”

Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937

Every now and then I scatter the blogs with pessimistic words regarding our current representation in Washington and the prospects of health care reform. It can be no other way – Max Baucus is indeed a mediocre soul, devoid of vision or any other inspirational qualities. Dennis Rehberg is a creature of wealth, smart and quick with the rejoinder, but lacking a feel for the troubles of ordinary people. He lives in service of wealth, including his own. Jon Tester is an unfolding book, but the early chapters make me think that it’s pulp fiction, cheap and predictable.

We hiked with friends over the weekend, and saw before us the destruction done by pine beetles. It’s everywhere, and it’s serious. One consoling thought was that the forest lives on, that our lifetimes are short and we don’t see the forest in its longer setting. Over time, destruction is improving the forest. Those trees that survive are resistant, and their progeny will be more durable. But it’s a slow process, and so it is easy to be sad in the present.

In the health care debate, there is progress. Many have acknowledged the failings of our system who before thought us the best in the world. People are now intrinsically aware of the problem of insurers resistance to covering the poor, the old, and the already sick. There is even some progress in public awareness of how other countries have it better, do it better than us. The principle of universality seems to have grown deeper roots among us.

We have to accept small progress as the best progress we can have. And we have to acknowledge the law of unintended consequences – that massive changes in our current system might bring disaster, a return to the old ways, and in the end, a setback.

Single payer never had a chance, and a national public option will likely be perverted into service and subsidy for the insurance industry in some form.

So let’s look for progress where it exists:

1. San Francisco as instituted a true and strong public option, and it is working. People are saving thousands of dollars annually, and receiving the same level of care as those who have those gold-plated Blue Cross policies. That example is going to spread.
2. Massachusetts has taught us the foolishness of trying to build universal coverage with the private insurance model. It cannot work without massive subsidy, and in the current environment, we are tapped. Massachusetts serves as a bad example.
3. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced a bill that garnered support from both parties that would preserve the right of individual states to institute single payer if they so choose. This might be a good place to draw a line and stand and fight: States’ Rights. There will be small breakthroughs, as in San Francisco, and then, just as it played out in Canada, good example will spread.
4. I hear very little praise for Max Baucus anywhere – he is reviled nationally, and even here in his home state the scales seem to be falling from some eyes. Montana is best represented by a Republican, as that is the majority of our population. Perhaps the person who takes Max’s seat will be one of quality and compassion, with the ability to both listen and lead. We’ve not had decent representation for many a year. We’re due.

That’s all I got right now – pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the soul. I’ll do some ‘PS’s below as other reasons for encouragement occur to me, and ask I my seven readers to add to my list.

Have a good day.

Here’s an interesting list published by the Los Angeles Times – conservatives tell us that we have universal care becuase any of us can go to an emergency room for treatment.

Never mind that ER’s are the worst imaginable care delivery system – we can’t go there for checkups or tests. We have to be in crisis. Never mind that the treatment is horribly expensive and that it is anything but free (save for the poorest among us). The above article points out something even more interesting.

There are 39 hospital emergency rooms in California that have closed since 1998. The problem is particularly acute in Los Angeles, with its large illegal immigrant population. It’s a private sector response and it is routine and rational – if a profit center becomes a loss center, close it down.

That’s actually a crappy answer to the problem, but the only one private-sector health care can give us. Universal care conflicts with their business model.

By over a ten to one margin, Canadians prefer their own health care system over ours (82%-8%). 70% of them are either fairly satisfied, or very satisfied with the system.

These are the results of a Harris/Decima poll published on July 5.

It points out an interesting phenomenon – if you asked any typical conservative, he would tell you that Canadians are plagued by waiting queues and flood down here to the states for fancy American medical care. They aren’t, and they don’t.

But most Americans have limited access to information about health care in other countries. The British, the French, Taiwanese, Canadians and Cubans — all of them all the way down the line don’t want our system. But here in this country information is filtered, and we only hear of unhappy Canucks and Brits. I( doubt that the above survey gained a mention on any American TV network, and damned few newspapers.

Of course there are problems in each of these countries, and conservatives, who know very little of their systems, are quick to point out the problems. Canadians do have waiting queues for some non-critical procedures. That’s a big complaint up there, but not so much that they want to sacrifice their system for ours. The British system is underfunded. Cuba is poor, and cannot afford expensive technology. But according to WHO, each is doing better than the US in delivering care.

By the way, Canada’s health system is run at the provincial level, and the worst-performing province is Quebec. This is where most complaints about their system originate.

The following is a transcript of an interview between radio talk show host Thom Hartmann and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom from July 30. The first part is about San Francisco’s adoption of a true “public option” and its fallout. They go on to talk about California’s budget crisis – I transcribed the whole interview because it was so interesting, but am focused on the part about the public option, which is relatively brief.

TH: Gavin Newsom is with us, the mayor of San Francisco … the website for the San Francisco government SFgov.org. I’ve often about how San Francisco, one of the first cities in the country – major cities in the country – to have instant runoff voting. It’s a shining city on the hill. You also are, if I have this right, the first city in the country to have a genuine public plan.

GN: We have a public option. Imagine that, Thom. The sky has not fallen in, the world did not come to an end, bureaucracy has not run amok and we have not replaced our beautiful American flag with the Canadian flag in San Francisco. We have a public option that’s providing real choice, and more importantly, competition. We have not raised general taxes, people will have real choice within that plan, and it’s making a difference for at least 75% of those San Franciscans that years ago had no basic health care and now are fully enrolled in this universal health care plan.

TH: That’s remarkable, and it’s working well for you in San Francisco?

GN: I mean – objective minds – we just did an analysis that showed that we’re providing comprehensive quality health care regardless of preexisting conditions, and dare I say this, regardless of your immigration status, and I recognize the controversy around that, but those are the facts …

TH: It won’t play well in Orange County…

GN: No, it doesn’t. I was just down there coincidentally yesterday, but we’re providing it for roughly $279, the equivalent of $279 a month. If you had the ability to go out and find insurance, and you had no preexisting conditions, the least expensive plan we can find out there that provides equivalent care is north of $380. And for a real plan, that’s more comprehensive, a Blue Cross-type plan, it’s over $619. So we’re providing something that provides the same quality care with the same public/private choice, within this public option for substantially less money, reducing, ultimately, the cost to the taxpayers and putting pressure on the insurance companies – so much so, Thom, that Kaiser, one of the largest HMO’s in the country, has joined our public plan on July 1 and now are partnering with San Francisco’s public option.

TH: That’s great. In fact, Kaiser started in San Francisco, didn’t it?

GN: And that’s why we hoped that we could get them, but it took them two years to really analyze it, and I think fundamentally they realized that if they didn’t enroll in this plan, the competitive nature of the plan was such that they would start losing customers. And this is the big idea. That’s why it’s absolutely right and principled, especially if you’re a free marketer and believe that we need to create competition with some of these larger private sector entities – that we’ve got to hold them honest and we’ve got to being down the cost of care is we believe in reform. That’s why it’s so important that this public option remain in the national debate.

TH: Gavin Newsom, you’re looking at the governor’s seat in California …

GN: Yes.

TH: If my understanding is correct, the governor has twice vetoed a single payer system or public option or some variation – something in between the two in the state of California. What are your thoughts about where California’s at – we’re all hearing about the budget crisis, Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed a new budget on the backs of basically poor and the mentally ill and the sick and the homeless, and his popularity rating is down now 28% I read in a poll this morning. And what are your thoughts on the crisis were facing, the genesis of that crisis, and what you would do to solve it?

GN: Well, we’ve had a structural problem in this state for decades. If you think about the last twenty years, even before the current budget crisis, twelve of those twenty years we’ve had huge budget deficits. And in those years when we had surpluses, they were only modest. So we have a structural problem. We’ve gone through the defense boom-bust in the 1980’s, the boom-bust in the 1990’s with high tech, and now the boom-bust combined with this macroeconomic meltdown in the financial markets that really is part of the challenge we face today. But in each and every instance, we’ve come out of it, but only to realize, and I hope now rationalize, the structural inadequacy of our system. And that’s why we need real fundamental reform, and that’s not just a trite political throw-away line, but substantive reform. The question of Prop 13 is a question more and more people are asking about – the idea that you need two-thirds of the voters to get a budget passed, but you only need fifty per cent of the folks to change the constitution to take people’s rights away, is in and of itself an issue that people need to address. Only Rhode Island, and interestingly Arkansas, has a two-thirds budget requirement, and that’s exactly why you can’t get a budget deal done in California.

TH: We do in Oregon if it involves tax increases. This was again put on by a bunch of right wingers a couple of years ago with a ballot initiative.

GN: And that’s another problem. We have these initiatives, and the folks with the big money can almost put anything on. The constitution, in the last 130 years, has been changed over 500 times. The U.S. constitution, in its [224] years has only been changed about 27 times. Our constitution is eight times longer than the U.S. constitution. And so, again, when we talk about the need for reform, we can start right there, and the idea of this constitutional convention is getting a lot of attention. The concern is, what does that mean, and who are the players that get involved in that, and that’s the devil that needs to be advanced in the detail.

TH: This is why, whenever anybody talks about a Federal constitutional convention, I say wait, whoa whoa!, let’s first get the corporate personhood thing out of the way, because there’s some very big players who would say we want to sit at the table. For example, when South Africa wrote their first post-apartheid constitution, three very large American corporations volunteered their legal staffs to go over there. And written right into the constitution is that corporations are persons and have full civil rights. Right into their constitution. It’s just absolutely bizarre. And so we’ve got to be careful …

GN: I couldn’t agree more. And the reason people are talking about it is just the absence of any ability to rationalize any reforms. Even in the margins, every single reform initiative, even good or bad … have also been just defeated or rejected. And I feel that the voters now are feeling defeated and rejected. You noted the governor’s latest cuts. I mean these are … when we talk about draconian cuts – I think people listening really need to understand what the governor of California did. In this budget deal, he talked of eliminating Healthy Families, meaning health insurance to every child in the state – the first state in the nation that would have done that. He called to eliminate Calworks, our welfare in the state – just not cut it by fifty or ninety per cent, but eliminate it. That was fought back by the Democrats, but not a hundred percent of the way, and just two days ago, he line-itemed out more cuts to children’s health care, more cuts to welfare, beyond the cuts that were agreed to in this negotiation.

It’s serous. It’s real. And those folks, human beings, are ending up in cities and counties across the state. It’s an unfunded responsibility to do the right thing, and we’ll do it in San Francisco, but it puts extraordinary pressure on the local level, and that’s why we need real change up in Sacramento.

TH: And that’s the problem. The problem is when the state fails to deal with it, then it falls to the local communities and the local neighborhoods start falling apart

GN: You got it. And that’s the reason this health care reform is so important. It’s not the federal government and the states – it’s your neighborhood community clinics that are mostly impacted. We really need a voice of the cities now in this health care debate.

From Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont: What we need in health care reform:

1. A strong public option.

2. Progressive funding with no taxes on health care benefits.

3. Expansion of primary health care.

4. Focus on disease prevention

5. Universality.

Seems simple enough. Notice he didn’t say “single payer”, but I suspect his aspirations will have trouble getting by the majority of Democrats, much less the whole senate.

Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington is saying that she will not vote for any bill that allows competition with private health insurance companies. She’s a Democrat, by the way. Her logic is a bullet-proof circularity – she says it won’t pass the senate, therefore she won’t support it. That’s not unlike Max Baucus saying he doesn’t support single payer because it can’t pass.

What is it with these Democrats? Why don’t they take leadership on issues and make things happen? Why the perpetual fingers to the wind?

We all know the answer to that. They don’t support these things in principle, and are lying about why they don’t support them.

And there’s this: Max Baucus might not be chair of the Senate Finance Committee much longer. It’s just a delicious rumor at this point, but apparently liberal Democrats (there are a few of them) are upset with his handling of health care, or as Richard Cohen puts it,

Some people simply do not care for this Max Baucus, with his lobbyist-whoring and foot-dragging and complete disregard for fellow Democrats when it comes to drafting acceptable health care reform legislation in his committee. So “these people” ( = his colleagues) have come up with a Plan to drive the ancient demon from his lair forever.

The following is from a Media Matters interview with Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal op-ed writer:

Q: My sense is that a significant percentage of wealthy and business interests have moved across the aisle over the past eight or ten years, so that the Democratic Party is a much more suitable party for business than the Republican Party.

Frank: That’s probably right. It’s partially opportunistic on their part … you’re asking me to go to the cynical side (and I will!). I found a funny description of the Democratic Party from some 19th century grouch – I forget who – but he said that the ruling class keeps and preserves the Democratic Party as a kind of lifeboat when they get in trouble with the other one.

Deep in my heart I know it has always been so. They probably had a strong business party and a weak me-too party back in the days of the Roman Empire too.

Finally, politicians lie. But when is a lie a necessary lie? For example, to maintain a coalition and stay in office, a politician necessarily has to lie to at least some, and probably all of his followers. I have no problem with that – it’s how I kept peace between my kids when they were growing up. I told them lies.

But what about deceiving the public (though not the Congress) about the need to invade Iraq? Was that kosher? What about Jon Tester saying that he would protect our roadless lands when running for office, and now working to give them away?

When is lying acceptable?

Leo Strauss put forth the idea of the “noble lie”, and I believe there is such a thing, as when I told my kids that I “loved them all the same.” They needed to hear that. Jack Nicholson put it better when he said “you can’t handle the truth!” Someone else said that if we like sausage, we should not ask how it’s made.

In the early 20th century, after implementation of the universal franchise, the idea of mass manipulation of public opinion through propaganda became the norm. Lying became accepted politics, as it was understood that there was simply nothing of value to gain by periodic consultations with voters.

Politicians lie. Tester lied during his campaign. Bush and the neocons lied about Iraq. LBJ lied about Tonkin, JFK about Cuba. Cantwell is lying about why she doesn’t support a public option. Baucus … well, Baucus lies too, but is just not very good at it.

Lies, lies and more lies. It’s all lies. But which of them are “noble” lies?

You tell me.

I thought I should get a letter in our local organ before moving on to Colorado.

Editor:

We Americans imagine ourselves more enlightened than others, even thinking ourselves justified in bombing other countries to make them “free.” But our own freedom is mere illusion.

Our two political parties are financed by the same concentrations of wealth. There are differences – big oil tends to favor Republicans, while trial lawyers have always had a particular affinity for Democrats. Wall Street finance houses have deep tentacles in both parties. But for the most part, money has no ideology, and shifts with the political winds.

Tea-baggers and “birthers” take the place of political dialogue. These same elements once screamed about Whitewater and Monica, and then were quiet for eight years. Now they’re back, crazy as ever. But they are a mere distraction. That’s not an exchange of ideas. That’s lunacy.

There is an important issue at the fore – reform of our health care system. The public by overwhelming margins wants real change. Democrats have enough power now to easily defeat the Republicans. But they won’t do it.

Our own senator, Max Baucus, is the leading anti-reformer. He supposedly represents the “liberal” side of our spectrum, but is more like a right winger himself, frustrating attempts at real reform.

And this is the nature of our “two party” system. Lacking any real mechanisms by which we can translate public will into public policy, our precious freedom is a mere illusion. Our parties are bought – the one representing “hope” and “change” merely covering the other’s back.

We have nothing to teach other countries. We need our own regime change. (Perhaps we should bomb ourselves?) We legally bribe our public officials. Because of our campaign finance system, real reforms in other areas are not possible.

Before we will see health care reform, we must fix campaign finance. Nothing changes before that.

We are on our way to Boulder today, and won’t return here until we have found a place to live down there. Boulder has its own vocabulary. Words like “spacious” and “open” do not mean there what they mean here. We are going to rent for a year and then buy something, and that year of renting will likely put us in a townhouse or condo, squished and compressed.

Something occurred to me as I was trying to answer some very legitimate questions over at Electric City Weblog. I have mentioned before that one of the reasons private insurance seems to work in the workplace is that employers tend to hire healthy people, so that workers are “pre-cherry-picked”, and the insurance companies’ job is done for them.

Then it dawned on me – every injury that might happen in the workplace is covered by Workers Compensation, so that insurance companies have even less exposure than they would otherwise have.

So health insurance companies have two reasons to cover the workplace: 1) pre-cherry-picking, and 2) shared risk.

What a deal!

The concept of insurance, as a college professor once told us, originated in ancient China. Each year the farmers and craftsmen who lived inland had to load their goods onto boats and take them to markets on the coast via the Yangtze River. Each year some boats were lost, and a few lost everything. They decided among themselves to spread their goods over many boats, so that if one or two were lost, each would lose a little, but none would be devastated.

We had an interesting discussion yesterday over at Gregg’s Electric City Weblog, and I learned quite a bit from a guy calling himself Wolfpack. I observed that the concept of for-profit insurance did not seem to work in health care, and should be run on a non-profit basis. He asked me

Mark T. said, that one thing that other countries have done is to outlaw for-profit insurance, which is colossally counterproductive. Mark- Are you opposed to “for-profit” car and home insurance also?

It’s a good question. Why does for-profit insurance work in some areas but not others? For example, in many rural areas private fire fighters respond when a house catches on fire. But the homeowner has to pay a premium for this service, and if he has not, the fire department will simply watch the house burn. A better solution is to make fire fighting a government service funded by tax dollars. That way everyone has coverage and no one has to watch a house burn while fire fighters sip coffee.

The private protection model does not work well in that mode, but does for fire “insurance” – reimbursement for loss after-the-fact. It also works well for personal liability and for automobiles. There are many companies who provide that kind of insurance, and they compete for our business. They respond to that competition by providing adequate protection and prompt claim settlement (There are exceptions, of course, and insurance companies have to protect us from abusers. They are diligent about claim service when there is suspicious activity surrounding a loss.)

I have driven cars for 43 years, and have never caused an auto accident. Most of us will pass through life without an incident. Only a few of us are so unfortunate. But with health care, sickness is a virtual certainty. As we age, it becomes more so (which is why for-profit insurers refuse to cover old people). It is here that the Chinese boat example works. Among ourselves we can agree to share our risks, each of us absorbing some the cost to protect those who are currently suffering. When our turn comes, others will take care of us.

Because suffering and sickness are universal, we don’t need an insurance company in the middle of the process trying to extract profit by avoiding the sick. We need government to collect taxes and provide the insurance. It’s broad insurance with universal risk and huge costs which will affect all of us in our lifetimes. We don’t need the money people mucking it up. We simply need to manage the system for ourselves, using our government to do so.

It is our right as citizens to boot the for-profit insurers out of the system. By its very nature, for-profit insurance has to avoid sick people and avoid paying claims. It’s not a match.

The problems with our health care system are caused by right wingers and conservatives who are convinced that some people taking more out of the system than they put in is a moral hazard. Not so. Health care should be a right. We can help each other in our mutual suffering by any means we choose, including our government. Screw capitalism.

With all this talk I do about Baucus and the Democrats and their many failings, there is this: Obama, unlike most of the aristocrats who run for national public office, has had personal experience with health insurance companies. While his grandmother was dying, insurance companies were trying to deny her care.

The president is not all-powerful – there is concentrated wealth in this country than can bring him down – him or anyone that gets out of line. But there is this – that he is a man of common origins, and he has experienced the health insurance that all of us ordinary people have to deal with. If he is the leader that his PR people projected on us in the last election, we may have hope of getting something positive our of the health care debate.

It depends on that, it depends on organizing, it depends on dealing some pain on Democrats who jump ship. But Obama might be able to deal on them a bit. He might be useful.