Here we go with the bogus spin about how Dems lost (if they lose)

Hotline On Call:

When polls close Tuesday, Republicans are overwhelmingly expected to win enough seats to take back the House. Just two years ago, the GOP was all but left for dead. How did Democrats squander the major electoral gains they achieved and snatch defeat out of the jaws of long-term victory?

The answer, both Democratic and Republican pollsters agree, is two-fold: Democrats over-promised on their first major initiative, then overreached on their most defining legislative effort. That combination has doomed Democrats to a disastrous election as voters take out a mix of frustration and anger on the party in charge.

He means they over-promised on the stimulus, and over-reached on health care reform.

No, and no. In fact, Democrats wimped out on both, and that's why they're in trouble tomorrow.

It all comes down to backbone and messaging. The President told the public the truth about how much a good stimulus bill could lower unemployment, he didn't over-promise at all. The only problem, the President didn't ask for a good stimulus bill. He asked for half of what we needed, then gave another 35% of what remained to the Republicans in the form of stimulus-useless tax cuts. So it's not surprise the bill didn't sufficiently lower unemployment. Few outside of the White House thought it would.

And if the President didn't think he could get a costlier bill, he should have gone to the public and embarrassed those members of Congress who opposed him, and opposed the nation's recovery. Speaking of recovery, whose brilliant idea was it to rename the stimulus bill the national recovery act, blah blah blah. I don't even know the law's new name. There was a sign recently in my neighborhood, near some construction work, touting some national recovery act blah blah. I think it was the stimulus. I had to take a picture and send it to a friend to be sure. That's seriously bad messaging.

And that brings us to the second part of the problem: messaging. The Republicans, from the beginning, claimed that we had no economic crisis, that the stimulus was unnecessary, and that it wouldn't produce results. The administration (and Congress) didn't fight back nearly hard enough on any of that messaging, and the GOP lies stuck. It's as simple as that. Even when CBO concluded that the stimulus saved or created millions of jobs, the public didn't believe it because, by that point, the GOP controlled the message. And in fact, who could blame the public? Unemployment is at 9.2% and expected to stay high for years.  That sure makes it sound like the "cure" didn't work.

Then there's health care reform. Same problems. The President refused to get engaged, and fight for what he promised, and the Democratic messaging was abominable. How else could Sarah Palin get away with her "death panel" garbage? Had a Democrat tried that kind of a lie on the Bush administration, he'd have been strung up alive. But Palin, and her Teabagger minions, were given a pass.

And tomorrow it all comes back to bite the Democrats in the ass.

No one over-promised, and no one over-reached. The President and the Democrats in Congress lacked spine and an ability to message. They ticked off the base, left the economy in more shambles than it needed to be, and permitted the GOP to lie with impunity. And that's the stuff of losing elections. Read More......

Americans really are dumb sometimes

New CBS/NYT poll. A few odd results.

Republicans hold six-point lead among likely voters in generic House ballot, 46-40.

But...

Democrats are viewed more positively than Republicans. Forty-six percent view Democrats favorably, while 48 percent view them unfavorably. Forty-one percent view Republicans favorably, and 52 percent view them unfavorably."

Seems a bit contradictory. Then there's this:

Forty-seven percent of likely voters want the health care law to be repealed. Forty-three percent want it to stand as it is.

People are morons. The next question should have been: And what is in the health care law that you want repealed? I'll bet none of them had a clue. They simply listened to the GOP misinformation, and the lack of sufficient response from Obama and the Democrats, and concluded the law nationalized our health care and thus will make it "bad," you know, like France (where health care is actually better than here and 1/10th the price) Read More......

David Corn: How Obama lost the narrative

Great piece from David Corn, looking at what went wrong for the Obama administration that the voters are so angry. David's piece could have been written by Joe and me.

It wasn't just what Obama did, but how he did it. The president forfeited control of the narrative—as they like to say in Washington—because he blew several specific opportunities.

SIZE MATTERS. The "original sin of the Obama administration," says former labor secretary Robert Reich, "was to make the stimulus too small while giving out too much of it as tax breaks to businesses." By most estimates, the stimulus saved or created about 3 million jobs, but it did not keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent, as the White House had projected (PDF). A stimulus twice the size would probably have generated about twice the benefits, notes Dean Baker of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, meaning unemployment might actually have dropped to near 8 percent, and GDP growth would have been 3.4 percent or higher. Instead, the low visibility of the results provided Republicans an opening to dismiss the stimulus (which to some voters may have become conflated with the TARP bailout) as wasteful. They had an easy line of attack: You spent nearly $800 billion, and unemployment is higher than you said it would be. In the absence of a stronger case from the administration, the assault resonated with large swaths of the public.

White House aides—and my colleague Kevin Drum—will say that Obama obtained the biggest stimulus he could, given GOP opposition. But the president need not have accommodated his foes so readily. "He could've demanded more, and settled for less," says a senior Senate Democratic strategist. That would have at least established a useful story line: For more recovery, we need to do more. Instead, Obama was left hailing a stimulus that didn't do enough.

He goes on to explain the health care and financial reform debacles. Must reading. Read More......

New insurance rules moving forward

And good news on the health care reform front:

Brushing off a last-minute lobbying push by the insurance industry, state insurance officials on Thursday finalized new rules requiring insurance companies to dedicate more revenues directly to healthcare costs.

The new healthcare reform law requires large employer plans to dedicate at least 85 cents of each premium dollar to actual medical treatments or other activities that improve care. (The threshold for individual and small group plans is 80 percent.) Plans that don't meet those thresholds are required to give rebates to their customers, beginning in 2012.

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Over 17,000 doctors being paid by Big Pharma

Conflict of interest much? Somehow I don't see the Republicans doing much about this shameful situation.

More than 17,000 doctors and other health care providers have taken money from seven major drug companies to talk to other doctors about their products, a joint investigation by news organizations and non-profit groups found.

More than 380 of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals took in more than $100,000 in 2009 and 2010, according to the investigation released on Tuesday. The report said far more doctors are likely to have taken such payments, but it documented these based on information from seven drugmakers.

The payments are not illegal and usually not even considered improper. But the investigation by journalism group ProPublica, Consumer Reports magazine, NPR radio and several publications showed doctors were sometimes urged to recommend "off-label" prescriptions of drugs, meaning using them for conditions they are not approved for.

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Insurance companies may not be able to reduce internal costs enough

Wow, private industry really can be much more efficient than the government. Somehow giving the insurance industry new customers isn't enough for them. They only want the right kind of customers, as in those who are happy to be ripped off with high internal costs. Maybe there will be no other choice but to bring back the public option if the industry can't manage to control their excessive internal costs.

The Obama administration is awaiting the recommendation of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, meeting in Orlando this week, for how and when to implement key changes to the "Medical Loss Ratio" rule.

Under health reform, beginning 2011, insurance companies will have to spend 80% to 85% of the premiums they collect on care instead of toward their own profits and overhead costs.

Prior to reform, requirements varied from state to state. In some cases, insurers didn't have to meet any minimum requirements.

For example, some plans have a 40% loss ratio. That means individuals could be paying $1 for 40 cents of care.

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The day CVS allegedly turned away a woman having an asthma attack for $1

Consumerist:

I had exactly a twenty-dollar bill. It came to twenty-one and change... I offered him my cell phone, my wallet. I said i live right around the corner. I come in here all the time....

I said 'Can you just give her the pump. She's on the floor wheezing... I didn't know if an ambulance would get there on time. He said there was nothing he could do for me.

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Aetna denied insurance for newborn due to 'pre-existing condition'

Only in the American insurance industry could this be possible. It's wonderful that GMA helped resolve this "clerical error" but you have to wonder how widespread these errors are across the country.

She's heartbroken because she has endured what no mother should have to endure. While pregnant with twins, she lost one of them at 30 weeks. The other baby, Kinsleigh, was born with serious heart problems.

But Barnes is angry because her insurance company, Aetna, held up paying thousands of dollars in medical charges. The reason? The insurance company said the newborn might have been suffering from a pre-existing condition.

"I don't know how something could be pre-existing in a baby, so it was very shocking to me to see something like that," Barnes told "Good Morning America." "It's a slap in the face. Her medical bills are the last thing I should be worrying about. I should know that my baby is being taken care of."

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Blue Cross to raise insurance premiums up to 47% in Connecticut

What a business model. What other industry can get away with increases like this during the worst economic period since the Great Depression? It's a relief to Big Insurance that the White House folded on the public option. But hey, don't let that stop the industry from calling him a socialist and anti-business. Yes, like Wall Street they wanted even more and will stop at nothing until they get it.

The state has given Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield the go ahead to raise premiums by as much as 47 percent for some members, and says health care reform is the reason why.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Insurance Commissioner Thomas Sullivan on Oct. 6, asking what he called "excessive" increases were approved without full consideration of all the facts. His letter mentioned rate increases for both Anthem and Aetna.

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Cheap and easy test for prostate cancer?

This will be fantastic news assuming it works.

British scientists have moved a step closer to developing a simple urine test to identify men at risk of getting prostate cancer.

They have discovered that a protein found in urine is affected by a genetic change linked to the cancer.

More research was needed, but their work could lead to the development of a reliable test costing £5.50 ($8.82).

NOTE FROM JOHN: That would $8 in Britain.  Or $300 states in the states. Read More......

Robin Carnahan to Roy Blunt: 'Man up' on health care by repealing his own benefits first

No wonder Roy Blunt didn't want to debate Robin Carnahan. She kicked his butt:

Carnahan, who trails in the polls, was clearly the aggressor in the only televised exchange of the campaign, to be broadcast on KCPT tonight.

The sharpest exchange came during a discussion of health care reform. Carnahan accused Blunt of opposing the health care law because of ties to lobbyists.

“I think people should have access,” she said. “They should have the same access you have as a member of Congress. So I think if you want to repeal health care reform and let insurance companies go back to their worst abuses, Congressman, then you ought to repeal your own first. And man up. And do what you’re asking other people to do.”

Great line. Roy Blunt would never give up his taxpayer financed health care benefits. He's a fraud.

During the debate, Blunt denied not supporting Medicare:

"I never said I was not for Medicare," said Blunt, later telling Carnahan

Wrong. Blunt actually said "government should have never gotten into the health care business." He then specifically noted that government got into the business of health care "in a big way" back in 1965 with Medicare. Sure sounds like he wasn't for Medicare. But, you can listen to what he said here. Seriously. He totally dissed the creation of Medicare. He's a fraud and a liar.

Come on, Missouri. Don't send this corrupt liar to the Senate. Read More......

Pres. Palin is going to look to Obama for guidance on whether she should be evil? Seriously?

From AMERICAblog Gay:

There's increased chatter, as the spies would say, from the Obama administration and from administration apologists about the notion that the President simply has to appeal our DADT & DOMA victories in court lest a future Republican president refuse to appeal legal challenges to Obama's health care reform bill or the Hate Crimes bill.

The President's near fanatical desire for "bipartisanship at all costs" is by now legendary. He seriously seems to believe that by giving something to the GOP for nothing, the Republicans will at some future date return the favor. And, not surprising to anyone born before yesterday, they never do. But he keeps trying. He keeps scaling back his promises, keeps caving on key legislative provisions at the drop of a hat, keeps putting conservative Ds and Rs in charge of his major policy priorities, from health care reform to the budget deficit, and keeps ceding more and more power to his Secretary of Defense on DADT, as though Robert Gates were the boss of Barack Obama - all in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, one of these opponents will be nice to him since he was nice to them.

But it hasn't worked out very well because life doesn't work that way, at least not in Washington, DC. The Republicans are never "nice" to Democrats because Democrats ceded ground first. To a Republican, you didn't give them a peace offering, you conveyed weakness. How many campaign promises does he have to self-sabotage before the President understands that the goody-two-shoes school of political diplomacy simply doesn't work in this town?

The notion that President Sarah Palin is going to look to Barack Obama for guidance on what to do on health care reform is laughable. And the notion that any Republican is going to give a damn about Obama's positions on gay rights when deciding whether to once again bash the gays is preposterous.

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More than 500,000 denied health insurance

Big Insurance does this because their friends in Washington helped them get away with it. Who doesn't have some sort of pre-existing condition? Financial Times:

The four largest health insurance companies in the US denied coverage to more than half a million individuals because of their pre-existing conditions from 2007 to 2009, according to a congressional investigation.

On average, the four companies – Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint – denied one out of seven applicants’ coverage based on conditions such as pregnancy, angina, diabetes and heart disease.

The investigation found that the number of people who were denied coverage increased about 49 per cent from 2007 to 2009. In that period, the groups refused to pay 212,800 claims for individuals who were already insured based on their previous medical conditions.

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US Drops to 49th in the world for life expectancy; #s are really crappy for white Americans too

Were number 49!

There's a myth that all these "bad" US numbers for life expectancy and such are really the result of America being a "diverse culture" - meaning, "it's all those minorities who aren't doing so well, while we white folks must be riding pretty darn high in the international statistics!"

Yeah, not so much. According to a new study, we white folk in America are doing pretty badly as well.  In fact, we seem to be doing worse than non-whites.

For example, compared to 12 other comparable countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), here's how white men and white women in America ranked in terms of 15-year survival rates at the ages of 45 and 65:

45 year old white men: ranked 11th of 13
45 year old white women: ranked 11th of 13
65 year old white men: ranked 11th of 13
65 year old white women: ranked 13th of 13

Oh, and here's a funny thing: The US numbers only get better when you INCLUDE non-whites.

As a consequence, the relative survival gains of non-Hispanic American whites, compared to all residents of the comparison countries, ranked next to last or last for each of the sex and age groups over the full period—even worse than overall performance (note that not all data were available for all countries for all years). Contrary to the diversity hypothesis, including the experience of diverse groups in the US data improves the comparative performance of the United States, since the superior survival gains of other Americans relative to non-Hispanic whites boosts the overall performance of the United States relative to that of other countries.

From Health Affairs:

Click chart to see readable version

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world. As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Meanwhile, per capita health spending in the United States increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy nations between 1970 and 2002. As a result, the United States now spends well over twice the median expenditure of industrialized nations on health care, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP).

We compared the performance of the United States to that of twelve nations that have populations of at least seven million and per capita GDP of at least 60 percent of the US per capita GDP since 1975. These nations are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

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Daschle confirms White House agreed with industry to scrap public option

This isn't news. The President never gave anything other than lip service to the public option, and even his lip service was lacking (remember, he refused to list the public option among his "must include" provisions in the bill, and refused to issue a veto threat). Still, it is interesting to see Tom Daschle confirm that the President gave away the public option in order to appease his political opponents.

Here's Daschle talking to the Wonk Room's Igor Volsky:

"I don't think it was taken off the table completely. It was taken off the table as a result of the understanding that people had with the hospital association, with the insurance (AHIP), and others," Daschle told Wonk Room's Igor Volsky. "I mean I think that part of the whole effort was based on a premise. That premise was, you had to have the stakeholders in the room and at the table. Lessons learned in past efforts is that without the stakeholders' active support rather than active opposition, it's almost impossible to get this job done. They wanted to keep those stakeholders in the room and [the public option] was the price some thought they had to pay."

Couldn't be any clearer than that. Of course, Daschle is now trying to back off of his statement.

Happy voting. Read More......

Insurance companies pouring money into GOP campaigns to undercut HCR

Sure glad we gave up the public option to make these guys nicer:

The insurance industry is pouring money into Republican campaign coffers in hopes of scaling back wide-ranging regulations in the new healthcare law but preserving the mandate that Americans buy coverage.

Since January, the nation's five largest insurers and the industry's Washington-based lobbying arm have given three times more money to Republican lawmakers and political action committees than to Democratic politicians and organizations.

That is a marked change from 2009, when the industry largely split its political donations between the parties, according to federal election filings.

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AP Poll: Americans support more health care coverage

So why aren't the Democrats talking about health care during the election cycle? Could it be that they know they settled for much less than most wanted? Despite the loud Teabaggers, more people support more coverage than are against it. Salon:

"I was disappointed that it didn't provide universal coverage," said Bronwyn Bleakley, 35, a biology professor from Easton, Mass.

More than 30 million people would gain coverage in 2019 when the law is fully phased in, but another 20 million or so would remain uninsured. Bleakley, who was uninsured early in her career, views the overhaul as a work in progress.

The poll found that about four in 10 adults think the new law did not go far enough to change the health care system, regardless of whether they support the law, oppose it or remain neutral. On the other side, about one in five say they oppose the law because they think the federal government should not be involved in health care at all.

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Big Insurance drops kids from coverage days before new rules

Being in the health insurance industry really is the way to go. You can pay some of the highest executive salaries in the country even during the worst recession in decades, implement double digit rate increases every year, opt out of paying when you don't want to and drop trouble making customers who dare to have pre-existing conditions. Even better, you have one political party that's dedicated to allowing that to continue and a second who is terrified of confronting you. It's good to be da' king.

The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration's allies at HCAN.

The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that's available to them.

"We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage," HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome said in a statement. "The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won't cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.

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Aetna gets green light to raise insurance rates 19% in California

It's good to be da' king. What other industry can manage to raise rates this much during one of the worst economic periods in the last 100 years? Even worse, how could the Democrats fail to get more when everyone who has health insurance is aware of such obnoxious rate increases year after year?

More than 1 million Californians will see their health insurance premiums rise Oct. 1 now that regulators have wrapped up their review of a plan by Aetna Inc. to raise rates an average of 19% for 65,000 individual policyholders.

Aetna was cleared Friday by the state Department of Insurance to proceed with its new plan. It was the last of four major insurers to be reviewed by the department, which has OKd double-digit rate increases by Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Health Net Inc. in the last month.

Regulators stepped up their scrutiny of the insurers after Anthem announced plans earlier this year to raise premiums by as much as 39%, triggering a backlash among policyholders, lawmakers and the White House. The insurer canceled the hikes and sought smaller increases that were allowed.

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Other than that Mrs. Lincoln...

From Ezra Klein:

[A] lot of the Obama administration's accomplishments were pipe dreams.

A near-universal health-care system? Why would Obama and the Democrats succeed when Truman, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton had all failed, and politicians as adept as FDR and LBJ refused to even make the attempt? They've seen the numbers, right? The health-care industry is bigger now, and richer, and there are no more liberal Republicans. There's no way.

A $787 billion stimulus? Yes, it was too small. But everything Washington does is always too small. And within the confines of that stimulus, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress managed to make a host of long-term investments that would've been considered huge accomplishments in any other context, but are largely unknown inside this one. Huge investments in green energy, in health information technology, in high-speed rail, in universal broadband, in medical research, in infrastructure. The Making Work Pay tax cut. The Race to the Top education reform program. No recent president has invested in the country on anything like that level.

Near universal care health care system? Okay, I'm no expert on health care reform, as compared to Ezra, but we're now to believe that what got passed is "near universal care"? Seriously?

And as for the stimulus, the fact that this "accomplishment" was far too small may have just cost us control of the US House, let alone a few million jobs. How is not even trying for the amount of stimulus that the President knew we needed an accomplishment? He was at 70% in the polls, had huge majorities in the House and Senate, and the GOP was in ruins. And he asked for half of what was needed, and then gave 35% of that amount away in useless (stimulus-wise) tax cuts to woo only 3 GOP votes in the entire Congress.

The President, and the Congress, have done some good things. But they had the potential to do great things - we handed them the potential to do great things - and they chickened out (or in the case of the President, his desire to be liked and avoid controversy overrode his desire to do good, and what he promised). And now we're all suffering as a result. Let's not encourage this kind of behavior in the future by calling this an accomplishment. Read More......