The Political Junkies

archived: 23 - 29 Apr, 2006 Back Next

UPDATED: April 25, 2006

STRIPPING HEALTH CARE

The news today largely ignored one of the most important stories for the daily lives of all Americans.

The percentage of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked health insurance for at least part of the year rose to 41 percent in 2005, a dramatic increase from the 28 percent in 2001 without coverage, a study released on Wednesday found.

Moreover, more than half of the uninsured adults said they were having problems paying their medical bills, with 20 percent of working adults paying off medical debt —often $2,000 or more, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based private, health care policy foundation.

The study of 4,350 adults also found that people without insurance were more likely to forgo recommended health screenings such as mammograms than those with coverage, and were less likely to have a regular doctor than their insured counterparts. . . .

[T]he study also illustrates how more employers are dropping coverage or are offering plans that are just too expensive for many people.

About 45.8 million Americans did not have health insurance in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. . . .

“The jump in uninsured among those with modest incomes is alarming, particularly at a time when our economy has been improving,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, who helped write the study.

“If we don’t act soon to expand coverage to the uninsured, the health of the U.S. population, the productivity of our workforce, and our economy are at risk.”

Bush and his minions are telling Americans that his “ownership society” is working; that the economy is good and Americans are prospering. The report above belies the Republican spin. Unregulated capitalism is leaving millions of hard working Americans behind while the “owners” of the production of capital are reaping historic profits.

The latest numbers on health care would be damning enough indeed, except radical Republicans are going one step further. Massachusetts recently adopted “universal health care” for its citizens. The plan is rather straight forward and melds universal heath care with the private sector:

The bill does what health experts say no other state has been able to do: provide a mechanism for all of its citizens to obtain health insurance. It accomplishes that in a way that experts say combines methods and proposals from across the political spectrum, apportioning the cost among businesses, individuals and the government. . . .

The bill . . . , requires all Massachusetts residents to obtain health coverage by July 1, 2007.

Individuals who can afford private insurance will be penalized on their state income taxes if they do not purchase it. Government subsidies to private insurance plans will allow more of the working poor to buy insurance and will expand the number of children who are eligible for free coverage. Businesses with more than 10 workers that do not provide insurance will be assessed up to $295 per employee per year. . . .

The Massachusetts bill creates a sliding scale of affordability ranging from people who can afford insurance outright to those who cannot afford it at all. About 215,000 people will be covered by allowing individuals and businesses with 50 or fewer employees to buy insurance with pretax dollars, and by giving insurance companies incentives to offer stripped-down plans at lower cost. Lower-cost basic plans will be available to people ages 19 to 26.

Subsidies for other private plans will be available for people with incomes at or below 300 percent of the poverty level. Children in those families will be eligible for free coverage through Medicaid, an expansion of the current system.

All told, the plan is expected to cover 515,000 uninsured people within three years, about 95 percent of the state's uninsured population, legislators said, leaving less than 1 percent of the population unprotected.

Surprisingly, the Massachusetts plan represents a political compromise among all of those involved in the health care system, including Republicans and Democrats.

"This is probably about as close as you can get to universal," said Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington. "It's definitely going to be inspiring to other states about how there was this compromise. They found a way to get to a major expansion of coverage that people could agree on. For a conservative Republican, this is individual responsibility. For a Democrat, this is government helping those that need help."

The Massachusetts plan may not exist if a few short weeks if Bush and Congressional Republicans have their way. Congressional Republicans have introduced a bill that the Senate will take up next week.

The viability of Massachusetts' closely-watched attempt to insure nearly all of the state's residents depends on state requirements for health insurers to take all applicants, a consumer protection that would be eliminated by legislation the U.S. Senate is expected to take a final vote on next week. . . . "This junk insurance bill is being peddled to the public as a way to cover more uninsured people, yet its chief effect would be to strip away state rate protections like Massachusetts', as well as Patients' Bills of Rights across the country," said Judy Dugan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR). "To pass such a bill during the Senate's Health Week even as Massachusetts struggles with how to enact its plan, is cynical and deceptive." If the [Senate] bill passes, a version of it is likely to become law because the House has already passed a similar measure and President Bush has promoted the plan. In order to sell the policies envisioned by the bill -- typically bare-bones policies with high deductibles and often no limit on what patients pay out of pocket -- the federal government would override state regulations and protections. Under Massachusetts' new law, this would force individuals to buy health insurance at any cost. If they are ill, residents would be forced into coverage that doesn't really protect them.

There is but one question for Americans:

HAD ENOUGH?

_____________________________________________

UPDATED: April 25, 2006

32%

CNN has just published its most recent Bush approval/disapproval poll. The incredible results:

Survey	Dates	Approve	Disap- prove	Unsure	Approve minus Disapprove
		%	%	%
CNN	4/21-23/06	32	60	8	-28

The CNN poll appears to confirm that the latest Fox poll at 33%. Bush’s approval ratings appear to have broken through his 37% support area in a major fashion. One would suspect that rising gasoline prices are the principal reason.

Democracy Corps’ take on Bush’s current standing:

There are many factors contributing to this broad pessimism, but Iraq remains the most powerful determinant of public attitudes. Americans continue to question the decision to go to war in Iraq in increasing numbers (58 percent in both the ABC News/Washington Post and L.A. Times/Bloomberg polls now say the war was not worth fighting), and they see little hope for positive change in the short term. An incredible 78 percent in the CBS poll believe Iraq is already engaged in a civil war, and President Bush – whose personal integrity and persona as a straight shooter were his greatest political assets for much of the last four years –is no longer seen as a credible messenger on Iraq; 56 percent in the L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll say they no longer believe the President’s depictions of progress in Iraq, and 63 percent in the CBS survey believe Bush is ‘making things in Iraq sound better than they really are.’

The message for Democrats is relatively straight forward – Americans are signaling that they have had enough. Democrats must continue to tie Republicans to Bush’s failing ship.

However, Democrats should avoid excessive exuberance. Democrats have been looking for a tsunami to return them to power in Congress. TPJ focuses on the latest numbers and strategy in THEM DEMS.

TPJ has been making the case for over three years that Bush largely fabricated the justifications for war. In February 2003, Junkie Editor Michael Carmichael wrote:

Following Powell's presentation [to the UN], there was a circumspect reaction from the ranking members of the United Nations. Within the Security Council, with the exception of the UK, the reaction was lukewarm. France's suggestion to increase the number of inspectors and to verify the American allegations on the ground with material evidence has carried the day. The momentum of world opinion is shifting even more decisively against American frustration and bellicosity.

Adlai Stevenson's moment in history is absolutely secure. Powell's bellicose case will be reduced by the powers of retrospection to a propagandistic charade to rally the fifteen percent hard right-wingers of the American electorate at the political core of Bush's popularity. Domestic politics is still the driving force beating at the heart of foreign policy in Bush's America. – TPJ

The revelations just keep coming that Bush’s public justification for the war was contrived. The latest confirmation comes from Tyler Drumheller, who headed CIA operations in Europe prior to the war.

intelligence opposing administration claims of a WMD threat came from a top Iraqi official who provided the U.S. spy agency with other credible information. The source "told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," Drumheller said in a CBS interview to be aired on Sunday on the network's news magazine, "60 Minutes."

"The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," he was quoted as saying in interview excerpts released by CBS on Friday.

"We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change'," added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of debriefing the Iraqi official. . . .

CBS said the CIA's intelligence source was former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and that former CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information personally to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top White House officials in September 2002. They rebuffed the CIA three days later.

"The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA agent told CBS. . . .

"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure," he told CBS. "This was a policy failure."

It sticks in our craw that Bush and the neoconservative Republicans fabricated the reasons for war to build the public support necessary to wage war.

TPJ has focused on Bush’s trade policies that have established China as our primary banker. One aspect of Republican policy is their “framing” the economic benefits of “free trade.”

Republican trade policy toward China is not “free trade” in any sense of the phrase. China does not permit its currency to “float” in the international currency markets. Instead, China fixes the value of its currency and only lets it trade within a narrow band. China has fixed the value of its currency so that its goods are cheap in United States markets, but the goods we trade in China are expensive. As a result, America imports from China far more goods than America exports to China.

As a result, America is accumulating historic amounts of trade deficits that must be financed.

During President Hu Jintao’s visit to America that has just concluded, Bush addressed the currency exchange issue:

Mr Bush urged Mr Hu to take action over the yuan. US producers say its low value is a barrier to exports to China, and has contributed to the massive US trade deficit with China - which reached $202bn (£113bn) last year.

Mr Bush said: "We would hope there would be more appreciation [of the currency]".

Chinese President Hu Jintao . . . stood firm against U.S. demands to significantly revalue China's currency as a way of reducing his country's vast trade surplus with the United States.

Speaking at a Boeing Co. facility . . . , Hu said he wanted to make foreign-exchange markets more efficient. But he said China was not ready for a drastic change in the value of renminbi currency, also known as the yuan.

"Our goal is to keep the renminbi exchange rate basically stable at adaptive and equilibrium levels," Hu said.

Translation: America’s banker says no. And, bankers usually set the terms of the deal.

Result: Republican policy will continue to lead America into even greater debt to the Chinese.

The price of a barrel of oil crossed $75.00 on Friday. This chart demonstrates the dramatic climb in price:

TPJ has found that legendary Texas independent oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens has most accurately predicted the future of the oil markets. On April 1^st, Pickens’ issued his most recent prognostication:

Pickens yesterday told CNBC television that oil could easily pass $100-a-barrel in the event of supply disruptions by Iran or Nigeria. With oil now at $67-a-barrel he said the supply position is tight and a spike would be inevitable.

Gasoline at the pump has already hit $4.00 a gallon at selected locations in NYC and in Beverly Hills. $3.00 per gallon is being reported more frequently, while the national average has risen to $2.85 per gallon.

When gas prices rose in 2004 and 2005, Americans responded by reducing the amount they saved to zero and borrowed against the equity in their homes at low interest rates.

The key to the economy’s strength in 2004 and 2005 was that household saving declined dramatically while the price of oil rose. Household saving fell from 2.5 per cent of after-tax income in the third quarter of 2003 to a remarkable minus 1.8 per cent two years later. This 4.3 per cent shift of after-tax income was equal to a rise in consumer spending equal to 3 per cent of GDP.

In dollar terms, saving fell from a $205bn annual rate in the third quarter of 2003 to dissaving at a rate of $159bn two years later. This shift of $364bn in the annual rate of saving far outstripped the fall in income caused by the higher cost of oil. This fall in saving allowed households to raise consumption spending on non-oil goods and services while paying for the higher cost of imported oil.

Can Americans go to the “borrowing well” in 2006? Martin Feldstein, professor of economics at Harvard University and president of the US National Bureau of Economic Research, postulates:

There is little spare capacity in global oil production and oil demand is rising rapidly in China and other Asian countries. A shock that reduced the production or shipping of oil could drive its price sharply higher. Speculative forces could compound this problem. The US was lucky after 2003 to escape the contractionary effect of an oil price rise even without an explicit change in monetary or fiscal policy. It would not be so lucky if a big oil price increase happened again now.

Why are prices soaring? Part of the reason is the political instability in the Middle East fostered by Bush:

Analysts say oil prices are likely to climb even higher in the weeks ahead as worries grow about how international pressure on Iran, OPEC's No. 2 oil producer, will affect its crude output. Rebel disruptions of oil production in Nigeria, the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports, also pose a risk to supply.

[W]hile oil industry analysts and the Bush administration will make the reasons sound very complicated, throwing in every market variable from refinery capacities to inventories to Nigerian guerrillas, I’ll sum it up for you in one word: “Iran.”

Although Tehran has yet to use “the oil weapon” by cutting supplies—far from it—saber-rattling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is learning fast that he can shake up the nervous global energy market with just a calculated remark here or there. In economic language so measured it sounded vaguely Greenspanian, the Iranian president told Tehran Radio this week that “the global oil price has not reached its real value yet.” At that, the cost of a barrel went splashing over the unprecedented $72 mark. “Every time there's an issue with Iran, the oil market freaks out," as one New York analyst told the Associated Press.

Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, admits that rising gasoline prices act as a tax on the Americans.

John Snow said . . . , "Higher energy prices act like a tax on American business, and American consumers, reducing their disposable income." -- Forbes

It is not a tax that goes to the Federal Government to pay for schools, national defense or social programs. It is a tax that goes into oil conglomerate profits. And, the profits are historic. Just ask Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon:

Last year, Exxon made the biggest profit of any company ever, $36 billion, and its retiring chairman appears to be reaping the benefits.

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.

Last November, when he was still chairman of Exxon, Raymond told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand.

Raymond, however, was confronted with caustic complaints about his compensation.

"In 2004, Mr. Raymond, your bonus was over $3.6 million," Sen. Barbara Boxer said.

That was before new corporate documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that revealed Raymond's retirement deal and his $51.1 million paycheck in 2005. That's equivalent to $141,000 a day, nearly $6,000 an hour.

Tumble Weed (Bush) Watch