Serially Principled Opposition To Healthcare Reform

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Some people feel that Joe Lieberman‘s opposition to healthcare reform has nothing to do with principles and everything to do with fealty to the health insurance industry. They point to the fact that one of the giants of the industry, Aetna, is headquartered in Connecticut. They mutter darkly about contributions made by Aetna and Aetna’s to Lieberman, both over the years and recently:

Since 1989, only 10 other current senators have brought in more cash from the health sector than Lieberman, who has collected $2.6 million in that time. Senator Lieberman has accepted over $110,000 from private health insurance Aetna in campaign contributions so far this year. In 2009, Aetna has already spent over $2 million dollars in lobbying for health care a system (sic) based on private coverage, while denying countless claims for patients who need treatment.

And all of this is, of course totally untrue. Sheer gratuitous vilification. If baseless attacks on political transvestites qualified as hate crimes, many many people would be in trouble with the law.

Because it is abundantly clear that Lieberman’s opposition to healthcare reform is deeply grounded in principle. Or rather, principles. A hell of a lot of them, at last count:

In June, Lieberman said, “I don’t favor a public option because I think there’s plenty of competition in the private insurance market.” That didn’t make sense, and it was quickly dropped from his talking points.

In July, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because “the public is going to end up paying for it.” No one could figure out exactly what that meant, and the senator moved onto other arguments.

In August, he said we’d have to wait “until the economy’s out of recession,” which is incoherent, since a public option, even if passed this year, still wouldn’t kick in for quite a while.

In September, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because “the public doesn’t support it.” A wide variety of credible polling proved otherwise.

In October, Lieberman said the public option would mean “trouble … for the national debt,” by creating “a whole new government entitlement program.” Soon after, Jon Chait explained that this “literally makes no sense whatsoever.”

Well, it’s November. And guess what? We’re onto the sixth rationale in six months. I actually like the new one.
“This is a radical departure from the way we’ve responded to the market in America in the past,” Lieberman said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “We rely first on competition in our market economy. When the competition fails then what do we do? We regulate or we litigate…. We have never before said, in a given business, we don’t trust the companies in it, so we’re going to have the government go into that business..”

Lieberman is, of course, dead on target with his observation that it can be extremely misguided to jump in and do things we have never before done.

For instance, when someone loses a Senate primary, what good can come of supporting them when they go ahead and run anyway as an Independent? Or, for that matter, when someone campaigns actively and viciously against the presidential candidate of their caucus, kissing them on both cheeks afterward and telling them it doesn’t matter, and they can keep their committee chairmanships.

Comments

  1. Mike says:
    November 23, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I believe the Senator is practicing that wonderful dodge of the last administration. IF THE FIRST LIE DOESN’T FLY TRY ANOTHER.

  2. Stephanie Hunter says:
    November 24, 2009 at 9:41 am

    Not to mention the fact that Lieberman supported the public option a few years ago. The claim that Joe is standing on principles simply isn’t defendable in light of facts like these. He continues to play politics like the rest of them!

  3. sarabeth says:
    November 24, 2009 at 9:50 am

    Which is why nobody we know — or are willing to admit to knowing — argues that he’s standing on principle.

  4. David Holmes says:
    November 24, 2009 at 10:41 pm

    Is there a coherent argument against any of the 6 reasons listed above of why Joe is against a public option? Every one listed can easily be proven.
    1) Plenty of competition, especially if insurance companies are permitted to cross state lines. How many hundreds of insurance companies are in the US?
    2) The public will end up paying for it. Where do you think the government will get the money? Oh, liberals don’t see the “rich” and middle class paying higher taxes as “the public” paying for it.
    3) Waiting until out of recession is smart. The author stated the public option wouldn’t kick in for quite awhile. True. Sometime in 2014. However, the Senate version so far has the tax increases to pay for the bill beginning Jan 1, 2010. That’s 36 days from now. We’ll get to pay for it for 4 years before seeing any benefit. That’s why the CBO’s 10 year projection is bogus. Pay for 10 years, receive 6 years of benefits. True analysis would compute 2014-2024, but liberals don’t want to do that because it shows a $2 trillion+ cost.
    4) The public doesn’t support it. Reputable polls show that easily. The more Americans learn about it, the more they oppose it. If you think different, post a reputable poll.
    5) The public option is a grand entitlement program (people will be given something from the government without having earned it. The money to do this will come from productive people’s labors). With major additions to the deficit (see #3 above).
    6) Name a business the government entered in to because competition failed.

    The health care bills are nothing more than a means of redistributing wealth. Part of the progressive’s agenda to achieve “social equality”. None of the bills will reduce health care costs. None address portability, tort reform (with resultant defensive medicine), or competition across state lines.

  5. sarabeth says:
    November 25, 2009 at 4:37 am

    Yes, in fact, there is a coherent argument against every transient rationale Joe Lieberman has hidden behind. (But only for those who are willing to let facts get in the way of their beliefs.)

    Just click on the second link in the post, and follow the links from there.

    Your “easy proofs” are facile and/or misinformed. There’s also “deliberately dishonest” as a possibility. You’re making tired Republican “arguments” that have been repeatedly debunked.

    Just for example:
    1) There may be hundreds of insurance companies, but in most markets 90% of the market is controlled by 1 or 2 companies. Nor even the Republicans — who have proved willing to lend their name to a hell of a lot of lies in opposing healthcare reform — are willing to call that competition.
    3) The CBO scored both the first decade and the second decade. How convenient to pretend their analysis doesn’t go beyond the first 10 years.
    4) Depends on the definition of “learn”, doesn’t it? As even some in the “fair and balanced” mainstream media have felt compelled to point out, one side has only been peddling lies and spreading misinformation. And the public still strongly supports a public option. This is a Washington Post-ABC News poll from mid-October:

    On the issue that has been perhaps the most pronounced flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support was 62 percent.)

    5) You don’t seem to understand the difference between the public option and subsidies to low-income Americans. (No doubt you are also vehemently opposed to other grand entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.)
    6) And we should never ever do anything for the first time, right? (That’s ignoring the fact that the government is already in the heath insurance business, via Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA system, not to mention the Cadillac plans provided to members of Congress.)

    None of the bills will reduce health care costs.

    No doubt you have conducted your own authoritative analysis of the issue, which is more reliable than that of the CBO?

  6. paul hanseen says:
    December 16, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    There is great deal of miss-information purporting that there are a large number of insurance companies, who, if existed, would compete. In fact, there are only about four companies and they do not compete, they have a legal monopoly, they all practice price setting; they set the price of a policy you buy. Once again there are only 4 companies that write, underwrite, and then buy the insurance plans, hire the commisioned agents, that sell the policy, that you buy!.

    I do not understand why the competition myth has not been exploded, it is, as if, everyone still believes in Santa and telling someone the truth is anomalous with disappointing a three year old with the news, “Santa does not exist”.

    Then let me say it this way, Santa does not exist, nor does health insurance competition exist, nor can it. It is impossible to for them to compete, they have a monopoly, they write the policy you buy whose price is then set by the same insurance company.

    It’s okay, don’t cry, my little capitalist idealist.

    Paul Hanseen

  7. paul hanseen says:
    December 16, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    There is great deal of miss-information purporting that there are a large number of insurance companies, who, if existed, would compete. In fact, there are only about four companies and they do not compete, they have a legal monopoly, they all practice price setting; they set the price of a policy you buy. Once again there are only 4 companies that write, underwrite, and then buy the insurance plans, hire the commisioned agents, that sell the policy, that you buy!.

    I do not understand why the competition myth has not been exploded, it is, as if, everyone still believes in Santa and telling someone the truth is anomalous with disappointing a three year old with the news, “Santa does not exist”.

    Then let me say it this way, Santa does not exist, nor does health insurance competition exist, nor can it. It is impossible to for them to compete, they have a monopoly, they write the policy you buy whose price is then set by the same insurance company.

    It’s okay, don’t cry, my little capitalist idealist.

  8. sarabeth says:
    December 16, 2009 at 3:19 pm

    That’s an asinine comment.

    a) what does it have to do with the specific content of the post?
    b) who is the “little capitalist idealist” it’s addressed to, anyway?
    c) your argument that they have a monopoly because they write the policy you buy whose price is then set by the same insurance company makes no sense (every company sets prices for its goods or services; all price-setting is not illegal; only collusive price-fixing is)
    d Maybe you haven’t heard but the competition myth was loudly exploded back in June, when Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released this report:

    The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country’s insurance markets are defined as “highly concentrated,” according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that’s led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

    Far from healthy market competition, HCAN describes the situation as “a market failure where a small number of large companies use their concentrated power to control premium levels, benefit packages, and provider payments in the markets they dominate.”