According To The Media, The President Should Avoid The Media?

It only seems like yesterday that all the President had to do to get gushing media attention was pull on a Superman suit, slap a silly claim on a banner, and get a bunch of firemen or servicemen to stand around him as props while he made a speech. My, how times change. Now, apparently, it's unseemly for a President to want media attention, and even worse for a President to consider his legacy.

First we have Robert Samuelson complaining that the only possible reason President Obama could be pursuing healthcare reform is as a manifestation of "politicians' psychological quest for glory." To prove that Obama is concerned only with himself, Samuelson selectively quotes and comments on statements made by Max Baucus. Funny, last I checked, Obama and Baucus were different people.

Next, we have Howard Fineman complaining that Obama is trying to take control of the message on healthcare reform, and is appearing in the media (of all places) to advance his goals. Following up on a couple months of flagrant lies and misrepresentations about healthcare reform from the political right, Fineman whines,

The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer.

He proceeds with a rather childish, and in my opinion false, claim that Obama's speeches are too "self-referential (even self-reverential)". (Dare I ask, did Fineman ever write about Bob Dole?)

Now we have the astounding Richard Cohen joining the chorus of complaints,

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on.

Whenever a theme like this starts to emerge, I am left wondering if there's a puppet master pulling the strings. Just as when you see a particular theme being circulated in the right-wing media, its timing and consistency, right down to the particular phrase they want to drill into listener's heads, is usually tightly coordinated.

Granted, sometimes the complaint that somebody is in the media "too much" means "He's talking to everybody else but won't return my calls." Sometimes this type of complaint is a thin substitute for the fact that the columnist doesn't agree with the President's goals, but it's a lot easier to write (particularly for somebody like Cohen) than a substantive piece on the underlying policies. And I don't think it takes much to wind Cohen up and cause him to write a thinly-reasoned, mean-spirited column about Obama. As they say, never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

Update: The "It's all about me" theme has been picked by Marty Peretz and George Will, who respectively accuse Obama of being a narcissist and on an ego trip. Er... takes one to know one?

Brooks Gets One Right

The Republicans have lived for decades in mortal fear that the Democratic Party would create an effective national healthcare system, true universal medical coverage. Fortunately for them, the Democratic Party is intent upon passing a horribly defective bill that, in what seems to be its most likely form, is likely to be both ineffective and extremely unpopular. David Brooks observes,

Republicans are going to oppose this health care bill. Oppose, oppose, oppose. And I can half understand where they are coming from. The Democratic approach does involve a lot of government control. Moreover, it is very likely that many Congressional districts that are now Democratic will turn Republican as a result of backlash against the bill. It’s hard to ask a party to punch a gift horse in the mouth.

I'm not sure what he means by "a lot of government control", but I do think he's correct that the Baucus bill (even the "new and improved" proposal) is likely to create a significant backlash among people who are forced to buy bad insurance policies or pay a penalty. Whether people get stuck with useless, overpriced insurance, or pay a penalty to avoid having to spend even more on that useless insurance policy, they're going to be angry.

Something that impresses Brooks leaves me unimpressed:

Fourth, Republicans have all along said that the bill should not make our fiscal situation worse. The Congressional Budget Office says the Baucus bill is deficit neutral over the first 10 years and would save money over the next 10. The C.B.O. number may not take into account the various political inevitabilities. Still, that’s pretty darn impressive.

We're back in the mode of trying to create a bill that's "everything to everyone", and thereby undermining every logical goal of true healthcare reform in the name of being "deficit neutral."

The Baucus Debacle

Max Baucus has apparently figured out that his atrocious healthcare reform bill isn't going to work very well, so he's... softening the penalties in a manner that will undermine universality - and make it financially appealing, and often beneficial to pay a penalty instead of paying for worthless insurance.

Health Care Reform

One of the biggest problems with healthcare reform is the insistence that it must take the form of a single bill, and that bill must be "everything to everyone." That is, the bill must:

• Bring about universal or near-universal coverage;

• Limit the abuses of the insurance industry; and

• Maintain or reduce present levels of healthcare expenditure;

The Washington Post adds a fourth demand,

• Malpractice reform,

despite there being no evidence that malpractice reform will advance any of the three other goals of reform - and plenty that it will not. (I've written quite a bit about the fiscal reality of "malpractice reform".)

It's not the worst unsigned editorial the Post has ever run, but Fred Hiatt is out to maintain the editorial board's reputation as a gang that can't shoot straight. At least half the time they time they don't know the target, don't actually want to hit it, or both. The editorial praises the atrociously deficient Max Baucus "reform" bill, while at best hinting at its most significant deficiencies: its deliberate underfunding of insurance costs for the uninsured working class, and its deliberate failure to provide any mechanism to pressure insurance companies to bring down insurance costs for people who don't have the good fortune to participate in employer-sponsored group plans. The Bacus bill bends over backwards to make sure that co-ops would be hamstrung and useless. I could cynically ask, how much did the insurance industry pay him (or promise to pay him) - except given the extent to which he kowtows is it truly cynical to ask?

A few years ago, I was paying for insurance through COBRA, continuing my wife's coverage through a full service Blue Cross/Blue Shield group plan. Over the course of eighteen months the price went from "really high" to "extraordinary", inspiring me to check out what I could get from other sources. Even through supposed "group rates" available through some professional organizations of which I'm a member, I couldn't find anything that came close to the group plan's benefits. In fact, the typical plan offered vastly less coverage, very high copays and deductibles, and... came at a similar cost. The only way I could "save" money would have been by using a catastrophic policy and covering "routine" medical expenses out-of-pocket, but given the health problems my family was experiencing at the time that would have been worthless. So I kept on paying under COBRA until my wife found a government job where... she became eligible for a Blue Cross/Blue Shield group plan that wasn't quite as good as her former plan, but was nonetheless very good - and, once again, offered at a group rate that was vastly below the "group" plans available to me as a self-insured individual.

The Baucus plan, quite deliberately, changes none of that. In that same position, I would have been offered only one other option - the co-op option Baucus has deliberately sabotaged, the overpriced "group" plan, or the useless "catastrophic care" plan. Had I faced a mandate at the time, but been ineligible for COBRA, I would have found the absolute cheapest catastrophic insurance plan that met the terms of the mandate, and been very angry at the government for making me waste my money on a useless POS of an insurance policy. The right-wing should be celebrating Baucus's crappy bill - in its present for, it stands to make their angry supporters even angrier.

Not surprisingly, given his obeisance to corporate interests, Hiatt's editorial page doesn't express any concern for the quality of health insurance that will be available to individuals. It does mention cost:

Asking families earning $66,000 a year to devote 13 percent of their income to insurance premiums - and more once deductibles and co-payments are involved - is asking them to assume a heavy lift.

They have a gift for understatement. A head of household with a $66,000 income takes home about $52,000. After the cost of housing, one or two cars, food, clothes... it's unlikely that the family has a great deal of wiggle room in its budget. Asking them to devote more like 16-17% of their take-home pay to an insurance plan - even more, to an overpriced insurance plan... and "more once deductibles and co-payments are involved" - is going to push a lot of families into foreclosure or bankruptcy. What a solution - rather than having your medical bankruptcy after you get sick (and your insurance proves inadequate), Baucus will force you into a preemptive medical bankruptcy! What's not to love?

I recognize why the disingenuous cowards, Jack Kingston and Darrell Issa, are afraid to put their (or is it our) money where their mouths are, and introduce an option allowing individuals to buy into the current federal insurance plan. (Maybe Kingston wrote a bill, but accidentally left it somewhere with his flag pin, never to be found?) But why doesn't Baucus have the cajones to add that option? (Or are we back to that "bought and paid for by the insurance industry" thing?) Conversely, if he thinks his watered-down co-ops are worth the paper their written on, why not require that federal employees obtain their coverage through co-ops? Including, of course, Senators? No, as you know, when a self-serving Senator is involved (and you rarely find another kind) sauce for the goose is never sauce for the gander - if he did that he would either have to fix the myriad defects in his co-op proposal or face hurricane-force blowback.

Top it off with this:

In addition, the proposal's version of an employer mandate - a so-called "free rider" provision that would penalize employers not offering insurance only if their employees obtained government subsidies - could have the perverse effect of discouraging employers from hiring workers from low-income families.

Are we sure Baucus hasn't changed parties? Given his apparent eagerness to cause the uninsured working and middle class to hate the Democratic Party, I'd swear he has his eyes on Michael Steele's job....