So it's Saturday evening, so I figured I'd kick back and read some TIME. It's the edition dated October 12, 2009 and it was all going well until I read a commentary by a man named Christopher Caldwell, who seems to think that Democrats as a whole love them some Baucus bill with a side of Max Tax.
Watch me pick apart this guy's remarks below the fold.
All quotes are linked from the commentary, linked HERE.
Democrats have a tiger by the tail. It is dawning on them that the people screaming at those town-hall meetings over the summer were not just feigning anger or sublimating their personal neuroses. Cherish is not too strong a word for how Americans feel about what they get out of their health-care plans, however much they grouse about access and cost. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 92% of Americans who do have health insurance are very or somewhat satisfied with their choice of doctors and hospitals; 95% are very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their care more generally.
Sigh, here we go, saying that many who have insurance are happy with it, ignorant of the fact that 45 million are bereft of it because of means and/or pre-existing conditions. He also doesn't mention the fact that prices have been rising faster than wages and that this is unsustainable and unacceptable. 44,000 uninsured Americans will die this year alone and all he focuses on is how those that HAVE insurance generally like it. I myself am on my college's health program and I like it (because it's paid for as part of the dorm fees at my public, government-run college). Before that, I was covered by my dad's job-provided insurance, c/o Blue Cross Blue Shield and we liked it because we have never come down with a serious ailment that has forced us to square off against the corporate bureaucracy.
Moving on:
Democratic reform efforts once focused on building a European-style single-payer Utopia.
As we have and still should, but Congress is such a frustrating and biased machine that we're lucky if we come out of this with half a loaf.
They [the Democrats] now focus on enlisting Republicans, if only a few, to share responsibility for a plan that Democrats, if they were sufficiently contemptuous of public sentiment, would have the votes to pass on their own. The centerpiece of the current effort is the individual mandate--basically a requirement that everyone buy health insurance.
Whoa, slow down there. You are right to be indignant about mandates, max taxes, and whatnot, but do not pin the whole ordeal on Democrats. Max Baucus may be a Democrat, but he does not speak for the majority of Democrats in the House and the Senate. The vast majority of us prefer the public option and will fight any mandate that is unjust. The reason why Max Baucus put mandates and taxes in there is because he wants something that will grow the corporations that he favors and offer negligible improvement to the current system. Just go here: http://standwithdrdean.com/... and you'll see what Democrats REALLY feel and not just the collective idiocy of Baucus & Conrad (the wonder twins of fail).
He goes on to talk about how the president is now supporting mandates, which is true, but he also talks about how max taxes and mandates will make people more indignant and angry against Democrats. He's right that people will be angry, but he kinda took the president out of context. The president talked well of mandates, but still favors the public option (but won't issue a veto threat because of fear that it would backfire). He also says that he'll only support reform that bends the cost curve and helps the middle and working classes, something that the Baucus bill will not do as it does not issue any significant regulations on private companies to keep corporate waste down and benefits up.
My personal response to his commentary:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
After doing a little research on Time magazine's website, I have found that this is not the only BS piece by Chris Caldwell. In a commentary (ominously titled "The Limits of Empathy for Sonia Sotomayor") he wrote for the magazine the week before the Sotomayor hearings commenced, he wrote a blue streak (linked HERE ) about the "wise latina" comments and the New Haven firefighters' case. Throughout this commentary, he heavily implies she favors minority races over Caucasians, without bringing up the fact that Sotomayor was only 1 of the 3 judges on that panel that voted UNANIMOUSLY against the firefighters and that the court was following precedent by ruling that way.
When I saw this earlier Caldwell article on Time's website, a light bulb went off in my head and I immediately remembered reading this precise same commentary at the time it was published. Then, he was spouting GOP talking points, so I shrugged him off. Now that he's falsely characterizing Democrats' views on reform, I have to call him out.
I leave you tonight with a video that characterizes the fail that is Caldwell's commentary: