I hope John Edwards is paying attention to the latest to come out of Camp Obama. Because if he is, I’m certain he’s just as stunned and appalled as the rest of us at BO’s latest mailer. I would expect the rethugs to drag out those old Harry & Louise type attacks on any Democrat pushing for Universal Health Care (you know – where EVERYONE gets covered?), but I never thought another Democrat would stoop so low as to borrow a page out of the Republican Insurance Industry playbook.
Think back to 1993, when the health insurance industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to scare people into opposing health care reform. Remember those infamous Harry & Louise ads? Here’s a still shot from one of them...
Well, here’s what Sen. Obama is sending around to households all over this country right now and (you’ll note) he’s using the exact same scare tactics...
Disgusting. He used the same BS, right down to the plaid shirt.
Make the jump – there’s more...
Don’t take my word re the eerie similarities here – Paul Krugman weighed in on this earlier today in Obama Does Harry and Louise Again...
The Obama campaign sends out an ugly mailer. Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don't buy insurance until they need care.
He wraps it up by saying that BO’s just poisoning the well for health care reform and questions whether this is an example of the politics of hope that BO’s always talking about.
Everyone’s reporting on this from HuffPo to TPM Election Central to Politico’s own Ben Smith, who posted on this earlier...
The Clinton campaign convened a conference call with health policy experts to denounce Obama's new mailer, which attacks Clinton's plan for "forcing" Americans to sign up for insurance, and which features a couple at a kitchen table that recalls, for some, the famous insurance-industry- financed "Harry and Louise" ads against the original Clinton plan.
"I am personally outraged at the picture used in this mailing," said Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, a leading supporter of mandatory insurance, who called it a "Harry and Louise evocation."
How anyone could defend garbage like this is beyond me, and yet David Axelrod did just that when Smith and Lynn Sweet (Chicago Sun Times?) ran into him in a hotel lobby later. I mean come on (!) - he used Harry and freakin’ Louise against another Democrat and against serious health care reform in some sad effort to earn political points going in to Tsunami Tuesday!
(John Edwards – are you listening?).
What Smith and others forget to mention is that John Edwards own healthcare policy guru, Peter Harbage also took an active role in that conference call. Harbage said that this line of attack of Obama’s would stun anyone who truly cares about healthcare reform. The fact that Harbage was even sitting in on that Clinton campaign conference call in the first place speaks volumes at just how over the line BO stepped with this mailer. His boss only suspended his campaign 2 days ago and he’s already lending support to Hillary’s team when attacked on something he believes in – true universal health care reform. It's only natural I suppose, that they'd band together to defend this reform package. Both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are pushing for universal coverage, whereas the guy resorting to these Harry & Louise scare tactics will leave approximately 15 million people out in the cold.
People were surprised that BO’s plan didn’t include mandates for all when he first released it. The very absence of those mandates meant that his plan was a loser right from the start when it comes to cost containment. Healthy people could cruise without coverage and then sign up only when they get sick. At which point Obama has said on several occasions that he would hit them with a penalty for not participating earlier.
Now he’s attacking Hillary over these same points?
His plan also includes a mandate for parents with children and would require them to buy coverage for their kids. Yet he doesn’t seem all a-fluster over the idea of "forcing" them to spend money on that insurance. He’s only going on the attack over the mandates in Hillary’s plan.
BO’s latest line of attack includes a claim that the only people don’t have insurance now are folks who can’t afford it. But that’s just not true you guys. Ten million of the 47 million uninsured out there qualify for public programs and assistance of some form or another and yet they’re not signed up. There’s more to it than affordability and I think BO knows this but ignores it anyway. It doesn’t suit his agenda.
One major thing that BO’s latest line of attack re Hillary’s universal health care reform package ignores is that her plan includes premium caps, measures to drive down costs, and increased funding for federally-backed programs that the poorest among us rely upon. People living on the margin with zero disposable income will still be able to afford coverage through massive tax credits – freeing up their income so they can afford to buy into federally backed programs like the Congressional health care plans. If they make so little that tax credits won’t help then they’ll fall under federally funded programs for the poorest among us (like Medicaid).
Hillary (and Edwards) has a plan that takes affordability into account. To suggest otherwise in these mailers is just a flat out lie.
Look, the bottom line that I think all experts agree on is that without mandates, you can’t possibly achieve universal health care coverage. Paul Krugman pointed that out. Several of the people on today’s conference call are experts in this field and they’ll tell you it’s vital to include mandates. And The Urban Institute came out with a report yesterday on this very issue. Here’s what they have to say in the reports introduction...
In this brief we conclude that, absent a single payer system, it is not possible to achieve universal coverage without an individual mandate. The evidence is strong that voluntary measures alone would leave large numbers of people uninsured. Voluntary measures would tend to enroll disproportionate numbers of individuals with higher cost health problems, creating high premiums and instability in the insurance pools in which they are enrolled, unless further significant government subsidization is provided. The government would also have difficulty redirecting current spending on the uninsured to offset some of the cost associated with a new program without universal coverage.
Ezra Klein also weighed in on mandates and this new Harry & Louise mailer...
A mandate is not how you cover everyone, it's how you force insurers to cover everyone, and discriminate against no one. And even if you don't have a mandate in your plan, to argue against universal mechanisms because they force people to buy insurance is supremely damaging to the long-term goal, which Obama professes support for, of some system in which everyone is, and has to be, covered.
In the end, his plan is not universal, does not attempt to be, and is probably less generous in its affordability provisions than Clinton's. And even so, I wouldn't really care, as it's still a pretty good plan, except that he's decided to respond to the inadequacies of his own policy by fear-mongering against not only better policy, but the type of policy he's probably going to have to eventually adopt. It's very, very short-sighted.
(Emphasis added)
This latest line of attack undermines any effort to get us to universal coverage. BO’s using Republican style attacks on his rival and in the process, is feeding right into what the Repbulicans will be doing to our nominee come the general election. BO’s painted himself into a corner by stopping short of calling for a universal plan, and rather than say "yeah I screwed up and I’m gonna fix it" he’s gone on the attack against anyone who’s brave enough to go for it all – right now.
BO’s plan will leave millions of us without coverage. More from that Urban Institute Report...
Opponents of an individual mandate argue that they can come close to universal coverage with a combination of income-related subsidies, more options for purchasing affordable coverage (e.g., through purchasing pools), and administrative mechanisms for facilitating enrollment in insurance. The most recent data indicate that there are 47 million uninsured people in the United States. Even if subsidies, benefits, and administrative simplifications are sufficient to reach two-thirds of the uninsured (a reach beyond what any study to date has shown for a voluntary system), this would still leave 15.5 million people uninsured.
This would be admirable, but would be considerably less than full coverage, and, as health care costs and insurance premiums increase, these numbers could easily erode unless further government dollars were injected into the system.
He’s the timid one in stopping short of calling for universal coverage, and to top off that timidity he’s using the old line of attack used by the insurance industry (Harry & Louise) to try to take down his rival. In the process (sadly) he may be destroying our one real chance at getting EVERYONE covered.
Read more about it - here’s her plan
Ok one more bit of late-breaking news – The Denver Post endorsed Hillary earlier this afternoon and here’s what they had to say in closing in their endorsement / editorial...
Obama has criticized Clinton's health care plan because it requires citizens to buy coverage while subsidizing low-income workers. But Obama's voluntary plan simply won't work, any more than a voluntary Social Security plan could work. By allowing seemingly healthy people to avoid buying insurance, Obama would simply saddle the taxpayers with the costs of their care if and when they are stricken by such catastrophic illnesses as cancer.
Nice – I like they way they touch on the whole healthcare thing. Then they throw in a twist – one that we saw Wolf Blitzer toss in at the end of last night’s debate. Check it out...
We genuinely admire both these candidates and confess we'd like to see them team up in Denver in a Clinton/Obama ticket. Marrying Hillary Clinton's proven record of performance with Barack Obama's uplifting vision would truly make history for the Democratic Party — and possibly for America as a whole.
Clinton / Obama ’08. He may not be ready for prime time in my book, but give him 8 years of seasoning as Hillary’s VP and we’re talking about a whole new ball game.
Stay tuned ;o)
U P D A T E
I see a handful of folks have gotten the latest talking points re that conference call this morning, and are repeating a lie about something one of the health care experts uttered. Here's what Hillary's Fact Hub has to say in response...
Link
Clinton Campaign on Health Care Conference Call
2/1/2008 2:51:42 PM
Earlier today, the Clinton campaign held a conference call to discuss the Obama campaign's negative health care mailer, which is reminiscent of Harry and Louise ads used by industry to defeat universal health care in the early 1990s. At the end of the call, Howard Wolfson made the following statement:
"I heard someone make a reference to a march in Skokie in comparison to the photograph in the mailer which is not a comparison that we would make. And everyone on the call is obviously very passionate about this issue, and rightfully so, but that is not a comparison that we would make."
These remarks were made by a health care expert unaffiliated with our campaign. They were totally inappropriate and the campaign rejects them completely.
Oh and by the way - if you're like me and you support Hillary in all this then please stop by a yahoo discussion group a few of us have set up. A sort of oasis in the midst of all this insanity ;o)
Hillary's Voice
Just let us know you want to join and we'll get you sorted :)