TwoThree issues of import to the netroots have run into difficulty.
1) The new "progressive majority" looks forward to doing away with competition in the Medicare program by having the federal government "negotiate" directly with pharmaceutical companies. Such action is supposed to come as part of the now much anticipated "100 hour agenda." But, the AP reports the initial cost of implementing the drug benefit has come in 30% below estimates, including $6.9 billion in savings because of competition between private sector drug benefit providers. With costs lower than expected and senior satisfaction running high, the AP also reports Democratic efforts to change the program have become more difficult. Not that we hadn't heard that before.
2) Did you know that Bush lied? Well, along the way, he was also illegally listening to the innocent conversations of loyal Americans.
Wait a minute.
On Tuesday the Seattle Times ran an amended version of a Washington Post article on the NSA terrorist surveillance program in question. The New York Times caught up with its own story yesterday on the matter. Here's a particularly interesting portion of the Post's coverage:
The probe comes as a newly active presidential civil liberties board received its first detailed briefing about the NSA program. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which was established by Congress and whose five members were appointed by Bush, was provided details about the workings of the NSA program last week.One member, Lanny J. Davis, a White House lawyer in the Clinton administration, said in an interview that he was "pleasantly surprised" by the privacy protections built into the program. He declined to discuss the program in detail because of secrecy restrictions.
"I was astonished at the extent to which they are all concerned about the legal and civil liberties and privacy implications of what they were doing," Davis said. "It was a constant theme of concern, awareness and training way beyond what I expected."
Davis said the briefings convinced him that the program had been carefully constructed from the start. "It was clear that as they thought about it, they put it together in a way that minimized problems to the best extent that they could," he said.
Of course Lanny Davis supported Joe Lieberman and had some harsh words for the liberal blogosphere, so that does make him an apostate of sorts to the new "progressive majority."
Ah, well, soldier on. Perhaps they can focus instead on implementing all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission as promised?
Posted by Eric Earling at November 30, 2006 07:39 AM | Email ThisNo one in their right mind can or should believe them, and their pledge to fully implement 9/11 was just another lie... just another day...
They could have been someone. They could have been contenders.
But now, they hand the GOP an issue to beat them over the head with for the next two years.
Maybe the GOP has infiltrated these clowns?
I wonder if the stilwell/Particle Man wing of the fringe nutters have figured out how badly they were hosed in this election.
WOW! Some of this is actually fun!
Posted by: Hinton on November 30, 2006 09:09 AMChuckie Shumer is already declaring the end of Reaganism. He, too, should be doing some soul-searching with his party.
You mentioned one nutroot loss and didn't mention the two nutroot losses in this state. However, their effect on this past election was dramatic. To trivialize their effect is a huge mistake.
Posted by: swatter on November 30, 2006 09:36 AMOnce the 100 Hour Agenda is over I plan to ask my rabid liberal neighbor (he just had to show me his "Impeach Bush" cycling socks): "How's the impeachment going?" And I plan to keep asking him until 2008. It’ll be kind of a test, wonder if he'll get it . . .
Why? Because that's how politics is played. You loose, you make it hell for the other side. Nothing ever gets done because it's a stalemate. This has been repeated countless times throughout American history, and is why Americans are doomed to suffer through mediocrity. Govt. is full of egotistical windbags who really only care about themselves and holding onto power.
Posted by: Cato on November 30, 2006 11:30 AMCompetition is great, and should be encouraged in every way, but in the healthcare area it hasn't done the American drug consumer alot of good when compared to the negotiated prices that consumers in the other industrial democracies pay. Even in the study you cite, greater cost "savings" resulted from lower than estimated enrollments than from competition (which is never defined). Again, this IS NOT meant to slam competition, only to caution against its sanctification IN THIS CASE.
You can still have competition within a negotiated price regime, depending on how you structure it. And no matter how you spin it, that provision in the original program that forbade Medicare from using its market size to negotiate lower prices, as large companies do every day in the private sector, was a blatent giveaway to big Pharma and should be repealed.
Let the D's change that provision and then compare actual drug costs before and after. If the change proves to be a mistake, then hang the D's with it. But, in the meantime, bury the free market vs socialism red herring, it doesn't become a thoughtful healthcare anayst.
Posted by: MJ on November 30, 2006 02:40 PM
I think a bigger question to ask is how much are life saving drugs worth? If one or two little pills keep you from dying, what is that worth? $80. a month? $200. a month? A thousand? Maybe more? I think a little reality is in order about what these drugs do compared to cost.
At this point the Feds should open-up the market world-wide and let people get their drugs wherever they can source them. Canada, Mexico, wherever. Use the internet. A free market. That will bring down the cost faster than anything.
Comparing to the VA is a bad comparison. The VA has a very small selection of drugs, not covering anything like the general population needs. The negotiation in this case was one-way - this is what we will pay for it. Like the foreign markets, if you want to do business in our country this will be the price. If you choose not to then we will copy it.
And then on top of it, can anyone honestly believe that the government will be anywhere near as efficient as a for profit company? That extra cost of having the government being the clearing house for one third of the US population - the third that requires the most drugs - would not increase the government payroll by massive amounts? That is a hidden cost of the government drug programs.
Posted by: Fred on November 30, 2006 04:22 PMMJ - one of the links I provided above, to previous Sound Politics discussion of a LA Times article , covered both of the points you raised, both the incorrect comparison to the VA and the misnomer that Medicare will just "negotiate" with pharmaceutical companies. That link also provides coverage of a Washington Post article detailing similar problems with the Democrats' proposal as described by the LA Times.
Moreover, your comparisons are all false. The VA and Medicaid don't negotiate prices, they dictate them - Medicaid using a specific formula to do so. Meanwhile, your claim of "negotiated prices" in other countries is curious, since most other industrialized countries utilize price controls of some sort (and have the shrinking drug industries to show for it).
Lastly, the lower enrollment you cite actually supports a conservative point in the original debate, that while there was demand in many quarters of the senior community, it was not as badly needed by all as some advocates claimed. Lower enrollment shows people chose not to sign-up, likely because they didn't need the benefit. It's not like you can claim they didn't know about it, since the media and assorted organizations and agencies serving seniors have been talking about it virtually non-stop for over a year now.
Posted by: Eric Earling on November 30, 2006 07:15 PM