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Ezra Klein opinion piece
Balloon Juice —
... Ezra Klein has a great piece comparing Clintoncare with what is being proposed now. I had no idea that most people were on something other than managed care before the 90s. ...
links for 2009-07-26
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles —
... FAQ - TinEye
Ezra Klein: The Ghosts of Clintoncare: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Health-Care Reform
Spencer Ackerman: I ...
The Not-Clinton Healthcare Plan
Suburban Guerrilla —
... Ezra Klein has a good piece today in which he dissects the pros and cons of the Obama approach to healthcare reform - namely, doing the opposite of what Bill Clinton did. Go read it all: ...
Doing the Opposite
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire —
Is the White House taking the George Costanza approach to health care reform? Ezra Klein thinks so. "Barack Obama's strategy to pass health-care reform seems based on a simple principle: Whatever Bill Clinton did, do the opposite... Obama's reluctance to follow Clinton's example is understandable: Few legislative failures have been as catastrophic as Clinton's on health-care reform. Yet the ghosts of the early 1990s still hover over today's debates."
Ahead of their time
Political Animal —
AHEAD OF THEIR TIME.... I learned a few things from Ezra Klein's Washington Post piece on the " ghosts of Clintoncare ," and the ways in which the Obama White House has been trying, perhaps a little too hard, to avoid the mistakes of the last serious campaign to reform health care. Clinton, Ezra explained, presented reform as the system was changing dramatically, and American consumers shifted from indemnity insurance to managed care. The plan in '93 and '94 was focused on problems that were going to exist, but the White House was ultimately not rewarded for their foresight. ...
Prepare for a Blowout
Patrick Ruffini —
... On a micro-tactical level, Obama may be taking great pains to avoid Clinton's fate on health care, as Ezra Klein details in Sunday's ...
Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
Daily Kos —
... NY Times: The major health care bills moving through Congress would require nearly all Americans to have health insurance. But as lawmakers struggle to achieve the goal of universal coverage, a critical question is whether the plans will be affordable to those who are currently uninsured. Paul Krugman: Are the Blue Dogs in the tank for the lobbyists, or just intellectually incoherent? We'll see soon enough. Ezra Klein from Sunday: What people support, in other words, is not public or ...
Non-Competition in Healthcare Insurance
The Glittering Eye —
In his op-ed in the Washington Post this morning Ezra Klein points out something that’s very important to understand:
The Justice Department judges an industry “highly concentrated” if a single company controls more than 42 percent of the market. By that definition, 94 percent of statewide insurance markets are highly concentrated. A recent study by the advocacy organization Health Care for America Now showed that in Indiana, WellPoint controls 60 percent of the insurance market; in Iowa, Wellmark accounts for 71 percent; and in Alabama, ...
Since Insurance Companies Already Ration Care, Shouldn’t It Be Ok If The Gov. Does It?
Say Anything —
... The short answer is “no.” But Ezra Klein makes that argument pointing out that the vast majority of Americans are already on health care plans that are heavily managed by employers and/or insurance companies. ...
Why So Little Competition?
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan —
Ezra Klein editorializes on health care. This is an important point:
In the modern health-care system, there is no higher power than the
insurance market. And the insurers who populate that market have grown
all the stronger. The Justice Department judges an industry "highly
concentrated" if a single company controls more than 42 percent of the
market. By that definition, 94 percent of statewide insurance markets
are highly concentrated. A recent study
by the advocacy organization Health Care for America Now showed that in
Indiana, WellPoint controls ...
Can’t do better than Ezra
Balloon Juice —
... I’ve never read much of Ezra Klein’s stuff in the past, even though it’s been highly praised elsewhere. But there’s no question that yesterday’s opinion piece and today’s ...
Seeking to Avoid Clinton's Mistakes, Obama Makes New Ones
Hit & Run —
Clive Crook has a characteristically smart column on the political troubles Obama has had with health-care reform: Though politicians and commentators talk about the president’s plan, he does not have one. Learning the lessons of “Hillarycare” far too well, Mr Obama has set out broad goals for reform and some principles to guide the design, but no more. This ...
Hullabaloo — Goats by digby Ezra sez: There's been a lot of skepticism about the White House's strategy of cutting deals in which industry players voluntarily promise to save money over the next 10 years. The skepticism is simple enough: If the pharmaceutical companies are willing to save $80 billion as a favor to Barack Obama, that suggests there's a lot more than $80 billion that could, and probably should, be saved. As Nancy Pelosi told me, "The minute the drug companies settled for $80 billion, we knew it was $160 billion. Right? If they're giving away $80 billion?" A few minutes later, she suggested that maybe those agreements weren't ...
Progressives must be ready to kill a bad health care reform bill
BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash —
ss BUZZFLASH'S LAST CHANCE DEMOCRACY CAFE By Steven C. Day God knows this country desperately needs to have a good health care reform package passed into law. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that may not happen — the good part that is — unless progressives make it clear they’re willing to kill a bad “reform” package. Let’s look at some of the recent evidence: Senator Dick Durbin, generally one of the good guys, just announced a willingness to dump the public option ...
The Ghosts Of Clinton Haunt The Climate Debate, Too
The New Republic blogs —
It's not just on health care where Obama's obsessed (maybe too obsessed ) with the lessons of the Clinton years. As Juliet Eilperin reports in The Washington Post today, his climate team also agonizes over the memory of 1997, when Clinton and Gore agreed to the Kyoto Protocol abroad, and then watched as the Senate cudgeled the climate treaty with a 97-0 vote: [image] Like most members of President Obama's climate team, David Sandalow was one of President Bill Clinton's negotiators in Kyoto. And he carries an indelible lesson from the experience of signing off on the international climate pact there 12 years ago: "Only agree abroad to what you can implement at home." He had ...
