Murphy: Health care bill bad for paper mills, med equipment makers

Here's a chunk of Rep. Scott Murphy's (D-Glens Falls) explanation for why he voted against his party's health care bill.

"I have consistently said that any bill that Congress passes must curb costs and keep health care affordable in the long term. During these difficult economic times, an unacceptably high price tag will stress our already overstretched federal budget and place even more burdens on our hard working individuals, families and small businesses.

"We need to fix the system now, and not put off the hard choices for another generation. Furthermore, I am deeply frustrated by the last minute addition of over $50 billion in taxes on the two largest private employers in the 20th District – medical device manufacturers and paper mills.

“As a small businessman, I am also concerned that H.R. 3962 falls short of making health insurance affordable for the small businesses of the 20th District; it fails to reform the fundamentally flawed incentives in the system, which continue to drive costs upward; and it fails to restrain the monopolistic practices of private insurers, which allow them to continue to increase premiums already weighing on families and small businesses."

North Country Dems split on historic Healthcare vote

The North Country is now -- astonishingly -- represented by three Democratic members of Congress, all of them elected since 2006.

Late last night, the trio split two-to-one in favor of the Democratic healthcare bill.

Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-Utica), whose district includes all of Herkimer County, voted Yes.

This from the Utica-Observer Dispatch:

"There are items I think could be improved,” Arcuri said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. “There are some parts of the Senate bill I like better, and some parts of this bill I like better than the Senate version. I look at this as piece of the whole — this is the first step in a process.”

Rep. Bill Owens (D-Plattsburgh), whose district includes most of the North Country, also voted Yes.

Rep. Scott Murphy (D-Glens Falls), whose district stretches from Saranac Lake down through Lake Champlain and Lake George, voted No.

Healthcare reform confronts pre-existing conditions

So it's come to this. The reason we can't create a massive new Federal entitlement -- universal healthcare -- is that it might endanger another massive Federal entitlement, Medicare.

Call it a pre-existing condition.

We've reached a stage in the debate over the future of our social safety net, taxes, and the economy where the rhetoric is so muddled that most Americans have no idea what's going on.

Democrats are pushing a complicated, kitchen-sink plan that was built by committee. By multiple committees.

Yes, it will insure tens of millions of Americans and end lots of insurance-industry nastiness.

But does anyone think this is the coherent, big-think, third-way solution that Barack Obama promised during the campaign? No way.

It's too expensive, too riddled with compromises.

And the Republicans. Sheesh. They can't decide whether they think there's even really a problem or not.

When they trotted out their "solution" last week, it was a joke. Only three million extra Americans covered over the next decade.

Tens of millions still out in the cold.

If there's a free-market, de-regulation, tort-reforming path to solving this problem, why haven't conservatives found it? Or at least pointed us in the right direction?

It would have been great if, from the beginning, Republicans had signaled a true willingness to collaborate on this bill, shaping it in a bipartisan way.

Instead, they expressed publicly the hope that its defeat would be President Obama's "Waterloo."

My best hope for this dust-up is that the reform package that's finally passed will be something we can fix once it's out of the garage.

Social Security and Medicare -- two of the best-beloved government programs in America -- both required a lot of doctoring after they were rolled out, and they're still far from perfect.

If the Democratic plan does win approval, Mr. Obama should make clear to the American people that this is only a first step. Health care reform is a work in progress.

How will North Country Dems vote on health care?

Freshly-sworn-in Rep. Bill Owens is a firm Yes on the health care reform package in the House.

Rep. Mike Arcuri, whose district includes the area around Old Forge, and Rep. Scott Murphy from Glens Falls still haven't signed on.

From the NY Observer:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has said "we're very close" to getting the 218 votes needed to pass the bill. Several other upstate Democrats in the House--Dan Maffei, Mike Arcuri and Scott Murphy--are undecided on the bill.

In a vote this close, the North Country seats that Dems have picked up since 2006 (Arcuri, Murphy, Owens) could make a difference.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Wilson

During last night's speech before a joint session of Congress -- the loftiest, most dignified ritual in our democracy -- President Barack Obama laid out a detailed, passionate, and controversial vision of health care reform.

In frank terms, Mr. Obama also accused his conservative opponents of lying about provisions of his plan. And according to most independent observers, his attack on the Republican Party appeared fair and accurate.

The Democratic proposals to reform our nation's ailing medical system may be flawed, but they certainly do not include provisions that would euthanize the elderly or the disabled.

They do not fund abortions. Nor do they force people to give up their private insurance.

During the speech, Mr. Obama himself was accused of lying by Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina.

Mr. Wilson shouted, "You lie!" during the President's address, a breach of decorum for which he has apologized.

Polite or not, was the Republican congressman's accusation truthful?

No. Sadly, it was a flagrant and bald-faced falsehood.

In claiming that Democrats plan to extend healthcare subsidies to undocumented aliens, the GOP has once again muddied this crucial debate with deception.

For the record, here is the New York Times' fact-checking treatment of the issue:

The legislation approved by three House committees clearly states that only lawful residents will qualify for new health insurance subsidies.

“Nothing in this subtitle,” it says, “shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

Let me say again: Many provisions of the Democratic healthcare plan are vulnerable to criticism and fair-minded debate.

I am particularly skeptical about Mr. Obama's plan to pay for the reform package.

But Rep. Wilson's outburst did conservatives no favors. It served to further discredit their movement -- branding them as hotheads, bullies, and yes, liars.

Until Republicans return to honest and civil debate on this issue, Democrats will hold the high ground.

Memo to President Obama: No more Mr. Cool

Next week, President Barack Obama will give the speech of his life, setting (or failing to set) the trajectory for the national debate over health care.

Here's my scorecard for what I want to hear in his address to Congress and the nation.

1. Show some passion and a clear agenda. Put it on the line, Mr. Obama. Win or lose, you own this. Might as well be up front about what 'this' is. Is it a moral imperative that we care for our fellow citizens? Or is this about technocratic tweaking?

2. Offer some new ideas. To solve this puzzle, we need your brain trust to come up with one or two game-changers. Not only because the healthcare system has to improve. We also need you to restore our confidence that government can be smart and creative.

3. Ignore the crazies. Democrats have embarrassed themselves dismally this summer, shadow-boxing with nuts. If you spend a single sentence trying to mollify people who think you're an evil Fascist, you'll lose enormous credibility.

4. Convince us that the lines will converge. Most Americans understand that we needed to spend money like drunken sailors to avert a full-scale economic collapse. But we're terrified of the national debt, and rightly so. How do we expand healthcare without going bankrupt?

It's a tall order. But you set this agenda. Time to knock off the cool-guy stuff and take a stand.

MoveOn.org targets Murphy for vigil

Various progressive groups - primarily MoveOn.org -- are holding vigils to nudge lawmakers toward embracing the so-called "public option" for health care reform.

According to a statement issued today, one of the gatherings will be held tonight outside the Hudson NY headquarters of Glens Falls Democrat Scott Murphy.

Murphy has embraced some form of publicly-funded insurance, though he's raised questions about issues of competition between public and private programs.

This from the MoveOn.org press release:

The vigils will include a memorial to Senator Edward Kennedy, who viewed fighting for universal health care as the "cause of his life."

The gathering gets underway at 7pm this evening.

Sen. Kennedy, healthcare and the people's government

Senator Ted Kennedy is a symbol of an idea that once seemed old-hat, that America's government can and should be a force for good in all our lives.

From the earliest days of the New Deal, conservatives have recoiled from this philosophy.

Efforts to dismantle social security, health care for the elderly and unemployment insurance began almost before the ink had dried on those programs.

While those efforts failed, Republicans scored some big ideological victories. Ronald Reagan famously declared that government wasn't the problem but the solution.

When Bill Clinton conceded that the era of big government was over, it seemed like the era of Roosevelt and Kennedy era was over.

It turns out not so much.

Republicans and Democrats quietly kept the big government bandwagon rolling, expanding social programs, exploding the size of military and intelligence programs.

The truth is that Americans talk a good game about our libertarian bootstrap ideals.

But we still want the government to help us get a job, care for our parents when they're aging, keep our streets safe, and on and on.

Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 and the market's failure to insure tens of millions of Americans further discredited many of those laissez-faire ideas in the minds of voters.

The townhall meetings -- crowded with people who think the Federal government is a conspiratorial cabal formed to devour individual freedoms -- are a distraction.

The truth is that the vast majority of Americans want a strong and capable and activist government.

The real danger is this: Somewhere in the fugue between our small government rhetoric and our big government greed, we apparently forgot how to actually govern well.

We blow tons of money on programs, on big-business subsidies, on cash for farmers -- while our economy and our quality of life continue to contract.

Worse yet, we've continued down this path long after we had the bankroll to pay for it. We're a welfare nation, lining up for our monthly checks from China and the Middle East.

Which brings us to the current debate over health care. Of course it matters that the Democrats find a way to improve and expand insurance coverage for millions of Americans.

But far more important -- to the nation and to the legacy of men like Ted Kennedy -- is that they prove America can still do this kind of big-government well, with innovation and creativity.

I'll be honest. So far, I haven't heard a single stunning new idea.

The Brain Trust that roared into Washington last January hasn't produced a single game-changing model or approach.

Is there anyone who voted for Barack Obama who didn't expect more and better than this?

Part of the problem seems to be that the Obama Administration is still trying to wink at the notion that big government is a bad thing.

That's nonsense. For better or worse, this Democratic Party is rooted in the ideology of Roosevelt and Johnson and Kennedy.

They're not socialists. They're certainly not communists.

But they believe that a modern, industrial and urbanized society like ours needs a strong, well-run central bureaucracy, capable of providing a safety net and smoothing the rough edges of capitalism.

This is the real test Democrats face in the fall. Not whether they can be bipartisan or moderate or centrist.

The measuring stick now is whether their ideals and their activism can achieve practical and sustainable results -- or not.

If the health care reform we see at the end of the day is a colossal and overpriced mess -- or if it fails outright -- Mr. Obama will have lost more than a fight over one issue.

He will have discredited the ideas at the heart of his own movement.

Kennedy's message: Know your messenger

Ted Kennedy's passing this week comes at a time when the vitriol in American politics is at fever pitch.

Democrats pushing for healthcare reform have been accused of trying to kill old people and people with disabilities.

They've been accused of being communists, fascists, and agents of the Anti-Christ.

Kennedy was a standard-bearer for the liberal movement and many of his policy proposals were highly controversial.

Along with Hillary Clinton, he was perhaps the most significant left-of-center culture warrior of his day.

But whatever you think of Kennedy's ideas, his motivations were beyond reproach: He believed in the vision of a better America, of better lives for the poor, people of color, women and working class families.

He also happened to believe that a democratically-elected government was an important tool for achieving those goals.

If nothing else, his career serves as a reminder to all sides of the discourse that we can disagree with the message without despising the messenger.

Opponents of health care reform should acknowledge that the goal of the reformers is very simply to extend health coverage to as many Americans as efficiently as possible.

Then they should make their arguments against the specifics of the Democratic plan, without hysterics and without poisonous accusations.

It's worth remembering that the nasty rhetoric isn't just a game; it isn't just a way of tweaking the ratings for cable news shows.

The experience of Ted Kennedy's family -- two brothers gunned down by assassins - shows just how ugly the politics of personal destruction can become.

Would America be a better place if all of Kennedy's proposals had been implemented? I don't happen to think so.

But I know with certainty that his motivations in politics were of the highest moral and civic caliber. That's good enough for me.

Where are the voices of color in the healthcare debate?

White Americans -- especially politicians from rural mostly-white states like Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and North Dakota -- are shaping the healthcare debate in Washington.

Those leaders are Republican as well as Democrat.

As the conversation moves forward, we need to hear more from lawmakers of color, Hispanics as well as African American.

Black babies die at twice the rate of white babies in America, mostly because their mothers can't afford healthcare.

The average black man in America will die six years before he average white man -- and no, it's not because of violence.

A study by the Federal government found that nearly 90,000 men and women of color die each year in America because they don't have the same quality of health-care as whites.

"The data showed that health insurance is a key barrier to health care among blacks and Hispanics, resulting in difficulties or delays in obtaining care..."

The truth is that many rural states with white-dominant populations already have a significant percentage of their population in government provided health programs.

Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and taxpayer-supported healthcare for government workers provide the lion's share of healthcare in states like Wyoming and North Dakota.

But under America's current lopsided system, those same benefits aren't made available to working class African American and Hispanic families.

Many of those families are working full time, multiple jobs in some cases, but still can't afford access to care.

We need to hear those concerns voiced deliberately. It's especially important to hear from policy experts whether non-profit "collectives" can effectively reach people in urban neighborhoods.

It's fair to ask why President Barack Obama -- the nation's first black president -- has held town hall meetings on healthcare in white-majority communities, but never in an urban neighborhood.

America may be moving grudgingly toward being a post-racial society. But health is one of the major disparities that remain.

In the current debate, we need to confront that life-and-death reality head on.

Now healthcare truly is Obama's Waterloo

I don't mean that President Barack Obama has lost the fight. I only mean that it's that important politically.

The town hall rowdies and the Nazi 'death panel' rhetoric have truly defined the debate in this sense: There is only victory or defeat.

There cannot be delay, or incrementalism, or a changing of the topic.

On Mr. Obama's side he has large congressional majorities, the mandate of his recent election, and fairly strong approval ratings, both for himself and for some substantial form of reform.

On the other side, substantive argument -- the kind that would have improved and shaped the reform effort -- has been largely eclipsed by vitriol, race-anger and flagrant deception.

If the Democrats can't prevail now, they will have been defeated not by Blue Dog centrism or bipartisanship but by pure hooliganism.

Their new President will have been crippled by Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and gangs of people (some of them armed) carrying signs equating Mr. Obama with Adolph Hitler.

If that prospect doesn't stiffen the spine of party leaders, nothing will.

Is Scott Murphy dodging health care protesters?

Congressman Scott Murphy posted an announcement on his website Wednesday that he had held a healthcare roundtable with local business leaders the day before.

Democrats are scrambling to find ways to avoid raucous protesters organized by groups opposed to health care reform.

About the congressman's after-the-fact notification of the roundtable, the Albany Times Union's Casey Seiler wrote:

Was Murphy trying to reap the publicity benefits of holding a health care discussion without having those pesky media types there to cover the actual content of the event?

Or was the congressman just being savvy by setting up two distinct kinds of public forums: town hall-style meetings — the kind that have recently been transformed into whipping posts by groups ranging from health care traditionalists to anti-Obama “birthers” — and more sedate sessions where the absence of the media might result in less grandstanding and a more frank exchange of views?

Contacted by the newspaper, Murphy said“It wasn’t a press event."

Murphy said the meeting of about two dozen businesspeople and members of the Chamber of Southern Saratoga County allowed for a much deeper discussion than would be possible at a larger public forum “where you’ve got a lot of people waiting in line to speak.”

The Times-Union coverage sparked this response from a conservative website called Next Right.

Now here's real political courage. Hold meetings and announce them to the press AFTER they've occurred. Why not just use stock photos for your franked newsletter if they are just staged photo ops, Scott?

Then again, maybe this is the way Democratic Congressmen will need to greet their constituents these days.

According to the Associated Press, Murphy has already been targeted with one protest:

About 20 protesters gathered in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Thursday to let Democratic Rep. Scott Murphy know they oppose the health care plans in Washington. They carried signs saying: "Obamacare Seniors beware! Rationing is here," and "If socialized medicine is best ... why didn't Ted Kennedy go to Canada?" Motorists honked as they drove by.

In the same article, the AP reported that Democrats are working on strategies to respond to the anti-reform protests.

Top White House officials counseled Democratic senators Thursday on coping with disruptions at public events on health care this summer, officials said, and promised the party and allies would respond with twice the force if any individual lawmaker is criticized in television advertising.

Socialized medicine? For a third of Americans, it's the status quo

Last week, Democrats tried to call Republicans' bluff, offering a health care amendment that would eliminate Medicare.

That's the government-run insurance plan used by roughly 44 million elderly Americans. The GOP, not surprisingly, didn't go for it.

Medicare is a widely popular program. For millions of America's seniors, it's a matter of life and death.

The game of political cat-and-mouse illustrates a point that's been lost in the current debate: America already has a massive government-run medical system, serving more than a third of our population.

Here's my back-of-the-napkin tally:

As noted, 44 million seniors are on Medicare. Another 47 million low-income and disabled Americans receive their health coverage through Medicaid.

Another 5.5 million Veterans receive their coverage through the taxpayer-funded VA program. Add to that another roughly 1.4 million who are active duty service-members or work for the Department of Defense.

The total so far? 99 million Americans receiving their healthcare through taxpayer programs.

But we're not done. There are also 1.7 million Federal employees; another 615,000 Post Office workers; 2.4 million state government workers nationwide; and a whopping 5.6 million local government employees.

All those government workers receive health insurance paid for by taxpayers.

Updated total: 109 million Americans on "socialized medicine."

Still not done, though. Those totals don't include the roughly 4 million Americans who work in public education.

Teachers, too, have health insurance paid for by taxpayers.

I've probably missed a few million people who draw their insurance directly from public funding. There are also likely tens of millions of dependent spouses and children not captured in this tally.

But you get the point.

At least 110-150 million Americans already rely on public funding of some kind for their health coverage -- and they have done for decades.

It's fair, of course, to debate whether some kind of similar option should be available for the 40+ million Americans who don't have any coverage at all.

But to suggest that publicly-funded insurance is unAmerican or dangerous or weird is, well, silly.

One footnote. Lawmakers complain about the cost of expanding health coverage.

But last week they insisted on packing the Defense bill with more than $3 billion in spending that the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and President Obama say they don't want.

That amount alone would provide basic coverage to a million uninsured Americans...

Gillibrand embraces 'public option' for healthcare

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is using the progressive blogosphere to rally support for a so-called "public option" for national healthcare -- something akin to Medicare that would be available to everyone.

Her essays have appeared in the DailyKos site and on Huffington Post.

I truly believe that health care is a right, not a privilege, and that the time for real reform -- including a public option -- is now. As the President said last night, the status quo is not an option and with you by my side, I intend to continue to fight for the real reform that Americans deserve.

Gillibrand first declared her support for the public option in May.

Who needs healthcare reform? Let's start with the babies

Here's the question that I would love for opponents of healthcare reform to answer:

How is it okay that thousands of babies are dying unnecessarily in the U.S. because of our broken medical system?

How many babies? Let's do the math.

According to the CIA's World Factbook, our country has an infant mortality rate of roughly 6.26 per thousand.

That's about on par with Lithuania and Croatia.

What this means is that between 6 and 7 babies out of every thousand born die before they reach their first birthday.

There are roughly 4 million babies born each year in the U.S. That means 25,040 babies die under our system every year.

How does that stack up?

It turns out that our infant mortality rate is far worse than countries like Cuba, Italy, Taiwan, Sweden, and Macau -- worse, in fact, that more than forty other nations.

Put bluntly, our medical system allows more babies to die than any other developed country in the world.

In large part, this is because tens of millions of women and children in the U.S. don't receive pre-natal and preventative care.

They can't afford their medications. They lack access to clinics and doctors.

As a consequence, they arrive in our hospitals malnourished, sick, and often burdened with developmental challenges that will last their entire lives.

And that's if they survive.

It's easy to get caught up in the debate over free markets, rationing and "big government."

But the simple fact is that countries with single-payer national healthcare systems, like Britain and Canada, see about a fifth fewer babies die each year per capita.

What if America had a really first-rate healthcare system, say as good as Norway's -- another of those dreaded socialized systems?

The answer is pretty heartbreaking: 15,000 more of our babies every year would live to see their first birthday.

Let me do the math one more time.

In every state of the Union, on every single day of the year, a mother and a father wouldn't have to grieve their son or daughter's death.