Financial Reform is now OPEN for Debate!!

Republicans finally caved and stopped filibustering the Dodd Bill for financial reform. It can now go to the Senate floor for debate. That's right. This wasn't a filibuster for passage. It was a filibuster to PREVENT the bill from even getting on the floor. Why??? NOBODY (aside from Wall Street, it's lobbyists, and Libertarians who have their heads up their ass) likes Wall Street right now. Stopping financial reform is about as popular as killing kittens. This makes the Republicans look bad and look like they are in the pocket of Wall Street. I know that both parties get a TON of money from Wall Street, but even Democrats are smart enough to not stop this.

Onto the LINKS.

Matt Yglesias has a great take on why people in this country keep saying "Freedom!" but then do everything they can to prevent others from having freedom.

Elizabeth Warren on why consumer protection is a good idea. How can anyone disagree with this? "Oh, hey, THANKS for taking me to the cleaners with my home loan! Please Sir, Can I have another?!?!"

Simon Johnson and James Kwak (authors of the excellent 13 Bankers book) on why Bank Reform is needed.

Slate's The Big Money shatter's the idea that Wall Street isn't playing with our money when they do their bets. I found the argument quite convincing.

These F@$cking Guys!!

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This week's reading list

One of the Senators that wrote the Senate Financial Reform bill is none too happy about the Senate minority leader's recent comments about it. Mark Warner looks like he's gonna whip some butt in the picture.

Here is the Pro Publica report on the hedge fund Magnatar that was discussed in last week's excellent This American Life episode.

The Atlantic has an excellent article on the Obesity epidemic in America.

Paul Krugman looks at the green economy in the latest NYT magazine.

Monday Thoughts

There's a lot of good stuff out there today. I'll try to go in to depth with some of this stuff, but please read the links, too.

One of the arguments proposed by conservatives to help lower health care costs is to allow selling insurance across state lines. At first glance, this idea seems to carry a lot of merit. It's cheaper in Idaho to carry insurance than it is in Floriday. So wouldn't it drive the costs down if Floridian's could buy insurance from Idaho? That sounds great, but there are a number of problems with that. One, each state has different requirements to what insurance can cover. Guess what? Idaho has some of the fewest requirements. That's why Idaho is very cheap. So if you decide that this is still a good idea, do you let the Idaho plan get sold in Florida as-is, or do you say that the Idaho plan must meet the minimum Florida requirements? If you choose to go as is, then you run the huge risk of having insurance companies run to Idaho to set up shop, the so called 'race to the bottom' that was experienced in the credit card industry. That's why most credit card companies are based in South Dakota. SD let the companies write their laws and sell card agreements. If you choose the other route, then you could end up with something like how the auto insurance industry is set up, with each company following the different states' rules. But that probably won't bring down the costs as much as conservatives would like to think.

One idea that hasn't been floated much is to charge people premiums based on their current health, excluding chronic conditions, age, and mental illness (stuff that people can't control). So if you smoke, you pay more. If you are over weight, you pay more. Seems to me like that would do 2 things: It would give people a real incentive to be healthy, and make those that aren't healthy pay their fair share.

Listening to conservatives scream about getting Obamacare killed in the courts is a remarkable about-face. Conservatives have always been against 'judicial activism', but now that legislation is getting passed that conservatives disagree with, they can't wait to get into court.

FrumForum has a great bunch of articles out today. This post examines how repealing Obamacare is dumb. It needs to be fixed. I couldn't agree more. This post looks at how the GOP has changed in the last 50 years. It makes a lot of sense to me. Reading the comments section after the post shows just how divisive and fanatical some conservatives have become.

More bank handouts by Obama

One of the things I disagree with is Obama's continued baby'ing of the banks. His abrupt U-turn on providing mortgage assistance to people who are underwater is not good. Barry Ritholtz explains why in an interview on NPR.

Older people and the Tea Party movement

I can understand the frustration with our government. I agree that our government does some dumb things. Our biggest fiscal bomb is the rising Medicare/Medicaid, but from what I can tell with these Tea Party folks, they cheer when a politician says that Medicare is untouchable. How does that compute? Especially when a lot of the Tea Party leaders are baby boomers near retirement. They want those benefits that they claim are ruining the country and destroying liberty and all this. That doesn't make sense at all. To me, those folks just reinforce the idea of Baby boomers wanting it all for themselves. I understand the anger more when it comes from baby boomer children, because the children are currently paying for the benefits being paid out right now. What kind of answer is it to someone who gets sick or gets into a car accident and can't work for weeks at a time, like this example here. I don't hear any answers to this scenarios, accept a shrugging of shoulders and an 'oh well, too bad.' I reject that on moral grounds. That is my biggest frustration. Come to me with a plausible solution so that I can do a comparison between the two ideas. Don't just say that the liberal ideas suck and leave it at that. That doesn't SOLVE anything. We have problems. Conservatives: Provide choices with viable solutions. Anything other than that is lazy and is just playing politics.

Historical mandate watch: The Militia Act of 1792 mandated that all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 45 equip themselves with a musket and rifle.

I agree with post at Slate. If Republicans actually offered good ideas and compromise, they would have my vote:

...I am in favor of universal access to health care and also horrified by what President Barack Obama's bill is going to cost. So who should I be voting for? If congressional Republicans are determined to fix this bill by, say, reforming the medical malpractice laws that drive up costs and put doctors out of business, they've got my vote. If, instead, they are going to scream "Communist" and "fascist" at our democratically elected president—thereby achieving nothing at all—then I want nothing to do with them.

I'm also getting a lot of enjoyment out of Conservatives crying out about Americans being against the health care bill. For one, its simply not true. Second, public opinion polls never stopped Republicans from doing things, like pulling out of Iraq when nearly 2/3 of Americans were against that war. Third, Democrats won the election in 2008, with large majorities in both Houses. They said they would change health care, and we voted them in. That's American Democracy. If it sucks for the opposition, then they can overturn the law when they get control if that is what the People vote for.

Finally, Bruce Bartlett (fellow Conservative castout like David Frum) has a thoughtful article talking about who the Democrats should thank for getting health care through Congress and then he talks about how similar the law is to Republican proposals from the past 20 years.

Obamacare mandate isn't unconstitutional

Ok, maybe it is on principle if you think that buying insurance from a company in another state does not constitute interstate commerce. But it is unlikely that the courts will rule in favor of it being unconstitutional.

That being said, if you agree that an insurance company can't drop you when you get sick, or can't accept you if you are sick (two things that are in the the health law) then what do you do? The point of insurance is to have a wide pool of policy holders paying into a system. So now you have this big pool of money that you can spend on those policy holders that are sick and need care. Not everyone in the pool is sick. The healthy ones payments cover the costs of the sick ones. If everyone is sick then you are screwed, because health costs are so high. You can try to figure out how to tackle costs (that is called rationing) or you can insist that people who could need care at some point (everyone) must pay into the system. The mandate is needed simply because you are making insurers take people that will cost a lot of money. This is happening right now in hospitals that receive Medicare payments. Federal law states that hospitals that receive Medicare payments must treat people who come into the ER. So people that don't have health care coverage wait until they are really sick and at death's door before they go into the hospital. So now the hospital has spent all this money on people that can't pay and don't have insurance. So the hospital has to increase the rates it charges for its services. This causes premiums to go up for all of us who pay for insurance. So you must have a mandate if you are going to force insurers to carry everyone. Otherwise you abolish the insurers and just cover everyone under Medicare. Or you do something that I haven't thought of.

David Frum is getting a lot of flak over his Waterloo comments, but I have to agree with him. He then states his current political outlook with all the new FrumForum viewers who came to the site to bash Frum over his Waterloo piece. It's well worth a read. The best part is the last line:

I don’t think of myself as having gone squishy. I think of myself as having grown sober. And my conservative critics? On them, I think the most apt verdict was delivered by Niccolo Machiavelli, 500 years ago: “This is the tragedy of man. Circumstances change, and he does not.”

I recently had a Facebook discussion with one of the kids from my neighborhood in Idaho where I grew up. He is a staunch conservative who is convinced that the country is going down the tubes. He is a great guy and has a wonderful family and if I ever move back to Idaho I'll probably hire him to be my realtor. But I just can't agree with his politics. The Machiavelli quote above seems to suit him aptly.

I'm not sure if I've posted this before, but the state of Maryland sets prices for what hospitals can charge for care. But they do it in a very smart way. They don't set prices to be the same for all hospitals. They set prices based on what each hospital is paying its workers and who the hospital provides care to. Guess what? It's working!

Here is a lengthy but thoughtful essay on health care in National Affairs magazine.

And this whole "We don't work past 2pm" Senate rule being used by Republicans? Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.