Jerry writes:

I would love to know, if we can get national healthcare passed, how many people that have been working and won’t retire because of the high cost of healthcare will finally beable to retire, then there will more job openings.

Answer:

If President Obama’s plan passes, people who retire before age 65 will be able to afford healthcare in either the private or public sector because the cost will be based on your income.  In a public option your healthcare follows you no matter where you move to and no matter what your employment status is.

ILean Left asks:

How do we go about changing the mechanisms in gov’t that allow those who are supposed to represent us to take money and subsequently become beholden to special interests that are at odds with the voters’ interests?

We can keep getting upset, but all we do is replace one scoundrel with another during elections. How do we stop this cycle. I, for one going forward, will dedicate my future time and resources to changing this system instead of electing the next, soon-to-be corrupt politician.

Answer: one of the problems is that special interest money funds a lot of campaigns, we really need campaign finance reform.  Arizona and Maine enacted clean-money campaigns by referendum.  I hope that grassroots activists will work in states that allow referenda to get clean-money measures modelled after AZ and ME on the ballot in their state.  Social Security was started in the states first and then became Federal law.  Cleaning up elections will start in the states first but only if citizens can vote for clean elections, legislatures rarely will do it on their own.

I hope you enjoyed the show tonight, now I want to hear from you - what’s on your mind about healthcare reform?

Fresh off of guest hosting Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Gov. Howard Dean will be here in a few minutes to blog about healthcare reform. He’ll be joined by one of his Countdown guests, author Phillip Longman, and they want you to join the discussion. (Hey — and thanks for all the great comments already!)

Here’s the drill:

• they post
• you write your comments and questions in the comments field
• they address as many as they can

And so it’ll go until 10 pm. It’s going to be fun!

Here’s a question I came away with from the show:

Should Senate Democrats just drop the bipartisan stuff and fight for a reform bill with a robust public option — i.e. one that gives American people a choice?

Stick around — Gov. Dean will be with us in a few minutes to kick things off. Meanwhile, here’s a quick note about our bloggers.

He hardly needs an introduction, but Gov. Howard Dean is the former governor of Vermont, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, founder of Democracy for America, and current chairman of the Progressive Book Club. He’s the author, most recently, of Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform.

Phillip Longman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, which chronicles the quality transformation of the Veterans Health Administration and applies its lessons to a plan for reforming the U.S. health care system as a whole.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann, guest hosted tonight by Howard Dean, is starting right now. Gov. Dean will have some terrific guests on to discuss healthcare reform. Go watch! And remember — Gov. Dean will be blogging here after the show and invites you to join the discussion, so see you back here at back at 9 pm!

Phillip Longman

As noted below, Progressive Book Club chairman Gov. Howard Dean is guest hosting MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann for two nights, starting tonight.

On tonight’s show he’ll be talking healthcare reform with one of the smartest health policy writers around, Phillip Longman. Longman is the author of Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, which chronicles the quality transformation of the Veterans Health Administration and applies its lessons to a plan for reforming the U.S. health care system as a whole. (And Dean of course has a new book out, Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform.)

After the show, at 9 pm EST, Gov. Dean and Longman will continue their conversation here on the Progressive Book Club blog, and you’re invited to join the discussion! 

Recap:

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

8-9 pm EST: Countdown with Keith Olbermann, guest hosted by Gov. Howard Dean, on MSNBC

9-10 pm EST: The conversation continues here at the Progressive Book Club blog, where Gov Dean and Phillip Longman will be blogging and taking your comments and questions. Don’t miss it!

Just a heads up for our readers on some exciting news: Progressive Book Club chairman Gov. Howard Dean is guest hosting MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbmerman this week on Tuesday and Wednesday nights!

On Tuesday from 8-9 pm ET he’ll be talking healthcare reform with some key people engaged in the fight to make it a reality. (Check back here tomorrow afternoon for the lineup.)

Dean is one of the country’s smartest and most passionate voices on healthcare reform, and not only because he’s a trained physician. He’s the author, most recently, of Howard Dean’s Prescription for Reform Healthcare Reform, a straight-talking guide that lays out the crisis of the current system, sets down common-sense solutions, and explains how we as citizens can join the fight to make affordable healthcare for all Americans a reality. (Get it for free when you join Progressive Book Club!)

Right after the show, the conversation continues here at Progressive Book Club, where Gov. Dean will be joining us for a live blog-chat on healthcare reform. You’re invited to join the conversation, so bring your questions and comments for the governor!

To recap:

What: Countdown with Keith Olbermann guest hosted by PBC chairman Gov. Howard Dean.

When: Tuesday July 28 and Wednesday July 29, 8 pm ET on MSNBC. (Check local listings for showtimes.)

Plus: Live blog-chat with Howard Dean on healthcare reform at progressivebookclub.com/blog, Tuesday July 28 at 9 pm.

[Posted by Sarah Silbert]

In his new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, David Neiwert identifies inflammatory language that encourages the exclusion of other racial, political, or religious groups as the “eliminationist” rhetoric which breeds anger, violence, and prejudice among conservatives. The Eliminationists could not be timelier, as the anti-liberal, anti-gay, anti-immigrant ideology featured on media outlets such as Fox News has lately reached a roaring pitch, with incidents of violence, including the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in Kansas and the white supremacist shooting at the Washington, D.C. Holocaust Museum, dominating the headlines. Here’s a brief synopsis of Neiwert’s case that fringe ideas and rhetoric have poisoned contemporary conservatism.

A Black and White World

One of the main characteristics of Neiwert’s “eliminationists” is the tendency to see the world as divided into good and evil. Combined with the fundamentalist Christian ideology that is often present in the Far Right, eliminationism is a condemnation of all those who hold other political, religious, or social beliefs. Neiwert discusses the history of eliminationist rhetoric in the United States, beginning with a focus on anti-black and anti-Semetic ideology and gradually moving toward the condemnation of liberals, gays, and immigrants. Read More

The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to approve the nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor, with all but one Republicans opposing on the grounds that Sotomayor, all evidence to the contrary, is some kind of ideological extremist; and all Democrats supporting.  The top Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, explained yesterday that a vote for Sotomayor would be a vote for “a new kind  of ideological judging, not the kind of objectivity and restraint that has served our legal system so well,” and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley questioned her pledge of “fidelity to the law.” In this context it’s worth considering Cass Sunstein’s distinction, set forth in his book Radicals in Robes: Why Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America, between two types of justice–Fundamentalists and Minimalists. Based on her extensive record of moderate, incremental judging over 11 years on the appellate bench which do you think better describes Sotomayor?

Are judges properly divided into “strict” and “loose” interpreters of the Constitution? The distinction between strict and loose interpretation is unhelpful. But it does point towards something real. Some judges, including [Justice Antonin] Scalia, insist on interpreting the text in accordance with its original meaning, and other judges do not. This difference, which Scalia himself describes as “the great divide,” is important, and it helps explain some disputes about the meaning of the Constitution. It begins to illuminate the real divisions on constitutional interpretation. …

Fundamentalists

Fundamentalists think that constitutional interpretation requires an act of rediscovery. Their goal is to return to what they see as the essential source of constitutional meaning: the views of those who ratified the document. They believe that “originalism” is the proper approach for constitutional interpretation and that the Constitution should be read to fit with the understanding of the founding generation. Fundamentalists know that current constitutional law does not reflect their own views, and they end to feel angry and even embattled about that fact. For this reason, fundamentalists have radical inclinations; they seek to make large-scale changes in constitutional law. Many fundamentalists do not want to make these changes all at once, but they hope to make them sooner rather than later.

Minimalists

Fundamentalists are opposed by minimalists, who dislike ambitious theories, including originalism, and who do not want to do much more than is necessary to resolve cases. Minimalists believe that a free society makes it possible for people to agree when agreement is necessary, and unnecessary for people to agree when agreement is impossible. Minimalists are cautious by nature, and the minimalist camp is large and diverse. We can even imagine minimalists with fundamentalist leanings. The point is that all minimalists accept the following proposition: For judges, nudges are much better than earthquakes.

Not even close.

Here’s a good Washington Post piece looking at a seeming paradox at the heart of the healthcare debate: while a majority of Americans think the healthcare system needs overhaul, a much bigger majority is pretty happy (”somewhat or very satisfied”) with their own care. And these folks, faced with specific reform proposals, want to know, “Will this benefit me my family?” This quote captures the concern:

“Something needs to be done, especially to help the kids and the elderly,” said Williams, 48, who works for the school district in Forsyth County, Ga. “But if the reforms affect the insurance I have now, I would have a deep issue with it.”

The noted pollster Stan Greenberg puts an optimistic gloss on this ambivalence. “‘Satisfied’ means they like their doctor and have insurance to go to that doctor,” said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “Maybe they think their policy is better than what most people have. But it doesn’t mean they don’t want reform.”

Maybe not, but it does make them vulnerable to scare-mongering (”socialized medicine,” “rationing” etc.) and thus less inclined to support sweeping reform that doesn’t take account of their specific anxieties. 

But, as Howard Dean points out in his book Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, as happy as people may be with their care right now,  absent meaningful reform they might have a hard time holding onto it. Why? Because if they’re in employer-based plans, the chances are their employers, burdened by soaring healthcare costs, are cutting back or dropping coverage altogether, or else passing on costs to employees; and if — God forbid — they’re in the (lightly regulated, highly expensive) individual insurance market, their premiums are going up, up, up, so that at some point they have to go without insurance or sacrifice other things. 

The lagging job market and the economic downturn have had the effect of pushing a growing number of Americans into the ranks of the uninsured. According to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, in March 2009 alone almost 11,000 workers a day lost their health insurance. Nationally, the percentage of Americans “under the age of 65 with employer sponsored insurance declined to less than 63 percent in 2007, from more than 67 percent in 1999,” and employers are now reporting that they plan to shift more health costs to their employees. …

As the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog observed, “A big reason is that employers say the recession isn’t simply crimping business; it’s also expected to drive up their healthcare costs. Those surveyed said they expect their health benefit costs to spike an average 7.4 percent this year.

All of which is to reaffirm that the purpose of healthcare reform is not simply to expand coverage to the 46 million currently uninsured Americans, important as that is; it’s to make affordable, quality, reliable care available to everyone — and that includes those who, however happy they are with their insurance today, could tomorrow find it too expensive or lose it entirely.

Note: Don’t miss Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight, 8-9 pm ET. Howard Dean is guest hosting and the topic is healthcare reform. We’ll continue the discussion here on this blog after the show, when the governor will be on hand for a live discussion (9-10 pm ET).

Lastly, here are some telling numbers culled from the above. 

Read More