Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Is there anybody in the world, outside of the hothouse world of congressional staffers, who understands what this battle of the frogs and mice is all about -- if anything? http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/01/13/house_defies_bush_oks_drug_plan/

House defies Bush, OK's drug plan

The US House of Representatives, in repudiation of President George W. Bush's Medicare prescription drug plan, yesterday passed a bill requiring the government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

....Several government officials.... said enabling Medicare -- through the secretary of health and human services -- to negotiate with drug companies would not drastically cut drug prices.

The bill "would have a negligible effect on federal spending because we anticipate that the secretary would be unable to negotiate prices across the broad range of covered Part D drugs that are more favorable than those obtained by the prescription drug plans," wrote the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress....

Senator Max Baucus , Democrat of Montana who helped negotiate the 2003 law, said he supports giving Medicare the ability to negotiate with drug makers.

Soon as the morning shades prevail, the Times takes up the wondrous tale:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/washington/12drug.html?ref=politics

Bush Threatens Veto of Medicare Drug Bill, but a Senator Is Seeking a Middle Ground

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — President Bush threatened on Thursday to veto legislation that would require the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to obtain lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries.

But chances for passage of some version of the legislation increased when a pivotal figure, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Congress should repeal a provision of the 2003 Medicare law that prohibits such negotiations. The chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said he did not favor price controls, but did believe that Medicare should be able to negotiate prices in “discrete areas where seniors need our help the most.”

Here's the WaPo -- nothing like three-part counterpoint, so playable, so transparent:

Drug Bill Demonstrates Lobby's Pull
Democrats Feared Industry Would Stall Bigger Changes

Before taking control of the House last week, Democratic leaders briefly considered proposing a new government-run prescription drug program as a way to reduce seniors' drug costs, according to Democratic aides and lawmakers involved in the deliberations.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her allies chose a far less ambitious plan -- to require the government to negotiate for lower Medicare drug prices.... They stepped back largely out of concern that the pharmaceutical industry would stall a complex change, denying them a quick victory on a top consumer-oriented priority....

To strengthen their position, drug firms and their trade groups have been transforming their Washington operations by hiring top Democratic lobbyists to gain access to new committee chairmen, bolstering Democratic political donations....

Even longtime industry nemeses like Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Calif.), chairman of a House health panel, are impressed. "They're pretty potent," he said this week. "They're not bush-leaguers when it comes to spending money and lobbying."

Democrats... now that they have a chance to rewrite the law... are pressing for what party leaders concede is only a minor alteration. "This is a first step," said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Well, after a little triangulation, maybe it's not so hard to understand after all.

That infamous left Hegelian, the young Karl Marx -- still in the shadow of his master's dream -- liked to suggest Mighty Clio will never pose us humans a historical task we can't begin to solve right then and there, at that particular moment and inside that particular social formation.

I'll humbly add: yes we can begin the task ... right now... potentially; but mostly we don't and won't want to. It's like an epic return: our fine hero gets almost home straight off in chapter one, but by hook crook or hubris she misses the chance, and soon finds herself on the long arduous outward leg of a much longer circling back. Seems Clio likes to frustrate those with the clearest social vision.

Consider a pal of mine, anonymous at his own request, whom I'll call Mr. S. He sees as if from the mountaintop -- and what do he see? Where as-by-right single-payer for-all health care should come, there's instead the Democrap, Mommy Dearest universal "dummy up bub" mandate.

I must quote S's generalization: it goes a long way toward revealing just what new-deal pale-deal of a Godot we pwogs are waiting for:

"The liberal petit bourgeois, who owns the means to get himself to the means of production owned by the capitalist, cannot for the life of him comprehend the risk aversion of people who have lived in close proximity to the realities of power disparities. It is intuitive to the liberal that pooled risk equates to a shared benefit. And so it does, provided the people in the pool have a means of enforcing the contract to obtain the benefit. Where that power can be taken away or ignored, all risk pooling means is that those most able to deal with being bilked will wind up in a relatively more endurable misery than those with lesser means.

Being unable to recognize this reality, the liberal will be thoughtless in admonitions to join the risk pool, will suffer hurt feelings when the invitation is rejected and will blame the refuseniks for the failure of the scheme, however crackpot it maybe. If the process of obtaining the benefit is sufficiently galling and demeaning... a certain percentage will reject a real benefit, and not just the eternally dangled carrot of neoliberalism.

When the liberal is caught in circumstances where enough people reject the opportunity to join the risk pool, enough so that those who have joined stand to suffer alone, regardless of the existence or absence of a potential benefit, he will become passive aggressive in the same style as a shoplifting schoolboy who is blatantly careless in order to make sure his comrades are dirty. And later justify this by pointing out that after all, he did risk the same punishment he brought on them.

Beveridge's plan has so many obvious, easily detectable flaws,especially when compared to redistributive plans that limit outcomes as a means of correcting power disparities, but it was easily accepted and put in place.

Because it neglected, by design, the most important part of social justice — addressing power disparities directly — it was easy to undermine, stint and finally be turned into a means of punitive control.

Mike Flugennock writes:

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I don't know whether to be infuriated or laugh out loud. All three -- oh, alright, two now -- "frontrunners" have totally, obviously ignored the demand for nationalized healthcare and have simply twisted the meaning of "Universal Coverage" to mean "forced to become a 'customer' of for-profit healthcare corporations". Oh, don't forget: "coverage" just means you've bought corporate health insurance; it doesn't mean you're actually going to get any care when you need it. So, Hillary wants to garnish the wages of even the lowliest burger-flipper or freelancer who goes without health insurance so he can pay his rent, so that she can brag about "universal coverage".

God damn, I hope they nominate Hillary. Perhaps everyone who's fed up with the Donkeycrats living in the pockets of Big Pharma and dodging the healthcare issue might actually grow a pair and vote for Nader, even if he's going to "lose".

Man, I'm sure glad he's running. Too bad that, living in DC, our vote has as much influence over the "election" as pissing into the wind; otherwise I'd actually risk being called for jury duty later by going out and voting for Nader (it'd be my first vote in any election in this city since '04, the last time I voted for Nader). I remember posting at Stop Me some time back, discussing how people need to get some balls and approach this freak show the way the Palestinan and Iraqi resistance fighters do -- like people with nothing to lose -- they'd be amazed at how liberating it can be to realize that "elections" in this country don't mean anything and go into it with some other ideas besides whether or not somebody they like is going to "win", or is "electable". Just get totally banzai about it, y'know? At the risk of repeating myself, I think it's time for some "political suicide bombers" to "seize the plane"(*). Banzai, Ralph! Crash that sonofabitch.

Here's the item:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080203/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_rdp_31

WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans. The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC's "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."

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(*) Dear Department of Homeland Security:

Mike is being metaphorical here. No need to send the SWAT team.

Sincerely,

The Editor