Blindsided! The Movie: The Health Insurance Corpo's Panic

Hmmm.

Mark Gisleson has been insisting for some time that Obama is cagy and that a lot of his apparently pro-corporate moves are designed to, as he wrote just this morning, "get something of value back each time they cut the Bushies some slack." I've been just as consistently saying I didn't see it because I didn't.

Until today.

A couple of days ago I suggested that Obama's public acceptance of corporate health insurers self-serving "sacrifice" indicated that they were basically running the show and there would be no health care "reform" that they disapproved of for profit reasons. It seemed pretty clear that they'd gotten a lot of great press for doing very little and promising nothing whatever thanks to Obama's generous applause. Much to my surprise, it seems they didn't see it that way. Or maybe more accurately, their constituency didn't see it that way. They thought Obama was trying to back them into a corner and may have succeeded.

After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.

“These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment,” Mr. Obama said. “Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.”

Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members,” said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. “I’ve spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it.”

Oooh, poor baby. Even the suggestion of the most minor and illusory financial "sacrifice" put the members into a tizzy and they reamed the boy out for as little as that. Huh.

So was Obama actually trying to publicly tie them up and lock them into place by deliberately interpreting their worthless offer as if it was real and then hanging numbers onto it, making it hard for them to back down without looking like wusses? Maybe. If he did, it was a clever move that made the bimbos of the insurance industry look like a bunch of topless Miss Californias after boob jobs that went horribly wrong.

Or did the industry members panic for nothing? Simply misread a PR moment as if it was real? Even then, though it proves nothing about Obama it certainly clarifies the industry's preferred position as one of the "we don't sacifice nuttin, pally" contingent of the we-intend-to-increase-our-profits-even-if-it-destroys-the-world crowd. Either way, they came out looking like warmed-over doo-doo.

Either Obama planned it that way or he just plain got lucky. I don't know which yet but I could soon be owing Mark a climb-down. If there's two or three more of these, he may have been right all along.

I hate that.

Comments

[Mark Gisleson]

Dude I have no way of knowing, but the point is that none of us do. Even a Caesar needed a few years to clean up his predecessor's messes.

I originally was pushing for Wes Clark in '08. Not because I agreed with him on issues, but because we need a steady hand on the tiller right now, someone who'll make the right decisions to keep things moving in the right direction.

By now I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that the Republicans aren't serious about anything except their way or the highway. Each additional day of that just makes it easier to fix things without their input.

But mostly the dollar can still buy stuff, and I wasn't sure that would be true at this point in time at all.

[OSR]

A 1.5% reduction in the growth rate of spending, as opposed to 1.5% spending reduction, doesn't sound like much of a victory to me.

[mick]

Mark: Even a Caesar needed a few years to clean up his predecessor's messes.

And was murdered by the aristocracy for doing it. I take your point but there's not much in Obama's background to suggest he's genuinely unfriendly to the corporate aristocracy. However, I'll take what I can get and keep my fingers crossed.

I liked Clark too but he never had a chance with the conservaDems in charge of the party. Neither did Dean, another guy I liked. As long as they're running things, we'll never see a Clark or a Dean at the top of the ticket. An Obama is the best we're likely to get.

OSR: Either way, it ain't much of a "victory".

[eRobin]

I think we'd have seen the same things from Dean (whom I just love) if he were president now as we're seeing from Obama. I'm probably remembering it all wrong now but I don't remember Dean promising so much, which is why I continue to prefer him to Obama. On the other hand, the night is young. Obama hasn't failed to come through on anything yet - he's just moving at his own pace, which is dictated by stupid reality. There's even time for him to get the Wall St. nightmare right. I'd say that the odds are long, but I can't read his mind. Maybe this is all an elaborate plan, as you and Mark have suggested.

Right now I'm completely immersed in health care reform. That's going to be a pretty good litmus test for Obama. If he can't get a strong and independent public health insurance plan through with the reform, he will have failed.