Mum on healthcare May 11: President Obama spoke about healthcare reform and his plans for changing the system. The Republican response, well, um, there actually wasn't a real Republican response. Who is voicing the anti-reform movement? Rachel Maddow is joined by former DNC chairman Howard Dean.Via Sullivan, this tidbit:
Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.
As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights—even if the drivers aren’t suspects.
Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.
Prediction: nothing will happen about this until a Wisconsin cop is caught tracking women for personal reasons (thinks his wife/gf is cheating, is stalking a certain woman, etc.), and then there will be enough outrage for the legislature to do something.
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Anonymous Liberal: The Need for a Public Option
Opponents of health care reform have begun to focus their efforts on building opposition to a "public option." For those of you unfamiliar with health care policy debates, the phrase "public option" refers to a government health care plan that people would have the option of purchasing instead of private health insurance. It would be like Medicare, except that people of any age could purchase it. Opponents of such an option fear that it is a back door method of achieving a single payer system. As the Wall Street Journal put it today:This new entitlement -- like Medicare but open to all ages and all incomes -- would quickly crowd out private insurance as people gravitated to heavily subsidized policies, eventually leading to a single-payer system.Putting aside for a moment whether this prediction is accurate, it's worth pointing out that it's totally inconsistent with the standard conservative talking points on health care reform. On the one hand we're supposed to believe that government run health insurance is some horrible thing that no one would want (the people Canada are so miserable!). On the other hand, we're told that such a plan would be so overwhelming popular that it would destroy the private insurance industry. So which is it?
The truth is, there's no reason that a public system and private system cannot coexist. And even more importantly, there's no reason whatsoever to believe that a private system, on its own, can cover everyone. So there has to be a public option.
Perhaps the best analogy here is to our mail system. When it comes to delivering packages across the country, Americans have both public and private options. The U.S. Postal Service coexists and competes with private providers like UPS and FedEx. The private companies do quite well and are in no danger of being run out of business by the USPS. But there's no way that Americans' parcel delivery needs could possibly be met by private providers alone. Why? Because of inherent inequalities in geography. If the USPS disappeared, private providers would do a decent job of covering the needs of those who live in or near major metropolitan areas. But what about the folks who live in rural and remote parts of the country? If private providers were willing to service them at all, it would only be at a significant premium. And for obvious reasons. The costs involved in delivering a package to a remote address in rural South Dakota are significantly higher than delivering that same package to New York City. The efficiencies just aren't there. It's not economical to maintain the facilities, personnel, and infrastructure necessary to deliver an occasional package to some isolated, sparsely-populated location. There's no money to be made in doing that. Which is why the "public option" is the only one available to people who live in such locations.
The same exact thing is true with respect to health care, where health needs vary dramatically from person to person. The private insurers are more than happy to insure relatively healthy people. That's where the money is. But they don't want anything to do with people with pre-existing conditions, who are the health care equivalent of rural South Dakotans. The same is true of people trying to buy health insurance individually or in small groups. They don't have the same bargaining power as those who get their insurance through large company plans. Like the residents of tiny remote town, they don't have the economic pull of a major metro area. For such people, a public option is the only option that makes economic sense. The private market is not going to offer them any reasonable options.
This really isn't rocket science. Without a pubic option, there will always be lots of uninsured people.
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