Jane Hamsher

In Netroots Blast Senate Health Deal (Dec 11, 2009), Matthew Spieler at The Faster Times focuses his analysis of netroots’ anger over the Senate’s latest health care deal exclusively on Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.

Spieler launches immediately into an attack: “Jane Hamsher, at Firedoglake, sends out a confused, and rather petulant email opposing the Senate health deal.”

On substance, Spieler largely agrees with Hamsher regarding health care reform – noting, in particular, that the Senate’s health care deal “does not do enough to control costs, and certainly fails with respect to consumer choice” -, but then he oddly proceeds to take pointless shots at her on style.

Indeed, Spieler criticizes Hamsher in the post for a couple of points that she made in a single email sent out on Dec 9, 2009, but he seems unable to decide whether he’s more unhappy with Hamsher’s strategy in working toward achieving real health care reform (that is, unhappy with what little of Hamsher’s strategy that he understands) or more unhappy with her for having chosen to hold President Obama and Rahm Emanuel accountable for efforts to trigger a public health insurance option rather than Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

First, he quotes Hamsher’s email:

“The Senate is cutting a deal to kill the public option by giving the President the ‘trigger’ that his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been fighting for since he took office.”

Spieler writes:

“Rahm Emanuel has not been pushing a trigger ‘ever since he took office.’ This was Olympia Snowe’s idea, and Emanuel saw it as the most politically viable option.”

Excuse me, but who cares whether Rahm pushed for a trigger from the beginning or just very eagerly bent over for it?

Second, Spieler focuses on this from Hamsher’s email:

“Shoveling taxpayer dollars into ‘too big to fail’ insurance companies is not the change I voted for. The failure to establish a public option to control medical costs and increase competition is President Obama’s failure alone.”

Spieler wants very much to know who has ever said that insurance companies are “too big to fail.”

Well, aren’t officials of the Obama administration treating insurance companies just like they’ve been treating the supposedly “too big to fail” companies of the financial services industry, making concession after concession after concession, giving more and more and more, all at the expense of the American people, while getting nothing in return from the executives of these companies?

Then we get Matthew Spieler’s analysis of the Senate’s failure to act on behalf of the American people:

“And in my view, the failure to pass a public option is not Obama’s. It’s arithmetic. They don’t have the votes. Joe Lieberman was going to filibuster a bill with a public plan. Lieberman gave Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln political cover to join in the obstruction. His reasons were illogical, disingenuous, and maybe even vengeful. But this was Lieberman’s doing. Not Obama’s.”

And Matthew Spieler is wrong.

They do have the votes to pass real health care reform with a public option. Out of the 100 senators in the United States Senate, 56 will vote in favor of it today.

It would pass.

The problem is that there are four members of the Senate Democratic Caucus who are refusing to vote in favor of allowing an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, and Obama and Majority Leader Reid are too weak to make these four vote with the Democratic Caucus on a procedural vote.

That would be Obama’s failure of leadership.

And that would be Reid’s failure of leadership.

And both Obama and Reid have to own their failure.

Let’s get back to Hamsher’s Dec 9 email. Here’s one part not quoted by Spieler:

“Obama said ‘coverage without cost containment will only shift our burdens, not relieve them.’ This plan does nothing to meaningfully contain spiraling health care costs.”

Indeed, since then, we’ve been hearing more and more about the loopholes in the latest bullshit Senate health care deal. The other night, I wrote Smoke, Mirrors, and CBO Scores: The Health Care Reform Bait-and-Switch about the first of the many loopholes we’re about to discover have been hidden in this bill.

The debate over health care reform – or lack thereof – is entirely about substantive matters that will affect millions of Americans.

Jane Hamsher has fought against Rep. Anna Eshoo’s contribution to the House’s health care bill that would grant biotechnology companies endless monopolies.

And Jane Hamsher entered this current debate to reform health care early, back in June, and she is still working hard to get a public option, as well as to make sure that the Democratic failures pay politically for having betrayed the American people if they pass something called health care reform, though it is not.

Spieler concludes his post by explaining why he wrote it:

“There are still real battles left to wage on health care reform legislation — namely the effort to open the exchanges so that we might have some leverage with our insurers. There will be a dispute over how generous the subsidies ought to be to help people obtain insurance. There will be efforts to both weaken and strengthen new regulations on insurers. These battles need to be joined — and they are all more consequential for those in need than an argument over a public option that had become almost entirely symbolic.”

Again, he couldn’t be more wrong.

Without creating some kind of option for health care coverage that gives Americans a choice other than the ‘products’ of private insurers looking to rake in profits, the rest boils down to debating whether private insurance company executives will be extremely happy with the amount of taxpayer dollars that will go into their pockets, or just very happy with how much they’ll be getting.

Without creating some kind of option for health care coverage that gives Americans a choice other than the ‘products’ of private insurers looking to rake in profits, whatever is passed won’t meet the standard for real reform.

And if Americans will be getting far less than real reform, then Progressives must reminded them of all that was thrown away as they work to elect candidates who will work for the interests of the American people rather than the interests of the private insurers looking to rake in profits, profits, profits.

Simply stated, Matthew Spieler either needs to make a positive contribution to such worthy efforts, or he needs to STFU.

[Originally posted at Circleparkforum.]