Finally, some talking points: Updated

Yglesias has been my blogger of choice for the past few days and has another post worth linking to today about the "Eightfold Path of Consumer Protection" that the White House is touting. The summary is that there are eight solid goals of Healthcare Reform that don't involve creating any kind of public insurance program but rather how current private insurance companies are regulated. The eight goals are both ambitious and sweeping:

"
1. No Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions
Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.

2. No Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pay
Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.

3. No Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care
Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.

4. No Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill
Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.

5. No Gender Discrimination
Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.

6. No Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage
Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.

7. Extended Coverage for Young Adults
Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.

8. Guaranteed Insurance Renewal
Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won’t be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick."

Yglesias makes the point that we should use these goals as benchmarks for any legislation that passes Congress, regardless of whether there is a strong public option or not.

I tend to agree with that statement, although I am fully behind a strong government program and find the whole co-op idea being flown by the Senate Finance Committee to be a misguided enterprise at best. More importantly, this list gives Democrats across the country some solid talking points on some very noticeable problems with our system. Elected Democrats and everyday people should be able to use these kinds of points to argue for Obama's reform efforts and counter the distractions being created by the right. While the White House needs to do everything it can to get these talking points out there, it's also critical for the reform effort that everyday voters hear this kind of stuff. Nobody wants to be denied healtchare, people hate having deductables rise and having to pay for stuff out of pocket, and the insurance companies make a good bad guy (on a related note, why isn't anyone making the connection between the insurance companies and the failing economy (think AIG)). Each individual talking point can be usefully geard towards a specific audience as well, so that if I'm talking to my rabid right-wing grandfather I can emphasize Points 2, 4 and 6. If I'm talking to some guy closer to my age I can underline points 1,3, and 7.

This is the kind of message direction that has been lacking from the Obama Administration up until now. These are concrete goals which would improve the healthcare of the vast majority of Americans and not just the 15% who don't have insurance (and who don't tend to vote). Its pretty hard to argue against accomplishing these things with reform. Now it's just a matter of the amplitude at which the message is blasted through the media at those on the recieving end of the box..and how far the massage gets carried by word of mouth contact.

UPDATE I:

The DNC is getting on board with a national ad-buy

Origins and Names

After a discussion with the brilliant Mrs. Klein, my fervent anti-spiritualism might be toning down somewhat. Still, I ran across this article that gives a brief status report on the idea that religion is the result of biological evolution, like teeth and male nipples. The sides presented are more or less that it is either literally a genetically-conditioned form of social organization evolved to provide competitive advantages on its carriers (like haplodiploidy), or that it is generally helpful, could have spread memetically (like fashion trends), but is really more cultural than genetic. The author tries to give a solomonic solution by calling cultural evolution 'an exaggerated metaphor", and granting that there's more to humanity than our genetic hard- and software.

Have both sides forgotten their Popper? Is a little falsificationism too much to ask? This is a debate about which there is an objective fact of the matter. It's more like asking whether more people have black hair or blond hair than it's like asking why Beethoven is better than Mozart (or vice versa). The way the debate is pitched, both sides are arguing for their own just-so-story. Religion as a biological trait to increase cohesion within the group sounds plausible enough, but if that's so, find the gene(s)! Just because it sounds plausible, doesn't mean it's true.

I have the feeling that scientists trying to make the God-is-a-product-of-biology argument would expect vindication if they could find that gene, as if that would be the final nail in the theist/deist coffin. The natural (I mean 'theological') reply to the question of how that gene got there, would of course be something like "Magic man dunnit". I recently remarked that I couldn't understand how an intelligent person could hold religious faith, and while that might still be true, the faithful as a group are capable of some first rate sophistry. Still, how religion is related to evolution is an empirical question, and I accept no substitutes.

I also saw this kind of travel diary by an 'Indian' who visits 'Indian' casinos. I remember when I was a kid growing up in western Canada, 'Indian' could be used to describe the pre-16th century inhabitants of the Americas and their descendants without denegration. That didn't last long before the term 'native' became more politically correct. (I had a problem with this even in grade-school, because both of my parents are first-generation immigrants to Canada (from different countries), and I was born there, so how were they any more native than I? If the plan was to ship all the colonists home, where was I to go?) Then 'aboriginal' was en vogue. (It's an etymologically interesting term with similarly disturbing connotations for me. 'More original than original', which would leave me, where?, just original?) Now, I think First Nations is the PC nomenclature, which can lead to some pretty awkward sentences ("This First Nations' gentleman has lost his hat! Has anyone seen the First Nations' gentleman's hat?"). My point is that Canada has really torn itself up over relations with First Nations (although we still call the responsible governmental department "The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs"), as one can clearly see from the terminological gymnastics of the last 30 years, but the Americans seem comfortable with good ol' 'Indian'. I wonder why.

My guess is that it has to do with Canada's multiculturalism. In Canada, I think we're pretty happy to call people whatever they please, but more importantly, the social ideal is cultural diversity, and some might need extra measures to stand out in the cacophony of different titles and tongues. We have many wheels, but only the squeaky ones get greased. In the States, there seems to be more of a integrationist, melting pot ideal in which all comers are meant to assimilate. Standing out might be a bad thing, so only the biggest minorities can withstand the resistance that hopping on the euphemism treadmill attracts. If there are costs to standing out, only those strong enough to assert themselves will even try. Hmm?

Small Goverment, No Government

I just read this article on the Beeb about the possibility that protests against the democrats' health care plans might be phoney, staged events put on by "birthers" and bitter republicans. I confess, I don't really care. What did bother me is this line:

...'small government good, big government bad' is the Republican motto.

Are you sure? Lazily, I'm going to take some figures from the Wikipedia to show that this is profoundly misleading. Let's have a look at deficits as a percentage of GDP. Negative numbers indicate surpluses and positive ones indicate new debt. Generally speaking, a number under 3% (the EU's allowable limit) is pretty respectable. Let's eliminate the figures for Roosevelt/Truman because winding down WWII was bound to save a lot of money, and that trend continues through Eisenhower, so let's start with Kennedy/Johnson. The average deficit as percentage of GDP for democratic presidential terms since Kennedy is -5.7, for republicans in the same period, it's 7.0. In recent history, republican presidents lose slightly more money than democrat ones save. If we look at just the most recent two-termers for the most recent trend, we get -4.4 for Bubba and 9.3 for Dubya. You can give Clinton a handicap because he inherited a big deficit from Bush senior that he was able to turn around, whereas GWB inherited a handsome surplus from Clinton that he managed to run into the ground.

The so-called Blue Dogs have been getting a lot of press lately, and their message of fiscal conservatism is music to my liberal ears (though I do support universal health care for fiscal and normative reasons). I would like to submit, though, that even the reddest (as in "most commie") democrat would have a hard time beating a republican in terms of fiscal profligacy. There is an old idea in American foreign policy analysis that republicans can be more dovish because other countries expect them to be the toughest hawks, and democrats have to be more hawkish than they would like, because nobody will take them seriously otherwise, assuming they're a bunch of softies. The same seems to be the case in fiscal policy: people assume republicans will save, so they have the freedom to spend and bloat government. It's perverse. Don't buy it.

Other news that caught my eye (for the anarchically and totalitarian-inclined):
Living human rights advocates in Chechnya are becoming about as common as Aung San Suu Kyi's days at the beach.

There also seems to be a growing movement to have children-free zones in public places in Germany. Thank goodness! There was a smoking law in my hometown for a while that allowed restaurants and bars to admit minors or smokers. Being a childless smoker at the time, I was very satisfied. Even after having quit, I'd still prefer second-hand smoke to first-hand brattiness!