For those of you lucky enough to have employer-provided health insurance, take note. The Bush Administration wants to take it away :

Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers ? instead of looking to employers for health insurance ? would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible “catastrophic” insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP confidence that the political balance of power has changed.
[. . .]
Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of Bush’s “ownership society,” say workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills. Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.

Jeez, Republicans sure do have a boner for savings accounts huh? Since I already blogged about this a few months ago, here’s why this “personal account” stuff is bad, bad news :

I wonder if Bush has ever had to lay all his bills out on the kitchen table and figure out which ones he can pay immediately and which ones can wait until the next paycheck? Or if he’s ever lived in an overcrowded apartment with hand-me-down furniture, eating the same thing six days a week because it’s cheaper? Or if he’s ever had to settle for a job slightly less shitty than the one he had in high school because there weren’t any jobs in the field he majored in? Of if he’s gone through the process of figuring out which generic brand products at the grocery store are as good as the name brands and which ones aren’t?

As most of you know, I’m not just describing poverty here. This is normal life for many Americans. Some live paycheck to paycheck, while others are able to pinch enough pennies to save a few bucks. Either way, most people don’t have thousands of dollars to spare.

Practically speaking, savings accounts for retirement and heath care a huge mistake, but for entirely separate reasons. With the latter, the rub is that health care is expensive. Let’s say you have an medical emergency with costs in the $20-30K range. How long would it take you to save that much? A few years? Even with the vague incentives, we’re still looking at a plan that’s the equivalent of asking every American to buy a new car that he/she may never drive.

Since this new article provides a little more detail, lemme point out some additional problems I have with this plan :

Pay close attention to the language in the article. The plan is to replace employer-provided insurance with “high-deductible” insurance policies. Deductible is just another word for “fees” and in this case, the first step in the plan to screw up your healthcare coverage is to charge you high fees for insurance. Keep in mind that that’s just the first part. We haven’t even gotten to the savings account yet.

While the expensive insurance that you’d be obligated to buy will only cover “major medical needs”, everything else is paid for out of your hypothetical savings account. I’ve already pointed out the problem with creating an account, but what happens if you actually have one? Well, unlike insurance, your savings account can run out of money pretty damn fast. What happens if you’ve got a chronic illness that requires frequent doctor’s visits? Or you get sick a week or two after starting your account. Tough shit, poor boy. That’s what you get for not having a healthy body.

And finally, what’s the point of messing with people’s insurance? In the words of the article, Bush and Co. think “workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills”. The implication here is that “more careful” means making less visits to the doctor. Having routine medical expenses not covered by the “catastrophic” insurance policies all but guarantees it. Of course, the problem here is that Americans don’t go to the doctor enough already. When you consider the fact thousands of Americans die each year of diseases that could have been caught through early detection, is it really a good idea to give people a financial motive for skipping mammograms, prostate exams, routine physicals, etc??

So, let’s sum up the GOP plan for medical overhaul that will be part of this “ownership society”. First, they want to encourage employers to dump you from your existing insurance plan (and if you read the rest of the article, if doesn’t sound like they need much convincing). Second, they want to force you into an expensive insurance plan that will only cover “catastrophic” medical procedures. Third, on top of the higher cost of your insurance policy, they want you start saving up any extra cash that you probably don’t have lying around. Finally, the whole point here is to ease the financial burden on your employer, make you pay more for less coverage, and encourage you to seek medical help as rarely as possible.

UPDATE : As randomliberal helpfully pointed out in the comments, I was a little fuzzy in my estimation of what was meant by “high-deductible”. (I really need to get into the habit of reading this stuff before I hit “Publish”.) To be precise, the deductibles that are paid up front for healthcare are what will be higher. The actual fees for the insurance, however, will come entirely out of your pocket rather than your employers’. In the spirit of the “self-correcting” blogosphere, my earlier statement should read “higher-deductibles and much, much higher fees.” Doesn’t that make you feel better?

On Wednesday night, I hope the President will give us an update on his fight to rid professional sports of steroids. I dunno about you, but I’ve lost a lot of sleep over this crisis ever since it was highlighted in last year’s speech. We can rest assured that the President hasn’t let his tough stance on professional athletes get in the way of his photo ops.

This VW ad begs the question : Did they have to exhume Gene Kelly to rape his corpse? (via Waxy) For corporate America’s next trick, they should replace the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz with a pair of Nikes or use Don Corleone’s death scene from The Godfather in a commercial for Sunkist oranges.

I keep wanting to say more about the Iraqi elections, but I’m having trouble connecting all the random comments and questions in my head into some cohesive point. Instead, I’m just gonna throw it all out there and open this up to discussion :

I’m very impressed with the high turnout. Millions of Iraqis literally risked their lives to vote when most Americans can barely stand to risk their lunch breaks to do the same. Iraqi turnout is estimated to be between 60% -75%. By comparison, the turnout in November’s election, which was the highest turnout since 1968, was a dismal 60.7%. Perhaps one day the Iraqi people will be free enough to take their liberty for granted.

Let’s hope the Iraqis are happy when they actually find out who they voted for. And that their anonymous representatives pick a decent candidate to be prime minister. Now would probably be a good time to educate people on the differences between a “democracy” and a “republic”.

As I mentioned in my last post, this election is just the latest in a seemingly neverending series of goalposts for the Iraqi war. Whenever violence flares up, it always seems that the tipping point is only one event away. Based on the last part of this article, my guess is that the next few events will be the selection of the Prime Minister, the drafting of the constitution, and the next round of elections at the end of the year. Every time there’s another violent attack, we’ll be reminded of these plans with an plea for the kind of patience that our leaders lacked in early 2003.

The one thing I can be certain of in regards to the Iraqi election is that the first fiteen minutes of this Wednesday’s State of the Union address will be unbearable crap. Bush’s speech will be full of flowery statements like “The transformative power of liberty is the Almighty’s gift to every man.” Ugghh…

Since the elections are essentially a redo of last June’s spontaneous handover, lemme just repeat what I said then :

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in a few weeks. If our guys are still dying over there, will Americans really be willing to accept the “don’t blame me, they’re sovereign” excuse?

Based on who’s still President, the answer seems to be “yes”.

Now that major combat opertations…umm..I mean, capturing Saddam…uh…handover of power…no, wait…make that ELECTIONS have occured without any incidents with only 25 or so murders, then we can look forward to a stable, senate Iraq. Hooray for freedom!

Downhill Battle, the anti-copyright crusaders behind Grey Tuesday, launched a new project this week to spread the civil rights documentary “Eyes on the Prize”. Here’s their sales pitch :

Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning documentary series that many consider a foundation of our collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s the most vidid portrayal of the civil rights movement and for millions of people, it’s the foundation for understanding what happened. Makers of Eyes on the Prize brought together extensive historical footage from the period and featured ordinary people who helped change the course of history for the better. No other book or movie has comprehensively brought together this much footage or has become a more common reference on the civil rights movement.

So why has Eyes on the Prize been unavailable for the past 10 years? Copyright restrictions. For example, the film includes footage of a group of people singing “Happy Birthday” to Martin Luther King…Eyes on the Prize is made up of news footage, photographs, songs and lyrics from the Civil Rights Movement that are tangled up in a web of licensing restrictions. Many of these licenses had expired by 1995 and the film’s production company, Blackside, could not afford the exorbitant costs of renewing them. “Eyes on the Prize” has been unavailable to the public ever since.

Copyright law has expanded out of control, and its public mission is no longer being served. Copyright was originally designed to encourage creativity and innovation–much like patent law. But for the past 50 years multi-national corporations like Disney and the major record labels have aggressively lobbied Congress to expand and expand and expand the reach of copyright law. Instead of lasting 20 years and requiring registration (like patents do) copyright has become automatic and now corporate copyrights last 90 years.

The problem of course is that these self-appointed defenders of artistry didn’t bother asking the artists they’re hiding behind. As a result, the nephew of the film’s director is justifiably pissed off :

I am heartily in favor of everybody showing their copies of Eyes to as many people as they can. If you have a copy of Eyes that you bought or inherited, great; show it. But please, please, please don’t don’t encourage others to duplicate it and distribute it, and please (above all, as some motherless losers are doing on eBay) don’t sell it.

There are negotiations ongoing (on and off, but ongoing) to re-issue Eyes on the Prize in DVD format, ideally with additional materials for teaching. Funds are being solicited for this effort, and sponsors pitched. This would allow the production of additional materials and allow Eyes to be distributed to the public and libraries and schools once more, playable on modern equipment and archived on more durable media. Every time the ‘COPY EYES!’ website gets seen by one of the rights-holders we have to negotiate with, however, the chances of us ever getting this done diminishes. This brings me to my second point.

Eyes on the Prize is not about the copyright movement. It is not about intellectual property. It is about the Civil Rights movement, and the Black experience in America. Using it in this way, no matter how noble the intention, will serve to brand it fairly indelibly in the minds of the policymakers as the ’spearhead of the p2p movement’ and the ‘emblem of the anti-copyright movement.’ While I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, I am saying that that will absolutely detract from the teachings and message that Eyes was, in fact, created to get across - teachings of history and messages of racial tolerance and diversity - by irretrievably muddling in a contemporary, hot-button (and entirely unrelated to the original topic) fight.

Whatever the motives, the countercopyright crew are essentially hijacking someone else’s life’s work and appropriating its power and recognition for their own purposes. In the process, they are potentially diminishing and damaging its own effectiveness. It’s not their place to make the decision to throw the weight of Eyes behind this fight.

Finally, I would point something out. They invoke Henry Hampton’s name and legacy on their page, where they advocate downloading and illegally distributing his works. Henry Hampton may have made documentaries, but that doesn’t mean he worked for free. Blackside, Inc. was always a for-profit corporation, and Henry Hampton took home what profits his films were able to generate. So trying to invoke his name while you encourage everyone to trample on the rights granted his works strikes me as extremely hypocritical.

Since that post, Downhill Battle has taken down their download links with the message “we have taken down the torrent links to these videos at the request of lawyers for Blackside, Inc. This sucks!” You know what else sucks? Hiding behind the civil rights movement.

I agree that copyright laws are out of control, but many aspects of these protests seem phony. How many people would have rushed to participate in Grey Tuesday if it were Toby Keith re-appropriating the chorus of an Outkast song? Would people have been as sympathetic to the samplers if it were a unsigned indie band getting sampled in a commercial for a Humvee? That movement was obviously about defending “cool” music (Jay-Z and DJ Dangermouse) against “uncool” music (The Beatles). There was as much rich vs. poor, young vs. old acrimony in that fight, but nobody was willing to be upfront about it. Instead, a fairly complicated issue turned into another childish vendetta against “The Man”.

This time it’s even worse. Without bothering to inquire about the status of the film, Downhill Battle took it upon themselves to defend this fair maiden against an evil corporate dragon. I guess it never occurred to them that not everybody wants to be saved. Then again, the whole civil rights thing was secondary to their real goal of subverting copyright laws. Since they’re so keen on piggybacking their projects on unrelated (but wildly popular) issues, perhaps for their next trick they can spread bootleg videos of Schindler’s List. Somebody needs to spare this masterpiece from Speilberg’s concentration camp of copyright hell.

Kevin’s got a good question about the political maneuvering behind the President’s Social Security plans :

Bush has smart people advising him, and they must realize that the odds of getting Social Security privatization passed is virtually nil. My guess is that it can’t even pass the House, and there’s zero chance of it getting enough votes to cut off a filibuster in the senate. So why expend so much political capital on such a quixotic venture? There’s got to be something else going on.

First of all, I wouldn’t be so quick to pronounce privatization D.O.A. We still have a State of the Union address to look forward to in which Bush will be using his bully pulpit to scare the bejesus out of everyone. For all we know, we could be looking at a situation a month from now in which average Americans are saying to themselves “I hate the idea of privatization, so I’m glad the President met the Democrats halfway with a plan that uses personal accounts instead.”

Secondly, as much as I love the recent trend of senate unity, our coalition is one faux-compromise away from falling apart. Have we become so accustomed to failure that we’re ecstatic when our side is against something that’s obviously a horrible idea? Opposition in this case should be taken for granted. The real question will be whether or not the Dems have the foresight to look at the big picture and oppose this “reform” in any guise that it may take. It’s also still up in the air whether or not our semi-revitalized party members will have the cojones to refuse to compromise with a power-hungry GOP that wouldn’t give them the time of day.

But Kevin is mostly right when he says the writing is one the wall on this bit of “reform” and I share his suspicion that there’s more to this than meets the eye. If they really don’t have the votes for this right now, then my guess is that they’ll use the State of the Union address to switch gears and try to catch Democrats off-guard. I could easily see either tort “reform” and tax “simplification” replacing Social Security as the top domestic priority for the Republican elites.

If this happens, Democrats might too busy scratching their heads or patting themselves on the back to catch the GOP’s head start in convincing the public to gut the legal system or destroy any remaining vestiges of progressivity in the tax code. These two issues are just as important to the Republicans as privatizing Social Security in the sense that they both highlight fundamental differences between the parties. Any success by the GOP would be disastrous for the Democratic party (and the American people, for that matter), so it’s probably a good idea to prepare ourselves for a partisan war on multiple fronts.

Another hack caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The Administration spent $88 million on “public relations contracts” in an election year. The “Stop Government Propaganda Act” is a good idea, but this stuff is most likely already against the law. A better idea would be to enforce the laws we already have on the books. Can we get a Justice Department investigation already??

Stolen from my friend Brian :

I forgot to mention that The Talent Show has two Koufax Award nominations for Most Humorous Post. If you enjoyed either The Five Stages of Bushism or Bush’s Debate Notes, feel free to throw a vote in our direction. There’s a lot of funny stuff linked from there as well, so you should definitely check it out.