Krugman on Blue Dogs: Why Obama Can't Throw Them a Bone

by Bartleby the Scrivener | Deb's taken a couple of runs at the specious arguments of the "Blue Dog Democrats" in whose money-greased palms the fate of health care reform (and maybe of the Obama administration) currently rests.  Can Obama appease their concerns?  Paul Krugman thinks not.

[H]e can’t — because the Blue Dogs aren’t making sense....

So what are the objections of the Blue Dogs?

Well, they talk a lot about fiscal responsibility, which basically boils down to worrying about the cost of those subsidies. And it’s tempting to stop right there, and cry foul. After all, where were those concerns about fiscal responsibility back in 2001, when most conservative Democrats voted enthusiastically for that year’s big Bush tax cut — a tax cut that added $1.35 trillion to the deficit?

But it’s actually much worse than that — because even as they complain about the plan’s cost, the Blue Dogs are making demands that would greatly increase that cost.

There has been a lot of publicity about Blue Dog opposition to the public option, and rightly so: a plan without a public option to hold down insurance premiums would cost taxpayers more than a plan with such an option.

But Blue Dogs have also been complaining about the employer mandate, which is even more at odds with their supposed concern about spending. The Congressional Budget Office has already weighed in on this issue: without an employer mandate, health care reform would be undermined as many companies dropped their existing insurance plans, forcing workers to seek federal aid — and causing the cost of subsidies to balloon....

One interpretation, then, is...: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers....

So these are Democrats who, despite their relative conservatism, have shown some commitment to their party and its values.Now, however, they face their moment of truth. For they can’t extract major concessions on the shape of health care reform without dooming the whole project: knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse — and probably take the Obama presidency down with it.  (New York Times)

Economist Brad DeLong responds bluntly:  "The Blue Dogs have been bought and paid for. They do not want a fiscally-responsible bill. They want to please their masters from the health insurance industry by trying their best to keep there from being a bill at all."

Kevin Drum at MoJo says:

The Dogs may be centrists, but someone needs to remind them that they're still supposed to be centrist Democrats.  It's time to fish or cut bait.

Open Secrets has the dirt on the insurance industry/dog connection (with a chart to back it up):

There's a particular breed of lawmaker on Capitol Hill that is pushing hard against a public health care plan, much to the delight of two seriously moneyed special interest groups--insurers and pharmaceuticals. They're the Blue Dogs: moderate, vocal and funded in part by the industries trying to protect their bottom line.

The typical member* of the Blue Dog caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives has received $10,300 more from insurers than the typical non-Blue Dog Democrat in the House (including health and accident insurers, HMOs and other health services) and only $3,625 less than the typical House Republican....

Health pros are among the top 20 industry donors to 38 Blue Dogs since 1989 and are the No. 1 donor for five of them. Health pros have also given the typical Blue Dog $47,550 more than the typical non-Blue Dog Democrat in the House. This month the American Medical Association, which lobbies on behalf of doctors, also came out against a public health insurance plan. The AMA is among the top 20 contributors to 10 Blue Dogs since 1989....

The health sector overall has given $62,650 more to the typical Blue Dog Democrat than to the typical non-Blue Dog Dem since 1989, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving $5,680 and $5,550 more, respectively. The typical House Republican, however, has collected more than the typical Democrat--Blue Dog or not--from insurers, health professionals and the health sector overall.

Scarecrow at FDL, like Deb, discusses the media's unquestioning acceptance of the Blue Dogs as supporters of fiscal responsibility and their failure to call them out:

[M]uch of the media continues to assume the Blue Dogs actually care about fiscal responsibility, even though the Dogs' actual proposals would...raise costs or undermine the reforms. Attention media: Paying more money to their local providers, raising public plan rates above Medicare levels and weakening the public plan's ability to force private insurers to compete will raise costs, not lower them....

Apparently the media can't see the connection between increasing payments to the health providers that dominate most rural areas and the campaign contributions that flow into Blue Dog coffers. The Dogs are not saving the federal budget; they're extracting pork -- rents to reward their contributors, the insurers and providers that dominate local markets.

And no matter how many concessions they extract, they'll demand more. They can do that because they don't care if health care reform fails. The people they're negotiating with do care, and that's why the extortion works. It would be helpful if the media could stop fawning and call them out.(FDL)

Deb has her own thoughts on why the media is never gonna do that.

Meanwhile, at HuffPost, Paula Crossfield has a post on the rejected single-payer option that would do a lot of good to the sort of voter and the sort of politician who is never going to read it.

The United States is the only high-income industrialized country not using some form of a single-payer healthcare system. Single-payer could be an expanded form of Medicare, and actually ensures under the Civil Rights Act that no one will be denied care. Conversely, privatized insurance companies can and do deny care with near-impunity. The administrative simplicity of the single-payer system would save on overhead costs, while the costs of care would go down because the profit margins private insurers would be cut out of the equation.

Despite what anyone tells you, single-payer is not socialized medicine, and no ominous government bureaucracy would step in and deny or "ration" care....

The question.... is how to do what Obama promised but has not yet delivered: get the lobbying interests out of Washington once and for all. It seems that this is the root of many of the problems we face.... It is specifically the cause for preventing single-payer, something Obama supported before becoming President, from even being on the table for discussion. (emphasis added)

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