At press time, tensions in the battle over health care reform were pulling to the max in every direction. As one estimate warned that health insurance would cost nearly twice as much in 2020 as in 2008, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was saying that the president might give up on bipartisanship and go for a party line solution delivered by the Democratic majority in Congress.
The insurance industry is seen as likely to gain in any scenario. Example: after stipulating earlier that insurers should pay at least 76 percent of medical costs for customers with the cheaper plans, last week the Senate Finance Committee had reportedly lowered that floor to 65 percent—a big difference for people with expensive illnesses.
Insurance and health companies have gone all out to influence the debate, and cries of "Socialism!" have gotten attention out of all proportion to their real significance. It was the media that gave the namecalling the status of dissent, and gave the way it drowned out the exchange of meaningful information the status of news.
But the brouhaha about Obama's "un-American" reforms had a good result for Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. At a mid-August "town meeting" on health care reform, Frank lost it and told a woman holding a picture of President Obama with a Hitler moustache that talking to her was like arguing with the dining room table.
Earlier, a fight was being waged between progressive and so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats over how far compromises in a health care reform bill could go. Sixty congresspeople (including Rep. John Olver, not including Rep. Richard Neal) had written the House leadership to protest the suggested elimination of a public health insurance option from the health care reform legislation.
Those who wrote to defend the public option were rewarded with donations from reform supporters cued by the Blue America blog, but after the town meeting, Frank harvested over $11,000, more than three times as much as the average among the 60 who signed the letter (Frank, who is gay, apparently also benefited from a homophobic screed by Rush Limbaugh after the town meeting).
