So Obama wanted to be president. He was elected, and pursued the works of Bush: throwing all the money in the world to save his friends the bankers, and other financiers.
We were far from Roosevelt’s “I welcome their hatred!” (speaking of bankers).
To make his sense of friendship official, Obama, while president, called Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the giant bank JP Morgan, many times,“my friend”.
Yet, it ought to have been then completely obvious that Dimon was a crook, in bed with the Bush administration (who offered him the bank Bear-Sterns in the infamous “Jamie Deal”).
Right now Dimon is negotiating a 11 billion dollar fine with Att. Gen Holder (probably proposing him in exchange a mansion on Grand Cayman, or something a bit less obvious: Holder himself is an expensive boy, with a fortune esteemed to more than 12 million dollars).
Of course, it was not all Obama’s fault: he had been selected precisely because he claimed to read the Financial Times, a perfect tool for the plutocratic system. Thousands of experts of said system were ready to steer Obama the right way.
Obama was told by one of the principals of Clinton, Mr. Bowles, himself a plutocrat, scion of an investment banker, in charge of setting up Obama’s cabinet, to “leave his friends behind, they only cause problems”.
Hence Obama’s friendship with well to do characters, such as the Gates, Buffets, Dimons… or even Wolf the more or less criminal ex-boss of UBS USA.
Looking back at the Obama presidency, we see nothing, but Bushes to the horizon. Ah, except Obamacare, a giant mountain that gave birth to a mouse. Obamacare’s official aim was to cover all Americans with a health plan, thanks to public subsidies to… private companies.
It’s esteemed that 45 million Americans have no health care coverage. Obamacare officials claim that, in ten years, in 2023, they will have reduced that number to… a slightly less horrific 31 millions.
In any case, his lack of overall achievement, or even definition, is why Obama is obsessed by Obamacare. Remove Obamacare, and eight years of Obama would have achieved less than Bush (who passed the financing of drugs for seniors).
And the truth is… That Obamacare should perhaps be called Obamacraze. Indeed, it seems to be the most complicated medical system ever devised, a thorough entanglement of government administration and private profit.
Complexity is a major defect, in all systems. A few years back, a tree touched a transmission line in Switzerland. All over Europe, lights went out. Rome stayed dark for hours, creating a giant mess. This was the result of too much, uncontrolled, fragile complexity.
Complexity ought to be engaged, as required, but not a step more.
In a country such as France, the “Assurance Maladie” (basically, “Medicare For All”) covers everybody, up to fluff. Fluff is covered by private insurance.
If one needs a liver transplant, Assurance Maladie pays everything. But, if one wants to recover in a private clinic, instead of a public hospital, then private insurance (typically connected to an employer) kicks in. If one wants a fancy fake tooth, private insurance will have to pay the difference with the reimbursement provided by Assurance Maladie for a basic fake tooth. and so on…
Such as national health care system has reduced complexity: basic health care is handled by a governmental system, and non basic care by a profit based system. The lines are clearly defined.
Thus the worst is… That Obamacare may not even be worth fighting for! Obamacare is very far from the basically free universal health coverage that exists in dozens of countries.
Instead Obamacare is a weird system with the cheapest coverage for the lower classes being called “bronze” (like in… colored), whereas the better stuff is associated to whitish hues. In other words Obamacare, symbolically, but also very practically, perpetuates the class scheme based on color.
If you are “Bronze”, you will find yourself with ruinous health care, once sick.
Obamacare was written down by a private health insurance executive who worked “under” Sen. Baucus, himself a plutocrat, for the occasion. Meanwhile, Obama was going around calling Warren Buffet his friend. Buffet made billions, personally by investing in private health care.
Despite the belief of much of their electorate in single payer, the professional Democrats took the strange step of offering a conservative, market-based solution instead. In other words, they went Republican. Now true blood republican make them eat crow.
The most hilarious detail was the last bill of the Republican controlled Congress, which proposed, among other things, that all the top politicos, including those in Congress and staff at the White House, led by President and VP, would have no more subsidies for health care. Instead the bill wanted to force them to buy their health coverage from the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare.
The “Democratic” leadership replied that it was impossible to force them to buy into Obamacare, because… “junior employees could not afford it”.
Unreal.
***
Patrice Ayme
Tags: health care., Medicare For All, Obama, Obamacare
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
October 2, 2013 at 1:38 pm |
Yes, you are right. It is all so unreal. And, frankly, so pointless. For if your prediction, as offered in your previous essay is correct, that of 500 ppm CO2 within 10 years, then the journey is over.
Shame! If the obama part in obamacare had been planet it would have been so different an outcome. Obama’s years as President may well turn out to have been the planet’s last window for change; sorry our planet.
The band plays on as the ship founders.
You see my dark side shows!
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October 2, 2013 at 5:51 pm |
Dear Paul: The problem is that we have to demolish the ship to build a new one, while staying afloat. The Obama presidency was a totally depressing shock to me (I was heavily involved in the first campaign, and I am a personal friend). It reminded me of a kill in the great plains, and all the vultures rush in, and all one sees is vultures flapping their wings.
Normal people, without long neck they can’t readily bloody, can’t even approach.
Obama ought to have implemented a real health care reform more than 4 years ago. Instead, in the hope of pleasing republicans, he waited until a time when the GOP would be in control. Or more exactly the Tea Party. He could have implemented Medicare For All by decree, right away (as I suggested at the time). Instead he chose to engage in this mess.
The present situation serves the Dark Side of plutocracy well, as all it wants is to cut down to size the elected government, until it can fully replace it.
As the San Francisco Chronicle unwittingly wrote today:”generations of philanthropists have changed this city“… In a long front page article about why generations of plutocrats have been the main contributors to SF…
PA
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October 2, 2013 at 6:18 pm |
“The problem is that we have to demolish the ship to build a new one, while staying afloat.” in very few years.
It’s very depressing which, for me, is not a familiar place; tend more to positive views of the world. Naive is a word sometimes used!
Just possibly there will be some form of democratic uprising, some new political force that truly is of the people, by the people and for the people. The potential power of the ballot box!
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October 2, 2013 at 7:02 pm |
For a successful uprising one needs a modicum of understanding from the masses (so far absent). The OWS movement was a let’s have fun together happenstance, closer to group sex than an intellectual enlightening.
One also needs non rotten leaders. There may be a few; an independent senator in Vermont (Sanders), Massassuchets sen. Elizabeth Warren, and governor Jerry Brown of California (who would make an excellent president).
PA
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October 2, 2013 at 7:51 pm |
Dear Patrice: I blog on this on Huffington post to explain how India does it to give a specific example of a commonly asked question.
Cover everybody? Who can afford that?
Obviously a money creator. USA.
Does the govt operate on borrowed money? Not a chance,
B.{ DEFICITS – NET IMPORTS = PRIVATE SAVINGS} is the balance for USA, and NOT
A.{ TAX+NET EXPORT = SPENDING + GOVT SAVINGS = SPENDING – GOVT DEBT} which was before 1971 during the gold standard, long extinct.
India,a money creator works according to modern monetary theory which means
NO debt ceiling, NO state income tax, NO federal reserve, NO lobbying,NO student debt (the University education being entirely free), NO plutocracy, NO banking problems and high DEFICITS. Japan also goes does the same. India’s is one smart administration. And NO inflation either.
India (much poorer than USA) has universal health care but of uneven quality, The quality of Indian healthcare is varied. In major urban areas, healthcare is of adequate quality, approaching and occasionally meeting Western standards. However, access to quality medical care is limited or unavailable in most rural areas,[15] although rural medical practitioners are highly sought after by residents of rural areas as they are more financially affordable and geographically accessible than practitioners working in the formal public health care sector. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India#Public_and_private_sector
Partha
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October 2, 2013 at 8:13 pm |
Dear Partha: The economy is dominated by the government. Always.
That’s why I have tried to say in:
So what’s the problem of the USA? That the government is in the process of being captured by the .01% Obamacare, paradoxically, is part of the plot.
USA health care is the world’s most expensive, in term of % of GDP. Much of that spending has to do with corruption (although USA economists have semanticized themselves out of that difficulty, just like Salafists say they protect women by keeping them at home).
USA health care serves the plutocracy (HMO investors, drug companies CEOs and boards, marketing executives, etc.) and its hangers-on (very rich doctors, and pretty young women selling their wares in doctors offices). It’s a way society is organized, and the question has been whether USA health profit can be transformed into universal USA health care.
Does not look. Three weeks ago I was attacked from the back by a large, ferocious dog with no rabbies paper. Although I have a health insurance costing more than $2,000 a month (don’t laugh!), I have been unable to get a rabbies vaccination (!) I was sent to emergency rooms… Many doctors told me not to panic, there was no rabbies around… Turns out that was false (animal control told me, after they arrested the dog, days later)… They had cases a few weeks ago.
USA medicine for you…
PA
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October 2, 2013 at 8:17 pm |
BTW, I don’t do the Huff Post, be it only because I don’t like their censorship system (they publish basically none of my comments). Also they are on the take from pluto Putin… (Latest development).
I also always had something against Ariana Huffington, an arrivist immigrant whose job was always to work the plutocracy, while presenting herself as the perfect “gauche caviar” alternative…
Yet, of course, they have a giant readership… Thus influence.
PA
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October 3, 2013 at 1:01 am
Dear Patrice: I agree with everything you say. I simplify it so people understand me with specific examples.
Partha
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October 3, 2013 at 4:36 am |
Dear Partha: Health care in the USA is also, independently of how much one can afford it, of extremely variable quality. Once I was hit by a car, and sort of half killed, but I was not treated, because they had no proof of insurance, and it was midnight, not a good time to call a surgeon. I was treated for fractures and internal bleeding the next day in a public hospital (I had maximum health insurance, but, for some reason I did not carry proof of insurance on me, nor was I able to make a discourse on my financial situation, and the favorable contribution to plutocracy that my state of health and assets was going to allow me to make…)
The (private) hospital in question (Herrick hospital) since failed and was absorbed by another… a sort of law was also more or less passed saying sort of dying people had to be treated by doctors, not ifs, buts, and insurance paper covered with blood, presented or not… Although my recent bout with the apparently rabidly behaving dog was not encouraging (if I had been in Africa, I would have got rabbies shots… But this is the USA, where there is no budget, and rabbies, or not, depending…)
I know plenty of uppity (PhD, or PhD like) women who nearly died recently in child care in the Bay Area (with quasi unbelievable stories). I cautiously went to France, and it worked superbly. The French-Italian docs diagnosticated expensive problems, just looking at the notes from California, and, within minutes, recommended a C section, making USA doctors look like incompetent fools…
PA
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October 2, 2013 at 6:54 pm |
Just seen on the BBC News website:
Goldman Sachs’ boss Lloyd Blankfein has warned that a failure to raise the nation’s borrowing limit would be “extremely adverse”.
The warning came after a meeting between US president Barack Obama and 15 heads of big firms on Wednesday.
Business leaders want Washington to understand “the long-term consequences of a shutdown,” said Mr Blankfein.
The US government has been shutdown since Tuesday, 1 October.
Other well-known business leaders who attended the meeting included Michael Corbat of Citigroup, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America.
Full news item may be read here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24375342
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October 2, 2013 at 7:09 pm |
Funny that they do not mention a major plutocratic actor such as Blackrock, which advises officially several governments (Suisse, Greece, Ireland, etc.) and countless others. While doing markets, futures, and the commodities attached to them (example 80% of the world copper).
The plutocracy is biting its tail, and finds it tasty? Not really.The plutocracy is biting the government, and finds it tasty
PA
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October 3, 2013 at 2:12 pm |
The problem with the US health care sys is NOT so much corruption and profit (although those certainly contribute). It is largely the INSURANCE And LITIGATION sectors who suck off about half of the health care dollar.
Total HC Providers like Kaiser Permanente work better by being their own insurance company and by excluding litigation (you sign a waiver when you join) and using mediation over malpractice.
If the entire US sys used the Kaiser model, the entire country could be insured for less total money than the 250 million who are covered now pay.
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October 3, 2013 at 2:27 pm |
OGP: Hmmmmm…. It’s Kaiser himself, himself, well, a major plutocrat, in engineering (if I remember well), who persuaded his friendly poodle Nixon to spend tax payer dollars on founding the HMO system we presently enjoy…
The analogy with Obamacare is excruciating: using taxpayer $ to support some plutocratic conspiracy supposedly serving the masses…
Now, OK, perhaps Kaiser is cheaper. Yet I have met Kaiser people in the past and it seemed to me they could not just pop in anywhere to be helped…
Moreover medical spending is at 17% GDP, in the USA, so, to make a drastic difference one needs drastic solutions. The obvious one would have taken 2 seconds of Obama’s pen, on day first: allow Medicare to negotiate with providers, no holds barred. OK, Buffet would have probably died of sadness or rage…
PA
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