Jon Walker: Roosevelt Institute Abandons Traditional Liberal Health Care Policies For Pete Peterson

[abelenkpe]

Jon Walker: Roosevelt Institute Abandons Traditional Liberal Health Care Policies For Pete Peterson

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/jon-walker-roosevelt-institute-abandons-traditional-liberal-health-care-policies-for-pete-peterson.html

Worrying about long term deficits with official unemployment over 9 percent and treasury bonds rates at near-record lows is inherently an act of madness. It is the antithesis of both progressive policy and basic logic. Left to their own devices, liberals would relegate reducing the deficit to a very low priority in this economic climate. Of course when you’re a billionaire like Pete Peterson and you’re willing to spend millions promoting deficit hysteria, your can convince “liberals” to play into your deficit fetish at even the most illogical of times. Hence the Peter G. Peterson Foundations 2011 Fiscal Summit.

I’ve berated all the so called “progressive” groups that took part in the Peter G. Peterson Foundation 2011 Fiscal Summit for including health care reform in their deficit reduction proposals, yet totally abandoning the traditional progressive solution: a single payer health care system. If the United States simply adopted a system that was roughly as efficient as France, Finland, Norway, Australia, Denmark, England, or New Zealand, we wouldn’t have a deficit. Yet the clear and demostrable global precedent set by these nations somehow managed to escape inclusion by these leading liberal economic lights.

The Roosevelt Institute’s deficit plan, however, deserves special attention. Of the three plans, it is particularly bad on the issue of health care. The organization that prides itself on “carrying forward the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt” apparently thinks that mission is best fulfilled by mainstreaming corporate-friendly right-wing policy recommendations.

Lucky for Peterson, the Roosevelt Institute is willing to put the FDR legacy into the service of his and other lobbyist-friendly objectives. Let’s look at their proposal (PDF).

(more at link)

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Please read! This is very important. If you think HCR was a step forward this deficit plan is a huge step backwards similar to the Ryan plan in that it would give vouchers to families and shift more of the burden of cost on to individuals.

[Enthusiast]

1. Peter G. Peterson doesn't favor a social safety net.

Billionaires don't need one. He is probably an Ayn Rand devotee.