I think Al Giordano really got at the problem I have with the "progressive" critique of the Obama administration. http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3694/we-have-met-corporation-and-it-us
What would happen to insurance workers? Probably unemployment. But in the wider picture, suddenly freeing up the many billions leeched from the economy by the insurance companies would make for a lot of new employment and business opportunities.
Saying 'We can't do that - it's going to cost Jobs™' is one of the standard right wing arguments - especially when the insurance corporations are already costing other people jobs, because of their culture and financial practices.
And yes, government managed health care would certainly better. It works in Europe, why can't it work in the US? It's not as if the US government isn't already managing a substantial national infrastructure, with varying degrees of success.
That's nothing like his actual argument.
As someone pointed out in the comments, it was pressure from the kill-the-bill lobby that moved the bill to the left, to the minimal amount that it was moved. So if he's saying we should all hail his legacy anti-corporate grumpiness and accept that he thought of it all first - or whatever his point is - I confess I'm struggling to see how that's relevant to the immediate health care issue in the US.
Suggesting that everyone should go all anarcho-syndicalist overnight is no less unrealistic as a counsel of perfection than suggesting the bill should be killed outright, surely.
And suggesting that a entirely parasitic industry can't be touched because it will cost jobs is a familiar right wing talking point. You'll have to ask him why he's using it, because I can't possibly explain it.
you are the media you consume.
Remember the context of the argument is that Moyers/Taibbi/Hamsher etc. are arguing that a health reform bill that improves lives of tens of millions should be discarded.
But what Giordano argues is: "Would single-payer and public-options still be preferable? Yes, but with the proviso that the improvement would be at the margins, and they, too, would create new problems to solve. I have yet to see a single-payer health proposal, for example, that honestly admits that removing insurance corporations altogether would cause hundreds of thousands of Americans that work for them to become unemployed."
Single payer is not the same as public option.
Giordano argues that from a socialist point of view, the claim that we should abandon a reform that would help tens of millions of poor and working class citizens on the evidence of stock market moves makes no sense.
As for market prices, market sentiment tells me nothing at all about the positives or negatives of the reform bill. The stock market does not have magical powers and frankly, whether the insurance companies stocks go up or down doesn't mean anything to me. What's important about the health bill is that it actually provides important benefits to many people and that it increases the political power of the union/obama coalition that forced it through congress over the bitter objections of the insurance companies. What kind of useful information can be obtained from this kind of stock movement? http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AET#chart2:symbol=aet;range=6m;compare=unh+^dji+^gspc;indicator=v olume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
