One step closer towards health care reform

The House of Representatives has backed Obama's health care bill narrowly winning by a 220-215 vote. Interestingly, every single Republican opposed the bill with the exception of Joseph Cao, from New Orleans.

You can see footage in the House as the bill is finally passed, above.

Finally, America seems to be moving in the right direction.

Expect a more detailed account of things from either myself, or Rob Ford, soon.

Thanks for reading,

Faisal.

Who supports the BNP, and why?

Hi Latif fans,

Quick post here in response to Faisal's comments about the BNP. I have recently been doing some research on BNP supporters (Someone has to do it!) What we found is reflected in the title of our paper: "Angry White Men". Your typical BNP supporter is a middle aged, working class man living in the North of England, who left school at sixteen, and hates all of the existing parties. He probably used to vote Labour (if he voted at all), but feels betrayed by them because he has seen no benefits in his area from Labour government and particularly because he believes they lost control of immigration. He is very likely to live in a constituency where Labour have been in charge for decades and where there is a large Muslim population nearby.

John Gray is right that these angry white Northerners feel bewildered pace of social and economic change in Britain, and disenchanted with a society that no longer has a place for them. But this line of argument can be taken too far. The BNP are not a product of "globalisation", and their supporters are not as sophisticated as John Gray. In fact, there is little evidence that economic factors - like unemployment, welfare dependence or local deprivation - have any connection to BNP support.

The BNP do well in deprived areas, its true, but they are also absent from plenty of others. The story is culture. The BNP harness resentments and prejudices, and to do that they need someone to blame - and the scapegoat du jour is, alas, Muslims. There is a strong and consistent link between BNP support and the size of the local Muslim population. One of my colleagues (Roger Eatwell) has called this the "cumulative extremism" dynamic - the perception of extremism among Muslims leads Islamophobic white working class voters to mobilise defensively against them. The presence of the BNP and racist attacks, in turn, can polarise the Muslim community and encourage more hotheaded elements to retaliate, which in turn boosts the BNP further...We see this dynamic also in the sudden appearance of the England Defence League, which is essentially a bunch of football hooligans angry about Muslim extremist demonstrators at the funeral processions of soldiers in Luton.

The BNP are therefore a symptom of something cultural, not something economic. Namely, the widespread, and deeply wrong, belief that British Muslims do not adhere to British values and represent a threat to the rest of the population. Anyone who knows Faisal can see this argument has no basis, but it is now touted about regularly in tabloids, and bad Channel 4 documentaries about "terorrists in our midst" and so forth. It is becoming the conventional wisdom, and this is greatly helping the BNP. This argument urgently needs addressing. I don't think Britain is on the road to Kristelnacht, but our political leaders need to speak out in favour of Muslims as valued, moderate and thoroughly British citizens, as the overwhelming majority indeed are.

You're more likely to die from horse riding than taking ecstasy

Greetings readers,

Fare the well? Am still living life in the fast lane, what with socialising, work and such like. However, this morning I thought I would take some time out to read, reflect and share some of my thoughts. So, the BBC's breaking news is that Professor David Nutt, the UK's former chief drugs adviser, and member of the independent drug advisory panel, has been forced to quit his post. This is in response to the fact that Professor Nutt spoke out about Gordon Brown's decision to re-classify cannabis from a Class C drug to a Class B. Indeed, the home secretary, Alan Johnson, wrote a letter to Nutt detailing how his comments had "undermined the scientific independence of the council". Nonsense.

The fact of the matter is that cannabis creates only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness and is actually less harmful than nicotine and alcohol, as Nutt put this in a recent lecture. If you don't believe me, read the scientific evidence. It's all there. No wait, that would be far too rational. Actually, ignore the independent, robust, scientific evidence, and enforce your archaic, myopic, presbytarian values onto the whole of British society. Gordon Brown - you are an imbecile living in the dark ages. In fact, this wasn't supposed to be such an anti-establishment polemic, but it really does rile me when politicians set up so called 'independent' advisory panels comprising of eminent scientists, and then decide to ignore their advice based on their own, sad, misguided pre-conceptions. Come on Alan, Jacqui, I'm sure you did a bit of 'puff' at Oxford, right? No, my mistake, you passively inhaled, and you didn't like the feeling....

But hold on a minute, two million people in this country alone do like the feeling. Don't they have a voice? And does sacking Professor Nutt really send out a particularly good message to future scientists? Not only does it seem foolish to completely ignore scientific evidence, but also somewhat abhorrent that the cabinet will not tolerate criticisms levelled against some of their (incorrect) policy making.

A sad day for policy indeed.

Thank you for reading,

F.

The March Towards Extremism?

Greetings readers,

I hope this finds you in fine fettle. It appears I have neglected my precious blog over the past few weeks but with good reason: I have been running at 100 miles an hour what with the start of my new course and the resumption of living in London.

So, onto business. Well, unless you are a cave-dwelling troglodyte, are foreign, or just completely uninterested in British politics (heathen!), then you will know about a particularly 'special' Question Time this evening. Ah yes, the wonderful Beeb have decided to give an unprecedented platform to the leader of the British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin.

Now I am completely torn on this issue. First of all, if any of you know me personally, then you will know that I am a second generation British Asian. I am proud to be British, and proud for everything this country stands for. In particular, I am deeply proud of our political and legal system; still a beacon of democracy, and a model that is highly respected, and envied throughout the world. Yes, this country has its flaws, and yes, we have a dark, imperial past, but on the corollary, I am indeed an absolute product of the British empire. In the best possible way I would like to think!

One half of me is deeply worried and sceptical over the fact that the BNP is being given a platform on the most respected political TV show in the country. Does this therefore legitimise the BNP, and mean that the party has now entered mainstream politics? I know that about one million Britains (shame on you) voted with your feet in June, giving the BNP two seats in the European parliament. But I know, and pray, that not all one million of you are racist, homophobic, misogynists.

I attended a public lecture last night entitled, "The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Ten Years On", delivered by Professor John Gray, emeritus professor of European Thought at the LSE. And I must say, it was rather fascinating. Now i'm not going to go into the minutiae of the lecture, but what was interesting was how Professor Gray was somewhat political in reference to his thoughts over Nick Griffin's attendance at QT. Indeed, what he did say is that the collapse of the financial markets, rising unemployment, increasing debt, and a general malaise has led to many people being rather disenchanted and disenfranchised by the current state of British politics. This, sadly, has led to many marginalised people to vote for the BNP.

Now much as I abhor the BNP, and everything it stands for, the simple fact of the matter is that they now are now represented electorally, and should be given a platform to air these views. The Green Party and UKIP are just, if not even more marginal, and they have been given air time on QT. If you believe in democracy, and the political process, then sadly we must cede to the fact the BNP have a 'right' to be on national television.

People have argued that the because the BNP only allow whites into its party, that it is therefore an illegal party, contravening the Race Relations Act. Indeed, Mr Hain, the Welsh secretary has argued the point vehemently. In addition, ex-London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has said that there is likely to be a spike in racist attacks following the BNP's airing on QT this evening. Apparently, there is usually a spike in racist attacks following the BNP being elected in a certain area. This makes me feel rather uneasy.

What I hope is that the gloomy climate which we are now in does not turn more people into voting for far-right parties. Perhaps an extreme point, but the rise of Nazi Germany followed economic depression, and this pattern has been seen repeatedly in history. Now I am not saying that Britain, or indeed Europe, is going that way, However, we MUST stop the BNP, and all of its political allies marching forward. Indeed, it is imperative we do so. For Britain, for Europe and for humanity.

Rant over.

Thank you for reading,

Faisal.

Fuck Buttons article on Glass Magazine

Hello readers,

I hope this finds you in fine fettle. Just a quick one to let you know that my latest article on Fuck Buttons is now up on Glass Magazine, and you can check it out, here.

All comments, as always, are most appreciated!

Thanks,

F.

Health Reform in the US II: What Obama proposes, and why passing reform is so tough

Hello again, Latif fans! Rob Ford here with the second part of my primer on the US health care debate. This time I’ll be covering what Obama and the Democrats propose, and why passing the reforms is so tough. More of an essay than a post by now, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting...

As I detailed in the first part of the guide, the three major problems with US health care at present are that it is expensive, inefficient and unjust. How does Obama’s plan to correct these problems? It’s worth noting for starters that there isn’t one “plan” – in fact there are several quite different plans working their way through parts of the American legislature, an issue I’ll come back to later in this post. For simplicity I’ll focus on the core elements of the plan, and refer to these as the “Obama plan”.

Let’s start with justice. The fact that America is the only developed country in the world that does not provide a minimum standard of health care to all its citizens has long been a thorn in the side of the Democrats, America’s left(ish) party. Every Democratic President from Roosevelt on has tried to expand health care coverage, though with varying success. All of the reforms currently on the table look to address this, but not in the way the NHS solved this problem in Britain. Obama does not intend to create a government funded, government run free to all health service. The private basis of American medicine will be left essentially unaltered. Instead, the Obama plan would make it a legal requirement that all Americans take out basic health care and provide large subsidies to poorer Americans to enable them to do so. Those who decline to take out coverage will be fined. The plan also addresses another major injustice of the current system: it would ban insurers from refusing to provide coverage to those who have previously been ill. Such “pre-existing condition” clauses are very common in insurance policies, though many Americans are not aware of them until they find out their medical bills are not covered. The insurance market more generally would be more tightly regulated, reducing private insurers’ discretion over what they will cover and what share of medical costs they can force their customers to pay themselves.

On the minus side, the plan will force a lot of lower middle class parents into a difficult choice: pay up to 12% of their incomes to purchase health care, at a time when money is tight, or face fines and other penalties from the government. The government provides money to help out the poor, but its not a lot and many struggling families could get stuck with big bills. So – good, but not great. 7/10

Next up: cost. The Obama plan makes some efforts to bring costs down – Obama has struck deals with drug companies to reduce the costs of medications and has pledged to reduce the fees the government pays doctors for their services through programmes like Medicare. So far, so good. Except this is really chipping away at the edges of the problem. The first big cost generator in the US is the decentralized nature of the insurance market – individual private insurance companies negotiating with doctors and pharmaceutical companies on their own don’t have much bargaining power, so the docs and drug companies can squeeze big increases from them. By contrast, the NHS negotiates all its drug contract centrally, and has enormous bargaining power – indeed, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is so powerful that other European governments follow its guidelines in their own price negotiations. The result: us lucky Brits pay a lot less for our meds. The Obama plan as it stands does nothing about this. Some of the bills have a proposal the Americans call “the public option” – a proposal to create government insurance plans to create in the private market. This has been fiercely resisted on the grounds that it is the first step down the road to “socialized medicine”. It probably would be – an insurance plan with the government’s tax raising powers behind it would be able to outcompete private plans. But that’s the point. It is “socialized medicine” – government directed or coordinated provision of health services – that delivers high quality health care at reasonable costs. Its what American pensioners have –and they like it. Its what American war veterans have – and they like it too. But Obama won’t even be offering a weak version of it to the rest of the American public.

Obamacare scores badly on the second major cost driver as well. As mentioned in the previous post, most Americans under 65 get their health care through their employees, who in turn get a huge tax break for offering it. As a result, when health care provides jack up costs, most Americans don’t notice – it doesn’t show up in their salary or their bills. The employers notice, but the pain is blunted by the big tax rebates they pick up on the cost increase. As a result, there’s no one to push back against the upward pressure on private costs. And if private costs go up, government provided medical costs go up too – the government has to pay the same rate or the doctors won’t work for them and the drug companies won’t sell them drugs. Obamacare does precisely nothing to deal with this problem, largely because the tax relief on health care is that rare example of a policy both company directors and trade unions fiercely want to keep. It would be political suicide for a Democratic president to withdraw it. Score: 3/10

How about inefficiency? Bad news here also...several thoughtful writers, including doctors, have written that a major cause of inefficiency in the US system is the way doctors are paid. In the UK, doctors receive a set wage from the government, which rises with seniority or with high performance. In the US, doctors don’t get most of their income this way. Instead they charge fees for every consultation they do, every procedure they recommend, every drug they prescribe. Would you trust a mechanic who gets paid based on how much he finds wrong with your car? Thought not. Yet hundreds of millions of Americans trust their lives and welfare to doctors who have a massive, MASSIVE economic incentive to find things wrong with them. The result is predictable: there is evidence of enormous over-diagnosis, over-prescription and over-treatment in the US system. In many cases, the results are actually harmful for Americans’ health. And what does Obamacare do about it? Not a lot – there’s some arm waving in the direction of better incentive structure, but the government can’t correct this unless it take a much larger role in the overall system – i.e. “socialised medicine” again. And Obama won’t go there. Score: 2/10

The Politics, or, where it all gets complicated

So all in all, OK on the justice front but not great on the cost and efficiency front. And that’s largely because what’s being proposed is so timid. Why not be more radical? Where is America’s Nye Bevan? Here’s where the politics comes in. In Britain, when Labour wanted to create a National Health Service all it needed to do was introduce a bill in the House of Commons and get its MPs to vote for it. In America, its much more complicated, due to their wonderful idea “the separation of powers”. Obama does not sit in America’s legislature, and can’t tell it what to do. He can say what he would LIKE to happen, but then its up to the members of the two legislative branches House of Representative and the Senate to write the legislation and vote on it. The actual business of writing laws is handled by Congressional Committees, and a big complex bill like heath care has to pass several committees – three in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate. Then in each chamber the different versions of the bills have to be “reconciled” – that is, turned into a single bill. Then they have to be voted for in the committees again. THEN the whole membership of each chamber has to vote on the combined bill. THEN the bill the House of Representatives has passed has to be reconciled with the bill the Senate has passed in what is called a “Conference Committee” between the two legislatures. Then the hybrid bill passed by this conference has to pass a vote again in each of the two chambers.

Got that? Thought not. Here’s a summary version:

To pass health care, all Obama has to do is...
1. Get three House committees to write legislation and pass it
2. Meld these three bills into a single bill, and get the committees to pass them again
3. Get the whole House to pass the melded bill
4. Get two Senate committees to write legislation and pass it
5. Meld these two bills into a single bill, and get the committees to pass them again
6. Get the whole Senate to pass the melded bill.
7. Take the bill the House passed and the bill the Senate passed, and get the two chambers to meld these into a single bill
8. Get each chamber to pass the melded bill again
9. Sign the bill!

Simples! When the Founding Fathers said their system was designed to prevent government tyranny, they weren’t kidding. Obama’s party has large majorities in both branches of the legislature, and the President has already made impressive progress in negotiating this obstacle course: all of steps 1-4 are in the bag. The trouble is steps 5-7 are much tougher, because they involve the full Senate.

Why is the Senate a problem. Two words: disproportionality and filibuster. When America was founded, the constitution provided two senators for every state, regardless of its population. This was a concession to the small states who worried about being dominated by the bigger ones. What has resulted is precisely the opposite. California, with 37 million people, gets two Senators. So does Wyoming, with 500,000. As a result, the Senate is hugely disproportional, with the views of people from low population states over-represented. You can get a majority in the Senate using senators who represent only one sixth of Americans. Unfortunately for Obama, the small states tend to have right wing electorates who don’t like health care much.

The second problem is the filibuster, which is a complicated issue but essentially gives any single Senator the ability to indefinitely block, and thus doom, any piece of legislation by talking about it for as long as they like. Senators have often exercised this right in all-night talkathons that can last 20 hours or more. Senate opponents of the health care reform will certainly use this power if they can. The only way to prevent it is called a “cloture motion”, which forces Senators to vote rather than waffle. And cloture requires the votes of 60 out of the 100 Senators. So Obama doesn’t just need 50 votes, he needs 60. How many Democratic Senators are there? 60.

So the great big choke point is this: assuming the Republican opposition remains united (which currently looks reasonable), for health care to pass EVERY SINGLE Democratic senator has to vote for it. Every single Senator is potentially pivotal, and they all know it. Obama and the Democratic Senate leaders have to craft a bill that 60 hugely powerful individuals from a wide range of different states and with a wide range of different ideological outlooks and views of health care will all vote for. And not just once : they have to vote for the original Senate bill and then also for the version that is melded with the one from the more ideologically left wing House of Representatives.

This is a monumentally difficult task. And this, in turn, is why health care is so hard to reform and why the Obama reforms are so timid: what he’s offering is probably as much as he can get the Senate to agree to. And there’s the rub: if health care fails, or doesn’t deliver what Americans expect it to, disappointed Americans shouldn’t blame Obama, or the Republicans, or the health care lobby, or Fox News. They should blame Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the rest of the Founding Fathers who decided to privilege small states at the expense of large ones, and enabled the rural right wing electorates of 20 empty states to hold the other 5/6ths of their compatriots to ransom.

Berlin, September 2009 - slideshow

Created with flickr slideshow.
Spent a few days visiting an old friend now residing in Berlin. A phenomenal city, as you can see.