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Joel Rosenthal Embraces Pressler Policy Talk, Writes Pulp Fiction

Kevin Woster's debunking of the Larry Pressler-closet story provokes Joel Rosenthal to recount a locker-room meeting with the veteran Senator and newly minted Independent candidate.

Rosenthal says he was "barely clothed in a towel after showering" when Pressler "literally bumped into me." (Good grief, what kind of dime novel is Joel writing?) If you can get past that introduction, Rosenthal describes Pressler's health care reform proposal:

He then in about 60 seconds told me that health care affordability was a big problem and that as he campaigned people were telling him that. He said that Obamacare was not going to be repealed and needed fixing (a very pragmatic view in my opinion). He then offered what seemed to be the developing Pressler solution. Why couldn’t we (he suggested), have health care delivered through cooperatives, like the Farmer’s Coops? Profits would not be retained by for profit health providers or non-profit health providers but instead by the cooperative’s members?

Hey, Pressler's health coops sound familiar. Cue Indy gubernatorial candidate Mike Myers on health care:

Myers also supports establishing a statewide health insurance cooperative, which he says will lower medical care prices. The term CO-OP here is actually an acronym for Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan, a program created by the Affordable Care Act and supported with federal loans. 400,000 Americans have enrolled in health CO-OPs so far, and states with CO-OPs appear to have lower health insurance premiums. South Dakota has not created a health CO-OP.

Are Pressler and Myers in bed together on policy? If so, Rosenthal doesn't mind. He doesn't think Pressler stands a chance (he says Pressler is "past prime time," and Rosenthal refuses to forgive Pressler's endorsements of Barack Obama). But Rosenthal says Pressler beats the five Republican candidates on policy talk:

The 2014 campaign in the GOP primary so far has been five candidates not talking about making anything better. No new ideas, no policy proposals, no nothing. They are to varying degrees angry birds. Just Shouting! Angry, more angry, and pissed off! ? “I love guns more than you.” “I hate Obamacare more than you.” “I am more conservative (says me) than you.”

Senator Pressler is out of the closet (if he was ever in one) talking about effecting change. It is time for the other candidates to come out of their closets and tell us how they are going to make America better [Joel Rosenthal, "The Closet," South Dakota Straight Talk, 2014.05.11].

I know we won't get former GOP chairman Rosenthal to vote for someone other than his party's nominee. But I'm pleased to see he's open to acknowledging that the apostate Pressler is promising a more intelligent policy conversation than the members of Rosenthal's own party.

Now, back to Rosenthal's sultry novel:

...And then, through the steam of the shower, in walked Larry Rhoden, wearing his chaps and a smile. "Health cooperatives?" he bellowed, throwing down his saddle. "I don't know if it's healthy, but let's do some cooperatin'...." [Joel Rosenthal, Pumping the Primary, Gayville, SD: Blue Ranch Publishing, 2014].

11 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2014.05.14

    Shaking off the dust, Larry Rhoden says, "Oooeee. I'm so thirsty I could lick the sweat off a bull's b****." From the corner of the shower, Steve Hickey pipes in, "Moo moo buckeroo."

  2. grainofsalt 2014.05.14

    Cory, I tried to leave a comment about reducing the cost of drugs in America so we paid the same as the rest of the world and was told my message was "spammy"???

  3. grainofsalt 2014.05.14

    LOL, this is the first time one of my messages was rejected for being "spammy" The subject is the high cost of health care. One way of reducing cost is to reduce the cost of drugs to American consumers to match the rest of the world and that message is thrown out as "spam". Again LOL

  4. Rorschach 2014.05.14

    Your message was spam. Mine was beef.

  5. caheidelberger Post author | 2014.05.14

    Hey, Grain, I apologize. I installed a new spam filter a couple weeks ago. It's been going on a tear, reducing my daily spam content to almost nothing and possibly helping speed up my database. But I've heard from you, Steve Hickey, and a couple other commenters about some interference like that. Did the comment have any links? If things like that continue, send me the original text, and I'll see if I can identify the problem and maybe re-engineer the filter to let you through. (Strangely, the system doesn't seem to give me an "Always allow this author/IP" option.)

  6. caheidelberger Post author | 2014.05.14

    R, your message wasn't just beef. It was hot beef.

  7. Nick Nemec 2014.05.14

    Rosenthal seems intent on dropping gay bashing hints when he talks about Larry Pressler. Whispered innuendo like this has dogged Pressler for years, it's not funny, it's not true, and it's not right. This is standard fare on the South Dakota War College Blog but I expected better from Mr. Rosenthal.

  8. Donald Pay 2014.05.14

    I'm a member of a Group Health Cooperative in Madison, WI, one of the first health coops in the nation. Started in the early 1970s, this was one of the first HMOs in the country.

  9. caheidelberger Post author | 2014.05.14

    Nick, I may have... enhanced the very gentle and quite possibly unintentional homoerotic undertones of Joel's post.

    Donald, does your coop work well? Does it keep costs down? Would it work in South Dakota?

  10. Donald Pay 2014.05.14

    In the 13 years I've been here, GHC has consistently had the lowest premiums for comparable coverage. We are a non-profit cooperative governed by a board elected by the members of the coop, ie., those covered under a group or individual policy offered by the coop. The board also has directors from the the medical staff, but the board is controlled by the members.

    GHC specializes in primary care with an emphasis on preventative care. It is an HMO, so you can't go outside the system for primary care, but it has cultivated relationships with the large hospitals, including the huge UW Hospital, and clinics for specialty care. It has been the leader in primary preventative health innovation (electronic records, nutrition, and exercise).

    Whether this would work in SD, I don't know. SD does have a history of rural cooperatives as well as food coops, so the concept isn't foreign to the state.

  11. Douglas Wiken 2014.05.14

    One of the 90 year olds in the Winner community tells of his father trying to set up a health cooperative and local ownership of the hospital on a cooperative basis. He was labeled as a communist. Now Sanford has its greedy fingers deep into the hospital.

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