Is Russia threatening Poland or do NATO deployments threaten Russia?

The deployment by the United States of an armored brigade in Poland on Russia's border is quite reasonably seen by Russia as a threat and a provocation. One need only look at historical maps of the invasions of Russia from Napoleon to Hitler to understand why.

Moreover, an armored brigade is essentially an offensive formation. Spearheaded by tanks, its purpose is to bring "mass" to a battlefield, as military geeks call concentrated firepower. It is designed for attacking, even if it is just a counter-attack that takes place in the framework of a retreat.
An armored brigade's punch comes from tanks, backed up by a large number of armored fighting vehicles and personnel carriers.

There is a very large infrastructure you need for this kind of force, in logistics (supplies), communications and other armored vehicles that are not primarily for fighting, but, for example, for evacuating the wounded, hauling a 70 ton Abrams tank to where it can be repaired, fording rivers, clearing obstacles and so on.

This sort of infrastructure can be easily expanded to service 2-3 brigades, an armored division), but, in the case of Poland, it is said explicitly that facilities will be developed to host much larger forces in a "crisis." Russia has to assume what is being developed is the staging area at least for an armored corps, as the United States and Germany have more than enough resources in the neighborhood to quickly put one together.

In (very schematic) military language, a "corps" nominally consists of three divisions, each composed of three brigades. You're talking about 30,000-50,000 troops with hundreds of tanks and attack helicopters, thousands of armored vehicles of, a huge supply chain, in short, a very credible component of an invasion force.

Moreover, U.S. brigades are very heavy compared to those of other countries. They are almost as large and fully as capable as what military doctrine in other countries designate as a "division." These designations are not arbitrary but describe a set of capabilities, especially the ability of a unit to fight as a coherent unit bringing together a variety of resources, like armor, artillery, tactical air support, logistics, command and control, etc. A U.S. brigade (especially if re-enforced with a few other specialized units as part of what the Pentagon now calls a task force or combat team) will look to the Russian side like a division, therefore a U.S. division will likely be seen as an armored corps, and an armored corps like a full army.

Russia cannot ignore that sort of NATO capability on the other side of their frontier, because if fast-moving enemy forces break out into your rear, you're fucked. That happened to the Soviet Union in 1941, and it came  within a hair's breadth of losing the war, but was saved by the onset of winter (just as Russia had been when invaded by Napoleon).

What is the justification for this Western provocation? That everyone is in a panic after Russia's takeover of the Crimean peninsula three years ago, and therefore need to be reassured.

What people are not being told is that historically, Crimea had never been part of the Ukraine. The big majority of the population is Russian. The biggest city in the Peninsula, Sevastopol, was and is the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet and to all intents and purposes, was in the Soviet Union and remained after Ukraine independence under the control of Russian armed forces, while under Ukrainian civilian administration and nominal sovereignty.

Crimea became associated with the Ukraine when Nikita Khruschev transfered it from Russian to Ukrainian administrative jurisdiction in the mid-1950s. The idea was to promote the Russification of the Ukraine and undermine Ukrainian nationalism. It made little difference otherwise, as Crimea, along with the Ukraine as a whole, had been and continued to be part of the Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s,the status of Crimea remained up in the air. At one point the local government there declared independence but could not make it stick. Sevastopol remained under Russian economic and military control because of the Black Sea Fleet. Eventually it was settled by an agreement that left Russia in direct, exclusive control of most of the harbor and parts of the city; authorized the presence of many thousands of Russian troops on the peninsula, and recognized Crimea as a an autonomous Republic within the Ukraine, a status no other part of that country enjoyed.

In 2014 the very corrupt president of the Ukraine was driven from power, with right-wing nationalists taking advantage of popular unrest.to seize control through a parliamentary coup. The very first law that the new authorities adopted in effect banned Russian as a recognized, official language, which was seen as a declaration of intent to drive out Russian interests in the country.

It was very satisfying, especially to ultrarightists, but handed Crimea on a platter to Russia. The local governments of Crimea and Sevastopol started organizing a referendum. Putin made clear that should the peninsula decide to "return" to Russia, of course their status and rights as Russian citizens would be automatically recognized and instantly in effect. (Which would triple pensions and raise the wages of government employees, among other things). And at the same time, armed detachments without insignias quickly took over government offices, posted guards at banks and post offices, and basically taken control without a shot being fired, or even a shouting match.

These were described in the U.S. as units of Russian soldiers and local militias, which was tremendously confusing, because, when did the Russians invade? And where did these militias come from? It had only been a few days since the coup in Kiev.

The truth is that the Russian troops had been there all along, some 15,000-20,000, all perfectly legal, open and above-board in keeping with the agreements between Moscow and Kiev. The Crimean militias were the local cops and military folks.

Obviously Putin had been extremely helpful and encouraging in Crimea's "return" to Russia, and would have brooked no opposition But the Russian population of the Ukraine was happy to accept it. And for Moscow, it was essentially a defensive move in reaction to the central Ukrainian government in Kiev having fallen into ultra-rightist anti-Russian hands.

For the Russians, it should be obvious to anyone that it acted to defend strategic geographic interests in a distinct territory that was already its military protectorate. And NATO claims about countering possible Russian "aggression" elsewhere are bunk.

But the NATO build-up does give rise to Russian strategic military considerations. Russia is going to build up its own infrastructure and forces on the other side: from a conventional military point of view, it has no choice. This will "confirm" Russia's expansionist intentions, when in reality they will be defensive.

How can anyone tell that it is NATO and the Americans that are driving this? Because the American deployment is sold as a move to "reassure" and calm the nerves of Russia's neighbors, in other words, Russia has done absolutely nothing in that area that can be presented as aggressive or threatening.

The Russian White House Coup ... and what Karl Marx has to do with it

So an anonymous dude formerly with the British MI-6 hears that Trump is a Siberian candidate, and --since the operative is being paid by an opposition research firm to trash Trump-- promptly discovers that, Oh My God, it's true!!!

Because you see, our spook has contacts in the Kremlin -- about a half dozen intimate with Putin's inner circle -- who go ahead and spill their guts to an intelligence mercenary, and they don't even seem to mind being described in some detail in memos detailing their treasonous disclosures.

CNN reported breathlessly Tuesday night that the Brit was so spooked he spilled his guts to an FBI agent in Italy last August, handing him a bunch of memos with a fair number of details about the clandestine Trump-Putin long-distance bromance.

This stuff has been floating around the D,C. journalistic, political and diplomatic cocktail circuit since the fall --and that's mostly what oppo research is good for, gossip fodder-- but nobody would touch it for publication. You get crap like this every four years. Sometimes it's about Candidate X's Black baby, other times about his being a communist agent.

Not that people didn't try to get at least some verification to get it published. This story has Pulitzer written all over it. And that's the least of it. You also get to be put in the Pantheon of the Gods of Journalism alongside Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame.

If it didn't come out then in the fall, when everyone had already got wind of it, why did it come out now? Because a 2-page summary of the allegations against Trump were appended to a written intelligence report prepared for a briefing to Obama and Trump by the heads of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and the top guy, the Director of National Intelligence.

See, U.S. libel law says if you simply report that there are these accusations without anything more, it is the same as if you had made the accusations to begin with. But if instead you are reporting about some official government action, like the inclusion of the summary in the briefing materials, then it is fairly safe.

CNN says this fact was leaked to them by multiple government sources.  So get the picture: the top four spies talk to the President-elect on Friday, January 6, and by Tuesday afternoon CNN has succumbed to the entreaties of the intelligence agencies and is reporting that the spooks told Trump they know he is a Russian agent -- well, allegedly.

Of course, it is all worded very politely. The CNN on-screen summary said, "Intelligence chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him."

And no --absolutely not!!!-- the public is not allowed to have any specific details on account of neither CNN nor anyone else being able to verify any of them.

So why is it worth telling the president and president elect now?  Because the U.S. intelligence services have just determined that the author of the memos, a Brit they've known since the 1990s when he was in her majesty's employ, is actually a pretty good guy, a fact that apparently had escaped them last summer and fall.

Except that the spooks did not actually do any "telling." NBC is reporting that, a "senior intelligence official" explained "that the briefing was oral and no actual documents were left with the Trump team in New York." And multiple outlets have confirmed this matter wasn't mentioned in the oral briefing.

Now remember, the reason the 2-page summary of the anti-Trump memos was prepared was to make sure that the President-elect knew about these rumors. But at the oral briefing, the country's top spooks "forgot" to mention it and unfortunately it also appears that they didn't leave behind a copy of the report where Trump or his aides could have read this if they bothered to read the appendix..

Thus we see why CNN constantly used deceptive weasel-wording in its report: "Intelligence chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian effort to compromise him."

Think about it: "presented Trump." Not told Trump or gave to Trump, or even "presented to Trump," which implies that the presenters actively engaged with Trump. The difference is this: suppose the President is at some dinner and it is time for the desert cart to go around. The president is very animatedly engaged in a conversation with the person next to him while the waiter brings the desert cart to the president. Of course the waiter does not interrupt, but after a few seconds, moves on.

Now you're thinking, wow, that is way too much freight to load onto one on-screen legend. But look at what the main reporter on the story said when CNN first aired the story.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Want to be very precise here. Multiple U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN that classified documents on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, presented last week to President Obama and to President-elect Trump, included allegations that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump. 

Notice again use of the word "presented."  The second I heard that while seeing it on screen I smelled a rat. Not because I'm a genius but because I spent more than two decades at CNN as a writer and producer and know how this stuff works. For that specific word to occur both in the on-screen banner AND the lead if the story which the reporter started with, "want to be very precise here" could only be the result of mandates from legal or "upstairs."


What CNN did not manage to stumble upon despite its concern for precision was that it was baby simple to destroy a central claim in the reports --that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen had played a key role, going to Prague last August and September as a go-between.

But it didn't happen. His passport confirms he did not leave the country. And there is no way the government agents could not have discovered this. Because under our post-9/11 police state laws, the government knows every time anyone boards a plane in the United States. The government also knows every time a U.S. citizen re-enters the United States.

So what CNN claims it was told by its sources --that the reports about Trump had not been verified-- was disingenuous. It's not that they hadn't been checked out yet, it's that they had been checked out and shown to be partly fabrication and otherwise impossible to verify.

It was German philosopher Hegel who is reputed to have said that history repeats itself twice. The maxim is remembered mostly for Marx's acerbic footnote: "He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

If the Cold War with its McCarthyism was a tragedy that even threatened the very future of humanity, this farce confirms the insight of the famous German founder of the movement that bears his name.

At first blush, this appears to be a farce, and a rather poor one at that.

Bernie and Cuba

I was on Facebook for the first time in a week or more and a post by a friend caught my eye. It had a number of Sanders's main talking points about billionaires, inequality and so on, and one comment asked:

"Will he do anything about it? I think he wants to, but when all is said and done, he can't. The President is not an elected king or dictator, and the reason we call the big businessmen and financiers the 'ruling class' is because, well, they RULE. The fundamental problem with Sanders isn't Sanders the person, but the job to which he's applying, and the power structure in which that job is a part. The problem isn't the occupant of the White House, but the whole bloody economic system."

This is, of course, the classical anarchist position. If voting could change anything, these friends say, they would never allow it. Thus, anyone who runs for office (especially for president) or even votes is either a traitor to the working people or a useful idiot playing into the hands of the ruling class. I pretty much 200% agree with the first statement, but not with the second, as it has to do with how to convince people who still have the idea that voting really matters that in truth it doesn't.

Because if they want you to vote for Mussolini, they just run Hitler against him,. And if they want you to vote for the Republican candidate, the Frankenstein monster, then the Democrats pick as their standard bearer the creature from the "Alien" movies.

Don't believe me? Just go spend a few days studying closely Hillary Clinton's political history and current positions.

But the Russian Revolutionary who used the pen-name Lenin, and that's how history remembers him, had a different approach to the "all or nothing" position in relation to elections (and many other issues). He suggested instead identifying with what people are trying to do when they support a Bernie Sanders, in other words, with their intentions, which we all agree on, and over time having a dialogue that in essence amounts to, I'll go along with the way you're trying to do things although I'm not sure that it will work (or even, I'm sure it won't work, but I want you to see that the reason it didn't work wasn't that I and my friends worked against it, so we stepped aside).

But if your approach doesn't work, here are some alternatives to consider.

It is disappointing to see people criticizing Bernie Sanders by making the same point he is making --that one person, even the president, can't change things-- but doing so in such a way as to try to undermine his effort to bring working people together precisely to fight against ruling class domination.

I say it is disappointing because a revolution is not a moment but a movement. And such a movement does not emerge suddenly but is the result of complicated processes.

People who are effective in bringing about social and political change are those who immerse themselves in such movements and help them mature both by understanding where the movement is at today and --at least roughly-- where it will need to be in the future, and can thus propose some of the next steps in getting from here to there.

Even if you predict this specific effort around Bernie  Sanders  is bound to fall short, all experience shows that the least useful approach is to be sideline critics.

Look at the example of revolutionary change in our lifetimes (at least my lifetime) closest to the United States: Cuba.

Before heading the fight that overthrew the Batista dictatorship, there had been a very substantial pre-history to the current that by the late 1950s was led by Fidel Castro and his friends.

It is well know that Fidel had led the disastrous July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada barracks.

But before that he had helped organize the peaceful Jan. 27, 1953, March of the Torches commemorating the centennial of the birth of José Martí, Cuba's greatest national hero. Which was followed by savage police repression against the movement that was then known as "Youth of the Centennial" and whose followers carried out the Moncada attack.

Before that, Fidel Castro brought a lawsuit demanding Batista's March 10, 1952, coup be declared illegal and Batista removed as president. I'm sure tons of radicals were thinking, "What an idiot! He thinks some judge is going to say a military coup is illegal!"

And before that, Fidel Castro was a candidate for Congress for the anti-corruption Orthodox Party in the 1952 elections that Batista's coup prevented. "What a fool! Changing from the inside Cuba's ultra-corrupt political institutions? Sure."

And even if you say, well, Bernie Sanders is no Fidel Castro, it just so happens that Fidel Castro started out as a follower of radical clean-government reformer Eduardo Chibás, whose dramatic on-air suicide during a radio broadcast in 1951 galvanized a new generation of Cuban youth into action.

"Right. A national radio broadcast (before TV came to the country) with the top opposition leader saying, 'People of Cuba, wake up! This is my last warning!'  Followed by a gunshot.

"That works?"

And Chibás's Ortodoxos, in turn, had been inspired by and descended from the 1933 Revolution against the Machado dictatorship. From that uprising came the "Government of 100 Days" and its leading figure, Antonio Guiteras Holmes, born in Philadelphia in 1906 who grew up with stories of his uncle, a Cuban patriot who fell in the wars for independence, and his great uncle, an Irish patriot of the Young Ireland generation.

With this 26-year-old at its center, the 1933 100 days' government was a  revolutionary-nationalist government that was the first one to enact a minimum wage, the 8-hour day and and many other progressive measures in Cuba. Which is why it only lasted 100 days.

Guiteras's organization, Joven Cuba, fell apart after his assassination in 1935, but was a central inspiration in the founding of the anti-imperialist and anti-corruption Orthodox party 12 years later.

And, of course, the "generation of 1933" in Cuba was directly descended from and inspired by José Martí's Cuban Revolutionary Party and the fighters in the 1895-1898 war for independence that was cut short by the American intervention that turned Cuba into an American  colony in all but name until 1959.

The José Martí generation overlapped with that of the Ten Years' War, which began in 1868 for both independence and the abolition of slavery.

And Cuba's 1868 rebellion was in turn inspired by the crushing of the slave owner's rebellion in the United States (so-called "Civil War") and by anti-Monarchist movements in Spain.

But it is precisely because Cuba's struggle for nationhood arose not just as a political revolution (independence) but a socio-economic one (against slavery) that when the Cuban Revolution finally triumphed in 1959 it wasn't just about changing office-holders or political structures, but a profound social transformation.

*  *  *

A lot of history for a very short conclusion: social change is a process and it takes time; but how sweepingly social it is (as opposed to just narrowly electoral or political) depends a great deal on how it arises and develops along the way.

No one can know today how significant the social motion finding expression around Bernie Sanders will be in the long run. But with his attracting many thousands of people to his campaign rallies, without doubt it is one of the two or three most significant expressions of the interests of working and oppressed peoples in the United States today, alongside Not One More Deportation and Black Lives Matter.

Whether he is the right person to lead or at least symbolize the effort beyond these primaries, what role should the "Black lives matter" or "not one more deportation" movements play, whether the focus should be electoral or in the streets, pushing in an immediate way national changes, local changes or both, are among countless pending questions.

But the least productive way to address them is from the sidelines.

Why I will never, ever, ever vote for Hillary Clinton

So Hillary Clinton has put out a "plan" for infrastructure reform with absolutely zero (0) content. Just vague promises like that when she's president, everyone's going to have "world class" broadband Internet Service.

There is nothing to address the duopoly on Internet services that exists in major markets, to put internet providers under the same rules as the telephone and electric utilities last century: you either build out for EVERYONE or you lose your license to operate in that territory and have to sell all your infrastructure for pennies on the dollar or just write it off.

She doesn't even mention the most outrageous corporate abuses, like entering into exclusive contracts with the OWNERS of apartment buildings that make it impossible for apartment dwellers to use a competitor, or state laws that prohibit municipal internet.

It's all bullshit happytalk, with a magic asterisk from which will materialize $250 billion to finance the plan from closing corporate loopholes. Yeah, sure.

When someone like bernie Sanders, who voted against the Clinton deregulation of the banks and refuses to take Corporate money says he's going to close loopholes, I don't just laugh at the promise.

But when a Wall Street stooge like Hillary awash in corporate PAC money says she's going to bite the hand that feeds her, trusting her is like Charlie Brown trusting Lucy not to pull the football away at the last minute.

This is how the Republicans can win the White House in 2016.

The Democrats nominate Clinton because she is more "electable." And Blacks, Latinos, and young people stay away in droves, because nobody trusts or believes or wants Hillary.

There hasn't been a presidential election decided  by "who people vote for" since Nixon's squeaker in 1968. Since then it's been which people vote, not who people vote for, and nominating a New Democrat retread like Hillary will mean a low turnout election which the Republicans might well sweep (just as they swept the midterms for the same reason).

The Democrat apparatus is counting on the "lesser evil" vote. People have had it with the lesser evil scam, you know, please elect nice Mr. Hitler here because the alternative is Count Dracula.

If that's what the Democrat establishment is counting on to win, get used to saying President Trump.

The new Sanders campaign ad

The 1-minute video aimed at the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries is a stunning collage that  begins with images from small-town rural America, followed by the "Feel the Bern" humongous Sanders campaign rallies interspersed with mosaics of hundreds of pictures sent by supporters who uploaded them when they made campaign contributions.

There is no "voice of God" narration but only a 1968 Simon and Garfunkel song in the background. Over the mosaic of contributor faces and massive campaign meetings, part of the lyric is perfectly synchronized with the singing.

THEY'VE   ALL   COME   TO   LOOK   FOR   AMERICA

And then "All come to look for America" is repeated, in the song as well as the ad. With these images, the message is that masses of people are rising up to insist the country live up to the promise of its ideals.

In a way, that is exactly the opposite of the meaning Simon and Garfunkel's "America" had for me when the song was released in 1968. That was the year of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King; of urban rebellions in Black ghettos and the police riot against antiwar demonstrators at the Chicago Democratic Party  Convention; of the savage repression that routed the French and Mexican student movements; and of Soviet Tanks crushing the Prague Spring promise of socialism with a human face.

I have often thought that the words of  Wadsworth about the French Revolution express how I feel about having come of age in the 1960's.

          Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
          But to be young was very heaven!

But I try not to think about that it was also a hell of disappointments, defeats, desertions and most disheartening of all, betrayals.

In its 1968 context, the song captured confusion, alienation and despair. We finally realized that the righteous, peaceful, and just country of our civics textbooks, Sunday sermons and July 4th speeches was more than imperfect, it was a chimera. That America did not exist at all. That was the America of the song.

On its face, it is a song about a couple --perhaps one that's just come together-- traveling a long way by bus. But by the last verse, it has become despair.

That is not captured or reflected in the Sanders campaign video. It skips from the first verse to the last four lines, which are presented as heralding a movement to find or create the real America of legend. Here's hoping we can make it so.

"I'm with her" or how the Democrats can elect Donald Trump

Take a life-long, self-entitled, arrogant, self-serving and money-grubbing politician, who chases votes by changing positions, and with as much grace and charisma as a vulture feeding on carrion --- and make being "with her" the main focus of the campaign.

And it's not about decades of Republican attacks. Look at the chart below showing her favorability rating over 18 months.

The chart is from Real Clear Politics, and its shows an average of recent polls that asked a question like "what is your impression of Hillary Clinton?" Usually you're given five options: very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, very unfavorable, and neither favorable nor unfavorable.

Before announcing her campaign she wasn't hugely popular, but not underwater. That's Jan 1, 2015. By March, her numbers start to decline as coverage of her coming campaign in creases, finally going negative at the beginning of June, when her campaign is fully launched, and trending steadily downward over the months, to reach a 20-point gap in May.

After Trump becomes the presumptive Republican nominee that her number improve, but only a tiny bit: she remains hugely unpopular.

Obamacare's death spiral in Georgia

The numbers are eye-popping:

67% -- Humana
51% -- Harken Health 
21% -- Blue Cross and Blue Shield
21% -- Alliant
18% -- Kaiser Permanente
14% -- Ambetter

Those were the rate increases approved by the state of Georgia for the 2017 Obamacare insurance plans from the remaining major insurers now that Aetna has pulled out to try to blackmail the government into approving its merger with Humana.
Of special note, Humana and Blue Cross. 
Humana's increase is, in part, the counterpart of Aetna's withdrawal but also, in my area, Humana offers the best insurance plans, with the most comprehensive coverage and highest-quality, least-restrictive networks of providers. And that is clearly proving to not be a viable business model.
Blue Cross is the largest and "default" provider as it has offers insurance across the entire state.
Why the huge increases? Undoubtedly, there is no small amount of price-gouging and profiteering going on, but mostly, the people getting insurance are sicker than anticipated.
Healthier people without insurance are rolling the dice, not buying insurance at all or dropping it once they've had their yearly exam and discovered there's nothing wrong with them. Similarly, couples planning to have children plan their insurance purchases accordingly.
You could, of course, find yourself without insurance and with a catastrophic illness mid-year, but even then there are ways to game the system, for example by moving to another county or another state (at least insofar as your mailing address goes), which will trigger a special enrollment period.
Why would people do this? Well, look at my case. I was 64 at the beginning of the year, and could have bought the absolutely worse individual Obamacare plan for about $525/month, or $6,300 a year, with a $6,700 deductible.
In other words, over a year's time I'd have to spend $13,000 BEFORE the very rock-bottom p-o-s Obamacare plan paid one penny.
If you're sick, of course, you don't buy the $6,300/year plan but the most comprehensive, most expensive plan on offer, in my area, probably one from Humana.
But that means terribly sick people tend to migrate towards Humana, raising its costs (and therefore its request for a huge jump in premiums).
Ambetter (aka Peach State) is asking for the lower increase because they're the ones that offer junk insurance, but even so, they're raising rates an order of magnitude above the overall rate of inflation.
The Republican critique of Obamacare is essentially correct: healthy people will figure out how to avoid the huge insurance premiums or simply choose to pay the (much lower) tax penalty (2% of income) for not having insurance. 
Sick people will sign up for insurance, driving rates ever higher. The higher the rates, the fewer people that are not as sick sign up the next year. That is the "death spiral" and even after only a couple of years, it is clearly evident.
This effect is especially noticeable in a Republican-dominated state like Georgia where there was no broadening of the layer of people covered by insurance through Medicaid.
A "public option" is no solution. It may well prove to be a political trap. To the degree it would be cheaper than private insurance, this choice would drive other insurers out of the market. But even then, the same logic that undermines private insurance would apply to the public option insurance offering. Especially as you get older, and the premiums get much more expensive, you try to figure out how to game the system so as not to buy insurance until you *really* need it. But when you do, you tend to get the "luxury" plan with the best and broadest network of providers and most comprehensive coverage.
The biggest problem in the United States is not the cost of medical insurance but the cost of medical care. We are spending one-sixth or more of GDP on medical care, about half again as much as the next closest country and almost twice as much as the average of the so-called "Western" democracies (Western Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand). One obvious place to cut costs is in administration. For example, according to a good friend who is in a supervisory position in nursing in a hospital, they spend several dollars' worth of effort tracking who should be billed for each and every aspirin, each of which is worth less than one cent. The billing and payments system in health care includes not just the 20% overhead & profits included in insurance premiums, but the costs to doctors, hospitals, labs and so on of complying with the billing practices of each payer. The small (half dozen) group of doctors that my primary care physician belongs to has six people in administrative roles, three of them almost exclusively dedicated to billing and insurance. In addition to which, the nurses and doctors themselves spend a great deal of their time complying with insurance requirements.
A second place to cut costs is pharmaceuticals. First, all advertising and promotion of prescription drugs to the public at large should be banned, just like it is in all other industrialized countries (except New Zealand). 
Second, either there is marketplace price regulation through the existence of at least four or five providers of the same drug, OR there is government price regulation. And international pricing should be used as a yardstick. If the rule becomes, you cannot go over an additional 10% or 20% more than in Canada or Britain or the Western European average price, the costs of our prescription drugs would plummet.