Great post, Gregg! By any chance is this fool beholden to the Insurance Industry in great numbers? More beholden than Lieberman, for instance? Does he know there’s a D behind his name?

personally, i’m not convinced that a public option can even work, especially in our current regulatory environment. the private insurance companies are just too strong.

i don’t see the need to keep the private insurance industry AT ALL, let alone subsidize it when we could be working towards single payer universal healthcare (note: healthcare — not health insurance). why do so many people love the insurance industry? they suck $400 billion dollars a year from us — and add nothing.

I don’t know why, but i called him and told him that he can lead, follow, get out of the way, or expect a primary when he’s up for re-election.

I also don’t see how a “public option” will necessarily work: single payer health care is the only rational choice. The problem is that no one has any guts in congress. or the white house, it seems.

uh oh. if this is correct, sounds like more bad news. from open left’s wire report:

Harkin open to health insurance cooperatives

This is really cynical on my part but I think that the reason they never started out with Single Payer (which is the only solution that controls costs, lets everyone in, and provides quality care), is because they knew they were going to back off from whatever plan seemed most positive. By starting out their game with ‘public options’, when they got around to dumping the least worst option, they could hand reform back into the hands of the health insurance companies. If they had started their manipulations out with single payer, they would have had to fall back to a public option/plan. By excluding single payer, starting with public plans, they delivered the status quo while seeming to wrestle with all of the issues.

OT Daschle just bailed on a public plan:

Local neurologist on my radio station talk show parroting every insurance industry talking point re health care. Thought I was gonna heave. They’ve really mustered the troops out to fight for more insurance profits.

Hey selise. Saw your comment earlier. Not a believer either but the Quakers seem to be the only game in town. Local Food Not Bombs history as well. Homeless now fed by Quakers and UU folks. Nice to get back with the original SPFP folks, though. They caught on quicker than I did.

Lobbyists throwing lots of incentives out onto the field.

What a mess. My supposedly Democratic senator’s wife is on the board of Wellpoint so I’m sure he’ll be able to put all biases aside and vote according to what’s best for We the People and not what’s best for his wife’s income.

Of course, that comment is dripping with sarcasm.

why does Jim Cooper love the private insurance industry so much?

Money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q

What sort of moron asks this question?
“Maybe I am asking the question the wrong way—maybe I should be asking, why does Jim Cooper love the private insurance industry so much?”

Top ten campaign contributors to Cooper.

Lawyers/Law Firms $644,853
Securities & Investment $499,073
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $298,103
Health Professionals $237,282
Real Estate $216,255
Retired $196,306
Insurance $179,759
Health Services/HMOs $132,981
Misc Finance $130,930
Misc Health $125,398

So 5 out of the top ten are “healthcare” related.
I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.

Last tuesday the Insurance Vultures were on full display in a congressional hearing.
http://www.motherjones.com/kev…..elves-foot

Crap!

Regional co-ops, with not enough market share to keep costs down or compete with the private insurance giants is the best way to “prove” that public health care doesn’t work.

We need to take to the streets!

bernie sanders, who’s single payer bill is s. 703, just put up a petition: A PETITION TO CONGRESS Supporting Single-Payer Health Care

and in the house there are 83 cosponsors for conyer’s hr 676, with 5 more additions in the last few days (thanks to all for the phone calls, etc):

Rep Serrano, Jose E. [NY-16] – 6/9/2009
Rep Hare, Phil [IL-17] – 6/11/2009
Rep Holt, Rush D. [NJ-12] – 6/12/2009
Rep Markey, Edward J. [MA-7] – 6/12/2009
Rep Dicks, Norman D. [WA-6] – 6/15/2009

info on the single payer bills now in congress:

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/4557

and for public option fans, here is info on stark’s hr 193 (which looks like possibly semi-decent even to this single payer extremist):

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5749

Why do the Senators and Congresscritters love the insurance industry….. EVERYONE has taken donations from someone in the industry.

Sen. Ron Wydon has backed off the “public option” stating that the senate doesn’t have the votes….

Received email from Congressman Conyers today asking for support for single payer…. where the fuck has he been during this fight?

I am sick and tired of all this lack of back bone….. WE DID WIN the election…. where is our rewards for working so hard?

So far all I see are crumbs and no beef……

oh good. i’m glad you saw it. was going to watch for you and give you a link back. i love working with quakers, catholic workers and the local UU church is my church home when i’m in a going to church mood. maybe can catch up with you re food not bombs etc on another non-issue type thread (morning thread, or similar).

If you look on Open Secrets, He did take, in the 2008 cycle $10,000 from the Blue Dog PAC. Perhaps that explains some of his motivations.

I’m personally dismayed at how the single payer option was so quickly dismissed out-of-hand . . . and now the political feasibility of even a public option is being questioned by Democrats like Daschle and Cooper and many more. This despite overwhelming poll numbers showing the American people want at the minimum, a public option.

I think everyone knows there is not an iceberg’s chance in hell of a single payer plan garnering enough votes for passage. In my opinion, the focus should be on the public option.

conyers has been pushing for committee hearings on single payer and the very first one was just held last week (with conyers testifying):

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5695

Do you have a link–I’d love to see it.

Hey, there, Katymine! How are you. Hope you’re feeling better.

I read a comment of yours the other day wherein you said you were applying for SS disability (which is what I’m on.) You also mentioned that you will be waiting for the two year waiting period to get on Medicare, and how expensive COBRA is. I had a similar problem when I applied for Disability and no insurance except AHCCCS. However, my renewal of AHCCCS came up within a month of my first checks from disability, and the monthly checks put me over income for AHCCCS. However, they said that if I needed to go to the emergency room, and if the bill exceeded a certain dollar amount (they gave me a mathmatical formula I can’t remember!) they could still help me. Have you any idea whether this is an option you may be able to use?

There is one plan single payer universal healthcare that if carried out with even a modicum of common sense will address our healthcare crisis. All the others don’t and differ only in how much they want to sell out to insurance companies, the medical industry, and Big Pharma.

By excluding single payer, starting with public plans, they delivered the status quo while seeming to wrestle with all of the issues.

yeah. which, imo, makes it all the more important to fight to get single payer back on the table. if the public rejects it, that’s one thing (means we have more work to do), but if the public would support it and yet deecee insiders reject it, that’s something else entirely.

Or, if I read bilejones comment at #10, I will find that he is beholden to 5 diffent health care industry entities for over 6 digit figure each, which a rough mental exercise reveals a total of more in the area of $1M. I call them big numbers! Way larger number than the paltry $10K from the Blue Dog Pac.

Nevermind–I found it under totals by industry at open secrets.

Polls indicate that 76% want a public option. I wonder how these clowns reconcile their ravings about democracy and then oppose a public option.

it’s worse than that. from 2006:

david sirota: News Flash – America Wants a Single-Payer Health Care System

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly takes the DLC to task for – shocker – not supporting the concept of a single-payer, government-sponsored health care system in America. Drum argues that Democrats have lacked the courage to stand up for such a proposal. He’s probably right – they fear the wrath of the health insurance companies. But make no mistake about it – the public would be with Democrats if they had the guts to push single-payer. As an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed in 2003, the majority of Americans support a single-payer, government-sponsored health care system, even when they hear the right-wing’s alarmist arguments.

my bolds

Cooper is a whore. His name should be displayed prominently in a website to show all the whores in Congress and in this administration.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pol…..038;type=I

His name should be displayed prominently in a website to show all the whores in Congress and in this administration.

Is is, see http://www.congress.gov

I’d like to step away from my usually positive persona to say what a f*ckin’ douchebag Tom Daschle is !

Not that I’m surprised, more like he just does not understand the error of his ways …

To bad that our health care system has not yet reached the point where they can perform spinal transplants.

Daschle and his trophy wife have made a fortune as lobbyists for the Airline Industry. Now Dash is working hard to protect the Insurance Industry. Say what you want about Daschle, but he is no fool when it comes to lining his own pockets.

He would be doing us all a tremendous favor if he would just go away and STFU. Daschle’s posturing – representing the common citizen as a supposed Blue Collar Democratic type – in a coalition with that Republican asshole Bob Dole – serve to clandestinely undermine any plan that might benefit the public.

I think the politics (polling) on this will bring them back on track. Besides, what other ideas do they have which is as good as some kind of public option? If you don’t have a better alternative, then what right do you have to stall?

I say the public option should NOT be a government-run plan, but subsidies to enable more people to get insured via the Exchange.