Tweet
For now, White House officials said, Mr. Obama remains committed to the goal of insuring all Americans and still prefers to foster competition for insurance companies by creating a new government insurance program, or public option.
That’s right. Every DC political reporter with a pulse — and a few that are questionable — just happened to wake up on the same day and hallucinate that the White House was leaking like a sieve that the public option was dead.
Up, down. Up, down. Kathleen Sebelius says it’s not important! No she didn’t! Eventually, everyone is exhausted and you try to pass it all off as "old news."
Good luck with that one.
Part the Second: The Plea for Republican Love:
To avoid some of the most heated criticism voiced in recent weeks, White House officials said they would have no objection if Congress scrapped proposals to have Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care.
Face it Mr. President, they’re just not that into you.
Part the Third: Launch the backup trial balloon:
If Mr. Obama does not gain traction by making these concessions, his allies on Capitol Hill said, they may have to consider bigger changes. For example, they said, rather than requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, Congress might start by requiring coverage of children, or families with children.
Translation: if the lipstick just won’t stay on this pig and everyone freaks out over a mandate to pay Blue Cross for crap insurance, we have to pass SOMETHING, and what sells better than cute kids?
I am really looking forward to this Senate Finance Committee bill, aren’t you? It is just guaranteed to be a dilly.
(With appropriate credit to Mr. Charles P. Pierce, who in addition to having written quite possibly the most trenchant sociological examinations of our time, has agreed to judge a Late Nite "Write Like Ross Douthat" contest at FDL. Though he is not certain that "hasn’t been laid for a decade" constitutes an actual writing style.)
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Trial balloons. I got their fuckin’ trial balloon.
Single payer, assholes.
The American public is not here to make the management of BCBS rich.
Even if everything is stripped out and the bill reads “The Healthcare system of the United States shall not change” do you think it will get a single Republican vote?
On edit: obviously a rhetorical question.
Your statement about being forced to buy Blue Cross’ crap insurance sums it up for me.
Come on, SD. It’s their last most cynical grab–taking fistfuls of dollars out of the hands of every well, every sick, and every dying person in the USA. What’s not to celebrate?
Obama’s two America’s:
Once upon a time there were two little America’s, the In Crowd and the Out Crowd. The In Crowd got everything it wanted. The Out Crowd got lots of lovely slogans for all occasions.
In the video, can you tell which little girl is from Out America and which little girl is from In America? (Hint: just substitute the word “pony” with “health care” or “college tuition” or “decent job” — it actually works for anything!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qb0vquRcys
This is not leadership. Period. The Dems are flailing and we are cringing out here. Note to Axelrod and the political team on 2010: weakness is not attractive, it’s pathetic.
This is my favorite quote in the Times story:
In coming days, look for an announcement that a WH aide is resigning to spend more time with his family.
This was the first president that I ever actually CELEBRATED inauguration day with a champagne breakfast for my friends.
I feel like such a schmuck.
You don’t get to play in the beltway unless you are prepared to do the bidding for “the establishment”.
If your message is too anti establishment you are toast or ignored.
If the WH had been looney enough to hire me I’d have quit a long time ago.
i’m confused, is this a duplicate post? anyway, here’s the bit i wanted to post on this thread:
from tpm via brendancalling at christy’s thread:
fwiw. but the source, grijalva, is someone i take seriously.
Gawd, I’m starting to miss the halcyon days of the Bush propaganda machine, a machine to make Goebbels proud. If you were half intelligent, and most of us qualify, you knew they lied about everything, including things that didn’t need lies, but they were consistently on message. The great communicator Obama, not so much, couldn’t carry a tune let alone an idea. By accident or design the Administrations mis/disinformation, slight of mouth sucks.
And once the public option is stripped from the bill, the next phase of spin will be based on what a disaster it would be for Obama not to pass a “health care reform” bill — and all those “progressives” who promised to block the bill will find themselves turning their back on the people who already gave them money in order to save the Obama presidency…
We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few years, my friend.
By the sound of things coming out of the WH I will be sitting on my hands in 2010 & 2012 I can no longer support corporatist Democrats. The only hope it appears is that we start a true Progressive Democratic party that isn’t beholden to corporations and will be accountable to it’s constituents.
Seems to me O’s communications are finely tuned to piss off everyone. Pretty well oiled machine.
tangential, this one is for watertiger:
has anybody ever demonstrated that the young lady whose dorm room advances Douthat rebuffed was not Meghan McCain?
i think you have some saying about never giving up?
Obama better pull a public option out of his hat
or
he will have lost, utterly lost, all his mojo.
He will not just be a perceived weakling; he will in fact be a revealed weakling.
pathetic.
Let’s all get on the finger biting bandwagon. That will show em.
Finger bitten off during California health protest
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man’s finger.
Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Frank O’Hanlon says about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms rallied Wednesday night on a street corner. One protester walked across the street to confront about 25 counter-demonstrators.
O’Hanlon says the man got into an argument and fist fight, during which he bit off the left pinky of a 65-year-old man who opposed health care reform.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..er_severed
Do we know what the CPC will do in response? Stick to their guns, I hope.
Personally I think we should scrap a bad bill. Instead of spending tons of money on give-aways to insurance companies, Let’s keep it very simple.
Simple Solution:
Limit the amount of profit they can make to say 5 to 8 percent. If profit limits are good enough for utilities and cable companies it is good enough for health insurance companies. The excess profit goes back to policy holders not share holders.
Make them cover pre-existing conditons.
Limit the amount they can raise premiums in a single year like insurance regulators across the country do for homeowners and car insurance.
Health Insurance reform, done.
The only thing ya get sitting on your hands are sore wrists. Get involved with others who reflect your views and work to get them elected. Start at the city/county level if necessary. Silence and inaction will get you nowhere.
I’m actually beginning to dislike Obama more than I disliked Bush. Bush was evil and ignorant but you never expected him to be an advocate for the common good. Undoubtedly a lot of the expectations for Obama were unrealistic but that doesn’t alter the fact that his pathetic acquiescence to the corporate controlled status quo is a bitter disappointment.
It’s real simple.
Never. Give. Up.
Simpler solution:
Make Medicare available to all.
Geez, does Obama have a codependency problem? How do we arrange for an intervention? Everytime the GOP say “come closer so I can slap you” he does!!!
Good grief, stop it!
President Platitudes strikes again
I can’t see Obama backing down on a public option. It would empower the thugs and send the message to everyone that violent intimidation pays. It opens the door domestic chaos. Obama understands this as well we we do. Here’s what I think. The trial balloons, etc. are simply different ways of describing outcomes, which is cheap and effective health-care for everyone. There’s only one way to get there, and that’s the public option. He knows that a ‘fake’ victory won’t mean anything and will alienate the liberal base when he needs us most to protect his back against the rising fascist movement.
Let’s not forget, too, that Waxman is going to have the Insurance Execs on the setand next week to explain their ‘business model’ )(aka screwing ordinary Americans). This is a fight and it will be close-fought, but it isn’t over yet by a long shot.
yes.
I’m no longer “beginning”. I’m there!
Simpleton solution!
That is exactly how I feel about Pelosi taking impeachment off the table.
Doesn’t that make him a crook?
President Platitudes, America’s first President with a bipartisanship fetish.
In court, a judge is often nicest to the party he’s going to rule against.
(I’m struggling to see a method in O’s madness here)
You are aware of the fact that limiting the profit margin means that the corp will earn higher profits by maximizing costs?
If you remember before the primaries I said I’d vote for whoever got the nomination because I considered both Clinton and Obama to be corporatists who would govern to protect the corporations and their profits. I haven’t changed my mind.
i have no clue. but, imo, a press release from grijalva pushing back is pretty cool.
that’s it! sounds so much better the way you put it.
These idiots in Congress keep talking about the cost. I think it’s time to broaden our attack to say that it’s OUR money. We should not have to beg people who live on our dime to let us use OUR money for OUR health care. I get the strong impression that a large percentage of Americans do not realize that it is their money – they seem to think that the gov’t has money, while of course it has nothing except what we pay in taxes. I am really offended that I have to plead with my gov’t about my own money. Especially when they use it for everything else they want to.
Hey, if the White House is trying to simplify the legislation, reduce the cost, and move it along, HR 676 is already written, simplifies by leveraging off Medicare instead of 1500 insurance companies, and in principle has a base of support among the co-sponsors.
If that is not simple enough, there is always the option of VA for all. Remember, single-payer was a compromise over a national healthcare system. And the public option is a compromise over single-payer. Or what was it that Teddy Roosevelt had in mind in 1912?
I too am confused – all my comments have disappeared
no big loss, but wth ?
Congress’ betrayal makes it into a giant “death panel” for the public in need. Bailout for the insurance/pharma profiteers? How do you spell Manchurian?
Conyers Bill 676 … when is that House vote happening? Can that vote get yanked? WH and Congress so not impressed by high percentage of Americans rallying for help. Medicare used for fraud and then Repubs point to Medicare as being flawed. Only because watchdogs, the officially
bribedpaid ones, stopped barking long ago.Jackob Hacker on Newshour said that public option reminded him of Mark Twain’s line about “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” but if public told often enough public option is gone… the same way they kept saying single payer off the table…. it was a mantra … it is part of corporate media kool-aid dispension.
what do you say about a man so unprincipled that he uses his dead mother’s memory as a cheap campaign prop?
seriously. We’ve been punk’d and there needs to be a consequence.
i am really eager to start making viral videos going after these people. as they say, fuck with the bull get the horns
hr 676
single payer comprehensive universal healthCARE.
duplicate
left you a note in that thread – unless it’s disappeared :D
If we have 1500 insurance companies how is adding another gonna reduce costs? Sounds like 1500 is a lot of competition already?
gotcha thanks!
To the extent that every elected official promises to work on behalf of ALL their constituents, not just special interests, they are at the very least shameless liars.
I don’t see how this can be characterized as a bailout for insurance comapanies. A bailout indicts the need for help. These fuckers are sucking us dry and dead. We are the ones that need the bailout.
Try twitter!
The insurance companies lost all of their money in the stock market crash.
Gotta rebuild.
We knew who Bush was. We knew for certain he was a simpleton mouthpiece phonetic teleprompter reader for the uber rich war profiteers and multinational corporations with offshore tax havens and outsourced third-world employees.
We did not know with any certainty that Obama was an articulate representative of the same interests.
I stand corrected I won’t sit on my hands and I will be more involved at the local/state level as well as congressional level. If what is coming out of the WH is true about health care reform I can’t stomach voting for Obama again and will have to write in Daffy Duck in 2012.
Is there anyway I can get the $1500 I donated to Obama back?
think he would have had enough guts to go to the front of the bus? do you think he does now?
Not legally.
libbyliberal! have you seen this post (and the thread) from ian welsh?
money quote:
a bit more:
Lowered expectations.
I feel it necessary to enlighten some of you as to what you are missing (even though I rarely post here anymore since my comments are sometimes deleted since I use naughty words and am completely insensitive to ignorance): RAHM DOES NOT CARE IF THE DEMOCRATS LOSE CONTROL CONGRESS. It does not matter to him becoz he is pimping the oval office and is taking campaign bids for that office right now. The democratic majority is actually a problem for him becoz now he has less cover to deceive the the democratic party as to what his objectives are: to pretty much sell out the oval office to the biggest campaign bidders as long as he continues to have control of that nexus of power. He’d prefer to have more republicans, maybe even a republican majority, becoz it gives them more cover to sell out to corporate interests due to the political landscape and the need for bi-partisanship/corporateship to pass legislation.
This is the clinton model. He sold out on a hell of a lot in his first term, but got the campaign cash he needed to won re-election. That’s all that mattered to him. And that’s all that matters to the power hungry former member of his administration, rahm. Especially with the executive branch having so much more power now and so little accountability to the american people. It’s the kind of environment a cockroach like rahm thrives in.
It’s clear IMO that the dynamic duo of dlc deceit, the pope of hope (yes I know that obama is not dlc member in name, he is a “new democrat” … big fucking difference) and his sidekick, emanuel, have little desire to use the democrat majorities in the senate and house to push through any non-business friendly legislation. No, they continually finagle ways that they “must” negotiate with the proxies for big business, namely the blue dogs and the republicans, even though they frequently get ZERO votes in return like in the stimulus bill and likely in any universal health care legislation. If they have no desire to use those majorities, then why would they want them?
They don’t and that is what most democrats haven’t quite gotten their minds around yet.
Z
Well then cost control them as well.
The Senate is the real roadblock here. If the House passed a single payer bill the Senate Rethugs and Blue Dogs would ensure it never came to a vote. Their campaign war chests depend on their voting against it.
Can’t wait to see the Olympia Snowe Healthcare Bill now that the administration has ceded the writing to the minority. Spineless Democrats never cease to live up to their strength.
It is no wonder that we Dems have been painted as soft on everything. If the shoe fits…..
Right on brother, you hit this nail on the head!
i have thought for a long time that the plan was for obama to come through with a public option in name only in order to declare victory while pleasing his corporate backers. i’m probably wrong, but that’s one of the reasons i’ve been so interested in nailing down what “public option” really means in terms of legislation (and not only hope).
Ask AIG, they have it.
All of a sudden, it’s not so simple.
Good one.
Selise, I think you have good intuition. And I think Obama will make us, if we get the PO as you say “in name only”, so grateful instead of getting crumbs, we get that crouton!
if ian’s source is correct it means we’re closer than we’ve been led to believe. not there yet, but closer.
this week’s big polling story spells that out in black and white
guess they think ‘any ol bill’ will pull them out of this dive
Blue Cross needs this mandate. They’ve looked into the future and see their profit margins vanishing: Job losses equal lower enrollment; future income growth will likely be limited; people are looking to Mexico and other countries for healthcare; people are going without medications or accessing Canadian drug companies; if we ever get normal relations with Cuba, Americans will have an offshore option close to home. What better way is there to insure continued profits than a government mandate with government subsidies?
You don’t have to sugar-coat it for us…
It’s time for the progressives to break away from the Democratic Party. I, for one, am sick and tired of being sold out to the highest corporate bidder. It’s time to put these assholes on notice that there’s a large price to pay for their egregious whoriness…
The notion of the House or Senate imposing ANY hardship on their sponsors is a non-starter.
Maybe we’re going about this all wrong. It seems now the key is keep “Rahm’s Bill” out of conference. Deny him his definition of a win and make him/them bring the pressure to bear where it belongs. The way I see it, we really only need a handful of safe Progressive Blue State Senators who would filibuster FROM THE (so-called) LEFT a bill without meaningful reform, and that means filibuster a bill without a meaningful public option.
There must be 3-5 Senators that can on board. Right?
selise… just caught your comment 58 and will read the link. Thanks.
Single Payer … let’s fight for it with every molecule. Don’t let them make a Trojan Horse. Once they “fix” it, the fix is in. Single payer workers still pushing out there I hope.
Man, I must say the attitude has certainly changed on this board. A week ago everybody was on the same page. Now everbody is scattering into different corners. Divide and conquer seems to be working.
Next election they’ll bring most of us around by playing good cop to the GOP’s bad cop. It works every time.
IIRC, one such “public option” makes ineligible those who currently have health insurance. And those who do qualify can’t opt for the public option for two election cycles.
Neither of these “provisions” are good. I have health insurance, but I don’t like it. My policy is full of holes in “coverage”. I want to see a viable public option.
It irks me to hear complaints about the cost when we have two hot wars costing billions each month going on for years with no end in sight.
God Bless, Welsh. I am sending that link to single payer contacts!!!!
They say “let them eat cake.” We should say, SINGLE PAYER, NOTHING LESS.
Crikey !
“could cause a very big split in the Party”
hey Schakowsky fans, take note!
That ain’t the way I see it. Name the various corners you cite.
Because that ONE is the Trillion Pound Gorilla that can stamp out the other 1500 leading to a Government “solution”.
Jean Edward Smith’s article in the NY Times makes the argument that FDR was a divider, not a uniter. He divided the top 1% from the “bottom” 99% of Americans.
FDR didn’t seek consensus from Goldman Scratch or J.P. Morgan before he separated investment (high risk) and savings (low) banks. He didn’t ask GM’s CEO if it was OK to create the Securities and Securities Exchange acts. Nor did he have his chief of staff vet the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority with lobbyists from Commonwealth or Southern utilities. He did much the same when enacting the original Social Security legislation. Apart from helping tens of millions of our neighbors stay off the streets and out of the morgues in their old age, that legislation and the leadership that created it helped prevent a bloody revolution that four more years of Herbert Hoover might have led to.
Those were all the correct policy choices for 99% of the country. They were electorally smart, too. FDR won four terms in succession. The votes FDR lost were never his to lose. The Congresscritters who represented corporate interests alienated by FDR’s policies would never have played bipartisan ball.
The vested interests they represented hated FDR. They fought for generations – and still fight – to undo his work. George Bush, for example, almost put Social Security into the hands of Goldman Scratch and its Wall Street cronies, which would have gutted Social Security’s social value and given more massive profits to Wall Street with “no assurance of future performance”.
Mr. Obama? What’s his leadership quotient and his tolerance for the conflict inherent in politics, especially those that strive to make policy choices that benefit non-vested interests? He and his mini-me, Rahm Emanuel, seem unable to make a decision or a policy without first obtaining permission from the fat cats. That’s what they call “bipartisanship”.
If the Democrats are at war with each other, then at least let’s have a fight over doing what’s right rather than just caving in to the insuresters, credit card companies, lobbyists and “defense” contractors and letting three-quarters of Americans needlessly suffer in the bargain.
do not feed it
That bullshit is starting to get really thin. On the other hand, the rep in my district is a dirtbag Republican anyway. A dead tree stump would be an improvement over him…
You haven’t been paying attention. There have been well defined divisions at this site between those who favored a public option and those who favored single payer. Those who were for the public option are seeing Obama cut the legs out from under them. So this leaves us looking again at single payer models or a reduced bill that only deals with the most egregious practices of insurance companies.
As Lawrence O’Donnell said to Rachel Maddow last night “MAKE MEDICARE AVAILABLE TO ALL” should have been the branding of this reform from the get-go.
Natch and Seconded.
This is 40 years old but still appropriate.
Some say Single Payer only way.
Some say screw Obama I’m done with him.
Some say I’m sitting at home in 2012.
Somebody is talking about his dead mother.
Etc.
I particularly liked his point that every family has a member who likes & can explain Medicare to them. No one has a family member who can explain what the various bills in D.C. are all about.
I think sitting at home is a perfectly delightful way to express disgust and if folks are disgusted they should sit at home..
Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is up and ready for our edification: “My Memory is Better than Ezra’s”
I would like to point out that bloggers here were some of the first to push for Medicare for All. I would like to applaud them for their foresightedness and good work.
“Medicare for all” would have been a better marketing strategy if actual reform was ever on the the Dem agenda. I doubt that it was.
selise, you are awesome in that thread BTW!!!!
Ian thinks Pelosi would push Single Payer if she had WH permission… they all would.
But Welsh makes the point Obama’s ego “is on the table” now since he took single payer off it, and wants to keep pharma and insurance happy, of course. To have Obama such a passionate enemy of single payer and more an enemy of the liberals but really the majority in the country that wants single payer system, including those that think that is what the p.o. would be, is crazymaking to say the least.
But I am passing your Ian article and thread on. Thank you!!!!
I think we need to be ready to sabotage this thing so that it is a very bittersweet pill for the Blue Cross Dogs and the White House. One way would be to have liberals demand that the reimbursement rate be 95% instead of the 74% they are trying to codify in the Finance committee as a condition for allowing some nonsensical trigger. That way the insurance companies do not stand to profit even with an individual mandate.
Will these bills more effectively regulate the egregious practices of and contracts sold by insuresters, or will they mandate that we accept and buy them pretty much as is?
Appreciated. The old divide up and conquer situation, too, with the crazymaking seductions from BO and the bribed Dems making noises of compromise, pitting the “realist” vs. “idealist” left so-called, when we were and are really all on the same team. Wanting the best we can get for the common good.
Thank you so Much! I’ve been saying the same thing forever. With profit limits and mandates to give back excessive profits to members we could crack down much harder on this organized thievery. This would be another way to make this pill bittersweet to Blue Cross Dogs and the feckless White House.
From a few steps back, it could be comical to see Obama desperately looking around for someone to capitulate TO, and finding no one here, and no one there, creating waves,and more waves, and capitulating anyway — with a lot of splashing around to try to make it look like there is a substantial
opposition to cave in to. Big majorities of Democrats and Independents and even a sizable Republican plurality (as I recall), were for this health plan with the public option only a few weeks ago.
The crazies have scared some people– but should they really be running our government?
Are you talking about this Medicare?
Per Wiki:
According to the 2008 report by the board of trustees for Medicare and Social Security, Medicare will spend more than it brings in from taxes this year (2008). The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will become insolvent by 2019.
Okay, if we are going to have a system withou single-payer or a public option, we should at least follow the lead of the major successful such system namely Switzerland, whose system is highly regulated and bans for-profit insurers from the basic health-insurance market.
If it is a small reform minded bill it would ban rejection for prior conditions and rescission. Reducing the differential between individual and group policies would be useful too.
“Translation: if the lipstick just won’t stay on this pig and everyone freaks out over a mandate to pay Blue Cross for crap insurance, we have to pass SOMETHING, and what sells better than cute kids?” that’s interesting, thats fascinating. so without mandates how do they get the reform of rules about prexisting,etc,etc. If they would just slam some real regulation down on the insurance cartels, maybe even remove they’re special exemption from anti trust laws, then it would be a bill i could support. and fuck mandates, and fuck co-ops it would be an admission that a few corrupt senators have way too much control, and that the senate itself needs “reform” but what better way to make THAT argument.
a small reform minded bill would be good, im afraid its going to be a small minded reform bill.
amen. no shit!!!
i am also irked that we are now spending (total national health expenditure) enough to pay for everyone’s healthcare — if only we would take private insurance out (as single payer does). why the heck should we have to design a healthcare system that wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year (as a public option in a multipayer system does)? money that could be used on healthcare for people instead of healthcare of the insurance companies.
effed up priorities
yikes. and she was one of only 5 house reps i gave a perfect score on the fisa fight.
Well a Medicare system not gonna clean up the waste:
Per Wiki
Fraud and waste
The Government Accountability Office lists Medicare as a “high-risk” government program in need of reform, in part because of its vulnerability to fraud and partly because of its long-term financial problems.[45][46][47] Fewer than 5% of Medicare claims are audited.[48]
I am talking about the Medicare that gives the oldest and sickest among us access to healthcare and does so with one quarter the overhead of private insurers. I am talking about the Medicare that negotiates better prices when it isn’t hamstrung by Congressional conservatives.
you remind me of one of my favorite posts from paul rosenberg: Martin Luther King and The Moral Imperative For Polarization
thats the spirit! It would be nice to see Accountability Now, which has some FDL entanglement, actually support some (I) and 3rd Party candidates instead of just gambling against a stacked deck in primary battles.
Netroots doesn’t know its own strength unless it tries something other than simply voting (D) no matter what, regardless of the outcome of whatever primaries are undertaken.
Hi Selise. Thanks for that link.
not the first. it’s been a very long fight, from long before there were blogs. but i agree letsgetitdone has been doing a great job advocating that single payer advocates use the “medicare for all” language.
boy howdy it’s been eye-opening. Eshoo appears to be another one. I’m from her home district, and those good people (Palo Alto) would be stunned at her um, relationships to lobbyists. really thought I had a firm grip on how corrupt they are, but was off by a ton
i’m glad you liked ian’s post. i’ve been reading him for awhile (since long before fdl).
So you’re saving pennies on overhead while billions are being paid out
in entitlements. Can’t substain itself. Do me a favor, just go to Wiki
and read the page on Medicare. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
And my I know obnoxious question right now is can public plan backers now burned take their egos off the table and bombard House in favor of Conyers HR Bill 676 Single Payer Medicare for All and follow Conyers and Weiner and get Pelosi to do the right thing by us? Pushback on the left to get BO’s attention for once. No time for the 5 stages of grief on this one. Time is everything and corporate media that blacks out reality, we have to beat the bushes (no pun intended) to get Single Payer respect. Frank Capra moment. And this REFORM has come along, this window, and wont be back like this again for decades.
OT with Stevens maybe leaving the court next year, will our Dem administration move us farther right one more time?
We have to make noise and keep the fire in our bellies.
check out hr 676: Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act
and some keep arguing that the most effective( non national) health care payer system in the country is less effective than the for profit insurance industry. well i guess it all comes down to what kind of “effect” you want sambot! im with you, lets get rid of medicare, AND allow private insurance to continue on its ruinous decline and when the insurance idustry send its Dem and Repub senators and reps to the country for a 3 trillion dollar bail out they can go to hell. By that time all of the “libertarians” and “budget buzzards” will have become marxist lenninists DERMADING that government take responsibility for a problem the “free market” cant and wont fix.
Did you go to her town hall? I’m not in her district but have known her for many years. Just curious about what info you have – not doubting you, just wondering if she has said something about health care.
howdy wigwam!
Apparently you are proof of that. When did Wikipedia become a reliable source of facts?
Can you dispute anything that is on the Medicare page?
Maybe the government “fixed the page” with erroneous information
to confuse us.
Early on in this process, I was sending links urging friends to write their Senators, Congressmen, the White House. Now I’m getting their emails urging me to write… there’s a growing public grassroots groundswell for real healthcare reform, with the public option, it crosses party lines, and it’s real.
Conversations are growing, people are taking a closer look…like the 400+ workers at BobCat’s Bismarck plant who got told this week, sorry, plant closing by year-end. With gone and downsized and outsourced jobs go the formerly complacent insured. There are too many now for even the most obtuse to ignore.
The White House and the Blue Dog “moderates” and Senator Snowe ignore that at their re-election peril.
ps The Republicans for decades have tortured Dems with LEARNED HELPLESSNESS spirit erosion techniques. We have got to fight the learned helplessness. Either Obama has it or he is amoral. IMHO.
no, sambot is a genius. lets get rid of all these collaborationist pollicies like Social security and Medicare, that prop up the capitalist system. Let the mighty capitalist system and the mysterious and benvolent “invisible hand” reign free across the land. Lets dipense with the bullshit half measures and band aids that divide us and give the right a blowhard platform. Let them put up.It wont be too long before they are shut up. It wont be a long before we have a socialist society and the right can dry up and blow away.
it’s not obnoxious to ask.
Tell the whole story:
From October through December, approximately 475 hourly and salaried positions in Bismarck will be phased out while as many as 390 of those jobs will remain in North Dakota as production is switched over to Gwinner. The move will be gradual, with an expected completion by December 31, 2009.
http://www.prairiebizmag.com/e…..roup/home/
A true capitalist society wouldn’t run up deficits in SS and Medicare.
The benefits would be tailored to match the incoming contributions to outgoing entitlements. Not stolen by the government to social engineer and fight useless wars.
Also, the proverbial Democratic circular firing squad. Herding cats metaphor is one thing, but Dems go to the circular firing squad too often.
why not?
serious question.
(btw, i agree about the useless wars)
Right . A “true” capitalist society would not “run up deficits” with socialists programs. so lets get rid of them RIGHT? all of them and let the”free market” find the many and creative solutions it is so eminently capable of doing, if only!oh if only it werent for that dratted liberal, socialist, “nanny state” interference right?! So lets git rid of it. All of it.
I don’t think a tiny Left filibuster (joining with Republicans for 41+) would work because the filibuster isn’t real; it’s a scam to bring the progressives in line.
Ask … selise … I’m begging. :)
FDL, PLEASE BACK THE FALL (WEINER LED) HOUSE VOTE ON HR BILL 676, Conyers’ Single Payer Plan — Medicare for all.
Medicare would be fine, if they don’t load up on insurance industry and pharma special protection adjustments and if they actually monitor it closely for fraud. Look at Pfizer this week with their scandal. In spite of the scandals Congress is still in their thrall.
Right. What republicans want is the democrats plan WITHOUT a PO, without co-ops and without subsidies. They will tell us that, if everyone had to pay the insurance companies, why, they would lower the cost for everyone (out of the goodness of thier hearts and because capitalism is all about giving shit away i guess). The right wants mandates
they just want to be able to blame them on the dems
Solerso and Selise.
My second sentence explained the first.
The benefits would be tailored to match the incoming contributions to outgoing entitlements.
I like that idea. Along lines of profit limiting but better.
You simply don’t or more likely refuse to understand what Medicare is and how it fits into the overall healthcare system. You are content to repeat talking points. Medicare does have problems. Many of those problems were built into by limitations imposed by Congresses which wanted to protect special interests. The fact is that Medicare in spite of all that does what it does far better than its private counterparts. But what you do is the standard conservative canard. Conservatives engineer defects in, refuse to fix them, and then brand the whole program a failure. The fact is too that if Medicare was left in or turned over to the private sector it would be an unmitigated disaster. The private sector can’t even deal with the young and healthy. How could they deal with the old and sick?
Yeah the Medicare that now only covers old, sick people. If younger healthier people were paying in it would be doing better. Natch.
it will be interesting to see what FDL does about that vote.
Jane said in a thread somewhere that she was in favor of single payer – I wonder if HR 676 will get the front page treatment.
I think you’re forgetting that LBJ passed the Medicare legislation back in 1965. The conservatives fought it, fearing it was a step toward socialism.
So any limitations and defects came from the Dems.
I’m all for kids, (hell I was one 40+ years ago,) but if they all get health care and the rest of us die miserable deaths from lack of access to care, who’s gonna feed ‘em?
After all, on an airplane who do they tell you to put the oxygen mask on first — you or the kid?
Why doesn’t the same principle apply here?
Hate to break it to you but if you have a job you are paying into it, regardless if you are 20 or 60 years old. Let’s think before we post.
A caring Dem-led Congress would address what to do with decline of insurance job employees… transitioning those people to show some EMPATHY and win/win capability — as they fought for a Single Payer option. You know, democracy and the public good. The myth we grew up with. If onlys …
The war budget, just liquidating some of our useless and it seems toxic and unpopular bases (about 800 all together?) would release plenty of money not to put another trillion on the backs of taxpayers, the trillion a/k/a the insurance bail-out or probably pay for ALL of a much lower costing single payer system.
no it does not. not in a nonconvertible monetary system.
there are other reasons you could give (which i might agree or disagree with), but the explanation you gave makes no sense whatsoever — not since we gave up gold based money.
I see teh stoopid is getting well fed today.
Oh well, guess everyone needs to eat, even teh fukkin stoopid.
I’ll ask again anyway, even if it won’t help.
But please don’t feed teh stoopid.
I only ask because as an avid reader of FDL and it’s comment sections, the comment sections where teh stoopid is left unfed are multiple times more enjoyable to read.
Thanks to all.
sambot dosent believe that society has any genuine responsility to the “sick, and the old” Im not sure what hes arguing about ss and medicare, i guess hes saying that if only they were run by altruistic, trustworthy, beneveolent private capital who answer to their boards in private secret meetings, and not the crooked, “stealing” inefficient govt, then it would be noble and wothlie effective programs. No, sambot, the private sector cant have the public money we paid in. all assets would have to be paid out to the recipients, then we end the programs, and let capitalism efficiently clean up the mess, according to “free” market for profit,priciples.
hr 676 has some provisions for the employees of insurance companies. from conyer’s faq:
p.s. i really like your focus on empathy. thank you for that.
Hey, It’s Old Fart.
This is just stupid. It ignores that medical costs are skyrocketing and would be put no break on them. It would just mean that fewer people would receive higher costing treatment. It ignores that healthcare is not like other expenditures. It isn’t elastic. You don’t get when you need it, you die or are damaged the rest of your life. Sambot doesn’t understand even the most basic aspects of healthcare. He/She just chases their tail. Medicare has problems so we should cut it back or get rid of it. Private insurance is a fucking disaster so we should put all our faith in it. We should make Medicare live within its means even if the system has been rigged against it and even though we are talking about killing people off as a result. But private insurance that has excluded 50 million Americans from coverage and still can’t control its costs. These are the guys we should trust with our lives and health. Just amazing in the blindness.
Also MsAnna,
I think we should be having liberals state that if we are forced to have a public option, that option has to be so powerful and liberal that it serves as a true boogeyman to the insurance companies. From what I’ve been hearing, their idea of a triggered public option is still pretty toothless. I’m not giving up on the public option, I’m just saying we should make this process as painful as possible to our very own sellouts and we should have a very good plan B.
they are paying taxes which, have been strangled off by corporatist lackeys over the years, to ensure that medicare would suffer a funding crisis. so they could step in and “save it” with privatization.
Sorry I meant if we are forced to have a triggered public option
maybe a diary or three?
you write like a dream, and i would be very happy to have your words to quote and link to next time i try to make the case for putting single payer on the fdl table.
hes a “privatization” guy. they are just looking for a way to filch more money from the people. thats the whole privatization scam.their own markets are in decline and they are running out of new ones to exploit. the game now is using the govt to force people to buy their products. nice “free market” ideals huh?
hr 3200 has a defacto trigger — po doesn’t happen until 2013, and even then is very small and limited although i think the hhs can, if they want, expand it later
Again another stupid argument. Just because Medicare was passed back in LBJ’s time doesn’t mean it couldn’t be updated. And certainly the Medicare Part D was passed under Bush and expressly forbade Medicare from using its market share to negotiate better prices on drugs. You really simply need to better inform yourself. We cut a lot of slack here to new people but all you are doing so far is discrediting yourself and your opinions. We all have our ideas and ideologies but the bottomline for most of us here is “Will it work?” Many of us here have very good records on making the right call on what will happen, or what will work or not. You don’t and it doesn’t look like you are going to acquire one.
I appreciate the excellent work folks at FDL have done at applying pressure on Democrats – and particularly the White House – and forcing them to be explicit about their duplicity, corruption and hypocrisy. I would say that Obama’s betrayal of his base (and beyond) is pretty much complete. I hear a lot of talk about being disillusioned and withdrawing support for Obama and the Democrats in 2010 and 12, but I have not seen any movement toward actively organizing against Obama and the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections. Now is the time to do that. Obama and Democratic congressional leaders need to know what they will face if they continue down this path: not only disaffected and alienated supporters who can be turned around eventually with inspiring speeches but an organized force challenging the Democratic hold on power. If only a segment of the army that marched Obama into the White House turned their energies toward a third party candidate (a credible one, this time), I think we would see a change in the Democrat’s tune and quite possibly a disruption of the untenable two party system we have right now. Could a site like FDL be the focal point of such organization?
So… would I be correct in thinking that even the best public options from the committees in the House are pretty crap? Not that anything nearly as good as them have a chance of getting passed… If that’s the case why are we not demanding no bill or single payer (same thing)? Even if Obama has a fit and backs a version of the bill from the House it’s still not even minimally enough? Is that correct?
Mandates without premium caps are meaningless. Just means more business for insurers and maintains their ability to shuffle off bad risks onto the safety net programs, in other words, tax-payer subsidized private insurance will now be an even bigger problem than it has been, as if that were possible…
That would be because it’s a paid troll.
hey Sambot are you still around? i was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt (that you are not a troll and are instead interested in both learning and teaching what you know).
i hope you will read my link @120 so you can see how hr 676 is financed. and i would love to discuss nonconvertible monetary systems with you.
will check back later in case you weren’t scared off.
thanks, spork:
I did a diary recently about single payer and finished off with Nader’s call for action on this:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/si…..tion=print"
We need to take a note from RFK, and ask “Why not?”
selise, thank you for seeing both the forest and trees simultaneously. a rare and valuable gift in these trying times! Appreciate these and their emphasis would do much to calm the hysterical especially.
I’m surprised at the number of people here that ever thought Obama was going to deliver on his promises. Rule Number 1. He’s a politician. Rule number 2. though shalt not forget Rule Number 1.
I will say that I’m surprised by his lack of mojo managing this. Jeebus-they look like a bunch of punters at the White House.
:) just caught this. thank you. I was too busy trying to bring the mountain to Mohammed so to speak …. quoting that Nader action stuff from my last single payer diary.
an interesting question – it would depend on whether FDL is more concerned with principles of social justice or with electing ‘more and better Democrats’. there is obviously an inherent tension between those.
check out:
http://counterpunch.org/lindorff09032009.html
for a proposal centered on Labor resources.
… hey LibbyLib, what is the link to yr diary on SP? I’d like to check it out, maybe others would as well.
The problem has always been, and it has been a criticism that many of us here have leveled, we don’t know anything about the public option beyond a few not reassuring generalities. That it would not be available until 2013, two elections from now. That a decision to expand it might happen in 2015. That it would be divorced from working with Medicare to contain costs and that its rates would be some undetermined amount, at least 15-20%, above Medicare rates. We never had a real idea of how many people it was likely to cover. The original idea that never made it into any serious discussion was Hacker’s for a robust plan covering more than 100 million. The best guesses on those being discussed in the Congress were for a program about one-tenth this size. This in turn led to questions about its viability. You need a certain number to make the program worthwhile and give it the power to negotiate price. But if it is forced to start small and unable to draft off of Medicare, it can’t attract customers or compete with private insurance by offering cheaper rates.
Then there was the ploy to call co-ops a public plan. That was just a dishonest bait-and-switch from the getgo. Some of us predicted that Obama would ditch the public option or that if it was kept it would exist as a figleaf. Unfortunately, events are proving us right.
Spork, I think selise’s link above re Ian Welsh should be added to these as single payer ammunition:
Everybody In, Nobody Out — Single Payer Health Care Plan — HR Bill 676 (Expanded Medicare for All) — Short Videos To Enjoy, Learn From and Pass Along
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7522
HR Bill 676 Single Payer: Change You (Really) Can Believe In
(Spork, this is the one I quoted from above!)
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7607
This guy is for the public option not single payer, but such good pushback against Grassley!!!
http://nowherethemiddle.blogsp…..kevin.htmlhttp://nowherethemiddle.blogsp…..kevin.html"
Dana Gould’s report on Real Time, he really takes on the wingnuts in this one
http://videocafe.crooksandliar…..-town-hallhttp://videocafe.crooksandliar…..-town-hall">
Spork and Selise, I’m wondering if FDL could collect all the great diaries posted on single payer by so many of us when and if they can get behind the coming up HR 676 vote!
This is Selise’s great ian welsh article link from above.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/spare-…..decisions/
And on my list @172, the kevin against grassley link I think I picked up from oldnslow and the Dana Gould one which I LOVE… GET TO THE WTF MOMENT OF HIS … was from Cujo.
Right, but I guess I am still a few thoughts ahead of you.
I guess I DO have to spell everything out for you or you won’t get it.
If instead of me or my company paying $500 per month for insurance that will probably fail me if I get sick, I put that into medicare. That would make the progam very well funded. Particularly since I am a relatively healthy young person.
Yes, I do pay into medicare, but I also pay into the private healthcare system that is daily killing and bankrupting their customers. I want out of that system.
I don’t appreciate you saying to think before I post, maybe you should do the same.
I was beginning to wonder if we were getting trolled.
Yes Hardball is desperately needed. I am seriously sick of the Dem pantywaists.
OK that’s what I thought… (never big enough, never cheap enough)… but in that case there’s no public option worth the name on the cards and never has been. So this whole game has always been 100% rigged from the beginning. That leads me to question 2.
Why did the progressive block, our $400,000 saviours supposedly, sell-out single payer? Taibbi’s article said it was for a guarantee of a single payer option, but that makes no sense if there never was a decent (”robust”) option even from the House, although I suppose it could have started out OK and got nerfed. But if that happened then why wouldn’t the progressive block go back to Pelosi and say, “Deals off – you didn’t keep your end.”
Now they have nothing and zero except that they’ve committed themselves and progressive to support a “public option” which will be crap.
Given that there’s zero chance that any reconciliation will end up with a bill even better than any of the bills going in (quite the opposite in fact) why bother to wait? Logically shouldn’t we be opposing reform right now — or equivalently, but rhetorically nicer, demanding nothing less than single payer / HR 676?
That stance seems perfectly logical to me, particularly since studies have shown no real savings without single-payer. The excess bureaucracy and profits for companies can only be eliminated one way. Single payer.
Oh earlier someone said the single-payer proposal says that the health insurance allowed under the single payer proposal only covers cosmetic things. I don’t see how you can insure against “optional” surgeries. Maybe they mean if you need a reconstruction for cancer? We need more info on this.
I would also like to point out that Medicare is an 80/20 plan. As someone else pointed out recently 20% of $100,000 is $20,000 and is a lot of money and is easily the bill for a single hospital stay these days.
My Mother has a supplemental insurance for Medicare through Humana that costs $300 per month. This is a lot of money. She is on disability and after paying her premium for her healthcare supplemental she has $50 to live on for the month. I am not arguing against Medicare I just want people to understand what it is and isn’t.
This is the part where Rham (Otter) puts his arm around you and says:
“Flounder, you fucked up – you trusted us!”
FYIW: Faith groups for Health Care Reform-Sojourners
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?…..=HC09-main
“Pennies” in overhead – aka grossly inflated administrative costs, driven in part by concerted efforts to deny coverage and respond to repeated appeals with the same “No” answer, and exceptional profits, even by big oil standards – are hundreds of billions of dollars to those who haven’t swallowed the Reichwing corporatist Kool-Aid.
The easiest budget math for how to pay for comprehensive health care reform Paul Krugman did some time ago: repeal the Bush tax cuts.
Me too. We need to just end these wars. Now!
Thanks, selise. I’m trying hard.
Agreed libby, but we also need to keep in mind that the idea that this is our one opportunity for a long time, is not to be believed. If we keep that pressure up and build a movement, then we can come back year after year until they pass Medicare for All.
There’s been too much attention to the Clinton’s failure and then refusal to bring up Health Care Reform again. What happened then was Clinton’s choice; he didn’t mobilize the public in favor of Medicare for All and go was burned because of it. Once burned he wouldn’t go into the fire again. Win or lose right now, we can do things differently.
Hugh, not just conservative tactics. Republican tactics too, going way way, back. I remember very well how Republicans managed to trim the poverty programs of the Johnson Administration in an effort to cripple them. When they failed the Nixon Administration adopted the policy of “benign neglect” toward the urban poor. A policy first suggested and advocated by that later “liberal lion” of the Senate, Harvard’s own, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
It’s a great bill, isn’t it.
And also the small size forecast for the PO in the House Bill, suggests that the public plan won’t be able to develop the wide-ranging and powerful network of providers necessary for it to provide real competition and first class service. This a major factor in anticipating its failure. There are no PO bills in Congress now that avoid this problem.
You bet. See my various posts proposing that for many weeks now.
thanks for inspiration, once again, lets!