“This is not reform, it’s expansion. …Expansion is a good thing.” – Eliot Spitzer (on Dylan Ratigan’s “Morning Meeting”
Spitzer then went on to blast the pulling of anti-trust portions from the Senate bill.
What a mess.
The graphic is the front page of Talking Points Memo. That’s what traditional and conservative Democrats are selling, that the bill that passed a test vote in the wee hours of the morning is “reform.” Democrats pushed through a Senate bill and are no doubt exultant, though after the Let’s Make A Deal giveaways, I really don’t know what all the applause it about. Who wouldn’t sign on for $100 million? From the New York Times:
The roll was called shortly after 1 a.m., with Washington still snowbound after a weekend blizzard, and the Senate voted on party lines to cut off a Republican filibuster of a package of changes to the health care bill by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.
The vote was 60 to 40 — a tally that is expected to be repeated four times as further procedural hurdles are cleared in the days ahead, and then once more in a dramatic, if predictable, finale tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
Both parties hailed the vote as seismic. …
Seismic… hmmm… As someone who spent two decades in earthquake country, the foreshadowing of choosing that particular word is unsettling, however true it may be.
As for the current Senate bill being “reform,” well, if you call a giant giveaway to an already huge monopoly “reform,” then this is your bill. And if you approve of forcing people into a system that has no competition, you’re going to love it. If you love taxing everyone, including the middle class, get ready to stand in adulation.
I’d say there’s hope because of the preferred House tax plan to hit people making $500,000 and above, but we’re likely stuck with most of what’s in the Senate bill, including onerous taxes on the middle class.
Meanwhile, Sen. Feingold praises the bill, while lowering the boom on Pres. Obama, in a statement that rang hollow to me considering that Feingold voted against women’s preventative care because it was too expensive, while now rationalizing that forcing people into a rigged system is good for anyone.
“I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.” – Feingold: Obama Responsible For Loss Of Public Option
The reality is that Pres. Obama bargained from a position of weakness all year, when he had all the cards to pass a bill that wasn’t filled with trip wires. He failed to do it.
But listening to Sen. Harry Reid talking about the people dying every minute for lack of health care insurance, I couldn’t help but feel I’d landed on Mars. The Democratic majority leader channeling Dick Cheney like rhetoric was positively surreal. At least he didn’t trot out his slavery analogy. After all, it is Christmas.
Seismic and surreal.Also silly,sad and seriously scary.
Stating the obvious: the recent history of this “historical” heath “care” “reform” effort shows a consistent downward direction. When single payer was never considered; when “public option,” “robust” or watered-down, was used as a game piece and discarded when it no longer served gaming purposes; when it became clear that “mandates” would basically serve as a profit funnel for the health insurance industry; when Democratic Electeds allow a decidedly un-”progressive” philosophy to drive politics, process, policy and pragmatism — to me that and more all mean that we basically have what was more or less planned all along.
The Republicans play their “No” role, for their own reasons; the Democrats play their self-proclaimed (supported by much of media, pundits and “experts”) “historic” role. Whatever eventually comes out of putting the Senate and House bills together — though almost certainly the Senate bill will largely prevail — we can find bits and pieces that, in fact, bring some decent changes, but the mandates to purchase insurance in the private sector, and the despicable anti-abortion measures will be historic only in their blatant and unapologetic decision, I think from the beginning (think campaign financing), to allow the health care industries to be the most important player, and the constituents of supreme concern, in the entire process.
I’m prepared for more “Be very afraid” and “The Republicans are worse!” tactics by the Democrats, based on “You have no where else to go” assumptions.
Sorry to sound so negative but this bill is a joke; a joke on the American people. If this is health care reform I’ll eat my shirt or better still I have a bridge I can sell to the American people. This is not change I can believe in nor expected from a Democratic president and Congress. I’m finished with the whole mess. I have good health insurance and I don’t have to worry about reproductive health care. I’m just sorry that the rest of the people especially the women, are going to be stuck with the same ol’ same ol’ garbage. Two years down the line, I predict health insurance premiums are going to go through the roof and those who have marginal insurance now, won’t be able to afford it. Without a public option there is no other way to go for these people. We’ve really become a selfish country.
Joyce – they should have started out with nationalized health care; single payer then gone from there. They would have been negotiating down to a public option which would have looked good at that point. But they really didn’t have their hearts in it, including our “hope and change” president.
Oh, by the way “Merry Christmas.” To one and all. I wish I felt merry. I just feel sad.
Jane, I am in complete agreement that they should have started with single payer. Failure to do that turned out to be an accurate signal of things to come.
I don’t have health care insurance. I don’t have any real hope, either.
And whatever any and all celebrate, I wish you the best possible.
Look, this is the bill Obama wanted all along. There’s just no way for the White House to spin it any other way. I find it laughable that Feingold gets out there now, after the fact, to state the obvious. The White House never intended to put any capital into the public option. That doesn’t necessarily mean Obama wouldn’t have signed a bill with a public option, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to put some skin in the game to make it happen. He clearly learned the wrong lesson from 1994.
And speaking of Feingold, where the hell were these comments in June? Or September, or a week ago? He may as well just kept his trap shut for all the good this does after the fact. Why wasn’t he putting pressure on the WH then? Trying to put the onus on the WH for his ineffectual efforts to fight for a public plan does not wash the s#%t from his hands. Sorry Russ, I aint buying.
Mandates are gonna kill this majority. About the only hope left is that the dismal polling numbers on the bill scare skittish members into voting against it.
I find it laughable that there are still Democrats, bloggers etc. trying to pin any of this on Republicans. Their smartest move was to oppose the whole thing. Now they have nothing on their hands.
Joyce Arnold and Jane …you both express my sentiments this morning.
I keep trying to remember the details of that old parable about the group of people stranded in the woods on a freezing night. Each had a piece of wood to build a fire, but would not share it with the group for his own reasons. They all ended up freezing.
It seems to me that this is the core problem in so many of the hard problems this country faces.
Like Jane I have good insurance and a very livable retirement income. I live in a wonderful bubble with my daughter and her family across the lake,in a beautiful rural setting 40 minutes from a city. It is affordable to live where I live and I know and love my neighbors and my community. I am thankful beyond measure for all of that. However, it pains me greatly that others do not have the same good fortune and I worry that ignoring this is going to bring us all down.
GaBuck, you are so right. “Obama wins, We lose” That’s a new bumper sticker that I had made up and am now passing around. But, the lousy health care bill is the least of our problems. We have 120,000 US troops in Iraq. 100,000 in Afghanistan. A secret CIA war going on in Pakistan. US missiles being fired into Yemen and the Sudan. Thousands of NATO troops running around all over the place. And Obama working as hard as he can to trigger a military confrontation with Iran (see Stuart A. Levey). We’re in a new World War and who knew? (That might make another good bumper sticker.) Peace
LL – the cost of the health care system will bring this country down, if not today, in the near see able future. We can’t sustain the cost of providing health care without true reform. Wait until the hospitals start closing; they have been in the last ten years, or when tests become so expensive that even those with some health insurance can’t afford to pay the huge co-pays and opt not to have the necessary testing for a diagnosis. The hand writing is on the wall. I worked in health care all my adult life and I saw what was happening, especially in the last six years before I retired. I know the costs of health care provision and what the insurance companies were doing to wheedle out of paying claims. The problem is that so many Americans don’t realize what’s coming down the pike in the next few years or if they do aren’t willing to fight for it.
“A house divided will perish” and right now this country is so divided I just see bad things in the future. We’ve lost our moral edge among other things.
Yes, we have lost our moral edge it has been superceded by all the faux moral “wedge issues”.
Good morning.
Your comments reflect my concerns. I’m worried that people won’t be able to pay for tests and other medical treatments. My daughter is already experiencing increased co-pays and tests that were formerly covered by her insurance, but aren’t being covered now. As I’ve always commented to people “20% of 0 is fine, but just wait until you have a serious condition and you have to pay 20% to each provider and they want payment NOW”! The #1 cause of bankruptcies is medical care.
Many people take good health for granted.
A good read:
http://tiny.cc/MfQc1
snip:
What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.
The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It’s that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky “leftists.” I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.
Leadership, Obama Style
Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.
Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn’t mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted.
Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.
Hmmmm…..who were those who insisted that Obama would be superior to HRC on women’s issues?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/leadership-obama-style-an_b_398813.html
‘But you have to believe something.
I don’t honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn’t figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he’s not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he’s going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they’re seeing right now is “liberalism,” and they don’t like what they see. I don’t, either.
What’s they’re seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That’s a recipe for going nowhere fast — but getting there by November.’
We’re in a new World War
Oh. Good. Grief.
whitepaw says:
21 December 2009 at 12:12 pm
That’s today’s must read, whitepaw.
Yep
doubt Dr. Westin will be getting a White House Christmas card
whitepaw says:
21 December 2009 at 12:12 pm
Thanks for this link, whitepaw.
whitepaw – that was a great read!
The best line for me was the following:
“Teddy Roosevelt was clear that capital gains taxes should be high relative to income taxes because we should reward work, not ‘gambling in stocks.’”
For too long the working person in this country has been getting stiffed. It’s time we returned to the old values of rewarding the working class with an honest return on their work.
Thanks whitepaw – good afternoon everyone.
GaBuck
Bet Dr Westin isn’t the least bit concerned
Here’s another ENCOURAGING read for you guys! From the Politico 44 Whiteboard:
http://www.politico.com/politico44/wbarchive/whiteboard12212009.html
…
NIGHT OWL: On health care more generally, Obama told Ryan he stayed up to watch the Senate’s early-morning vote on a health care bill and said he’s confident Congress can work out the “five percent” difference between the House and Senate bills.
“I was up because I wanted to make sure that I was watching what could end up being an historic moment,” Obama said.
The president sought to downplay the lack of a public health insurance option in the Senate bill, saying: “There is so much good in this bill, and I’m now confident that it’s going to pass.”
“I think people need to understand just how significant this is,” Obama told Ryan.
The public option, he said, “is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights.” But, Obama added: “As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect of this bill — the House bill or the Senate bill.”
Only “a few million people” who buy into the insurance exchange set up in the bill would have benefited from the public option, he said.
“So it wasn’t like suddenly everybody would just go out there and buy a government-run plan,” Obama said. “Most people will still get health insurance from their employers.”.
…
Now, this interview was given to American Urban Radio Networks’s April Ryan. He’s telling us black folk that the historic nature of all of this was keeping him up late at night (similar to the historic nature of his candidacy and presidency – which a lot of my contemporaries are still pretty juiced about). But do you see how dismissive he was of the public option (“symbolic of a lot of ideological fights”)? This, in my opinion, helps to clarify what Drew Western talked about in the aforementioned HuffPo link. Please understand that Barack Obama is not weak. He just won’t fight for you or me. Black, White or whatever. But he will run over pretty much anyone that will threaten his place in history.
I would love to see him fight for the little guy. But Big Pharma and Wall Street have him by the short hairs. Oh well.
No the most important aspect, for him, is paying off Big Pharma, the insurance industry and Wall Sttret. Obama is a slug who’s unaware of what’s about to hit him. Peace
Taylor, don’t. Oh. Good. Grief. Me. Missy. Let me ask you a question. How many contries does it take to be involved in a war for it to be considered a world war? NATO has how many members 21, 22, more? Then there’s Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan. Are we up to 30 individual countries yet? Add in the peripheral contributors. I don’t know Taylor? Not, a world war? Peace
No, not a world war.
Good. Grief.
But he will run over pretty much anyone that will threaten his place in history.
In a nutshell, StephenAG.