Comments on: Village Surprise On Health Care

By: laurenc

laurenc — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:25:07 +0000

Excellent points Becca, exactly correct!!

why aren’t there any progressives in the Obama administration?

By: selise

selise — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:48:54 +0000

there is no strong PO in any of the bills. that one, the original hacker proposal, was apparently pre-compromised away too (although that pre-compromise, unlike the single payer one, was not to my knowledge every announced or formally acknowledged).

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-“public-option”-was-sold/

i think the idea now is to try to get something that might, with future improvement, be workable or at least not a major fail. just wish people would stop with “robust” nonsense. over hyping the reform will blow back on the dems. and it’s not right to be less than as accurate as we possibly can in describing the various bills/policies/etc.

my two cents anyway.

By: newtonusr

newtonusr — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:40:13 +0000

I saw and sensed that, too. My take is that LO is anxious to be prescient, partly because he needs the ongoing cred of knowing the Hill, and partly because he believes it, and thinks wasting time on it on cable TV shows would be time better spent laying waste to Republicans for obstructing.

I would dearly love to see him resoundingly repudiated on the former.

And I don’t dislike LO.

By: OldFatGuy

OldFatGuy — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:35:28 +0000

All these village idiots will have some major egg on their faces when all is said and done…can’t wait to see the crow eating contest.

I just hope it’s them that has the egg on their face. I’m not going to be shocked if a bill passes with no PO or with one so watered down it might as well have been no PO. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit. In fact, I’ll be surprised if they DO pass a bill with a strong PO. But then again, I am a long time pessimist.

By: BayGirl

BayGirl — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:29:34 +0000

You are so right Gnome! LO is a perfect example of village idiocy. I usually like him but seeing him on Countdown time after time stating matter of factly that there were not enough votes for the PO no way, no how has been maddening. I even wrote a kos diary about it. The weird part is LO seemed to be enjoying saying that the PO was dead. Whatever. All these village idiots will have some major egg on their faces when all is said and done…can’t wait to see the crow eating contest.

By: realworld

realworld — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:30:01 +0000

Right! What we’re looking at now is a repeat of 1988 when they added “catastrophic coverage” to Medicare only to be forced into repealing it in 1989. Why did that happen? It was repealed because it put all the costs up front and, BY DESIGN, did nothing until a future date. This is what we’re doing again and the lesson isn’t even part of ancient history.

Unfortunatly, when things come undone, the dems ranks are thined, etc, the wrong lessons are sure to be the ones that get promoted. It will be said, the country wasn’t ready for reform, it was too radical, we can’t hold the purple districts with progresive legislation, etc. Whereas the real lesson is, when you pretend to fix things but don’t people won’t stand for it.

By: selise

selise — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:16:45 +0000

lol. well, i wouldn’t but apparently hcan et al. disagree. at least, i don’t have any other explanation for the massive amount of disinformation (the public option will let you choose single payer, the public option is single payer, the public option is like medicare,….) and co-opting of single payer rhetoric, etc. i’ve seen over the past year. the latest “medicare e” for “medicare for everyone” is really outrageous. not medicare. not everyone. and hr 676′s official name since 2003 has been “expanded and improved medicare for all act.”

if selling the po/mandate system is hard going, the answer shouldn’t be pretending it’s something (single payer, medicare) it isn’t. lame.

By: FaeYin

FaeYin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:10:43 +0000

I’m not all that convinced that they are the issue. I do agree that they compromise when they don’t need to… and they are victims of the fact that conservatives have successfully embedded their PR into the culture’s collective brains in these 30 or more years. I think what’s happening right now is what needs to happen. These reasonably intelligent, brainwashed, folks are slowly waking up to the idea that the old accepted ideas just aren’t accepted any more.

The only real question is – do we have that critical mass yet to give us enough power to actually get decent health care?

By: slowereastside

slowereastside — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:04:15 +0000

i should have included the pitch for single payer hr 676:

everybody in, no body out
no deductibles, no copays, no coinsurance
doctors and hospitals compete for your business.

Sure, marketing is key. Because you wouldn’t want PO supporters who think they are really fighting for Medicare For All to mistakenly write, call, march and work for some other program, right?

By: selise

selise — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:03:25 +0000

It’s plain as day; we’ve been sold down the river.

yep.

and whoever thought pre-compromising away single payer and pre-accepting individual mandates because the party leadership could be trusted to do something like hacker’s original public option proposal (actually robust, unlike the weak pos now being fought over) was, imo, nuts.