Am I the only one who thinks that if the Dems pass a bill with mandates and subsidies for poor and moderate income people to purchase it but no public option or competition with the insurers, that it will be pretty much a catastrophe for the Democrats in political terms?
No.
There, that was easy.
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wow. “pretty much a catastrophe for the Democrats in political terms”? that’s pretty amazing.
My answer is easy.
No.
But, but, that Rahm, he’s such a political genius!! Surely he’s thought this through, and . . .
God, Obama, if you go along with this crap, you are stupider than dirt.
gee, Josh, way to state the obvious!
Me & Ludovic are gonna be on Laura Flanders tomorrow.
Go team!
That this is possible at all is so sad.
If proper health care reform could pass (in addition to a few other things) perhaps President Obama could reverse the colors on the 1984 electorate map in 2012 and render the GOP truly impotent in the House and Senate. My generation is ready to vote left for the next 40 years, please don’t throw this away Dems!
First it was, “Do you want ’something’ or ‘nothing’”?
Now it’s “Do you want ‘nothing’ or “worse than nothing”? That’s easy. I’ll take “nothing”.
Send that crap sandwich back to the kitchen.
Pass no bill.
This is getting very weird, but I can almost imagine joining forces with the Right to defeat it if this is the final bill.
Hold hands with Republicans singing We Shall Overcome and Obama finally gets his post-partisan Unity!
On the right side of this page I see three founding fathers who look very bummed out.
Leave this (no public option) bill behind.
Better yet, “Leave the mandate, take the medicare.”
(with apologies to Mario Puzo)
Do you get the feeling Obama is gaming us all? It’s like he’s sitting back and letting the Progressives do his hit jobs? We beat up on the Blue Dogs. When it’s over, he puts his hands in the air and says, “It wasn’t me.”
He and/or Rahm believe the Conventional Wisdom RE: 1994 (namely, that Evil Progressives Killed Clinton’s Health Care Plan and Let The Republicans Win Big That Year). Plus, they want the health lobby, which traditionally donates only to the GOP but has changed its donation patterns as the political power has shifted, to keep throwing money at Democrats as elections are hideously expensive (even a candidate for a rural congressional seat will need to cough up at least $500,000 to have a shot at winning it — add a zero if you’re talking about a seat in the urban areas of places like NY or CA).
This is yet another argument for public financing of elections.
Jane, I was so glad to see you address the issue of what really happened in 1994. The Conventional Storyline is that the public punished the Democrats and Clinton for “being too liberal” (i.e., raising taxes, pushing a health care reform plan) when in fact progressives demoralized by early Clinton sellouts on NAFTA and DADT stayed home in droves.
Jeralyn, speaking of the Baucus bill:
I’d say that’s another “No.”
Like with NAFTA, when Democrats roll over for coporate masters, people buy into Republican phony populism.
No PO, no mandates. Really, no bill.
Excellent point, Phoenix Woman.
I think Rahm’s and BO’s #1 concern via HCR is to corral as much campaign funding from the Health Ins as well as Wall St.
Whatever actual improvements that the bill does for the mass of Americans is secondary.
I remember 94′ and how disillusioned I was about Clinton, I voted for Nader in 96.
It’s possible. We need to put Obama into a place where he says he cannotr get a bill through without a PO. The left of the left made him do it.
Or, as he showed signs fo doing, Obama can step back and lead a movement for change. Fied up. Ready to Go! For a bill with a public option.
this is going to be just like the auto insurance windfall, rates went up when insurance became mandatory
can you imagine what auto insurance rates would be if there were a public option for liability?
I still like thom hartmanns idea, simply allow people to pay into medicare at the rate it costs to add a new member to their roles
I love how the republicans are countering “medicare is a public option” with “medicare is banckrupt”
to which the real answer is;
“IF it’s bankrupt that’s because the reagan.bush administrations gave their assets to the people who don’t use it in an irresponsible attempt at “economic stimulation throught tax cuts”
when you cut taxes you are cutting a service the public voted in.
this is something so simply realised but not till spoken;
“when you cut taxes you are cutting a service the public voted in”
simple stuff right there, and I know I am going to take a hit on the this but I agree with clinton and his “pay go” philosophy but I think it needs to go in both directions
“when you vote in a service you have to demonstrate how it’s going to be funded and where excess in funding will go, when you lower taxes you have to demonstrate which goods will suffer and why that good does not need the funding that will no longer be there“
see my bold there?
that’s the platform democrats need to run with, that WE are the tax cutting party with that principle and the republicans are the “borrowing against our kids” party with their principles
that would be a great campaign I guarantee
We seem to have one set of leaders (the rethugs) who’ve imbraced nihilism and another set of leaders (the WH and many Dems) who just want to appease the nihilists in the name of political expediency. Heaven help us.
LOL. Spot on.
Sounds like OT but really not: Alternet article about what happened to Van Jones and from the horse’s ass’s mouth.
Not sure how this fits in with defeating a bill with no PO, but it sure sucks.
Clever idea to use AC/DC, but if you want a current song that actually speaks directly to why we need healtcare reform, check out “Chemotherapy” by Colin Gawel.
http://www.colingawel.com/videos
Here’s the lyrics:
Seriously, it’s time to toss him over the side of the boat. No more “dual citizenships” in the executive branch.
And we’ll even share our roaches with the Amway types…
Citizen Hamsher:
Who the hell is this “LudovickSpeaks” and why is he/she messin with my breakfast?
Yesterday, in the second half of the comments of masaccio’s post Kip Sullivan showed up. He had some pretty tough criticism of the PO provisions in HR 3200.
Is he right? Is the PO in HR 3200 a half-assed contraption that won’t do
much?
ENTRENCHED whores corruptedby filthy money….let a 17 yr old boy die in Calli…..MURDER BY SPREADSHEET
OUT INTO THE STREETS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faxEtxEzP2M
Citizen Phoenix Woman:
“…when in fact demoralized by early Clinton sellouts on NAFTA and DADT stayed home in droves.”
AND durin’ the congressional elections 0f ‘94, Clinton hunkered down in the White House instead of hittin the road for the Democrats who had put it all on the line for the bastard in the tax hike.
When I hear a politician say small government or lower taxes ,what I hear is, we’re gonna cut your services,
Maybe the town I live in will have to lay off teachers ,or won’t be able to replace it’s aging fire trucks etc. My state taxes will go up to make up for the loss of Fed dollars my property taxes will go up sales taxes will increase
slightly o/t but related.
“The Supreme Court may be about to radically change politics by striking down the longstanding rule that says corporations cannot spend directly on federal elections. If the floodgates open, money from big business could overwhelm the electoral process, as well as the making of laws on issues like tax policy and bank regulation. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09…..=1&hp
“If the first amendment don’t work, the second one will.” (My favorite bumper sticker slogan)
simply stated
I DEMAND THE SAME HEALTHCARE AS CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT
and their families get for life,that we pay for
period ……..full stop
And this is what will happen again in 2010. Are the Blue Dogs too stupid to see this? They would rather not have the political support of liberal Democrats in their fight to keep their seat from going Republican? Blue Dogs are willing to reform health care without a public option in which case health insurance premiums will skyrocket nationwide all to the benefit of the private health insurance market. And what, exactly, is the resulting benefit to consumers? This is their winning political strategy?
You can argue all you want against the public option, but it does give Americans a choice, after all it isn’t mandatory, and it does introduce real competition that will drive down the cost of health care for all Americans. A public option is no different than a public school system in this sense, and just as essential.
Well if the Blue Dogs get their way at least it will be educational. We will be able to see for ourselves what it must have been like for Custer at Little Big Horn. But instead of Custer it will be Emmanuel leading the troops into the GOP ambush. Otherwise the outcome will be the same, and I plan to watch it all unfold on Foxs News while eating popcorn.
“If the first amendment don’t work, the second one will.” (My favorite bumper sticker slogan)”
Is that meant to suggest that if you don’t like what I say ,I will get shot ?
It’s my nightmare. Are the dems SO FRIGGIN’ STUPID to think we will be running to vote for them in 2010 and 2012 if they FORCE us to buy crappy junk from the thieves that got us here in the first place???
I for one, refuse to buy it. They can punish me all they want. Tax penalty? Fine. Cheaper than paying an insurance company for nothing.
It’s starting to sound like the Liberal/Progressive Caucus is starting to twitch. From Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line
So Roll Call is now reporting that some House liberals are already saying — in advance — that they may be prepared to accept a so-called “trigger” for a public option, rather than insisting on the public plan without one.
If they pull this trigger garbage they should all expect to get their asses kicked out of office! What a bunch of spineless weasels!
perris, this is one of the smartest statements I have read in a long time.
ya know what they worry about in France
If Sarkos too short
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…..speech.htm
he stands head and shoulders higher then any leader,cept Sanders here
That would be any corporation…u know, multinational or otherwise. Maybe China or Russia could enable the Conservatives to desocialize our America?
Thanks for posting the link. Interesting that someone in the NYT editorial room can be so disturbed about this. In reality, this SCOTUS vote would be the culmination of events that began the day JFK took the hit. It would represent complete takeover of everything by the corporate-military complex.
You’re so right Phoenix Woman! Why the hell should I be forced to buy insurance from the very companies who are screwing everyone who has their insurance right now? It should be painted as nothing more than a bailout for the insurance industry who’ll get 46 million new customers to screw! If they can’t compete with a public option then they should go out of business. This is ridiculous! The Dems will pay dearly because I for one will stay home and hope every liber and progessive voter will do the same. If the Dems are going to screw us and let the Republicans back in, we’ll help them through inaction and no donations! Idiots!
thanx sunshine
I have to admit, when I wrote that I didn’t realize the power of it till I was done and once done it seemed inspired
so thanx for feeling what I felt when I pushed the submit button!
That was predictable.
The problem is simple;
KarlRahm seems to think that job #1 is building the foundation of a permanentRepublicanDemocratic majority.What the people really want, and why they voted for the Democrats doesn’t matter so much.
Like Thom Hartmann said the other day, a lot of political strategy, on both sides is based on Game Theory, which they haven’t bothered to notice, has been proven to be a fatally flawed analysis.
hope is fading
It was clear the fix was in a month or so ago. The only suspense was to see how the script was written.
Loaded the next audiobook disc, so back to chores.
Furthering the trajectory to Third World status. Soon the federales in Mexico wlll be increasing the manpower on their side of the border, to keep the gringos out.
We are all teabaggers now.
Krawk!
Re: Obama’s Campaign Style recent “Fired-Up” Speechifying, I say this:
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me. `
If I were Obama, I would be speechifying on Wall Street.
Hope is gone. Breaking: Obama enlists Harry Reid to take the wheel on health care.
that Sargent post highlights comments from Mike Capuano. . .
in the ridiculously safe D+32 district of MA-08
he also signed the Sibelius letter
No
We could use a tune about health care and the public option. Bruce, Eldridge, Mayer we need your help.
If Obama actually wanted a PO, he’d be fighting for it. He’s just offering platitudes about how nice a PO would be. He doesn’t want a PO, or is indifferent about it at best.
Is the PO in HR 3200 a half-assed contraption that won’t do
much?
Read Matt Taibbi’s latest piece in Rolling Stone, and you’ll find out that the answer is a resounding YES.
They are fockered, to put it bluntly. This passes, the Movement goes straight to the top.
Social Security and Medicare would not be nor are in fiscal difficulty if all income in any form is taxed to feed them and those funds are fully and completely segregated from any other budgets WashingtonDC treats as open cookie jar accounts.
Tax all capital gains in any form and tax all income with no arbitrary cut offs from $12,000 upwards to all that top 5 percent of Americans income now not touched by SS/Medicare taxes.
As for American healthcare funding for Single Payer/Medicare For All when the current for profits regimes skim and top take is moved from the for profit insurers useless overhead,EO payouts and stock payouts and combined into Single Payer/Medicare For All that produces a significant movement of funding into Single Payer/MedForAll.
It is nonsense to not consider the current amounts of money Americans are spending on healthcare as a resource to be combined into new SPP.
Problem of course is WashingtonDC is awash in a very corrupt form of money politics that many third world governments must envy.
GOPer or Democrat it matters little until the corporatists sponsored money politics are taken out. Americans do not elect K Street players but K Street is calling the march in WashingtonDC.
Barack Obama should do the honorable thing and just blow it up and if that means not getting re-elected in 2012 so what?
More profiles in courage please. Less chicken shit politics kowtow to money politics.
Or maybe just let the GOPers with their insane anti-good governance and no government/useless government approach just run WashingtonDC over the cliff.
Charles Grassley for President!! Eric Cantor for President!!
Newt Gingrich for President!! Rick Santorum for President!!
It is certain that it would be better to let these CrazyTowners just finish what Ronny Raygun and “WMD” Junior Bush and “Darth Torture” Cheney began.
It is also certain no American healthcare “reform” is better than what this Obama WH and Democrat run Congress are trying to pass off as reform if it does not lay foundations for American SPP/MedicareForAll creation.
Single Payer or Medicare For All are real reform.
Mandated sign up and pay in to the current for profit insurers regime with no SPP/Public Option/MFA is not reform. It is robbery by corrupt money politics.
On moral and ethical measurement alone this idea of making money off peoples fear of sickness or medical need or avoiding fiscal ruin is just plain wrong.
It is past time overdue to take the profit out of American healthcare.
The administration allowed the GOP to frame the debate yet again. We need leadership. Why didn’t they learn lessons from the ’90s? Obama actually had advantages the Clintons didn’t have at all in the ’90s. For instance, now, the majority of Americans believe some kind of healthcare reform is needed. Back then, that wasn’t the case.
If the Dems pass a bill that doesn’t contain costs (e.g., drug costs, healthcare delivery systems) but mandates insurance with subsidies for millions more people all under private insurers, total costs will continue to escalate and the Dem party will pay in future elections. I also now avoid the Mainstream Media who discuss issues as if they are discussing horse races. No meaningful substance…
In effect corps would raise prices of the good or services they provide and take our money we spend purchasing those goods and services and use our money for political purposes AND their huge salaries. There is no end to the way they get their hands in our wallets.
Weren’t you paying attention when Dubya updated this saying for us?
Easy indeed, Jane.
And one wonders just why the Gang of Six including my own Senator Kent Conrad are so hellbent on protecting the likes of these guys:
BCBS Execs profited from bogus bonuses.
Funny, these are the guys who’d be at the front of the line to run those oh-so-wacky regional co-ops touted by Conrad, Baucus, Ben Nelson et ill. [yes, et ill is deliberate….]
Public option = Public Watchdog. We need it. Now.
I agree Teddy! No Public Option to compete head to head with the Insurance Companies NO BILL! Anything else is Political suicide for the Democrats! They might as well start packing now as they will be killed at the ballot box come 2010!
bingo
they have no CLUE how to frame these debates, not a single frigging clue
Nice to see JH come around to my point of view:
.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7354
from August 19th.
and your local taxes go up more then the cut, they cut trillions, give back millions to the middle class and trillions to the wealthy and call it a job well done
that is their motus operendi
Right and corporate lobbyists will have no influence on how that law is written, im sure.
they seem to have stopped flogging co-ops, is that even part of the pretense anymore? that should be a dead giveaway to anyone who pushed the “co-op” idea that it was always a fraud and a red herring.the mandates (robery and forced, upward “redistrbution”)are the whole plan. the next move will be to gut the low income subsidied (which are already weak)
Yes, I was … but you left out the forever seeming four second pause.
Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me twice …
One thousand,
two thousand,
three thousand,
four thousand …
You can’t be fooled again!
(I’m pretty sure that’s very close, if not exact.)
My bad, because you’re right; the pause to give the hamsters more time to generate power to his feeble brain was key to the whole embarrassing episode!
“God, Obama, if you go along with this crap, you are stupider than dirt.”
lol – MM I hadn’t thought of it in those exact terms, but that says it all.
For the moment to be truly appreciated, one must see the expression in his eyes – the same kind of dumb-struck terror in the eyes, as when he heard, Mr. President, we are under attack, and it’s not from Pet Goats.
Unless I’m mistaken (and it wouldn’t be the first time), I don’t think he said the phrase “shame on me”. That’s the part he couldn’t remember. A mind like a steel trap, nothing in – nothing out
yep, that was my first take on the whole thing. I’ve heard that will happen right after the snowball fight in hell is over.
Thank you for speaking so candidly and I am a Fiscal Conservative and a Social Moderate, Democrat. With age comes wisdom and I was deceived when younger and erroneously voted Republican. Democrats are the true Fiscal Conservatives and for the average working American.
I read this at least three times, and not once did it make sense. I think I know what you were trying to say, but it needs punctuation, or restructuring, or something.
Luck.
Remove the “pretty much” part, and I agree with Josh.
The President may be “all fired up and ready to go” for health care reform but his speech to the AFL-CIO made it plain that he only “still believes” in the public option. Some folks “still believe” in the Second Coming of Christ; most know it isn’t going to happen in their lifetime.
“Change we can believe in” has become “Triangulation we can believe in.”
Without a strong public option to reduce costs, Obamacare will be another bonanza for the health insurance industry. The industry will be rewarded with a universal health insurance mandate which will bring in megabucks from the young and healthy. The industry will refuse to insure people with ilnesses and dump them on the “co-ops” or “exchanges” which will be too weak to reduce costs – if they are able to survive at all.
Those who already have private insurance will be able to keep it as long as they can afford it. When they can no longer afford it, they will be forced into the coo-ops and exchanges.
The industry may have to give up the practice of rescinding existing policies for pre-existing conditions – a practice which affects only about 25,000 a year. The industry will consider this a fair trade for another enormous bite out of the American family pocketbook.
We can expect the employer mandate to die with the public option.
Canada Health premiums:
http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/ms…..emium.html
Over $28000/yr income:
1 person $54/mo
2 persons $96/mo
over 2…108/mo
ghostof911,
The moment I heard that Obama chose Rahm Emanuel, an Israel Firster, to be his right-hand man was the same moment I knew that Obama would keep us neck-deep in war against the Muslim World. And the moment I learned from Glenn Greenwald that Rahm Emanuel is the Dr. Frankenstein behind the Blue Dogs’ rise to power was the same moment I knew that Obama was nothing more than a puppet for our moneyed elites. So I’ve pretty much written Obama off as a president who’ll stand up against America’s war machine and standing up for ordinary working Americans!
Write these FDL comments on the fly between other biz — sometimes do try to circle back to edit — often do not being these comment threads move down and off home page pretty fast here at FDL.
My point was what!? A bit squishy?
Take two below–
Take the profit bloat out of current for profit health insurers — roll current regimes inflated overhead/executive officer payouts/Wall St.stock dividends and profits into / towards first steps in creation of American Single Payer Healthcare. Must move towards SPP/Medicare For All. Now. Sooner to be sure. Not later–or never.
Gotta run >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ;>
Is this unusual for Josh Marshall? I had the impression he was on the right wing. Did he support the Iraq war? Or was he the one who supported the Iraq war until about 3 days before it started?
Still the whole mandate thing seems bizarre to me. To be honest with the level of aid to pay those bills that the current bill seems to be leaning towards I think it would be a disaster of a bill even with the pubic option. After all even with a robust option that controls costs and doesn’t wait until 2013 and is open to over a hundred million not 9 (ie a fantasy option that will never even come close to happening), it is still a hugely regressive tax.
This bill needs to be buried.
I was just reading Matt Taibbi’s story on how the kibosh was put on Health Car Reform from the start. Single Payer was put out to pasture and not allowed to be seen during meetings (That were suppose to be on C-Span!).
The “liberal media” has failed its job basically being “Bipartisan” to a fault for no reason other than do so. Look Conservatives have their own channel, its their fault if they can’t afford Cable or Sat TV to watch it.
They are not doing their own investigations into our health care system and concluding Single Payer only makes sense but to add it might not be politically possible and to look for alternatives.
Massive Fail…
To be honest, Maddow and Keith focus on well, Bullshit. The DOJ has announced they are looking into the abuses by the Bushies; let it go, we don’t need to keep talking about people 90% of the public doesn’t give two shits about. Its too bad we have all those people incarcerated on trumped up charges or no charges at all and I support getting to the bottom of torture debate, but the real issues are HEAR AT HOME and a health care system that doesn’t work.
If the Progressives don’t vote for the House/Senate bill and defeat it, I’m fine with that, but what the “liberal” media should be doing after that is DAMAGE CONTROL and point out that the fight is not over, we need to eliminate anything that gets in the way of reform.
There’s no automatic that Wiener’s amendment will get into the final House bill, so a vote on Single Payer might not happen anyway.
That comes out to just under $700 a year for single person. I would be down for that.
You forgot the “fun” part -
The current adjusted net income thresholds are:
$20,000 – 100 percent subsidy
$22,000 – 80 percent subsidy
$24,000 – 60 percent subsidy
$26,000 – 40 percent subsidy
$28,000 – 20 percent subsidy
The regular premium assistance was enhanced effective July 1, 2005, to allow more British Columbians to qualify and to allow those already receiving a partial subsidy to qualify for a higher subsidy level.
Prior to July 1, 2005, the adjusted net income thresholds were:
$16,000 – 100 percent subsidy
$18,000 – 80 percent subsidy
$20,000 – 60 percent subsidy
$22,000 – 40 percent subsidy
$24,000 – 20 percent subsidy
Under the Canadian system I would qualify for the 80% subsidy based on last year’s tax return. They would cover $518 of the $648 = $130 a year out of pocket.
Its still a massive fail by the media because only Democracy Now has had somebody representing the Canadian Health Care system – http://www.democracynow.org/20…..my_douglas
We need to stop putting our “unique” American spin on the same issues that face others around the world, its ridiculous.
I know this is way EPU’d, but thanks for the update. It makes much better sense now.
There is a Public Option for Liability in California. I have it!
Its $425 a year…
But no comp and collision
Some states do have State sponsored Car Insurance
There’s a church down the road from us that’s called “Jesus Is Alive.” Those folks must believe in “triggers” and “co-ops” as well.