The Baucus bill was "authored" by a former WellPoint VP. Tom Carper admits that PhRMA paid good money for advertising in support of the $80 billion deal they cut with the White House, so the Senate must honor it. And now the overweening concern of Pat Roberts is for the rights of lobbyists:
[T]he thing that I’m trying to point out is we would have at least 72 hours for the people that the providers have hired to keep up with all of the legislation that we pass around here, and the regulations that we pass around here, to say “hey, wait a minute. Have you considered this?”
I’m all for transparency and wish that committees would put their bills online before voting on them. But Roberts and others who are asking for 72 hours to read the bill are trying to stall past the October 15 deadline. The Finance Committee has to report a bill by then in order to be able to use the reconciliation process for Senate passage of certain parts of the bill, which would require only 51 rather than 60 votes. Kagro has the rundown.
Now the October 15 deadline is at the discretion of the Budget Committee chairman — Kent Conrad. And Conrad doesn’t want to use reconciliation. Neither do the Gang of 7 now forming in the Senate to seek a "bipartisan" solution.
But it’s touching that Pat Roberts thought it was a good idea to speak up for the silent, oppressed lobbyists anyway in order to play for time.
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Good to know.
Clearly, I had drastically underestimated Roberts’ capacity for empathy toward the truly suffering.
Oh, BTW, this is the same Roberts who never did follow up on his promises to investigate Cheney back when the good Senator was chairing SSCI, I presume?
Truly, his compassionate views on the sanctity of corporate profits are a wonder to behold.
I was a DC lobbyest for ten years and can say that it DOES take a little while to read thru this stuff (nearly 1500 pages) and try to figure out if there are SERIOUS problems for everyone. And, let me tell you! Congressional staff screw up ROYALLY sometimes. Other things are just the product of not really thinking things thru before writing proposed law. Yah. 72 hours isn’t much time.
He could have made a fake, but correct argument of “let’s be transparent and let our constituents read what we’re about to do.” That would be much more difficult to pierce.
But no, he used the language he actually meant. And there’s not a peep to be heard from the rest of the committee members about the “people that the providers have hired.”
It’s so damning. On all of them.
These Senators are a laughingstock, with all their stupid non-Constitutional rules and procedures that they use to justify doing the bidding of their corporate paymasters. These rules are just rules you made up, fellahs. Including the October 15th “deadline” for reconciliation bills.
Really, the rest of America sees what you are doing, Senators. We can see you! And we know why you’re acting this way.
All your made-up, arcane, ludicrous rules and procedures are simply a way to ensure the Senate doesn’t do the people’s bidding. And it’s quite obvious that’s what you’re doing.
I think I said yesterday that the Senate is a joke. The House once in a while does the peoples’ business but the Senators pontificate and bluster to each other. They have become ossified.
Lobbyists have had plenty of time to read the existing language. They are sitting in the room while the changes are being made. They tell their pet Senators how to vote.
I call bull on this argument.
Circle the Limo’s boys.. we’ve got to protect the oligarchs!
mmm, I believe one spells it “oligarhy.” ;]
Hell they often wrote it.
ES LOL!
The understood sense of the word “provider” are the doctors, nurses, allied health workers, and the facilities they work in. There’s ambiguity introduced in Roberts’ whinging statement.
the “right to lobby” is really the right to petition the government for redress
this is one of the reasons we must rescind corporate personhood, they should have no right to petition the government for anything, it should be a monitored priviledge.
we have to do whatever it takes to keep corporations from buying more law for themselves and one of those methods will be to restrict their rights to lobby
watch the wealthy politicians flock from public service when corporations are no longer allowed a “right to lobby and buy american law”
I have a great idea for a “trigger”;
“the trigger is triggered when a person doesn’t want to use a private provider for their health care”
there, that’s a trigger I can live with
Sooooooooo-eeeeeeeee!
PIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah. The rules. 10/15 is the deadline. Unless Conrad says it isn’t. What the hell kind of rule is that?
This man is an obvious moron but his wording above does reveal either intentionally or not the way they see the situation. Lobbyist are seen as representing the interests of “providers” he says. Now insurers don’t provide a damn thing; in the case of health care the providers are doctors and nurses. Insurers merely pay out for services provided by someone else with the money that people pay as premiums.
This task of paying out claims can be performed by a machine or a central entity or anybody else. There is absolutely no reason for private insurers to exist in the provision of health. They merely operate by keeping a portion of the money that people supply for paying for the services of health providers.
This notion that private entities must be involved in every type of transaction is a religion to these Ayathollas. Practicality and common sense is always subservient to their dogma. The irony is that these people hate competition and always demand preferential government largesse provided by tax payers money, when they are the recipients. Think financial bailouts, defense contracts, farm and big business subsidies, preferential deals on public oil and mineral rights and on and on. These people are a parasitic blight on the society and loathesome.
Refrain from knee-jerking long enough to consider that YOU might actually wish to see for YOURSELF what potential law would actually mean in YOUR life before you tell YOUR senator and rep that YOU want this bill passed or defeated.
The bill is nearly 1500 pages long. We all took “speedy ready,” but seriously, how long would it take to actually look at real language and decide if it works as you’d like it to?
Keep in mind here that we are talking about YOUR health care.
It would take at least 72 hours to find out what bloggers, who actually read thru the stuff, think. Even AARP would need some time.
Senator Roberts one of the main men to delay and divert the investigations into false pre war intelligence. I know holding people responsible for torturing is critical. But what ever happened to holding anyone accountable for the creation, cherry picking and dissemination of false pre war intelligence.
Remember the Niger Documents?
Remember Phase I and Phase II of the SSCI? Not one person has been held accountable. many are above the law
http://thinkprogress.org/roberts-coverup/
Where is Dougie Feith and Micheal Ledeen and team
http://crooksandliars.com/2008…..propaganda
Roberts is a “stall” master. How long did he and team keep the Office of Special Plans off limits to the pre war intelligence investigation. Stall master
What is up with the folks in Kansas?
Thanks for the background. Good questions.
Since when do Senators represent a lobby group? Aren’t they supposed to represent the voters?
the reports
http://74.125.113.132/search?q…..#038;gl=us
More
http://74.125.113.132/search?q…..#038;gl=us
More
http://74.125.113.132/search?q…..#038;gl=us
Not one person or persons have been held accountable for all of that false pre war WMD horseshit.
Hundreds of thousands are dead DEAD, injured and millions are displaced.
Hey just move on, forward, next chapter, turn the page….PATHETIC
As the cat says about the proverbial dog who wants back in the house, “[You’re] obviously deranged.”
You see, it’s a House of prostitution…Senate, to be sure. That just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.
I’m watching these proceedings and I see them texting their little fingers off while going over the provisions. Its like they have to check in to see “what they think” about things…………….I guess this is the modern day version of puppet strings…… What’s next? Necktie cameras and earplug mic’s? Why don’t they just get the lobbyists to sit on their freaking’ laps?
“my right to lobby”??
I think the Roberts SCOTUS is deciding my lobbying rights as we blog.
The Congress is back in session and doing the dirty work for the Medical Industrial Complex.
mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,
lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M,
conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M, boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M, j wilson 800K
were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.
(Source: OpenSecrets.org)
Co-Author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of a Recent Harvard Study on Annual Deaths of America’s Uninsured, says the lack of coverage can be tied to about 45,000 deaths a year in the United States. The only way to affordably cover all Americans is through a Medicare-for-All, Single-Payer System. A Single-Payer System would generate $300-$400 billion in administrative savings annually, enough to cover all of the uninsured, and to plug the gaps in coverage for Americans with only partial coverage. Obviously, Medicare-for-all is anathema to the insurance industry. What politicians are doing is saving insurance industry profits, by sacrificing American lives.
12 Million Americans were denied health care coverage by the Medical Industrial Complex because they had a pre-existing medical condition. 12K Americans are denied insurance coverage everyday by a for-profit Insurance bureaucrat. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)
Medical malpractice lawsuits are a hot topic but, are they? Tort Reform is such a “Red Herring” and is easily disproved. A 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.
bush(43) economic speech writer david frum, at least, is willing to admit the idea about selling insurance across state lines is a crock:
New Jersey health policies cost more in large part because New Jersey hospitals and doctors charge more. If I buy a cheaper Kentucky policy that reimburses my providers at Kentucky rates, leaving me to pay the balance, how much good does that do me? And if the Kentucky policy is made to pay New Jersey rates, there vanishes my low Kentucky price.
These are some of the easily refuted arguments bought and paid for by the Medical Industrial Complex to derail any chance of their criminally massive profits being reduced.
Follow the Money: Link
Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!
(Toll Free # House and Senate)
1-866-338-1015 _____ 1-866-220-0044
1-800-473-6711 _____ 1-866-311-3405
Sign Single-Payer Petition: Link
Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.
SEMPER FI!
QUIZ Roberts about the contents of the Bill after Roberts has had 72 hours to read the Bill.
No cheating by letting Roberts lean over and ask his staff, err, lobbyists buddies what the answers are.
If he fails the quiz, public option automatically gets put in the bill.
American dream
because George Carlin “you have to be asleep to believe it”