… a “Medicare for all” public option….

Which isn’t on offer in any of the legislation. And because it isn’t, public option is a FAIL in the making. And when public option does FAIL, it’s going to weaken the Medicare brand too.

* * *

The worst thing about this is that the obvious response is tax resistance, for which the right has a well-developed infrastructure and ideology. One more way that the Dems are enabling right wing populism….

Dropped single payer before the health care debate even began despite his love and insistance upon a single payer option during his lofty, deceptive campaign.

That’s not true; although Obama supported single payer in 2003, he ran slightly to the right of Hillary, with his Harry & Louise style ads in Ohio. Once in office, however, his administration, despite the promises of an open and transparent process, excluded the “little single payer advocates” and censored them.

FISA.

This site is THE go-to source for what’s really going on with the health care reform effort, and the analyses of “working the yo-yo” etc. are right on target, but I think something is missing from this post, and that something is what we are going to do to outmaneuver Rahm or whoever the corporate lackeys are in the WH and Congress. What are the talking points? Who’s at the top of the phone call list? Our calls are clearly working and we need to do more of them, but is there any way to break through the broadcast media noise (other than Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow)?

As is often pointed out here and elsewhere, it’s the lame excuses that have so often in the past quashed progressive polices. But we aren’t falling for that anymore.

We deserve a “Medicare for all” public option.
No co-ops, no triggers–real competition NOW. Lives are depending on it.

Traditional media outlets have been declaring the PO dead for two months now, and yet it lives, and I am increasingly hopeful that we can win this one. Viva the PO!

I wonder if he has considered that all those millions and millions of dollars he needs to raise from small contributions to run for re-election in a couple of years will be going to pay for increased insurance premiums and not political donations?

I also wonder if anyone in the WH has contemplated how furious folks are going to be when they’re subject to “mandates” that extract $$$ from their pockets to give it to insurance companies, while insurance companies

** continue their immoral rate increases;
** continue their immoral and capricious denials of service;
** continue their obscene payments to their executives.

Do they think they can push these disastrous events off past 2012 [”effective in 2013″] and that no one will “notice” while they crow about enacting health insurance reform?

And the IRS is going to be utilized to enforce this??

Whatever their “motives” as a bunch of bought-off politicians, I can’t believe they don’t see this as a disaster for every Democrat who supports it. Perhaps that’s why some Republicans are running towards a public option.

I also think it’s a good idea to start calling it a Medicare public option or a Rockefeller public option and to constantly distinguish it from all the other faux public options.