We’re all getting Stupacked.

Jane, did you finish your pj yesterday? If not, I’m still available. Was going to phone some of those who voted aye on the amendment but nay on the bill. Not that I expect to get any real answers, but what the heck. Unless you still need to assistance with Dan, I think I’ll make those calls, just for ducks.
How would I contact Dan?

Ah, yes, Dennis Kucinich.

The guy who switched from antichoice to prochoice so he could run for president.

The guy who brought pie charts to a radio debate.

The guy whose every move screams “backbencher”.

Jane -
What’s happening with Accountability Now?

And how ’bout those private insurance mandates? Eh? Pretty snazzy, if you’re Aetna!

The guy who waited until after he was out of the running to get a hair cut that didn’t look like he cut it himself?
Sorry. You inspired me to share.

The guy who advertised for a girlfriend during a campaign speech.

The centrist minority has the whammy over the left minority. The left neads a majority to be powerful. The centrists can play procedural games and suck up to the Republicans.

I’m probably less critical of the progressives who caved in than most people will be. They had to ask whether the bill was better than nothing, and whether they could block the bill this year and get a better one next year. They answered yes and probably not in that order, and they were probably right.

Things were simple for the anti-healthcare Democrats. All they had to do was wreck. The pro-healthcare anti-abortion people just had to convince themselves that blocking abortion was more important than getting healthcare to people, but were able to find a way to do both.

But the progressives had the tough choices. It will always be that way until we get a majority.

ya’ll are hammerin the patron saint of progressives, it’s no wonder the left is almost as fucked up as the right!

She’s now his third wife.

sorry if im repeating. stopping by quickly and reading fast.

why didn’t 3 of those who supported HR 676 vote NO on HR 3962 with rep kucinich? instead of whipping the vote for 676, kill 3963 with stupak amendment.

That works if you see politics as a personality cult, not so much for organizing around principles.

Good question.

There is a virus afflicting Congress that I refer to as Rahm’s Revenge. Symptoms are similar to Montezuma’s Revenge, i.e. nothing passes except for watered down shit.

A huge tactical achievement? Who cares? Tactical achievements for us are as meaningless as legislative wins for Rahm. I don’t like the bill.

LOL You got up using a baseball bat this morning – have at it.

Yeah, and good for him. But I was stunned when I saw him say it, and I thought it lowered his gravitas. If it gets any lower they’ll have to tether him to keep him from floating off into space.

If by ‘patron saint’ you mean ‘someone who is largely ineffectual’, then I guess we are.

Instead of doing the third-party flirt, Kucinich should have raised money to set up the sort of patronage system for progressives that Republicans have for their people: If you run as a Republican, they will provide you with your own campaign staff (and later, congressional office staff), tons of money, professional groomers, etc. All you have to do is show up. (Of course, this means that you’re helpless without their aid, which is part of the plan — it’s easier for them to enforce loyalty that way.)

But of course doing that would take time, effort, organizational skills, and forbearance, as well as cash. Much more fun and far less work just to holler “Impeach Bush!” every so often to keep the shekels rolling in for your own campaign.

You have to admit that she is highly decorative.

The great Arthur Silber got the health care fiasco dead right.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/

thanks Jane

Kucinich has fighting for the people for a very long time!

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

“No matter what you may think about the adequacy of the public plan itself…that is a huge tactical achievment.”

You know how much I admire your courage, intelligence and hard work Sister Jane but please tell me that you are not even a little satisfied with this “tactical” victory…it seems to me that your spin is like rejoicing about gettin’ ta choose silk instead of hemp for the hangman’s noose!

No, dear Sister, there were a lot of things that went terribly wrong this weekend and got us very much closer to the end of democracy. First, the pathway to eventual national single payer was forever closed. Second, the C Street crazies in the House of Representatives became an imuteable force in all progressive problem solvin’ legislation. Third, access to abortion might just have become impossible for ANY woman in this country and certainly impossible for the poor and this all without a single vote in the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment. And finally, the ground was set for a return to congressional power of a much more violent and fascist Republican party…if not in the majority, certainly enough gains in the South and border States to allow for a viable minority with which ObamaRahma can triangulate the Democratic Party right out of power. This is the biggest threat from what happened in the healthcare debacle and unless we start right now gearin’ up money and candidates for a nationwide primary assault on Democratic incumbants, we will have a repeat of the Clinton nightmare but Obama won’t survive to 2013.

Please tell me where I’m wrong in my assessment, Citizen Hamsher, it seems that the Likud element of the Democratic Party has studied the New Deal also and is makin’ sure that it doesn’t happen again!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE FUCKIN’ AMMUNITION, AND REMEMBER THAT WE ARE KILLIN PEOPLE EVERYWHERE BUT WHERE IT COULD DO THE MOST GOOD!

I’m feeling about the same way I did when FISA passed.

Not finding hope anywhere.

Stupakistan !

blogger, Katherine Huff

if the House vote was close and included some giveaways, the Senate Dem caucus is going to look like an auction.
I cant imagine how they are going to get to 60 to get it off the floor…unless they do reconciliation.
of course, the first vote doesnt matter.

Yeah, she’s smokin’ hott. I envy him, but I just don’t think it made him look presidential.

To his credit, his State single-payer amendment was about the only way we were possibly going to move incrementally toward real healthcare reform, rather than a massive artifice that incentivizes huge year-over-year cost increases as expected subsidies are built into the base price of coverage.

You can’t subsidize demand, it just makes everything more expensive; faster. You thought skyrocketing college tuition was out-of-control; they’ll have nothing on health insurance premiums (now that we’re subsidizing them without controls).

As flawed as it is, it’s still better than what exists now, which is enforced medical bankruptcy and debt peonage to the health insurance industry. Furthermore, it’s good enough to raise fear in the hearts of the Chamber of Commerce folks, which is why they’re running ads against it constantly.

Citizen Hamsher:

I guess what I am callin’ for is allout war against the Democratic Party leadership and the congressional Blue Dogs…forget about pressurin’ the White House, make Obama come out and stand up either for the progressives in the caucus or the fascists. And remember way back last September when I said that all resources and energy needed to be placed in the House of Representatives for buildin’ a force that could challenge the leadership…well here we are and our troops are scattered all over the fuckin’ battlefield!

Are people beginning to realize that “reform” in a corrupt and ossified political and social system is impossible? A total collapse based on the inherent contradictions in the current system is far more likely than the possibility of any transformational change.

Here’s some hope:

The very fact that this bill is STILL under heavy attack by the Chamber of Commerce AND the insurance lobby. Why? Because they fear — no, make that know — that even a weak public option is strong enough to eventually take out the private insurance companies, thus resulting in single payer after all. (“Trojan Horse for single payer” is the phrasing used by the far-right inmates of the Heritage Foundation.)

But organizing takes time, patience, and planning.

I am depressingly in total agreement with you. The Battle of the Buldge was a tactical victory for the German army but they were eventually reversed by a superior force.

It all feels like kabuki to me. Rahm is not going to let anything happen that will hurt the ins. cos. and PHARMA. With the biologics problem still there we will still have medical bankruptcy. Poor women will be having children they can’t afford or dying in the effort to not have them. Young voters are going to sit on their hands or vote against the people who forced them to buy insurance or pay a penalty.

Hard to see much of a silver lining here. No ponies in sight.

I care !

and we should all care. this wasn’t just about the fight, but learning how to fight and move beyond just being online fangurls and boyz singing in a reactive-only chorus

this was integral to our evolving and maturing as a modern progressive movement

I may be as pissed and disheartened as most, but I do see what Jane and others accomplished without substantial resources as proof of what can and must be done

Hair cuts, girl friends WTF?
Thanks for NOT trying to polish this turd of a bill,Jane.

I disagree, and Jane has gone on record that she’s against this bill. That leaves us with only the tactical victory, which means nothing to me.

No matter what you think of the adequacy of the public plan itself (and it is woefully inadequate), that is a huge tactical achievement.

it was a huge distraction that sucked attention from other issues. as a matter of public policy it is NOT a stepping stone to medicare for all (before privatization from pure single payer) and i will happily debate anyone on that issue.

it was used by less than honest allies to confuse people about what single payer hr 676 actually is and why something like hr 676 can work in ways that a public option in a multipayer system never can. it was used as an excuse to betray the actual progressive grass roots — who have been for years exclusively single payer advocates.

it is a flawed policy and while i admire the effort and dedication of those who made the effort, it is time to put that flawed and failed policy and political strategy aside. please please please don’t waste any more effort, time, attention or money on it. we have a very very long battle for comprehensive universal healthcare. let’s at least fight for a policy that can deliver that (it doesn’t have to be single payer if anyone’s got other ideas, but it does have to be a policy that makes sense).

please.

p.s. urging everyone to read this diary by Dakinikat for some context

Seconded.

And it’s branded the death merchant health insurance oligopoly.

But if we are looking at this in terms of tactics, can we get away from the pledges? Any pledge that requires us to repeatedly go back to the pledgers to reconfirm that they are still on board with the initial pledge defeats the purpose of a pledge. We were showing through our actions that we knew the pledges held no value. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to keep going back.

Citizen Phoenix Woman:

Respectufully, the “time, patience and planning” was done in organizin’ around healthcare. The infrastructure was established to go right after the Clintonista leadership in the House of Representatives and a simple Medicare Plus public option would have established a progressive majority to face down Pelosi-Hoyer. That infrastructure would have been enough to build upon in targeted campaigns in 2010. This is exactly what the DFL needs to be doin’ in Minnesota in killin’ the Independence Party but I’m afraid the old, fossilized leadership has sold the farm again! (That is, whatever family farms still exist thanx to crony DFL politics).

For Christ’s sake, PW.

I usually like your stuff, but first of all, you’re wrong about Kucinich, and second, it’s just plain stupid to get into a circular firing squad at this point. You sound like a winger.

Conservatives won.

progressives lost.

you can “bright side” as much as you want, but this is a disgusting result, and if this is the way fdl rolls over for the sake of dems, then I feel less inclined to give money to their efforts.

I think the big task now is to try to keep senate democrats from commiting further transgression against the american people, and either get the billed killed (unlikely) or hold off bad amendmants. i am cringing at the thought of what the senate dogs might be able to do.

win or lose it’s worth fighting for what we think is right. even when we lose, we learn and are better prepared for the next fight.

Citizen RevDeb:

If you want a good look at Clintonista-Likudnik politics getta look at the fossilized DFL Party in Minnesota.

Had Kucinich found 3 votes to kill H R 3962 with the Stupak Amendment, he could have robbed Pelosi of her ability to proclaim a historic victory, which she, in fact, didn’t achieve, but fucking threw away.

And today Americans across the country would be hailing Kucinich as a hero and as the guy who saved the Democratic Party from itself.

FDL doesn’t roll over for anyone. Jane was the strength behind great efforts to lead Progressives to the right decision. Now we push some more and harder. It’s that simple – just keep on going.

So what’s Obama going to do about all this, Norske? Wouldn’t you say the President has more to do with it than online progressives?

I haven’t seen any discussion about the provision to cut Medicare spending by $400 billion in the next 10 years. How is cutting Medicare funding a good thing? Already it is getting hard to find doctors who will accept patients with Medicare — won’t cutting funding will only exacerbate that problem?

What am I missing here?

The left neads a majority to be powerful. The centrists can play procedural games and suck up to the Republicans.

We need to understand the full implications of this point, it’s very true. For decades now Democratic “centrists” and corporatists have been able to say to Left Democrats, essentially, “SFTU or we’ll leave you to the tender mercies of the Republicans.” And we haven’t much answer for that. Aside from rare opportunities for the left to coalesce with the right against the center, as happened in the first anti-bailout vote last year, the left is forced to weigh the practical against the ideal in coalition with the center. Although this is what apologists for Obama say as well, there is a difference: there are compromises they are willing to make that we aren’t. We unfortunately need to learn to play on this field (Kudos, Ms. Hamsher for a fine job, by and large) long-term and learn to better appreciate the difference between a partial victory and a sellout.

no, i think he’s right. third parties are a waste of time and money.people who want third parties are still looking at this as mainly a political problem, when its mainly a class problem. we should take on the corporate intertests and regain control of the democratic party.a third party would just be like a pressure bleed valve to keep corporate class control strong by blowing off malcontents into the blow off tank of a third party.

why didn’t 3 of those who supported HR 676 vote NO on HR 3962 with rep kucinich? instead of whipping the vote for 676, kill 3963 with stupak amendment.

i got a message from a state NOW asking for a vote against 3963. don’t know why more group didn’t (at least that i know of). fdl was in a good position to do that, having helped raise over $400,000 in support of the cpc members who had promised to vote “no”.

i guess for folks who are caught up in supporting the dems, it’s hard to make that call.

Sorry but there is only one way we can get something to happen favorably and that is to organize now to challenge those congresscritters who are in oppo. Senators are first then Congress.

“I may be as pissed and disheartened as most, but I do see what Jane and others accomplished without substantial resources as proof of what can and must be done”

And there in lies the problem, we will never have the resources to alter the inevitable course. Ned Lamont was a tactical victory, Obama was a tactical victory. The only thing we prooved is that we know what “must be done” and that we ‘can not’ effect the final outcome. We still don’t have a public option and are not going to get one because the Senate is never going to vote for one. Then we will get a “reform bill” that is worse than useless and we can call that a tactical victory too and justify it by saying sometime we have to take a step backwards before we move foreward. I don’t want tactical victories, I want single payer health care for America.

i lived in cleveland when kucinich was mayor and i think you’ve got it wrong.

With the exception of Kucinich and Massa, all of the House progressives abandoned their July 30 pledge to vote against any bill that didn’t have a public option with rates tied to Medicare.

I am increasingly reluctant to contribute to any of these people, even those promoted here. We donate, they get lots of progressive $$, and then they abandon the principles. Seems like there’s a lot to be disappointed in with Alan Grayson, to whom I also donated.

Maybe I just keep my hard earned money in my pocket from now on, since my (e.g., OUR) support seems wasted.

Ditto, John Emerson @43 – pw’s criticsm is petty and personal. I’m surprised.

What am I missing here?

there is a ton of waste in MediCare Advantage programs – that’s what those proposed cuts are aimed at – Rick Scott, AHIP and the rest of the cabal are the ones misleadingly referring to them as cuts to MediCare

3963 was a typo. My bad! It’s H R 3962. (if you know it, sorry! it’s still good to correct it for the benefit of others.)

In some states, the Right is attempting to get birth control pills clasified as abortion pills. Under the house bill, women will be denied birth control in those states.

What public option? At best, the weak option in the house bill will be used as a dumping ground for sick people the insurance companies don’t want. Big Insurance is now GUARANTEED 11% of middle class incomes, at a time when those incomes are dropping. What a regressive tax!

It’s the anniversary of the Berlin wall. Let’s tell Obama to TEAR DOWN THAT WALL that prevents Americans from purchasing cheaper medications outside our borders.

amen.

yes.

Well as a major thief of medicare funds I am sure Rick Scott sees any crack down as a loss.

My money is now going to go to NNAF to help fund abortions for women who can’t afford them. At Brendan’s suggestion, all donations will be made in honor of Stupak and he will be thanked for them.

I’m tired of giving to politicians who turn around and screw us because they “had no choice.”

Conservatives won.

True.

progressives lost.

we were fucking betrayed.

you can “bright side” as much as you want

I’ve got nothing but sunshine for Pelosi, Rahm and Van Hollen… right.

If this is the way fdl rolls

this isn’t hcan, jackoff. who do you see rolling over for the dems around here?

I wasn’t asking anyone to celebrate a tactical victory – and I’ve been here long enough to know that isn’t what Jane is calling for

tactical knowlege – yes. I can not think of a campaign or action wherein so many of us got up close and personal with the actual sausage making process – that is key to moving forward. we aint ever gonna beat them at their game until we have a more thorough understanding of the game itself – that is what we take away from this struggle

my mistake. thank you for the correction, it is much appreciated!

Yeah, if “tactical” victories mean taking steps backwards it won’t be long before we see the “defeated” conservatives moving to the front of the line. Gives a whole new meaning to Pyrrhic victory. There is no real public option in this turd everyone is trying to put a shine on.

Wall Street this morning:

Market is up +1.49%

Wellpoint (WLP) +1.86%
CIGNA (CI) -0.29%
AETNA (AET) +0.72%
UnitedHealth (UHN) +0.45%

Obviously, they’re not worried at this point.

Obviously, they’re not celebrating at this point.

No matter how you cut it progressives lost big and decisively on healthcare, capping a long series of defeats on the economy, the wars, government transparency, and domestic spying. Our biggest defeat was I think the whole idea of electing more and better Democrats. We did and it is clear that has made no difference whatsoever. My question to Jane is when will she move into opposing this healthcare bill and process. The House was the one hope to get even a halfway decent bill and that flopped. The Senate bill is worse and the conference report will be ghastly. At what point, is the liberal blogosphere going to accept that it has been had and move into opposition to Democrats generally. Because until we do, they are going to keep playing us like they have for years.

I asked Congressman Kucinich if there was any attempt to whip those 14 votes. He said no, there wasn’t.

Is Kucinich saying that not even he tried to whip those 14 votes?

I don’t get it.

The handwriting is so on the wall. Congress will never pass good legislation. It’s disabled from doing so.

Yet none of the talk here is about how to replace the current system.

Bitching and moaning won’t help. Nor will planning and organizing within the confines of the current system.

The Democrratic party needs to be overthrown.

hear, hear!

We were betrayed. The country lost. We have to shout as loudly as possible that the Democratic Party leadership betrayed us all.

Pelosi cannot be allowed to solidify her narrative of having achieved a victory.

you finally come over from the threads of sunshine, lollipops, and roses, and you insult FDL ?!?!

dude. think. why would someone who paid a price for calling out the Veal Pen, “roll over” for Centrist Dems ???

Very similar to the economic system. Collapse is more likely than conscious transformative change.

that was our job.

let me know when the activism switches to “against the bill”, so that progressive ideals are moved into the bills the same way consevative ideas are.

I haven’t seen any discussion about the provision to cut Medicare spending by $400 billion in the next 10 years.

Actually I have discussed it. I think cutting Medicare as a way to attack entitlements was a major reason Obama decided to do “healthcare” in the first place.

Hey indiepro

you didn’t come here to attack the bill, as you say you want to @ 80.

you came here and – @ 44 – took a shot at FDL.

Take a look at my response to you @ 67.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Jane Hamsher:

I hope you are listenin’ in on the debate goin on here in response to your post, the pain and anger is palpable and as a leader you must not only listen to it but FEEL it and learn. You didn’t fail! Your supporters didn’t fail! The few real progressives in the House of Representatives didn’t fail! We got our asses kicked but we learned and we put a hurt on those who would like to bury the propgressive base…now is the time to shore up those in the House who put themselves in harm’s way to fight for something meaningful. And it is time to reach out to those like Kucinich and Sanders and Brown in the Senate. It is NOT time to attack the “old left” like Kucinich but to convince the progressives that by standin’ up with him we will have their backs. We must turn the 2010 elections into an assault on the Blue Dogs and their Clintonista-Likudnik handlers. And we must do that behind leadership like yours. I see you as our 21st century female General Patton. My Father and others in Pattons 3rd Army called Patton “Old Blood and Guts: our blood and his guts”…that’s what us ground-humpers out here on the tundra need, Sister Hamsher. Do ya have the chops for it?

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION AND WHEN IS A CHOICE A CHOICE ANYWAY??!!

yes. and more than that, i do think there was what looks like a concerted effort by party insiders to sell the public-option-in-a-multi-payer-system to progressives not already involved in the details healthcare policy as something it wasn’t and was not going to be. if i can pull some of it together, i’ll write a diary on it.

So let me see if I understand correctly.

WE pledged a whole boatload of money to progressives for promising to not vote for a bill that didn’t meet the “robust” definition. Every single one of them except for 2 didn’t do that.

Are we getting the money back?

Doesn’t seem like you’re asking for it back Jane. If Grijalva is such a hero why did he break his vow?

But beyond all of this you want us to redouble our efforts and try again with money?

It’s not going to work. It’s NEVER going to work. They will always be able to outspend us. Even if you had a million people we wouldn’t be able to dent the amount of money corporations are going to be able to put out.

We need new ideas. We need Dennis and Bernie Sander to form a viable 3rd party.

But we can’t just do the same thing again. That’s the definition of insanity.

I saw your response [edited by mod].

[modnote: please refrain from personal insults]

Looking forward to the diary!

Care to respond to your baseless attack on FDL [edited by mod]?

Citizen Knoxville:

Fuck Pelosi and her narrative…we are her worst nightmare and we ain’t goin anywhere!

We need new ideas

bottoms up grass roots organizing in support of a real social movement. national blogs like fdl are in a perfect position to amplify the message coming up from the grass roots. of course, that is the opposite of what party insiders want — which is a party aligned netroots to amplify THEIR message.

You are creating unnecessary friction. Many of us here have been critics of this whole process. Some like me broke with Obama back in 2008 months before the election. Many of us here are single payer advocates. I have called for defeating the healthcare bill for some time now. You win no friends and influence no one if you show up and start throwing accusations around.

No matter what you think of the adequacy of the public plan itself (and it is woefully inadequate), that is a huge tactical achievement.

Getting your ass kicked is not a tactical achievement.

right on! time to trip up her victory tour.

Citizen Inquisitr:

Go find the 3 or 4 other remainin’ Mutant Nija Naderites and self-emolate in a burnin’ toxic waste dump but stay the hell outta MY Democratic Party.

was pleased to see you over here, not used to seeing you wield a broad brush though

“He told me ‘Kid, you want to clear up your face, you need to go out and get schtupped.’ So I went over to the drug store and asked the pharmacist, ‘Can I get schtupped here?’ He said, ‘Not even with a prescription.’” Buddy Hackett

It’s amazing how things don’t change one jot even with a president registered as a Democrat in office preaching about change during his meteoric rise and a Senate and Congress Democratic majority.

Oh, I called out a bad hair cut, fuck me.
Idle hands are the devil’s playground.
I offered to help on a pj and was never told how I could help.
Still available.
I’m not hammering anyone. When I really am, you’ll know it.

It was hard to be happy about the passage of the health care bill

this sentence implies a way was found. I do nto feel the same at all.

Why do women always have to make the sacrifices? We need to start showing up at demonstrations will photos of dead women who could have been saved if the medical care was appropriate. How many women have died because George Tiller was murdered? How different is what the house did to the “health care” bill. Murder by politics is still murder.

it’s not possible to force members of Congress to take a stand on something they’ve got no inclination to do on their own.

Are you saying only ONE member of the progressive block is actually progressive?

In the grand scheme the money raised to support “progressives” was nothing but chump change compared to the money that was thrown into the battle to preserve the status quo to the greatest extent possible. It’s a rigged game that plays like the myth of Sisyphus.

We didn’t make the sacrifice.

We WERE sacrificed. (and by a woman Speaker of the House)

Big difference.

Ok. Let me refer you to Hugh’s response @ 91, which is a better response to you than was mine. I’m as upset about what happened as you are. Didn’t sleep much last night because of it.

The fact that even 14 of the 89 cosponsors won’t exercise the power they have and stand together to force even a symbolic vote shows how much work has to be done.

Why is this in the past tense? They have yet to vote on the final bill. There’s plenty of time to find just 14 decent honest progressives from those who pretend to be progressives.

This bill CUTS $400 billion from Medicare and has a mandate to boot, with nothing to control expenses. The Democrats have a death wish.

KILL THE BILL!

I didn’t say we volunteered. I just said the sacrifice was made. As far as I can tell the house is mostly men. Nancy is just a figurehead.

Here we go again.

For the most part it isn’t about Pelosi, Reid or even Kucinich. It is
a systemic problem that makes fundamental and sweeping progressive change
extraordinarily difficult, if not impossibe, to achieve.

The incrementalism our system favors did not occur by happenstance. The system was designed that way. So, if Kucinich was the most dynamic member of the House since Henry Clay, and had a haircut worthy of George Hamilton, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of differnce.

Citizen Knoxville:

Don’t get depressed, Brother Knoxville, get ORGANIZED!! And get leaders like Sister Hamsher to RE-organize and we’ll win next time!

Ron’s sister told him last night that some of the medicare cuts were for preventative medicine like tests for colon cancer. WTF? Is this true?

Wow. To attack Kucinich after he just proved once again that he’s the only member of congress worth a damn. Nice way to out yourself as a conservative again.

I am fired up. Let me be proven wrong. Make a fool out of me. I’ll accept it. I want it! I just don’t want progressives to lay down at this point and, though it is hard, find a way to be happy with what happened.

I think FDL is one of the only truly progressive movements out here. I read that line 9It was hard to be happy about the passage of the health care bill) as a sense that FDL is gonna tow the line of, well incrementalism bullshit, and we gotta pull this one out for Obama. I’m not afraid to be wrong. I’m not afriad to be a fool. Make me one!

It would seem that most Democrats are as delusional as all Republicans.

We’re not done with this time yet!

I agree completely with this. Back during the campaign it was obvious that Obama was going to be Clinton 2.0, which meant that it was going to take a Democrat to dismantle liberal institutions in ways that Republicans never could.

External whipping doesn’t have much impact if there is no internal whipping going on to keep some solidarity in the midst of going out on a limb.

And given, Eric Massa’s position, I find Kucinich’s comment a bit strange and self-serving.

Look it’s not really an either / or thing. Any third party would start as a part of the Democratic party that had enough cohesion to vote against the party line — as the Blue Dogs do. The problem is you don’t have anything like that either in or out of the Democratic party. There’s just nothing but capitulation (other than Kucinich).

Getting your ass kicked is not a tactical victory unless you fought.

Honestly, I think the general consensus around here – though not unanimous consensus – was that H R 3962 would have been somewhat acceptable. Not great. Very flawed. But somewhat acceptable.

Then we got betrayed even on this compromise.

Not acceptable.

I sent a couple of suggestions to Jane late last night about possible next steps in calling Pelosi out as she tries to spin this bullshit as victory. And I know that Jane was working on something yesterday to fight back and to fight back hard.

FDL will be taking action. Of that much, I am sure.

Ain’t it awful? Those $5000 a year leases that Medicare pays on motorized wheelchairs will have to go down to $1000 a year.

Too bad that Larry Kissell fell for this same crap.

for that kind of action, I’d offer bountiful mea culpas, and pledge more support in as many ways as I could.

It wasn’t just the leadership that betrayed you. Even the so-called progressives, even the progressive’s you’d bribed, betrayed you.

Yeah, Obama is more concerned about feeding the banks than in feeding the people. The U.S. was punk’d.

Good God, is it too much to ask people here to do a little research before spreading propaganda and lies?

Medicare slashing? Really? Obama’s going to smack it to senior entitlements? Really???

Google “Medicare cuts health reform” and start reading.

Well you’ll be delighted when they strip it out in the Senate then. That should make it better, right?

I think Norske is right. We lost this one, I don’t think that can be disputed… but seriously… compare this to ’94.

Thanks to people like Jane, Maddow, Olberman, etc. and the progressive blogosphere, we’re getting stronger.

Obviously, we’re not strong enough yet, but we sure shook things up a bit this time around. Maybe next time around we’ll actually achieve some kind of real victory.

It won’t happen if we all get discouraged and disengage though. Let’s take a day or two to piss and moan, but we need to get right back to it. No one said this fight was going to be easy – or quick.

But there’s too much at stake to just give up.

Let me say it again a different way: progressives will seldom be able to win by hard bargaining and parliamentary manoeuvering the way centrists and Blue Dogs do. That’s because it’s pretty much win-win for the centrists — either they get what they want or they block action, and either way is OK with them.

Furthermore, centrist Democrats can always join with the Republicans, whereas progressives have no allies.

But for progressives, it’s always a hard choice: more, less, or nothing. We got less. Is it better than nothing? Probably yes, unless something horrible shows up.

The reason the progressives lost is because there weren’t enough of them. They couldn’t have won much by bargaining harder. My guess is that they’d need a majority of a disciplined Democratic Party in order to win, or else an absolute majority of Congress (either in a third party or within the Democratic Party). We’re not close.

In turn, there aren’t enough progressives in Congress because there aren’t enough progressive party workers and voters, and because the ones that there are don’t work hard enough. (Compared to conservative Christians, for example).

Right now we have to punish a few people and elects some new people. That’s how it works. We have to think long-term.

Are you familiar with Section 3 of Article I of the United States Constitution? Or, the second paragraph of Section 5 of Article I of the United States Constitution?

Simply put, your calls to action for achieving HCR seem to ignore the nature of our Republic.

Um, no. You don’t spend $1.4 million a day for the better part of a year on kabuki. Remember how they sunk the Clinton HCR plan? Same deal.

Besides, if you saw Masaccio’s post on the prominent place of “goodwill” in health insurance company balance sheets, you’d see how even a weak PO is a clear and present danger to these companies.

The bill is worse on men financially than women.

Agreed! Sorry. I’m upset and turned it on you. We’re all upset. Now is the time to turn it into anger and take the fight to those who betrayed us.

I don’t think the bribe-our-own-side cash was chump change but I do think it’s more than money we’re fighting against. There’s a whole system of corruption beyond simple campaign contributions.

Goof job, so far no one has taken the troll bait! Resit, it’ll dry up and go back to Canada. . .ey!

Your calls to action for achieving HCR seem to ignore the nature of our Republic.

Seriously? Please, by all means, enlighten me about your reading of Section 3 of Article I and of the second paragraph of Section 5 of Article I of the United States Constitution.

What kind of action do you think I’m calling for?

You may not like it, but we got what we asked for on the public option. We never asked that it be tied to Medicare rates, because we didn’t think they’d do it. The only other option was the same bill without one, and if you think that would’ve been better, feel free to make that argument.

We said no triggers, no co-ops, no opt-outs. That’s what they did. If you think it was possible to get more than that, look at the huge success of the single-payer-or-nothing advocates, who got one member (Kucinich) who would’ve voted for the bill if he’d gotten his vote on state single payer, and another (Massa) who used it for cover to keep from pissing off the wingnuts in his Republican-leaning district. I don’t notice any rush to take credit for that massive “fail.”

and we gotta pull this one out for Obama

apparently you have missed all of Jane’s calls against ‘a W for a W’s sake’

No kidding. Though Short Ride Joe may actually have wound up helping us here. By doing his attention-getting pout of opposition to the PO, right after Boxer exercised her spine in a precedent-setting way to get the climate bill out of the EPW committee where Lieberman’s GOP buddies were holding it hostage, he’s making reconciliation much more likely.

No (Nancy) Pelosi and (Louise) Slaughter run that place. In the Senate the leadership concept is a bit iffy but in the House leadership rules the roost. Of course for any bill which effects money as this one does, the House is superior to the Senate too.

This concept that you can blame the male gender for bad legislation is nothing but sexism.

Exactly.

No kidding. In fact, I know a few folk who actually think that Jane backed Hillary in the primaries because she goes after Obama hammer and tongs here!

In all honesty I have fully expected Obama to slash social security since 2008. You may be correct that the present bill isn’t doing it but I expect it at some point. Just as Clinton axed welfare.

We don’t have to do jack for Obama until he does something for us and the country. He’s just waaaaaaay to casual about what needs to be done. No more pretty speeches.

I am not gonna support, in any way, shape or form, any bill that retains the language of the Stupak Amendment.

imo a weak, nonviable po is indeed worse than nothing because when it fails it lets the corporatists win the next battle of “i told you so.” we will have given them everything they need to prove, even to people paying attention, that the gov can’t run public insurance as well as private companies can. it will be the stake through the heart of both a real po (something like what hacker was originally proposing) AND single payer.

it is a great way to break the back of the single payer movement.

it would be completely different if a viable public option was somewhere, anywhere to be seen — and i would not be making the same argument. but there is no viable public option and that’s the reality of all of the bills that have come out of committee.

i’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, i’m just trying to speak the truth as best as i can see it.

Speaking as a progressive, I am pissed that we started this fight in the House by taking single payer off the table. Speaking as the administrator of a primary care clinic, I am pragmatic enough to believe that the fact that preexisting conditions and caps will become a thing of the past, is a great accomplishment for all. Speaking as a woman, I am appalled by the Stupak gambit.

His speeches have begun to sound repetitious. Same style, same affect, same bullshit.

Again, will you be happier if they strip it out in the Senate? Is this a victory for you?

No the difference with ’94 is that even the elites can see health care is going to wreck the entire economy if something isn’t done. In other words health care is a problem for the rich now too. Despite this they have failed to control spiraling prices and therefore (as Kucinich predicted) will have to revisit the issue around 2013.

But for progressives, it’s always a hard choice: more, less, or nothing.

I think you’re wrong. You can do more with less if you are tough and ready to walk away. You’re wrong about the conservatives too; they stand to gain a great deal from this bill, they just know well enough to pretend they hate it. That’s negotiating 101. Why don’t progressives do that? Because they’re just not really progressive.

By your logic Kucinich as the most progressive would have been the first to throw in the towel. The reverse is true.

you’d see how even a weak PO is a clear and present danger to these companies.

that’s just flat out wrong as a matter of policy. a weak po if it were to survive would be a dumping ground for the people private insurance doesn’t want to have to cover. there is an argument to be made, i’ve even made it myself, that at least it might, if it can survive charging higher premiums, etc, at least provide a refuge from private insurance abuse for the seriously ill.

and that would be a help to the profits of private insurance companies.

Steady, fire discipline, it’s persistent.

You may not like it, but we got what we asked for on the public option.

I hate to say this but that’s simply not true. You’re lying Ms Hamsher. I’d like to like you a lot on this thing but that just isn’t true. You and this site made them promise a robust public option. Come on. Don’t play games with us. You know we’re smart enough to know the score. Don’t try and make this defeat and dress it up. I assume you’re doing it to try and keep moral up or something. It isn’t right though.

Seriously? Please, by all means, enlighten me about your reading of Section 3 of Article I and of the second paragraph of Section 5 of Article I of the United States Constitution.

For legislation to become law requires it pass the United States Senate. Moreover, to pass the Senate the legislation must successfully negotiate the rules of the Senate.

The Senate is an anti-democratic institution established to protect the status quo.[Section 3, Article I] The procedual rules it has adopted make it even less democratic. [Second paragraph of Section 5, Article I].

So, opening up a can of whup-ass for Pelosi might make you feel better, but won’t get us HCR.

Basically what we won by all this was a non-Baucus bill. The Baucus bill was awful, with almost no good points politically or as policy, but that’s what Obama wanted. What we have now, id we can get it past the Senate, is significantly better. We won to the extent of our powers. We made something happen.

We aren’t a 500-lb. gorilla yet, but that has to be our long-term goal.

So do you want it to come out of the Senate bill? Would that be a victory for you?

i think i would prefer to see the bill defeated entirely, but i don’t feel i know enough to work either for either it’s success or for it’s failure at this point. i see no victory nor anything to delight me in the current bill, public option, or political process. if it was possibly to have the kucinich amendment included that would at least be a way forward, but i don’t see that as a realistic option at this point. i’d love to see other changes also — on the biologics issue, on the chips issue, stronger regulation. they might be real improvements, but are they realistic to fight for? i don’t know.

i stand by my comment @38, which did not include words like “delight” or “victory.”

IMO the bill that will come from the Senate will be on life support.

No kidding. We were the ONLY winners. We staked out our goals in late June. We achieved them.

Those who thought we should’ve aimed higher failed in their own efforts to prove that it could be done, and seem to be blaming us for their lack of success.

I guess trolling our comments section is not the sure-fire winner many assumed it would be.

Jane, I am not sure which side of this you are arguing at this point. Maybe because there has been more than one bill. Yesterday, you wrote that you were against HCR the day it dropped. Was that a different bill?

Your comments ignore the opportunity cost of this bill.

Sure its better than nothing although the massive regressive tax hike on the poorest and the huge industry give away is making it only just better than nothing. Many many people will be helped enormously by this crappy bill. People being shafted by the current non-system by “accident”. People whose pain isn’t making the rich money. Sure we got that “win” – the unopposed actions we won. Stuff we would always have got.

But compared to what we could have got?

Agreed. Thanks.

But do you think it helps to allow Pelosi to define what they passed as victory?

What’s the best way to make sure that the Stupak Amendment is removed after the United States Senate passes its garbage and the House and Senate meet in conference to merge the two?

i should add that from what i can tell, the fed program, with or without a tiny po, looks to be much worse than what we have in MA. i have been assured by a member of my rep’s staff that because we (MA) already have a waiver from the HHS we will be able to keep our exchanges with their mostly better reimbursement rates and covered abortion services and medicaid folded into the subsidized programs.

don’t believe i’m writing this, but it makes me glad (in a selfish way) that we can keep romneycare when i see what obamacare is shaping up to be.

Excellent reference, bilejones; and the following article is an excellent “how-to” get something accomplished by single-minded focus on one issue with like-minded allies. The progressive scatter-gun approach with shifting alliances, methods, groups, etc. has led to this disaster. We really could/should be calling, fighting for, publicizing, petitioning, writing about HR676 and S— {forgot the number, it’s been so long}.

Lot of thoughtful material there to read. Thanks

karen

money was raised for the 57 reps who promised medicare +5.

Well I don’t think the bill’s failure was ever a realistic option, the Democrats have too much invested in it. So I’d like to know how doing nothing — which you say would’ve been better, and which would’ve resulted in a bill without a public plan — would’ve resulted in a superior outcome.

If you think we should just let it get stripped out in the Senate and do nothing, I would very much be interested in hearing that argument. Haven’t heard anyone make that yet, but it’s implicit in many of the critiques I hear here. Maybe I should put up a poll: Should we sit on our hands and let Joe Lieberman get is way? yes/no.

They have the votes to pass “something,” they always have had. They’ve got a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a majority in the House. Do you think anything anyone could’ve done would have changed that math?

Sorry to be trite, but garbage in, garbage out. The Imperial House of Lords will make sure that anything that’s good comes OUT of the bill. It won’t be the battle of Titans but a quiet slow demise.

What’s the best way to make sure that the Stupak Amendment is removed after the United States Senate passes its garbage and the House and Senate meet in conference to merge the two?

That’s the $64K question. I certainly don’t see Obama/Rahm exerting any pressure to remove it.

Jane, I think we will all do whatever it takes to make the Senate do the right thing. I don’t know what it will take because they are entrenched in their superior attitude. We have maybe five Senators who will fight for us. I will enjoy watching.

word. and I;m guilty of the same, I reckon as far as FDL.

I did not support the bill the day it dropped, and some will be surprised to learn that putting in the Stupak language did not make it better for me.

Since I don’t have the power to kill it, and never have had, the question then becomes “is it better than it would have been if it weren’t for our efforts.” Unless you think stripping the public option out would make the bill better — something no one here has yet argued — then I think the answer is absolutely “yes.”

People who think we should’ve done more might be asking themselves right now if THEY could have done more. Because if they tried, and failed, they’d come up against the realities of what $1.4 million in lobbying money can do, and be congratulating us that we did what we did. Blaming us for not making their health care dreams come true flies in the face of every single post we’ve written since we started this, when we were clear about our goals and the political reality of the situation.

so what should we do? let pelosi declare victory. accept hr 3962 with the stupak amendment. watch the dems use it for fundraising. stand back as they fill the house with more owens types? and call it all, what?

I agree that the Stupak Amendment is a travesty.

Where I disagree with you is that I think this compromised and incremental HCR legislation is all the system will allow. So, I will take what we can get. As half-assed as it is, it will help millions of people and give us something to build on.

I can’t speak for selise, but I can say unequivocally that what we’ve got here is absolutely antithetical to providing, “Affordable, quality healthcare to every American.” Which is what I understand as the reason for engaging in this circus in the first place.

We’ve contrived a de facto regressive-tax and price-inflation regime in every single bill that’s up for serious consideration. If a “strong” public option isn’t on the table, then the whole thing had to go, because the mandates make the whole thing parasitic. No such option is on the table, so either the mandates go, or the whole bill does.

I’ll say this again. The ONLY thing this bill does is require insurance companies to cover people and procedures that they didn’t cover before, but ensures that they’re paid HANDSOMELY for doing so.

It covers some of the uncovereds. While it takes away a poor womans right to choose. It has NO significant controls of cost, as the PO is set up to fail, or at the very least be ineffective. And paying for health care, which is a right, through a regressive mandate rather than through the progressive tax code, is just plain WRONG.

NO, I don’t like or support or want anything to do with this joke of a bill. And I’ll guarantee and bet anyone this. If Obama does sign a bill this year, IT WILL INCLUDE THE STUPID AMENDMENT. Cause it ain’t coming out.

Now blast away. I’m not supporting this just cause the Democrats say I should, or the right winger feign outrage over it. It’s a big, heaping, pile of SHIT.

I think you’re wrong. You can do more with less if you are tough and ready to walk away.

As I explained, centrists can and progressives can’t, because centrists have the Republicans backing them. It isn’t just will, you need beef.

All the Blue Dogs had to do was threaten to boycott anything the progressives put up, because most of them didn’t want any bill at all.

In other words, if both sides had talked tough, the Blue Dogs would have won (by calling in the Republicans) and we would have had nothing.

We were the ONLY winners. We staked out our goals in late June. We achieved them.

If this is a victory, what would defeat have looked like?

Well I don’t think the bill’s failure was ever a realistic option

Then why ask people for money to get congressmen to promise to vote down any bill that didn’t have a robust public option? What the heck was all that about???

The whole point was Obama needed a “w” so they had leverage. You don’t have leverage without a credible threat.

Pyrrhic victory is useless.

Thank you Jane!

We’re all a bit disappointed that we didn’t get a better bill, but you’re right we managed to have a big impact on this bill even if it’s still far short of what any of us would like.

I, for one, feel the subtle shift in power. Local democratic parties holding special referendums in support of a Public Option!?

Who could have dreamed we’d see this day?

But we’re far from where we need to be. We need to keep up the good fight – and keep fighting the people who need to be fought (instead of each other.)

“Compared to what we could have got”.

My reading is that the best the progressives could have got was “try again next year”. In some circumstances that’s a good move. Gingrich was willing to do that. The Progressives weren’t confident that that would work, though.

At this point isn’t it obvious we should kill this corporate giveaway to big insurance disguised as reform? Or is the thinking, this is just a baby step towards real reform?

Eh. Personally, I would love to see progressives tank this. But another part of me is hoping the senate guts this, the house caves, and what passes can’t be defended at all, and once we dissect the horror of the aftermath we get further proof that the government simply doesn’t function for working americans but only for the wealthy.

i never said do nothing. don’t think i’ve ever said that about anything. my point was about the down side of continuing to make the battle over what is imo a policy distraction (and has other downsides) instead of refocusing efforts on policies that make sense (abortion services, drug costs, subsidy rates, regulation, chips, etc or for the very long view single payer). i don’t think the po, as currently constructed makes much of a difference as a matter of policy.

We probably exerted more pressure on the House than any so-called progressive organization, e.g., Planned Parenthood.

We conducted a recon in strength operation and have identified key objectives and targets for further operations. This struggle isn’t over by a long shot.

Ouch, the cold water you just threw hit me dead on. Thanks, I needed that refreshing dose of realism.

karen

First of all nobody is saying you didn’t try hard so get off that horse, OK? But whether you/we succeeded or not is a different question.

Since I don’t have the power to kill it, and never have had, the question then becomes “is it better than it would have been if it weren’t for our efforts.” Unless you think stripping the public option out would make the bill better — something no one here has yet argued — then I think the answer is absolutely “yes.”

Why is it better? I don’t think it is because the PO they have is worthless. The things that are good in the bill would have been in there regardless (stuff like no more prexisting conditions and individual payers not being charged quadruple). In fact I think you could argue that if we hadn’t fought, if you hadn’t fought, this ridiculous anti-abortion thing wouldn’t have been put in there, because frankly that looks like a punishment for trying. Which I am fine with btw. That proves you were getting to them.

Not one dime. “Medicare plus five” didn’t even crop up as an option until months after that fundraiser.

We never asked for it. THEY wrote a letter demanding that a public option be tied to Medicare rates, but I said at the time I never believed them, and never deceived people when we were fundraising that I thought this was a possibility. They gave that up 3 days later on August 3, as noted here:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/08/03/pelosi-laughs-at-house-progressives-and-you-should-too/

The fundraiser started on August 18.

Don’t feed the thread-hijacking troll, please.

If someone has an argument against this comment, I’d love to see it. Sacrificing some for others can not be the progressive way.

Okay. Yesterday you wrote that you opposed the bill, not that you did not support it. So I am just not sure why you are arguing with the rest of us today who are against this bill. If it is because you think your efforts are not appreciated, that is not true, at least not in my case. But categorizing this as a win concerns me. It is a win of the sort Rahm boasts about, which you usually make fun of. Where is Jane?

Oh, Dragon. Unless you have a vote, it doesn’t matter.

I look forward to your efforts to kill the bill. I’d like to be able to fly, but that’s not going to happen either.

Here in the real world, your choice is between a) this bill with a public plan, or b) this bill without a public plan, or public plan with triggers, or a public plan with an opt-out.

Which of these options do you prefer? If you are all-powerful and capable of stopping Democrats with a majority in the House & Senate and control of the White House from passing something do let us know, that’s huge political news and it belongs on the front page of the New York Times.

I dunno… that stupid abortion things seems like a bargaining chip to keep the progressives in line. But maybe it was meant as that and got out of hand and passed. Frankly, what do they care about abortion? It’s like hanging a sign on our backs saying “kick me”. It doesn’t get them any money. I would think it could be removed although what do I know on that one? The process might have gone too far. The Senate has nothing like that though does it?

I’d like to hear from Jane Hamsher on that question actually.

you make a good point which reminds me of something else i haven’t brought up in this thread. if the current bill is going to be something the public (including us) hate, then it is important to distance ourselves from it. i would hate if the public learns the lesson that progressives can’t be trusted on matter of important policy because we’ve tied ourselves to this pos bill. better, if we think it should fail, to fight it and loose if only because it will be harder for the right wing to blame it’s failure on us.

just another issue to consider as people work things out in their own minds. i have a feeling that there may be 100 different conclusions for every 100 people reading this thread.

Okay, think for a second here. Let’s make it really, really simple. Answer these questions, one at a time, and we can have a conversation.

1) Do Democrats have a majority in the House & Senate and control of the White House?
2) Do you think this bill would be better without a public option?

As I explained, centrists can and progressives can’t, because centrists have the Republicans backing them

Republicans would have backed the progressive block in trying to kill the bill. That was the whole point.

3]Do Democrats have 60 reliable votes in the United States Senate?

I did some of that, I have seen NOTHING that’s official or definive in defining WHAT the medicare/medicaid cuts entail.

Perhaps, since you are fairly adamant that info exists, you’ve already found it and could post the link(s) to the info?

I know I’d be appreciative of you sharing the proof of this burden.

Given the lack of cost control getting rid of the individual mandate would have been a win. Also Kucinich’s states single payer thing was a bone they could have been ready to throw us to get Obama his “w”.

If nothing else they would have stood up for themselves and won some credit as fighters for other issues including the next time health care comes up.

I look forward to your efforts to kill the bill.

We haven’t been able to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t oppose them. I don’t understand what your game plan is. Single payer got booted to the curb. The PO was never robust and has been weakened to the point of joke status. Yet all I see is sticking with a dead horse and tying progressive responsibility to something that isn’t progressive at all.

Of course they have 60 votes. Strip out the public option and they could probably pass the House bill in a heartbeat.

The question has always been “do they have the votes to pass a bill with a public option.” The answer is probably “no.” So, you’re likely to get your wish, and it will come out, and then you can explain to all of us how that is better.

Blaming us for not making their health care dreams come true flies in the face of every single post we’ve written since we started this, when we were clear about our goals and the political reality of the situation.

But the Stupak Amendment requires women to voluntarily surrender their reproductive rights if they are going to benefit from anything in H R 3962.

Some will be surprised to learn that putting in the Stupak language did not make it better for me.

Understatement?

I’m sorry Jane, but SaltinWound @ 186 is correct.

1) Yes
2) No

and oldgold’s 3) No

Okay, what’s the logic here, because I’m not getting it. “Sticking with a dead horse.” What exactly do you mean?

Here’s the world of options:

1) Try to kill the bill entirely. Which I do not believe will be successful, but anybody who wants to is welcome to try. If I thought we could do it, we would. And if there’s a movement in the House to do that, we’ll support it.

2) Try to make sure a public option stays in the Senate bill.

3) Give up and let Lieberman strip a public option out of the bill.

Which of these do you support? I really should put up a poll.

Jane why do you think a PO that’s too weak to control costs is worth anything at all? That’s a genuine question I’d like you to answer. Or do you think this PO is still “robust”?

How different is what the house did to the “health care” bill. Murder by politics is still murder.

Well said Mary and OH so TRUE. These self righteous Male ReichWing & BlueDogsAssholes need to get the fuck out of dictating how much control a woman has over her own body…
Whats that saying possession is 90% of the Law!!
How about letting women decide what happens to their own body??????

Reid hasn’t let anyone know what his PO is. Hard to be for or against it.

I don’t have much leverage. Going down in person again to both Senator’s offices and my Rep, but they’re all establishment Democrats (Wyden, Merkley, and Wu). The only way this thing is going down is to create a coalition of convenience with the Republicans where (like with the bailouts) we managed to find common-ground against the center. Neither progressives, nor Republicans are within my reach; which is a weird thing to say being that I’m in Portland. I can track down DeFazio, but I’m not his constituent.

My only real voice is the one capable of being amplified by you, because of all the hard work you’ve done to create FDL as an institution of action, which is why –in effect– I’m lobbying you, because I’ve long since given up on my individual ability to lobby my political representation.

Anyway, I can’t tell if we’re arguing over whether or not this is worse than nothing, or that we’re beyond the point where we can get nothing, so we have to shoot for what’s less-worse than the status quo.

1) yes
2) yes

I can not stand this public option. Democrats have already sacrificed their gay constituents time and time again, in the name of progress. Now we are supposed to accept women being thrown under the bus as well. It is ridiculous.

Yesterday, you stood opposed to this bill. Is that no longer the case?

Correct about what? We never took on the choice issue. So unless I published a post I’ve completely blacked out on, you’ll have to provide a link.

“Reliable” votes in the Senate. I don’t think Short Ride is a reliable vote on this bill unless it’s a pure out and out giveaway to the insurance companies and is touted as such by any Senate spokesperson. I would put Short Ride on the Nay side of anything I was trying to whip, regardless of what he might say.

I have to say this right now.

I am willing to let the bill burn to make sure it’s worth something. This is the promise we’ve been trying to draw out of progressives since day 1.

@ Jane, If we weren’t trying for Medicare rates with this pledge what were we bothering for? Wasn’t our entire point that Obama was wrong because he didn’t start with Single payer and Negotiate from there? How can you give him gruff for that when you’re doing the same thing?

As for NorskeFlamethrower, I’m not a member for your Democratic party, and I would never sell my soul by being a part of that party.

If you take the conclusion as some here have that the problem is we just didn’t raise enough money compared to the insurance lobby, what possibly makes you think we will this time?

We are wasting our time with this.

WE will NEVER make an equal amount of money to the corporations, we need to switch focus. Healthcare will nevere be a viable goal, nothing well ever be a viable goal so long as we have a 2 party free for all donations electoral system.

You can push on the ocean all you want, it won’t change anything.

Isn’t the Stupak ammendment an insertion of the government between a woman and her doctor?

Option 1, and if there’s NOT an effort started in the House, THEN START ONE. Because this bill is shit. And even if we fail, we’ve done the right thing, just like trying to stop the wars. And Kucinich might be where we start in the House.

Do you think the bill will be stronger with it out? That’s the only question before us. Yes or no.

If someone says the bill is better with it out, let’s hear it, but so far everyone has studiously avoided answering that question.

Correct about what? We never took on the choice issue. So unless I published a post I’ve completely blacked out on, you’ll have to provide a link.

But then you’re admitting that we failed, were outfoxed, whatever, and giving up.

Ain’t it so, brother?! Tragic. We have one (1) real Democrat in the House (Ellison). Of the remaining seven, one may be a progressive (Walz). Oberstar is off on some little ego planet when it comes to being a team player. Ditto McCollum. And Colin Peterson is blueberry blue. We have one bona fide Dem in the Senate (Franken). The state of Humphrey, Mondale, Wellstone et al has a stultifying eletoral system, run from within by party hacks, that produces mostly mediocre (at best) candidates selected by “let’s see who can play the caucus game the best.” It’s a terrible mess, and I’m finished with it.

Wouldn’t allowing the Senate to strip the useless PO make killing the bill easier?

Ding ding ding! We have a winner:

I don’t think Short Ride is a reliable vote on this bill unless it’s a pure out and out giveaway to the insurance companies and is touted as such by any Senate spokesperson.

So explain to me how that is better than the House bill. Because if we stop, that’s what you get.

That is not my wish. I want a strong public option. I haven’t worked harder for any political matter since taking to the streets in the late 60′s and early 70′s. This time, not only did I take to the streets battling the danm tea baggers, I spent a good deal of money. But, after everything all of us have done, the political situation is what it is.

I will take what we can get and build from there. I understand that others have a different view.

Have you all actually read the HC bill? Anyone???? It is a piece of ca-ca! It massively subsidizes the Insurance companies and Big Pharma, 2 of the biggest mass murdering entities in this country! The Public Option is so weak that it probably won’t survive even 5 years! The 2 Billion that the Feds give it to start up is actually a loan that has to be repaid in 10 years and then it is on it’s own, NO BAIL OUTS ALLOWED! So that it will have to repay the loan, build it’s reserves and pay for the health care of it’s participants, all while building it’s provider network. No wonder the CBO said that the premiums of the Public Option may actually be HIGHER than the prevailing premiums of the private corporations in the Health Insurance Exchange! The only thing it has in it’s favor is that it does not have to make a profit, unless you call the 2 billion loan pay back over 10 years, a partial profit! The Insurance Industry will go gunning for the PO, to kill it and I believe that they will succeed!
Now is there anything else that we get in this bill? Yes we get the Insurance reform, which could have been a couple page bill without all the massive subsidies to the corporations and without the Individual Mandates! Also Medicaid get’s increased to 150% of FPL but CHIP gets the AX! So that is a +/- for lower income children!!! Small businesses and even eventually large businesses get to dump their responsibilities to provide health care coverage, I am not kidding, read it and weep!
Seniors get their donut hole closed for name brand drugs only and patents on biologics stay extended, so we are going to be giving our tax dollars and our individual dollars to corrupt Big Pharma for ever!
We, the people will now have to buy insurance every year or pay a tax! And what does Washington call affordable? 10% of your income for medical costs for those 200% of FPL or $21,000 a year, rising quite quickly to approximately 20% of your income for medical costs if you make %43,000 or 400% of FPL. This is NOT affordable and that is the subsidized portion of our population, can you imagine how much the rest of us will have to pay in premiums year after year? The 2.5% yearly tax/fine is looking like my way around this boondoggle already!!!
This bill stinks! I completely understand why Kucinich would vote against it! And everyone out there who is angry at Kucinich wouldn’t know a true populist if they slapped you in the face, Kucinich gets it and really stands with the people, unlike many of his so called Progressive buddies in the House, who all caved on every one of their demands!
I don’t have any idea why Dems/liberals are claiming any victory at all and as for the Stupid Amendment, of course that was the final kick in the head to all populists!
If this is the best that can come out of the House, then you know what comes out of the Senate will really suck! My call now is to KILL THE BILL IN THE SENATE! Let’s realize where we are at in this country and that our Congress is bought and paid for by the corporations and let’s change our rallying cry to INSURANCE REFORM ONLY! Obama’s 8 points of insurance reform would make a good bill and then let’s break up this bill, kill, for now, the false Public Option but also kill the Individual Mandates(new 2.5% Tax on everyone)and the Massive Subsidies to the Corporations! We can work for those very few reforms in this bill one at a time that are worthy of our effort and grow our mass of support for Single Payer which is what we really deserve in this country! I will post another email with the top 10 things in the bill that are the keepers along with the top 10 suckiest things in the bill!
We only have 2 months to Kill This Bill, the Senate is not going to come out with the Kucinich amendment or the Weiner amendment, no matter how hard Sanders tries! Let’s get smart about this, something horrible is not better than nothing! This bill makes us take 2 steps back! If we kill the bill then the need for reform will still be out there and we will have major political pressure going into the 2010 elections to Kick the Bums Out, so perhaps we can get a few more populists like Dennis elected!

What are you talking about “we failed?” We didn’t whip for that. I’m sure if you read the entire thousand plus pages of the bill you’d find many things you didn’t like, but forcing responsibility for that onto us is really a bit of a stretch.

Though I’m flattered at the idea that you think we’re that all-powerful. I’ll have to let the mods know, they’ll be delighted to know they’re “masters of the universe.”

We oppose the bill, like we oppose the wars. So we get defeated. Like that hasn’t happened before. At least we stood for something. Where have all these endless compromises gotten us? We lose the fight and our self-respect.

Phoenix Woman,

Honestly, why so much vitriol against Dennis Kucinich? He is our most consistent progressive champion in the House of Representatives and ought to be commended for that, not ridiculed. Yes, he is against abortion, for profound moral and religious reasons, but he nonetheless supports a woman’s right to choose. In case you didn’t notice, he voted Against the Stupack amendment. Yo say “he screams backbencher”? Well why do you think he’s consigned to being a back bencher? Because he brings pie charts to radio debates? Because has a funny haircut, which Demi seems to think disqualifies him from being considered a legitimate politician? Absolutely not. I mean honestly, it’s not like the Congress is awash in good looking, serious people. He has no leadership positions in the house because he’s a threat to the corrupt private interests which finance both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Jane was trying to make a valid and hugely important point: When certain interests, such as the Pro-Israel lobby, the NRA, the anti-choice movement, or others, make a stink about something, they immediately have tens if not hundreds of legislators to back them up. Yet despite the fact that over 60 Democrats vowed to vote against any healthcare bill unless it contained a robust public option, 88 Dems have sponsored HR 676 (single payer), and large majorities of Americans support public health insurance, only 1 Democrat took a stand last weekend and voted against the bill. And given that 25 democrats were going to vote against the bill anyway, we only needed 14 people to stand up. 14 people! When we’ve got a progressive caucus of over 80 members! If only 13 others would have joined Kucinich, we may well have be looking at a bill today with a public option tied to Medicare rates or perhaps even preserved the state single payer option. Instead we’ve got a downright miserable compromise.

Thank you Jane, for pointing out these facts. As for the Kucinich haters, please, just stop! Direct your ridicule some place else.

If the PO is stripped from the bill in the Senate why would we support it? Without the PO we get a mandate for every person not on Medicare to buy private insurance and the Stupak Amendment. If the Stupak Amendment was also meant as a poison pill for the PO it worked for me. If the Stupak Amendment is stripped I’ll support a bill with a PO, even the weak ass thing the House bill has. It’s a step.

Kucinich didn’t vote against it because it sucks, he voted against it because he didn’t get a vote on his amendment.

But I look forward to your success killing the bill. Being able to over come Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate as well as a President determined to pass “something” is quite a hurdle to overcome, but your confidence is admirable.

Well of course I think it would be better without a PO. I am sorry; I thought that was clear and also I believe that is selise’s position here and others who would KILL THE BILL.

It’s a simple argument made in comments above. Perhaps you missed them as I am being moderated (at least the moderator reads all my stuff!)

(1) PO is too weak to control costs – worthless
(2) PO’s failure can be used against us – “see? government run healthcare don’t work”
(3) the stuff in the bill worth anything we would have got anyway (eg no more prexisting)
(4) loss of opportunity costs
(5) loss of face by progressive block capitulating yet again
(6) Overton window pushed to the right as crappy PO is labeled the “progressive position

Now please explain why you WANT the PO in there.

Okay, so let’s ask it one. More. Time.

Which is better?

1) A health care bill with a public option
2) A health care bill without a public option

If someone is willing to argue that 2) is better, I’m all ears. Because until that happens, a symbolic battle that we’re going to lose does not seem to be a reasonable choice.

Minnesota blue is a myth. Our reps are running wild. My point is simply that if it’s this blatantly obvious here, and no one in “leadership” has the cojones or even the limp desire to rein ‘em in, we are most awfully screwed. Did our Dems vote the “right way” on this bill? Some of ‘em did, depending what one means by “right way.” Frankly, I see no right way. But that’s just me.

Jane,

Why are so sure that A BILL will pass? You don’t believe it’s possible to be blocked in the Senate?

I see where your coming from. You believe, correctly, that the bill the Senate passes will be an even smellier pile of shit than the House bill, and thus, of those two choices, obviously the House bill will be the better one.

I’m just confused as to why you seem so certain that a bill will pass the Senate. I’ve already contacted my 2 Senators, and all 41 folks on my pledge list have said they’re going to also, to ask them to BLOCK HCR. Obviously I/we aren’t masters of the universe, and all of those emails and phone calls will likely be forgotten with all the other thousands, but I believe in my heart of hearts that it IS possible to totally block the bill in the Senate. If I’m reading you right, you don’t. You’re saying the pressure will be such that they have to pass something.

OK, I get that. That pressure isn’t going to phase any Republican. So we’ve 40. All we need is 1 more to block it. Are you suggesting not even 1 can be brought on board to block it?

Jane, your missing I think a key point here of your community.

Most of us mean it this time. We got all whipped and worked up with the Mantra of “block anything bad”. I’m not blaming you here, what you did is great and commendable. But you got the idea that we finally CAN block legislation we don’t like in our head.

And now we’re really ready to use it.

I don’t think anyone here thinks the House bill is a good thing. Am I willing to let it die? Yes. I am willing to take the chance that we can tank both the House and the Senate bills. I am willing to make a stand here and try.

Becasue here are our options.

a) We support this Bill, say we get the house version of the PO, and even if we striop Stupak, it’s a crappy insurance industry bailout.

b) We support this bill but depite all our efforts once again we get the Senate version mandates and all.

c) We block this bill and we get the Senate version.

d) We attempt to block everything, in which case we either get one of the above choices anyway, or we win.

So I guess it really does come down to do you think the House bill is better than Nothing.

I do not. And I would rather go down swinging and standing for what we believe in than just trying to make a shitty bill less shitty.

Please see my comment at 206 so, if nothing else, you can stop saying no one will answer your question.

Selise, I agree with you about the dire implications of a weak reform effort leading to further erosions down the line.

Per Hugh up above and Hugh at other times and places in FDL, the IMMEDIATE next step threat (if a weak reform in HC is enabled) is an increasing level of attacks on ALL entitlements, and all government expenditures. And that would included infrastructures, highways, education and the obvious Social Security and Medicare programs.

That’s the big picture fight, and I’m not liking the tide as it’s flowing.

As someone else above posits, getting Obama as a Dem to enable the dismantling of progressive programs to serve the masses may well prove to be MUCH more effective than any Republican efforts to do so in the past 40 years. Albeit, Obama’s effort DOES come upon the heels of Reagan/Bushite’s, and what a stage THEY have set for the next levels of cuts, hacks and disembowelments the american masses are facing.

Sigh.

And BTW, can ANY one point me to just what the cuts in Medicare/Medicaid really ARE in the HR Bill that just passed the House? Not op ed opinion making, but some definitive analysis of bill language that SPECIFIES where and what will be cut?

Thanks in advance, Pups.

Hang in there, it seems we are all at the least disappointed, but still reflecting on what it is that just happened in The House (aside from Stoopidpak, that is). Talking it out, sharing ideas and thoughts and concerns is good for us all . . . and so is having differences of opinions about it all! *G*

Sadly, I think there’s another level of low still ahead of us in The Senate. I’m very concerned about what the next step in the process will yield as a final bill and product Obama will sign.

And in closing, please forgive what might seem to be a VERY simpleton’s question but:

Did the Eshoo amendment get stripped from the House Bill that passed, as part of the deal with the Stoopidpak Amendment, or are we saddled with BOTH pieces of flaming shit in a bag on our door step?

Can we dare hope The Senate will do ANYTHING about either of those issues? I can’t see it, The Senate ain’t no bastion of championing the rights of the people, above corporate bought and paid for dictums.

Sigh.

Precisely. A poison pill and it worked. That crappy PO you used to hate, minus the Stupak nonsense is looking good now. My question is was that the entire purpose of that amendment and if so can we expect to see it taken out to ensure your support for a bill you had been ready to kill?

That is the one thing we can do, then, weaken the mandate.

Daily lurker here. Hang in there, Jane. FWIW, I appreciate more than I can say the effort and commitment you’ve expended on behalf of the public option. And, I stand in awe of your energy and dedication. What you’ve accomplished, in spite, to spite, despite the realities, is commendable.

Again I DON’T SUPPORT THE BILL. Really, I don’t. But the axiomatic step to “I don’t support the bill therefore the best thing to do is try to kill it” makes several logic leaps that are flawed.

It assumes that this is the best way to spend our energies is killing it, which 1) isn’t possible right now, and 2) means we give up on the public option in the Senate and Joe Lieberman wins.

Now, I should say, that’s likely to be where we wind up, if Joe succeeds and the public option comes out despite our best efforts. But at that point, we’ll be pushing members of Congress to stick with a pledge they made TO US (as opposed to a letter they wrote to Nancy Pelosi that we knew they’d never abide by).

Again, at that point, we’ll be backing their own effort to kill the bill. Because that’s the only possibility of success.

But I look forward to your success killing the bill

Don’t be such a sourpuss. Nobody is trying to get at you here. At least I know I appreciate you and I’m the “troll” supposedly.

The Democrats have controlled Congress for less than three years, and the Presidency for less than a year, and we’ve been working on healthcare for a year or so. It’s awfully short of breath to give up now.

The conservative movement started from almost nothing in 1955 or so. It took 25 years to elect a President and another 10-15 to gain control of Congress. and they didn’t accomplish everything they wanted to but, unfortunately, they succeeded in transforming America.

The netroots is only about 6-7 years old and it was mostly just venting and emotional support for the first two years or so. It was a very small factor in 2004, a bugger one in 2006, and bigger still in 2008, and there have been a lot of mistakes along the way, which we’ve generally learned from. We should learn from what just happened, which I do not see as a simple defeat.

Liberals, by their individualistic philosophy, want to dump politics on the politicians and go back to their personal lives, but you can’t do that. If you do, you’re sure to be cheated. Elected officials will never take care of things for us. Democratic politics is very labor intensive, and also slow.

Because Obama needs a “w” and the Democrats have the place locked down.

The courts are going to do that.

Why do you persist in erecting this strawman? I have written for months that the final deal would either have no public option or a minimal one. I do not see a joke PO as an improvement over no PO. All I see it as is an opportunity for progressives to lose credibility.

The choice you give is rather like asking whether it would be better if the gash in the Titanic was painted over or not. It doesn’t matter because the ship will sink either way. That is what is wrong with your choices.

Morale, it’s spelt morale.

Unless moral is code, which is is, freudian or not.

Sigh.

Raven’s gonna be pissed at me for this . . *G*

You know, I think you might be onto a good idea. Everytime someone or some organization that has caved and let you down requests a donation, tell them that you give to “so and so” instead (a women’s health charity group, a food bank, a women’s shelter) because they have failed to do what they promised to do if elected. No money or support unless and until they prove themselves as keeping their promises. They treat the left like doormats and will as long as we let them.

It amazes me that people have hope for this. I don’t think they understand the process.

The Senate goes next, and if you think we’re getting anything better than the House bill you’re just plain wrong. It’s going to be worse.

So we have 2 bad bill, bad and worse.

Then we conference them together, so we might bad and worse we get some worse than bad when we started.

This bill isn’t going to get any better. It’s only downhill from here.

So Damn right I’m willing to block all of it now, because even if we did get the House bill without Stupak, it’s still a shitty bill. So I don’t take Jane’s meaning that a Bill with a PO is betetr than one without, because from where I sit both bills, with or without the PO are completely worthless.

And I’m tired of so much support for shitty bills when we all know it’s wrong.

Yeah we’ll probably lose. But next time they’ll know we won’t just say “yay you passed something”

“Medicare plus five” didn’t even crop up as an option until months after that fundraiser.

i was referring to the later, not the earlier fundraiser.

from your timeline:

August 3: Progressives, led by Jan Schakowsky, cave to the Blue Dogs, who get what they want on Energy & Commerce. In exchange, progressives get a symbolic vote on single payer that will not pass. Pelosi laughs at the idea that in the end, they would vote against any health care bill and keep it from passing.

August 14: At Netroots Nation, Donna Edwards asks me if we’ll do a campaign to thank the 57 progressives who signed the letter saying they would vote down any bill that didn’t have a public option tied to Medicare. I said they gave that up three days later. She assured me that it would be in the final House bill.

August 17: The 57 members of Congress add 3 more to their number, and they sign a letter saying that they won’t vote for any bill THROUGH CONFERENCE that doesn’t have a strong public option.

August 19: Blogs across the internet raise over $160,000 in 24 hours to support these 60 members of Congress.

August 20: The Hill reports that there are those among the 60 signatories who would accept co-ops as a public plan, and others who don’t think the commitment holds through conference. Among those who signed the letter and now won’t say what they would do in conference: Donna Edwards.

the July 30, 2009 letter to the house leadership defined robust public option (their definition) as medicare +5:

Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates – not negotiated rates – is unacceptable.

the august 17th letter to sebelius did not redefine “robust”

A robust public option is essential, if we are to ensure that all Americans can receive healthcare that is accessible, guaranteed and of high-quality.

but it did address the issue you raised about the vote on the conference bill as well as the initial house vote:

The 57 members of the House who signed a letter saying they would not vote for a bill without a public option have added three more to their number — Robert Wexler, Emanuel Cleaver and Gregorio Sablan. They wrote a letter to Kathleen Sebelius today making it crystal clear that if there is no public plan coming out of a conference bill, they won’t vote for it

you never gave anyone reason to think these members could be counted on to live up to their pledge, just the opposite, but i did, perhaps wrongly, expect they would be asked to:

http://www.actblue.com/page/theytookthepledge

These are the progressive members of Congress with the guts to stand up to Big Insurance, Big Pharma and to the pressure from their own party bosses. They stood with the American people and ordinary working families when push came to shove and both political parties decided propping up a disastrous health care system and a corrupt Insurance Industry was more important than keeping the promise made over and over to working families. These were the men and women who promised to vote against any health care reform bill that didn’t include, at the minimum, a robust public option. 60 signed a letter to Secretary Sebelius and 18 took the FDL Pledge.

Democratic members of Congress need to understand that a healthcare reform bill with a Public Option is simply not an option– it’s a requirement. The congressmembers on this list have said in no uncertain terms that they will not vote for a bill without a public option all the way through Conference. That takes courage, and we need to show them how much we appreciate them for doing so. Please make a contribution– and thanks for everything else you’re doing for the public option.

in fact, i whipped my own rep wednesday night (one of the 57) based on his pledge and the fundraiser, and he didn’t tell me the money raised was for something other than what he promised, he just blew me off and said he couldn’t vote no and then went on to compare the bill to social security and medicare.

You probably need a whole lot less than 41 to block it. I always guessed you’d need 12-18, but it’s looking like even fewer than that.

You just aren’t going to get them right now to kill the bill in its current form. If they were going to do it, they would have. And having just capitulated to anti-abortion extremists, they’re probably more likely to stick with a promise to kill it if Joe strips out the public option.

I think there are enough to do that. And if and when that happens, we’ll back them.

This is exactly true

Jane I have posted giving an argument against the PO several times but the mod won’t let it through yet, although generally they’ve been keeping up with my typing. You might have to look back to see the comment(s) or I could repost it.

Oh come on. Let me be grumpy for a bit! (Okay, maybe more than a bit.)

;)

Since the day Roe v Wade was decided the forced birthers have been trying to get it overturned, both legislatively and through the courts. Even when they were defeated they won something. Roe v Wade is still the law of the land but they’re still trying to destroy it.

If a bill containing a PO, however weak, is signed into law it’s a victory. Mayhaps not the grand solution we’d all like to see but a small step toward that goal. As it stands now the PO doesn’t really go into full force until 2013 or some such. There’s a lot of time between now and then, 2 Congressional election cycles and 1 presidential.

We have to be willing to bust our ass to get what we want. Just because we didn’t get all we wanted in 1 fell swoop is no reason to go home. A vast majority of the anti-war folks went home when Obama was elected. Look where that got us.

Never. Give. Up.

We fought, we got what we could get, though we all wanted more. Let’s not tilt at windmills. Eliminating preexisting conditions & caps is HUGE – if nothing else, this alone makes a great deal of difference in a lot of lives.

Yes. bad girl :)
Now I know you’re weakness for incorrect gramer and speling….

Block it and then what?

Do you think the 112th Congress will be any better?

The system allows for incremental change. We should take it.

I agree with Jane that something will pass.

But can’t a senator on our side posture as if he wont vote for it? Can we pressure at least one senator to do that…? Bernie Sanders? Wyden? Anyone?

Jane, I’m not arguing with you, I’m agreeing with you, although maybe on a different path.

What he said.

And how do we ‘do better’ at this point?

We can’t really STOP this train wreck, the Senat’s gonna pass SOMETHING! And Obama and Dem’s will dance like Pelosi, and hope all the bright shiny objects hold up thru ’10 and ’12.

So KILLING this puppy is just not an option, as I think Mz. Hamsher has pointed out?

So, how do we minimize the FURTHER damage we expect The Senate to inflict?

I’ve NO suggestions . . . but eagerly await thoughts and suggestions from others regarding this dilemma we now face, and have been facing.

Not only Raven. *g*

The public plan currently inscribed in the Pelosi bill, Jane, is not terribly important. The analysis of PNHP shows that. So, yeah, keep going after the Blue Dogs. But, yeah, if you don’t feel we can all get together and, pulling with all our might, kill the bill, then let the We Really Just Want To Preserve Corporate Hegemony Bill of 2009 Or 2010 pass, and organize for the future.

- A parasitic reform bill is bad policy, bad politics, and –most importantly– antithetical to quality, affordable healthcare.
- Does the presence of the public option –as constructed– provide relief from the parasite?
- If yes, then it’s a relevant point of policy to advocate and stand on.
- If no, then it’s a non-sequiter.

The question is, does the public option even matter anymore? If it doesn’t matter as an effective practical solution, then it’s only value becomes as a political albatross… the problem is that isn’t value for us, that’s value for our opponents, because it’s our albatross. Every possible political force is going to make sure we own this thing, as evidenced by the fact that the public option is already promulgated as the “far-left” position by the media and most of the political-class.

Huh, I’ve been grumpy all weekend. I wanted to physically harm all 64 “Democrats” that voted for the Stupid amendment. And I’ve never harmed a person in my life.

That’s pretty inevitable, methinks.
And from THERE, what do the masses do?

they’re probably more likely to stick with a promise to kill it if Joe strips out the public option.

So logically we want to lose the PO in the senate to KILL THE BILL?

Come on Ms Hamsher; many many people have argued against the PO now not just selise and me. How about your argument for trying to keep a PO that’s too weak to lower costs?

And how would you block the House bill? It passed Saturday.

We haven’t been able to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t oppose them.

haven’t you heard about keeping your powder dry? only fight battles you can win /snark.

Jane, thanks for as clear a description as I’ve seen of the tactical ineptitude of the single-payer movement. I’m on the mailing lists of, and will continue to march in solidarity with, pretty much every key SP organization around. However, I’ve seen nothing in the last few months as specific and targeted as a whip operation to get 14 progressives to commit to blocking HR 3962 without the Kucinich amendment.

Given that only one of the 60 signatories to the July 30 CPC pledge held firm against a bill lacking Medicare-based rates, maybe a harder-core Kucinich amendment pledge was always impossible. But nothing like a highly visible, FDL-style citizen whip count was even attempted.

I’ve been consistent from the start in questioning the wisdom and value of a Weiner floor vote. That said, as a matter of historical precision, I’m not sure you’ve really supported your claim that Schakowsky and the other CPC members on E&L caved to negotiated rates as a quid pro quo for the Weiner floor vote. I elaborated on this recently:

You’re referring to Jane’s posts about the events of July 30, when 60 CPC members signed a letter vowing to vote against any bill containing a PO that was not tied to Medicare rates. The CPC announced this stand while the E&C committee was still in markup on HR 3200.

President Obama had personally lobbied Jan Schakowsky and other progressives on the E&C committee to vote the bill out of committee with the weaker, negotiated-rates PO demanded by Blue Dogs. The progressives on the committee relented. They were not signatories to the CPC letter. (At the CPC press conference announcing the CPC letter, Lynn Woolsey said that it wasn’t appropriate for progressives on the E&C committee to sign, since they were still in the midst of markup. I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense, but there you are.)

Jane wrote a post implying that Schakowsky’s cave-in was at least partly a quid pro quo for the HR 676 floor vote. She actually offered no evidence of this, however. Maybe it’s true, but it’s also possible that Pelosi offered the floor vote just to speed things up in the E&C committee deliberations and deprive Anthony Weiner of yet another amendment on which to grandstand.

I’ve repeatedly said that nothing worth having was worth trading away just to get the HR 676 floor vote. However, I don’t believe Jane really made the case that Medicare+5% would have survived the E&C markup had Pelosi not offered the 676 floor vote. I think the committee progressives very likely would have rolled on negotiated rates, regardless.

Whether the 60 signatories to the CPC letter will ultimately roll as well, we don’t yet know. But I do agree with Jane that no CPC member should automatically be trusted based merely upon a written signature on an explicit pledge.

I’m not saying you were wrong, but as noted above, I’m not sure Schakowsky wasn’t primed to cave on negotiated rates regardless of the fate of the Weiner amendment. If you have more evidence on the point, it would be of (strictly academic, I’m afraid) interest.

The courts are NOT going to weaken the mandates. The ACLU won’t even try.

be as grumpy as you need to be. i think we’ll all understand.

(((jane)))

When you look at the rest of the advanced world, you see that they spend half as much on healthcare as Americans and have better outcomes and overall better health among the general population due to access and preventative care. The answer to healthcare is simple and straight forward. Take the profit out and allow the government to regulate or administrate. Healthcare is not the problem. The corruption of Congress is the problem. We are wasting our time talking about the specifics of healthcare policy. We should be singling out each legislator on the take and making it untenable for he/she to survive the spotlight. What they are doing is a criminal enterprise and they should be called out as criminals. Their actions directly cause death, suffering, bankruptcy and the breakup of families. Our jails are full of people that have committed crimes far less savage and callous. It doesn’t matter which Party, these criminals need to go.

Block it and then keep blocking it till we get a decent Bill.

Obama made a promise to do healthcare his first term. If it fails you think he won’t try again?

And even if he doesn’t, next issue he takes on, be it DOMA or DADT, or Immigration or whatever they won’t assuem they can just walk all over the left again. Because get used to it, this is going to keep happening over and over and over. Because as it stands right now, even if the house bill passed so what? Even without Stupak it’s a weak toothless PO that won’t do anything important.

@SouthernDragon

Yes The House bill passed…once.

It has to now be merged with the Senate Bill and voted on again, and that is our opportunity.

No one is of the opinion that this House bill is fair or adequate reform, but it has passed and the outcome was certainly influenced marginally for the better by the netroots effort. Even Hacker feels that way when appraising the version of the PO that was included.

Also it must be borne in mind that a recent study shows that not having health insurance is estimated to cost around 40,000 deaths /year and a loss of $50,000 to the economy for every year that is lost per person per year due to not having insurance. The cost to the econmy from this is a staggering $140 Billion over 10 years.

So this loss at least may have been ameliorated by this bill.

There is no question, I think, that netroots advocacy did shape the outcome and should take some of the credit. But I feel that now a show of stregth must be shown.

Someone needs to pay a political price for the weakness they have shown and for the damage they will have caused through the inequities of this bill. I think we should work to unseat Reid now and replace him with a candidate more in keeping with our views.

Whatever power in numbers we may have needs to translate into political electoral action.

Look I am re-posting as my comments under moderation get lost too easily (if the software added them at the end that would be better). Jane Hamsher keeps asking where is the argument against the PO. here it is:

(1) PO is too weak to control costs – worthless
(2) PO’s failure can be used against us – “see? government run healthcare don’t work”
(3) the stuff in the bill worth anything we would have got anyway (eg no more prexisting)
(4) loss of opportunity costs
(5) loss of face by progressive block capitulating yet again – less power in future negotiations
(6) Overton window pushed to the right as crappy PO is labeled the “progressive position”
(7) no PO in bill means its more like to be killed.

Block it and then what?

If we were confident that we’d have more strength next year, blocking it would make sense. Nobody here seems that optimistic — UNDERSTATEMENT — so passing it makes sense UNLESS we believe that it’s actually worse than nothing.

So if you’re purely grumpy, you say “There’s no hope and block the bill”. But blocking the bill makes the most sense if you’re optimistic.

Let’s not make this into a mood thing.

I know I understand.

Jane’s an amazing human being, IMO. Wish I had half her “stuff”, whatever it is she has that keeps her ticking.

I’ve discovered there are LOTS of amazing folks here at FDL. Wish I had found this site years ago.

Selise, I’m scratching my head a bit here. We’d been using “robust” (as did the CPC) long before that July 30 letter. The CPC had whipped on “robust” with no explicit definition for months, per Jerry Nadler, and we have him saying that on video.

The July 30 letter that progressives wrote to Nancy Pelosi said they will vote against a bill that does not have a public option tied to Medicare rates, period. Which we mocked, because we knew they’d never stick to it.

“Medicare plus 5″ was a compromise that cropped up in early October:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/10/02/progressive-block-loses-14-members-join-dfa-and-fdl-and-tell-them-we-stand-united/

And the “later” fundraiser WAS the August 18 fundraiser. Click through in the link above.

Sorry if you thought we said something we didn’t, but we expressly and purposefully didn’t tie our “ask” to Medicare. They weren’t going to do it. They capitulated to “Medicare” on August 3, and “Medicare plus 5″ just recently. Which was why we didn’t whip for it. It wasn’t going to happen. There were too many votes against.

Why most of you are trying to throw Kucinich under the bus?

We all know what the “Liberal Media” would have done if the headlines on Saturday Night where “Dems kill their own reform in the House”. Look more than 3/4 of the country isn’t even paying attention to the daily workings of Government. What’s the viewer rating of C-SPAN? Right around 3-4 million at any given time? Funny but that’s about how many would be covered by this shitty bill if it stays as-is when becomes back, but by all accounts it will come back WORST.

The push for HR676 is over, it won’t happen in the Senate. We need to roll that back into the Liberal Closet for the time being and focus on what’s possible, if not a public option, then YANK the thing and put in the provision that Kucinich is championing. Republicans are always talking about preserving State’s Right, make them support it. After all, in their home districts what do THEY have to worry about?

As I have said before, this can be done a few ways. Since there is no desire to put draconian rules on insurance companies, no support for a “Robust (Hacker) Public Option” or “Canadian Style” Single Payer, then drop the whole thing.

If all they want to do is outlaw Pre-existing Condition, then let them keep that in and let the Government subsidize the Poor/Working Poor. All it will do is heighten the already out of control “Class Warfare” in America.

But require and push hard by all Progressives that we WANT Kucinich’s Amendment put back into the final Bill. Maybe we can modify Sander’s stand to support this as well.

Clearly this wasn’t going to work this time. Can anybody point to any real regulation that has passed recently that was liberal in mindset and worked as designed? Even Cash For Clunkers wasn’t as Progressive as it could have been and many countries are still running their Clunker plans long after ours has exhausted its supply of money.

As Dennie Kucinich said back in July –

Re-Double Our Efforts, make sure it comes back into the Bill and Stays

Is it at all possible to get some ConservaDems to support a stronger PO now that they anti-choice amendment is in there?

I am horrified that that language is in the bill now, but honestly, I think it’s there to stay. It’s not a bargaining chip that they plan to remove, it’s the key that gets this thing passed and Democratic leadership is determined to pass something, anything, so this is what they have to do to do that.

It’s pretty clear this bill is going to suck, but can we get some leverage out of one crappy provision to de-crappify another provision?

The answer may be “no,” but I figure it can’t hurt to ask the question.

And we don’t yet know what final form the Senate bill will take.

I’d like to see what strength Charlie’s in afore I start using up my resources.

Actually the US government pays more per person for health care (public money that is) than any other. It just also has a ton of private money on top. It’s freakishly inefficient.

For “inefficient” read “profitable”.

Jane, what do you have in mind for those who took the pledge and then voted for this bill?

Well, I suppose it’s “pie in the sky” stuff, but I’d LOVE to see the Democratic Party nationalize next years elections around the issue of Single Payer and see what happens. I really think it could win at the polls.

And if it doesn’t, then Americans deserved to keep getting raped by insurance companies.

Sorry, I am so late on this.

I still maintain that by not uniting together with all progressives behind Single Payer Medicare for All, and refusing as a block when it was taken “off the table” originally, the passion and momentum for uncompromised universal health care as a human and civil right was lost, which passion and commitment would have been contagious to fellow ostrich citizens eventually, not to mention it would have been clear and understandable defying the “mystification” powerplay of “this is too complicated for your little minds” played by Congress and insurance companies and an obtuse and manipulative corporate media to keep the majority of citizenry uninvolved (and our sell out economists in the administration play this). We could have strongly stood behind all straightforward elements of the original 30 page bill.

Do we want the INSURANCE AND PHARMA COMPANIES TO BE ROLLING IN EVEN MORE PROFITS? DO WE WANT TO PICK UP WHERE THEY HAVE MADE US LEAVE OFF, SUNK TO THIS PATHETIC BEGGARLY LEVEL, OR CAN WE GO BACK AND ASK FOR WHAT WE HAVE ALWAYS DESERVED AS CITIZENS? Let’s put our line in the sand as a BLOCK!!!!

Again, can we say a BIG NO to the travesty that just passed and not just quietly watch it be spun and celebrated by a fast sinking hypocritical Obama administration?

And now Sanders is adapting his S703 to be more like HR676 and will present that soon in the Senate. And will we watch that get scuttled because we are so cynical and demoralized or will we REALLY PISSED OFF push for what is RIGHT AND TRUE?

PLEASE will the “pragmatic progressives” who are strong and smart and resilient and skilled at FDL and elsewhere rejoin with the progressives still fighting the good fight for single payer medicare for all NOW and put their might behind S703 in the Senate, and go for the real and immediate best option for the common good, and DEFY the betrayal that has just happened, the annihilation of pro-choice using insurance reform deal making. WE NEED TO UNITE ON THIS STUFF. WE NEED TO KEEP IT SIMPLE AND COURAGEOUS AND UNCOMPROMISING ON BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS.

May we all unite behind a clear and uncompromising demand for what we deserve and have been so disrespected and sabotaged about by our non-representing representatives.

Please seriously consider, Jane, et al. Let’s all take it to the mattresses. Yesterday on Meet the Press, David Brooks scoffed that only 20% of the citizenry are progressives and Obama would be foolish to heed us. But that 20% is the INFORMED part of the citizenry. And if he is flicking off the call of that group, he is dissing citizens that are the truly informed and the voice of the true public needs and that is a travesty. He and David Brooks are lost to exceptionalism and gamesmanship and corporate and political cronyism and are ENEMIES of the common good.

I’d love to stay and chat, ladies ‘n germs but gotta go back to work.

Namaste

We’re going to have to weaken the mandate, if we can’t get a real public option, or some actual cost-control measures (price caps, low fixed-rate schedules, etc.)

The subsidies, since there are no real minimum coverage or maximum premium controls, will eventually be included in the baseline price of coverage to keep the margins growing for private insurers. This is what happens when you have expected permanent subsidies to the demand-side of the market. This will inflate the price to the point where people can’t afford it again, meaning one of two things has to happen. Either the subsidies have to increase, or the mandate penalties do. With the former, we’ll have the government playing a constant game of cat and mouse with increasing premium prices that it will then continue to grow at their real-rate + subsidy-rate. With the former if the penalties don’t get stiffer and stiffer, then people will cyclically drop off the roles of insurance in the gaps between rate hikes and the time it takes the subsidies to catch up.

It’s a tightly coupled system that’s design flaws feed the problem it was intended to solve.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually for mandates, because they’re supposed to prevent individuals from avoiding paying in their share of the pool. Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re using them for. The way they’re constructed with the legislation we’re seeing is that they’re being used to create a captive market and de facto regressive tax.

The Party won’t do it. It’s gonna be up to the citizens to force whoever’s running to take a stand one way or the other. The pols are gonna start their campaigns in the not so distant future and now’s the time to ramp up that discussion, regardless of what happens in Congress now.

my mistake then. don’t think i’m the only one though, and that includes my rep.

You sound like you are trying to defend them on a technicality. Could a PO without medicare +5 be robust? Yes, in theory. But is this PO robust? Clearly not. It’s dead from multiple wounds. Bottom line: will it control costs? No. Are you saying the progressive block disagree and genuinely think the current PO (which will only get worse still) is “robust”?

If not they do appear to have reneged on their promise.
Is that not clear?

Sorry, I was being a moran.

*G*

I am sorry but the longer this debate goes on the more confused I get. My understanding of a robust PO is one that has rates that are commensurate with actual costs sans huge costs of private insurance and also that is available to those who choose to enroll in it without restrictions. Is this correct?

if it is the same as the House PO, it doesn’t matter. Why should I care about a in name only PO? Seems more like something to pacify liberals. Certainly not what I’d consider “Click to Join the Fight for a Real Public Option“.

Didn’t the CBO say the House PO will likely be a dumping ground? Why fight for that? Just cause they call it a PO?

But again, Reid hasn’t shown what his PO is. It matters.

If 88 members wouldn’t stand in support of HR676, how are 60 going to stand for S703.

No, I say focus on giving States the Power to do Single Payer if they want.

Colorado and California already have Single Payer ready to go and be voted on when needed. If you live in the Deep South or the Mid-West, sorry I support Single Payer on the National Level, but no matter how much you want it, two things won’t happen.

Massive Public Support

Massive Infusion of Money

Phoenix Woman, what on earth does any of that have to do with the points that Kucinich is making with regards to this bill? All you are doing with that posts and posts like that is engaging in brain-dead ad hominem attacks. If you can address the points that Kucinich made, please do. That you resort to the sort of spew that was that post makes me think you don’t really have an argument.

unless someone has another policy to advance that gets us to comprehensive universal healthcare, i’m with you. this isn’t something where win/lose is defined by one legislative cycle. it we believe that healthcare is a human right, and i do, then we have to get behind a policy that is consistent with that.

got to go, but glad to leave on your inspiring comment. thanks libby.

Silent Witness re domestic abuse victims is an excellent model for this. The org with lifesize red cutouts of women slain by their abuser, with a bio of each woman attached to her “cutout.” They stand in silence in state capitols, at marches, at rallies, at education events re DA, etc.

So, yeah. Time to do something visual and powerful.

Indiepro,

Jane wants to know what our choice would be, between the current corporate bill with no PO and a corporate bill with a PO (which at some point will hopefully be expanded).

We want to know why this choice is so important, if the PO is so unimportant.

Don’t we?

I mean, why waste a lot of time, energy, and organizational dollars on it?

Anyone wants to volunteer to work tomorrow on a single payer project, email me at firedoglake AT gmail DOT com.

Jane, what was this single payer project you were talking about just before midnight Saturday night HERE?

We may not know what form it will take but we knwo for sure it’s going to be worse than the House Bill. And if the house bill si already unacceptable what’s the point in waiting?

You really think you’re goign to get something better from a more conservative Senate?

We have to work to kill the bill now, or we lose.

Progressives become a laughing stock who once again will not stand up and vote for what they believe in.

You say “I’m not sure you’ve really supported your claim that Schakowsky and the other CPC members on E&L caved to negotiated rates as a quid pro quo for the Weiner floor vote.” I’m pretty sure I’ve linked to this on serveral occasions:

Anthony Weiner is about to be the new hero of the progressive crowd after getting a promise from Nancy Pelosi to debate — and vote — on a single-payer plan to solve health care reform.

Weiner got that promise after he agreed to withdraw an amendment to essentially create Medicare for the whole nation in the Energy and Commerce Committee health care markup session this evening.

The Brooklyn-Queens Rep. looked a little surprised when Chairman Henry Waxman said Pelosi would allow that vote, and made Waxman repeat the deal to be sure it was clear and on the record.

It’s an especially big deal for advocates of a single health care system — who see it as cheaper and simpler than the complicated measure being drawn up — because they have been complaining that they have not even been able to get an airing of their position.

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2009/07/single-payer-gets-a-vote.html#ixzz0WOIgImSq

The SP movement was focused on whipping to get the 218 needed to pass Weiner, but didn’t have a strategy to get any Blue Dogs on board (12 were needed) so I never thought it would wind up being viable. They had no interest in whipping to block anything that didn’t let Kucinich on to the floor, but Kucinich could’ve done it himself. That’s how these things usually start.

I like the SP orgs a lot and hope we can work together to marry strategy with policy. The best way to do that is not for me to jump in and hijack their plans.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually for mandates, because they’re supposed to prevent individuals from avoiding paying in their share of the pool.

But if it’s not my pool, then why should I pay for it?

The injustice of a mandate is not merely that, under certain conditions, it would create a captive market and be a regressive tax, although these are certainly real injustices. The injustice of a mandate is also that the regressive tax and the captive market are responsible to undemocratically-appointed, private for-profit entities enshrined by government.

If we are required to pay for the pool, it had better be our pool.

I don’t know how many more times to say this. We never asked for that.

If you want to go back and kick the shit out of them for not living up to their promise to Nancy Pelosi, by all means, do. But “tied to Medicare rates” was something we never asked for.

the PO was important, but the progressives capitulated and failed in the House. If by some miracle Reid brings a real PO, it’ll be important again.

btw, I don’t agree with this: “A public option was never anything more than a stepping stone to Medicare for all”

with mandated insurance, insufficient subsidies and no real cost controls, a PO was the only counter to the insurance industry being able to take as much US treasure as they like. And it was a good stepping stone.

Well, I suppose it’s “pie in the sky” stuff, but I’d LOVE to see the Democratic Party nationalize next years elections around the issue of Single Payer and see what happens.

Now THAT I support!

Well, OK, then. Let’s do it. What’s involved, what are the logistics?

No Jane, you are wrong, I know Dennis very well, he voted against the bill because it sucked, if his amendment was in it then he might have voted yes, having given us in the amendment, a way out of paying premiums forever to the same corporations that are trying to kill us! But the bill sucks according to Dennis and according to myself, have you read the bill yet????
Dr. Lora Chamberlain

The ACLU won’t have to try.

The day this bill is signed, there are going to be lawyers in all 50 states ready to file court papers. And they’ll be well financed by the right wing as they view this as a way to destroying HCR. The fact that I agree with them that it’s unconstitutional makes me uncomfortable, but it’s not the first time I’ve actually agreed with something from the right wing. It is very rare though.

If one would want to engage in some contingency thinking then it might be a good idea to begin to think of what to do if the likely outcome is a bill with the current version or even a more limited version of the PO, just to focus on that aspect for the moment.

I do tend agree with you that the PO was likely a dsitraction but at the time something had to be clung onto since single payer seemd to far out of reach.

Anyway, looking ahead to make the best of the PO as it will emerge I think we should strive to assure that as many low risk prospective enrollees enter the PO, even if the premuims are marginally greater than for private insurers. Only then will costs to come down within the PO plan and at the same time deprive private insurers of more entrees into their plan.

I know that private insurers will be an obstacle but that’s always a given.

I’m having the loveliest little chat with myself. And therefore, I reserve the right to contradict myself. What was I thinking about doing a major rollout of an Pro-choice model?!?!? Talk about playing into the hands of the enemy. That isn’t what this is about at all, and yet they’ve made it be so. Treacherous little devils, aren’t they? Yes, barbara, they are.

If by some miracle Reid brings a real PO, it’ll be important again.

Harry Reid would only do that if he thought he could get the votes for it. Right now Harry Reid’s main public face is in favor of stalling for time, and what you see of the “public option” movement is locked up in rearguard actions against its further weakening.

So there will be no miracle.

Ok, setting that aside, we didn’t whip against the Stupak Amendment. I hear you. But it was taken out like a knife behind our backs and used to all but nullify the good parts of H R 3962, as women will have a choice now alright:they can choose between getting the benefits from H R 3962 by voluntarily giving up their rights and not getting the benefits at all.

Essentially, you’re saying that because they gave us something with the right hand while stabbing us in the back with the left, we should be satisfied. At least that’s what I’m hearing.

I’m not trying to fight with you. I’m trying to understand you and, so far, honestly, I don’t.

OldFatGuy, the mandate will be called a “tax increase.” Those who have health insurance will receive a “tax credit,” a subsidy, to offset the increase. Neither credit nor increase will merit the attention of the courts.

I guess we’ll see. The Mass. individual mandate currently has a case pending.

That would be one phrellin wierd ass ‘Win/Win’ hoss.

I’m not ‘AGIN it, but, we should maybe ‘be careful what we wish for’ whilst dancin with the devils.

And for that alone, I’m now thinkin, I AM ‘agin it, I’m ‘agin siding with the right wingtards not only in GENERAL principle, but on any principle.

You side with them once, you’ve watered down your position, and let THEM drive you to their right. They been doing that for 40 years now, and we the people let them marginalize us further and further to the right all along.

Nope. Part of this here reform (which we lost to Bank/Fi Stim, Bank/Fi Reform, and a myriad of other issues recently) is drawing a line in the sand and saying, hell no, we the people won’t let YOU 23% whackaloons drive our lives and our country no mo, no matter if BOTH parties are using you for their own corporate enabling.

No more!

You can support that all you want, you and I both know it’s never going to happen.

The current Democratic party stoped having this as one of thier plank issue years ago. The current Democratic parrty no longer shares our views.

what I find the most disheartening is that we (the Progressive blogosphere) were all whipped up as this being our line in the sand moment. And let’s be fair Jane, you didn’t help matters any with that. We all Believed that the Progressives would hold in the sand.

They didn’t, they cowered out. there’s no way to look at it otherwise and we can nitpick as to which provision they didn’t keep, but they broke thier vow.

So why are we continuing to work in this failed framework? You keep saying you’re not willing to try to kill the bill because you don’t think it will work.

Has going about this the same old way worked? I would say no. We got a few comsetic victories, but we really got shafted in the end, with a bonus slap in the face of the Stupak Amendment.

So why are we going to try the same failed strategy? I have not yet heard an answer to this.

a) We can’t outspend the Corporate interests, we just can’t.
b) The Progressives will never stand up to leadership because they all have agendas

With those 2 blaring facts staring us in the face, why are we just going to try doing the same thing over again when it not only didn’t work at all, but cost us because of the stupak amendment with Progressives getting outplayed.

Killing the bill is the next step, one we have to advance to or all our threats, even you daring to primary Blanche Lincoln are absolutely menaingless.

I agree. I think it is highly unlikely, and I have no problem saying so. Yet, until he actually allows the bill to be seen, I don’t know what it is.

I think this bill is gonna hurt alot of peole. I know many people who live paycheck to paycheck. Are contract workers, or the insurance at work was too expensive for a family. The middle class is hurting, and many are not eligible for subsidies. The media are calling this a liberal bill, etc. It ain’t. It’s a conservative bill.

I’m with Jane that having a public option in the final stinking mess is better than not having it. What we got stinks in numerous ways.

Wasn’t one of the criteria for “robust public option” that it be available from day one?

Insurance gets 30 million new customers, the public option gets 6 million from the estimates I’ve seen. It is good that there will be 36 million newly insured in 2013. I don’t see costs being contained because 6 million people are on a PO plan.

How much can we do to fix the problems between whatever comes out of conference and 2013? That’s two Congressional election cycles and a presidential election away. Personally I’d like to see more progressive candidates in safe districts, and let DINO blue dogs lose to republicans in the off year. Work as much as possible to get the decennial redistricting to make our work in 2012 easier. Congressional class of 2013 could be a lot better for us… possibly some of the eligibility restrictions for the PO could get lost in 2013 and it could cover enough people to put pressure on private insurance.

Tell me why a lo risk MANDATED enrollee would choose a higher cost premium choice?

What would be the marketing discourse that pitches that?

A moral obligation? Those fall short when personal survival comes into play, and rightfully so.

No, the only way to ensure the success of a robust PO is to break the backs of the private insurers and reduce their stranglehold on the so far, government legislated monopolies they operate under, all bought and paid for, as evidenced in lists galore presented here at FDL by many.

And that robust PO does not exist in the House Bill, and the Senate will not ensure a robust PO, either.

So, what’s yer game plan, gamed?

Let me clarify…. I want to Kill the House HCR bill as it moves into the Senate, which I think is completely doable! All we have to do is kick up the wingnuts and we will have an instant movement, they only have 52 votes in the Senate anyways and they need 60. We ask the Sanators to kill this bill and introduce Obama’s 8 points of Insurance reform in a new bill, so it gives the Senators who want reform something to focus on! A simple swap! But this present House HC bill must not progress for all the various reasons that everyone on this blog has listed. Just read them all over again and what you get is a general admission from everyone that we did not win with this bill! OK, OK, OK so we didn’t win, now stand up, shake yourself off and start fighting to get at least something for all these months of debate and lobbying. But don’t just throw up your hands and say “Oh Well, it’s already a done deal so we might as well just climb back in our slave shacks and take it like the slaves we are!”
Come On, we can Kill this Stinken Bill!!!

You’ve lost me, totally.

It’s interesting listening to your voices, though. Mine are alternately shouting and talking to one another thru out this entire thread . . . it’s good dialogue!

Wanna spell it all out for me? Please? Cuz I AM lost, and interested in what you mean about the choice/anti choice thang . . . .

Thanks!

I like the SP orgs a lot and hope we can work together to marry strategy with policy. The best way to do that is not for me to jump in and hijack their plans.

Is that why you are reluctant to suggest they broke their promise?

Hey. I’m confused about what has happened here at FDL. Trying to figure it out, publicly (unfortunately).

Do you see that they gave us the stuff in H R 3962 with one hand and took it away with the other, indeed, made things worse with the Stupak Amendment than just taking the benefits of H R 3962 back?

The Stupak Amendment was taken out like a knife behind our backs and used to all but nullify the good parts of H R 3962, as women will now have a choice alright: they can choose between getting the benefits from H R 3962 by voluntarily giving up their rights and not getting the benefits at all.

What did we get with HR 3962 with the Stupak Amendment in it again?

Uh, that language is in The House Bill? Or any parts of the present Senate Bill?

I’d be delighted to learn of this . . . that there’s language to support your posit.

A tax increase and a subsidy for whom? Those uninsured and mandated to BUY insurance?

Those of us who HAVE employer insurance and see our rates going up and our coverage going down?

Thanks in advance for your clarity, ‘preciate that.

Can nobody say why they think having a PO is a good thing, given that it is too weak to control costs?

Larue, that’s how they enforce mandates. The penalty is payable to the IRS as a “tax increase.” If you have insurance, you don’t have to pay a penalty, thus you get a “credit” to erase the penalty.

Whether they call it that in the bills, or not, is irrelevant. That’s how it will be defended in court.

Then read some more. I’m not here to spoon-feed you, just as you’re not here to be spoon-fed.

Are we not grown-ups who can do a little research on our own? You need links? Surely you know how to use Google, no?

I have seen lie after lie after lie posted on this blog about Medicare “slashing”, and just about NOBODY has called them on it.

So many HERE engage in the republican tactic of tossing out a sound-bite/lie, walking away from it, and hoping the lie sticks.

Bullshit on that.

I’m in a decided minority over Stupak:

I think it is morally and ethically wrong. Reproductive health is an essential part of health care and mandating that certain procedures not be covered is wrong.

I don’t think it sets reproductive rights back as much as people think. Uninsured women find ways to get abortions now (mainly via subsidized services at Planned Parenthood, etc). That won’t stop just because they have insurance for other care.

Insured women will be paying out of pocket for abortions. Given the price of a Vacuum Aspiration is $500 or so, D&C on the order of $1000 … it is a hardship, but not the end of legal abortion.

removing it via conference is important. I’ve written to Obama already to demand that he keep his promise. I will be writing Feinstein and Boxer to insist that they work to remove it (Stupak).

Reproductive health could see some improvements from other parts of the bill that improve medical training. We could see more OB/GYN providers that offer abortion services are scarce and this scarcity is a bigger threat to access in my opinion.

What we got was 36 million more people that will have health insurance. Newly insured people get basic screening and preventative care. Which means they get the blood pressure medication, not the emergency bypass. They get the insulin, not the repeated rides to the ER in a diabetic coma. Etc. This saves money regardless of whether a private company or the PO pays the provider.

One last thing, Jane I agree with you that Naral et all were slow to the fight about the Stupid amendment, they should be contacted and urged to help kill this bill!

88 members didn’t stand behind it because the progressives weren’t UNITED behind it and they knew it, and they knew the cause wasn’t being embraced by the public since it was oo confusing and convuluted to follow, the ambivalent “public option”. And it — fight for a morphing publi optoin — disenfranchised a passionate and activist base of the progressives. If the progressives were UNITED behind it, then there would be momentum to catch up more citizenry to get behind it. And then it would be a force more to be reckoned with. EVERYBODY IN AND NOBODY OUT. It will repel the xenophobics in this country, but they weren’t for po anyway, and it would INSPIRE those feeling betrayed by Obama and YES fellow progressives.

Playing Lucy and the football with Obama and Congress people, the ever morphing public option, was too remote to the citizenry. The “in the loop” progressives working with the supposedly “in the loop” Congressional progressives, NOT.

We have the structure of a bill that is coming up. Actually on the calendar thanks to one stubborn Senator, the way almost stubborn Weiner had put it. We take it to the mattresses and focus so much of this awesome FDL machinery and its influence on other progressive networks on that prize …. and keep going after Sanders S703 vote. It will renew the fight in the progressives who have been not on the same action page.

Medicare for All … is the line in the sand. There is no genuine respect for the common good with corporations and Congress and Media. We should keep our eyes on the prize, not the ever morphing shrinking “trust us we’ll make sure it will be a prize” of a public option.

I am so tired of getting disrespected for wanting to use a line in the sand, broken record kind of assertiveness…. “We deserve universal health care as a human and civil right. There is no compromise.” That is not naive. It is core and the rock on which to stand and make demands, not shifting sands with a horrible undertow of self interest. Universal health care can easily be afforded (aside from reducing massive gratuitous and violent war funding) by removing the insurance and pharma vendors who have violated the public trust, taking $1 out of every $3 for itself, and must now suffer ACCOUNTABILITY by terminating their services which can be arranged using a Medicare structure that is in place now. Just lower the age from 65 to 0. And bring in insurance workers on the bottom rungs to that kind of needed and non-gratuitous paperwork support.

I keep thinking of how much more Helmsley at UnitedHealth will get above the $57,000 a day salary he is getting now. At the same time realizing 120 people prematurely die each day.

Having the real prize front and center to be fought for is what it is about. King said to keep your eye on the prize. Universal health care.

Why not try NOT the compromising route? Why not try the stick with message and keep that drumbeat going and going and going. The Repubs uses it for the vile. Why not use it for the good. Do you know how tired I am hearing interviewed Reps on TV say, well, actually I am for single payer but …. WTF???? Why not make those people stick with Single Payer instead of talkign the procrastinating talk?

If you po progressives feel frustrated communicating your point of view with the Reps in Congress who won’t take a stand, it is a little bit how single payer folk feel with the public option folk telling them “you just can’t get there from here.”

Thanks for responding to me, BTW, dj.

Thanks. Wish I could write more, but I’m at a loss.

Hmmm, IANAL, perhaps you are.

But for MY NAL needs, I’d have to read the bills actual language before assuming anything the courts would or wouldn’t respond to. To learn how it ACTUALLY works, ya know.

Know what I mean?

A PO that cannot contain costs is like a bucket with no bottom in it. It simply is not fit for its only purpose and is therefore not really a PO except in name. Useful only as bait and switch.

What is the argument for a PO?

Sadly my comments are effectively blocked in any thread where there’s a lot of posting due to the time taken for the moderator to approve them. This is nothing but political censorship, enacted with dishonesty.

Uh, thought I made it pretty clear in my original post that MY googling revealed NOTHING of substance.

Ergo, my request of the poster in question for THEIR insights, as they apparently already HAD the info, the links, and details.

Ya know?

But thanks for, well, not much but a lecture on my lack of initiative and inability to google.

‘Preciate knowing I’ve some handicaps and shortcomings I wasn’t aware of!

selise, thanks. i think you are underestimating how strong the force would be if the “pragmatic progressives” took a stand with the hard line single payer folk, it would renew both groups and would be contagious and wake up the ostrich citizenry.

But fighting for compromised public option was like as one person said, “trying to leap the chasm of reform in two jumps.” We need the passion and righteousness to make that one big leap to universal health care for all, Everybody in and Nobody out.” Xenophobics are not the majority of this country.

45,000 people die a year. Isn’t that enough to kick citizens and Congresspeople in the ass to put a stop to it, AND THIS VERY F*CKING YEAR!!!

Not sure if I’ve ever seen your name here before stranger but just in case you are as new as I think, the convention at FDL has pretty much always been that the person make the assertion of fact is the one who provides the links and data to back up the assertion.

Otherwise, you get the reputation of a blowhard with nothing concrete to really say. “Because I say so” generally does not fly.

Libby, I’m all for drawing a line in the sand.
I like your moxie, I like your tactics.

What part of the nation, that’s NOT got healthcare, would turn its back on care, not insurance?

Once simply ‘splained, “You get a doctor, a nurse, and drugs and treatment, and you don’t have to pay for it”, what illiterate rightwing rednecked moran would refuse that, for them and their family?

And then, working up from the bottom of the barrell, what literate people would turn that down, if simply ‘splained? You think ANYONE without care (cept for XTIAN anti science prayer curing idjits) would turn that down?

It’s a marching call. It crosses all lines of divisions. It’s all inclusive, all people, all human.

I like it.

What we got was 36 million more people that will have health insurance.

Newly insured people get basic screening and preventative care. Which means they get the blood pressure medication, not the emergency bypass. They get the insulin, not the repeated rides to the ER in a diabetic coma. Etc. This saves money regardless of whether a private company or the PO pays the provider.

DK, thanks for spellling it out.

I was kinda dancing around the hard line ‘splanation of that.

Good to see yer fonts, as Suz would say! *G*

Just askin here but, what part of 150% above poverty level subsidy is gonna include 36 million?

Those without jobs, money or ability to pay that are at single income instead of dual income per family, or umemployed, who qualify at 400% above poverty won’t be covered, they’ll be MANDATED!

This is a huge hit on the already screwed middle class, with rising unemployment.

Read recently, calculated REAL unemployment, of those who STOPPED looking for work, who were out of work for 6 months or more, is at 17.5%! Or more!

My point? Present House Bill don’t and won’t really cover 36 million, and as we keep sayin, The Senate ain’t done with fuckin up the PO as it is, either.

So let’s see what actually gets signed, and implented. And when it starts, and who it covers.

Till then, your posit of who is covered is speculation, no?

And yes, lemme tone it down, we NEED to speculate a bit, other wise we sit and wait with nothing to say or to fight for.

But I’m skeptical about this 36 million covered thang. How’s that for a better formed reply?

Thanks for being patient with me . . .

Hmmm, 12:45 or so now, not too bad for a thread kicked off around 7am earlier this morning!

But time to wander and pursue other noble posts and comments.

Thanks for the chat, Pups. Thanks Mz. Hamsher for your efforts, well done, as usual.

;-)

You are precisely the kind of person I’m talking about here.

Tell me: Do you know the difference between “Medicare” and “Medicare Advantage”?

If you did, you would know that one is government single-payer and the other is private insurance which costs the government an extra 14 percent.

And you would also know that many liars and/or stealth republicans here are allowing casual readers to think that reigning in “Medicare Advantage” is going to “slash” Medicare payments for seniors.

I’ve said enough. I can tell that you don’t want to do too much research, you just want to act clever here and be your own variety of “blowhard” (your friend’s word).

But none of that is through the PO. That’s other stuff in the Bill, right? So my question remains unanswered. What’s good about having the PO?

Speaking of [Edited by Moderator. No name calling please. Attack the argument not the person]:

Where were you when others here were making false and misleading statements about Medicare “slashing”, and allegations that Obama was out to get seniors, ALL without supporting links and data?

You were nowhere. You accepted the statements at face value, presumably because they jibe with the “veal pen” beliefs of so many here at FDL.

I hope that’s clear.

Uh, I think you have FDL Action and FDL in general confused with some other places.

NO front pager at FDL has made statements that Medicare is being “slashed” and that “Obama is out to get all seniors.” There may have been commenters saying that but I can’t say for sure as I don’t read every comment on every thread.

But it is too laugh that you are saying we have “veal pen beliefs” here at FDL. Are you even aware that Jane Hamsher, author of this post, is the one that (I’m fairly certain) coined that term to describe the captive, so-called “liberal advocacy groups” in DC?

Nah, I didn’t think so.

Take it easy, OK?

We’re mostly on the same side here, irregardeless of how this thread looks.

The Medicare “cuts” that you speak of are difficult to comprehend, which is why it’s an easy target to manipulate. It’s not entirely clear to me, for example, how the cuts to Medicare Advantage will or won’t affect seniors currently enrolled in that. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for some to question this, OK?

Larue, study what they do in Massachusetts.

I’m going with the CBO estimate of 36 million currently without insurance will be insured.

Yes the uninsured middle class is screwed. I’m not sure how many of those between 150% and 400% of FPL are currently uninsured though.

Is an employer that currently offers insurance likely to drop it? And cut pay by the amount they currently subsidize their employee’s policy? Wouldn’t this be a recipe for strikes and labor action?

Serve cheese with your whines?

libby, i think you could very well be right. why should members of the cpc hold out for single payer when they already watched almost all political progressive organizations betray the progressive grass roots during the summer of 2008 in favor of the policy advocated by the dem party leadership?

here’s a thought experiment: what if instead, all those progressive organizations had gone all out for hr 676 instead, and been willing to compromise to either hacker’s original po or better yet, the kucinich amendment for states to experiment with single payer? would we be any worse off than we are now? at the very least we could have made tremendous headway in explaining single payer hr 676 (expanded and improved medicare for all) to the wider public instead of having to constantly battle dishonest (even if unintentional) propaganda coming from organizations like hcan.

again, we don’t know. but during the summer of 2008 when organization after organization was buying into the top down decision to go with the party instead of the grass roots, i thought it was nuts. and i still do.

insurance is not healthcare. something i don’t think many people here get (maybe you do, if so please don’t take my comment personally) is how many people WITH INSURANCE go without medication or doctors visits because they can’t afford the copay or deductible.

and 18 million without even insurance

It was done in order to have the PO included in the bill. That threat from those 50 reps to veto the bill’s passage if it did not include a PO is what kept it alive. You have to recall events accurately.

This is an achievement on which we can build. Tactically it worked and it affirms the influence that netroots can wield.

Complacency toward this reminds me of the words of Bill Clinton regarding the welfare bill that also cut into women’s health and support “We’ll just have to revisit this at a later date.” 10 to 12 years later the doormat’s still dusty waiting for godot.
Kucinich is one true progressive who courageously stands on principle similar to our founding fathers. It’s refreshing that his clarity of vision and intelligence does not broker compromise on such important matters. And he is an indefatigable fighter for our rights.
We are lucky to have him in the house of power, even if he was under the back bench, Phoenixsoccermom.

Here’s hoping someone uninspires you and soon.

Two reasons:

One, people that are insured, including those who will end up in the PO because they are not in the private plan, live longer. They do not constitute those that die yearly due to lack of insurance.

The second, to pay for care for someone with insurance is cheaper than covering their care if they are uninsured. These savings have been quantified at around $140 Billion over 10 years.

There is no reason to totally belittle the efforts to include the PO in this legislation, to work for its defeat is not productive. The PO as it exists can be viable if people can be convinced to opt into it as that will assure its survival.

The bill is worse on men financially than women.

If this were true I’d just say whaaa but it is an indefensible statement. Is it ok to say fuck you to David Byron? Just want clarification from the mod.

[Mod Note: Sorry, no.]

the term “robust” was used in many different ways by many different people and sometimes i think by the same people at different times. it certainly has confused me, because i understood it differently also (although not in the same way you did). here is an example, is jon walker at fdlaction on oct 29:

In a huge victory for the health insurance industry, hospitals, and PhRMA, the Blue Dogs managed to stop the robust public option tied to modified Medicare rates. The Blue Dog Coalition, who must call themselves “fiscal conservatives” purely as part of some elaborate ironic joke, fought tooth and nail to kill the robust public option, which would have saved the federal government roughly an additional $85 billion. It would also have provided families with an option roughly 10-11% cheaper than the typical private health insurance plan. That would be roughly a $1,400 a year reduction in premiums for the average family.

The Blue Dogs fought hard and they won a big victory for the for-profit health insurance companies. If I were an insurance company CEO, I would be writing each of them a very large thank you note (i.e. a campaign contribution). Of course, today was a huge defeat for the American taxpayer, serious health care reform, and working class Americans who are going to be denied a robust public option which could have saved them thousands of dollars.

and here is another example from chris bowers (OL was also working the progressive block campaign) from oct 28:

Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the House Democratic leadership unveil their health care bill. It is highly likely that it will include a public option with negotiated rates, rather than the more robust public option tied to Medicare (+5%) rates.

and oct 20:

Congressional Progressives are on the brink of a major victory in the public option campaign.

Following tonight’s meeting of the Democratic House caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ready to bring a health care bill with the “robust” public option (currently defined as a public option with Medicare +5% rates) to the floor of the House.

i think at best it’s confusing.

No, because of premise number 1 in Jane’s argument. Namely, that the Democratic party has too much vested in producing a HCR bill, with or without a PO. Lieberman’s veto threat not withstanding.

The House pledge to vote only for a bill with the PO is as ephemeral as the pledge of those to vote only for a bill with PO +5%. They will vote for the bill coming out of conference, again because of premise number 1 above.

We will end up with a bill likely with some version of the PO, likely weaker than the House verion. Jane’s logic is unassailable.

We ought to make the PO work by urging everyone eligible to opt into it.

Larue,

Thank you. I think political imagination eclipsed moral imagination BIG TIME. And now we are stuck with a bill that is so ugly and loopholed and even steamrolling down an established right of pro-choice in its monsterness … only to have more horrors added to it in a MORE conservative senate?

I say cut the Gordian knot of health care congressional/corporate bullshit and get the drumbeat going for S703. We have the structure, we have the upcoming vote. If we go down, so be it. But lets not have lone Bernie Sanders go down. the only voice in the empathyless US wilderness.

We can do it. And we should do it. And we have to do it now. It would begin to wake up a sleeping citizenry beaten down and too demoralized to fight an untrustworthy Congress and it would show some rage at a government that taxes without representing. Dishonors the public trust. Has no moral imagination for the common good.

The citizenry has been “off the table” for a long time. Let us not eat shit and smile … well, let’s not eat shit at all. Let’s tell them we know they are a pack of back-stabbing, money-grubbing, selling-out cowardly hypocrits.

All but 36 ,members of the House voted that it was okay with us about Israel’s war crimes, past or in the future. As Rachel Maddow says, what kind of “ethical freakshow of a universe” are we living in?

We need to fight the immorality or emigrate. My 2 cents.

LOL

Selise, but your political imagination is still running around trying to compromise. What I am saying is Single Payer Medicare for All … reduce Medicare age from 65 to zero. Hey, can’t we just amend Medicare and it is done? Seriously, I am saying, broken record assertiveness, not Kucinich amendment, no Hacker p.o. EVERYBODY IN, NOBODY OUT from square one today. Like 99% of the rest of the industrialized world. Or is it 100% of the rest of it. Incrementalism is a code word for the corporatists get to play the game and corporatists play the I will always WIN game all the time.

In this Obama regime of non-accountability .. which is a nightmare following the Bush regime of ANYTHING BAD GOES, we have got to show the consequences and first consequence on this should be pirate vendor corporations OUT!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I appreciate the support.

You know a lot of single payer folk are cross-sectional America who recognize the wisdom of single payer. We need to spread the truth of single payer medicare for all because we know the lobbies and media are fighting hard the other direction.

you are really really good at convincing me. *g*

no giving up. and while i still see the value of the kucinich amendment now only as a temporary measure because it can be a path to national single payer (i don’t see hacker as a path to anything else, so i’m fine with dropping it).

gotta go for now because i want to have some time this evening to spend volunteering on jane’s single payer project!

I’m familiar with the sequence of events. But association is not causation. Schakowsky had already gotten a personal appear from Obama to vote the E&C version of 3200 out of committee, and you haven’t demonstrated that that wasn’t enough to make her cave. My only point is that you haven’t offered evidence (even reference to OTR personal communications) that the Weiner floor vote was a quid pro quo to Schakowsky and the other committee progressives.

As I noted elsewhere,

I think giving Weiner a full floor vote on 676 in exchange for dropping his amendment in Energy & Commerce was a win-win for Weiner (and to some degree, Medicare for All supporters) and Leadership:

Weiner and HR 676 advocates got a chance for a historic but doomed floor vote, along with the mixed blessing of a CBO scoring (yet to appear).

Leadership got a chance to speed things along in a markup session where Weiner was already having way too much fun with his amendment to eliminate Medicare (forcing Republicans to vote against removing a government health insurance plan) and where the promise of a 676 floor vote may have helped assuage the guilt of progressive committee members who agreed to cave on Blue Dog demands for negotiated PO rates.

As noted, a quid pro quo is plausible, but that’s not enough in itself to make a flat assertion that it existed.

I wasn’t suggesting you involve yourself with SP orgs, just that they could have benefited from emulating the citizen whip effort.

true enough.

Some newly insured will still use ER as their primary place of treatment. Which doesn’t change even under a single payer universal coverage system.

Educating people to see a physician for a check up is orthogonal to getting them some help paying for those visits.

I’m overdue for a physical myself – and because I don’t have insurance I can’t get a doctor to be a primary care physician. I can pay out of pocket for a one time check up at an urgent care clinic. If something that needs to be treated is found I’m screwed, now I’ve got a pre-existing condition.

So I’m directly helped by this legislation. I’d rather have a regular physician instead of what I’ve been using:

I used Planned Parenthood to get a prescription renewed earlier this year, got another year of ACE inhibitor (pre-hypertension) medicine prescribed, blood chemistry (lipids, liver and kidney panels, STD) checked for a $5.00 charge (I paid $20, gave $15 to local PP). Pharmacy is charging me less for a 90 day refill than I’d been paying under UHC PPO – $13 charge for meds as an uninsured, I’d been paying $15. I expect I’ll be going back to get a second liver/kidney screen done. I’ve discontinued taking ibuprofen since my potassium levels were mildly elevated and I suspected interaction with the ACE inhibitor. I want to confirm my kidneys responded to this change and talk with the PA about alternative anti-inflammatory drugs for my osteo arthritis.

Your argument against the PO seems weak. Quantitatively how much does the obligation to repay $2 Billion over 10 years affect the premiums, do you have a number or percentage?

Also if companies are encouraged to drop enrollees who are covered by private insurers, all the better as this is a loss of revenue for the private insurers and a gain for the PO if that is where they will end up.

Mandates even if unfair are a necessity, it results in huge costs savings and savings in lives from being uninsured. In any case this is an argument for increasing subsidies for the poor not for keeping them uninsured.

Lastly we must not be at all so sure about predicting the future. What if the PO after some struggle to remain viable failed in a few years time while still paying for services? Maybe then all those in the PO will go to a Medicare system. We are hypothesizing after all.

There was a time when I would have agreed with Jane Hamsher’s “half a loaf” position. No more.

The House bill stinks, the Senate bill will stink (and if you think the Baucus bill is dead, you’re dreaming), and one of them or some synthesis of them is going to pass and be called “health care reform.” 36 million Americans will be forced to pay for health insurance that, just like the health insurance most other Americans currently have, covers less and less and costs more and more. I don’t know where people get this fantasy that having these people covered will be better than having them not covered. All it will do is raise premiums on everyone who currently has insurance in order to cover the expense of paying for those added to the rolls, with no improvement of care and with full preservation (and even expansion) of corporate profits. The “mandate” to buy useless private health care insurance will lead to increased numbers of bankruptcies, maybe even higher incarceration rates as the new “crime” of not having health insurance is enforced (depending on how draconian such enforcement turns out to be). The weakened and watered-down “public option” will be used to illustrate how inefficient and wasteful government provision of health care is, with every horror story reported ad nauseam and every success story carefully buried by the compliant media. All of this so we can say, well at least those currently without insurance now (mostly) have it?

This is not the progressive vision of health care. There is no victory here. Anything short of single payer is no reform at all.

http://www.healthcare-now.org/statement-on-the-withdrawal-of-rep-weiners-single-payer-amendment-to-house-bill/

The vote for Congressman Weiner’s single-payer amendment would have allowed advocates to have their representatives on record as single-payer supporters.

But this legislative battle is not yet over. Our focus can now turn to two remaining efforts for single-payer in this Congress. Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce S 703 in coming weeks, and we understand that he is considering editing it to be more like HR 676. We will have the opportunity again to see the first ever vote on single-payer in this Congress. In addition, Rep. Kucinich’s amendment to allow states to more easily implement a single-payer system may be reinserted into the bill during the conference committee between the House and Senate.

All of these efforts are crucial to building the movement for the only solution to our healthcare crisis – single-payer national healthcare.

If this Congress passes inadequate legislation, there will no doubt be emboldened state movements in the coming years. We welcome them. But let us not forget the movement to push our federal legislators to meet the demands of the people, not roll that responsibility onto the states. Healthcare-NOW! and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care remains committed to a national, single-payer solution to the healthcare crisis. Comprehensive, quality healthcare is a right that should be extended to every U.S. resident.

At this important time, let us not forget how far we have come. Either now or later, a single-payer national healthcare system must come to the table. We will keep building the movement to make that happen.

Can, WILL we rally behind Sanders’ S 703? I am going to stand with Sanders. Has a nice ring to it. STAND WITH SANDERS. Take it to the mattresses. Keep it simple, single payer medicare for all. Medicare — reduce the age from 65 to zero. Done. Don’t destroy our civil and human rights like pro-choice amidst your thousand pages of loopholes and ambushes and chicken-shit dealmaking.

It achieved nothing. There is no PO worth the name.
Again and again I ask, what is this weak PO good for?

I asked someone to explain what the weakened PO is good for:

Two reasons:

One, people that are insured, including those who will end up in the PO because they are not in the private plan, live longer. They do not constitute those that die yearly due to lack of insurance.

The second, to pay for care for someone with insurance is cheaper than covering their care if they are uninsured. These savings have been quantified at around $140 Billion over 10 years.

There is no reason to totally belittle the efforts to include the PO in this legislation, to work for its defeat is not productive. The PO as it exists can be viable if people can be convinced to opt into it as that will assure its survival.

That all happens with or without the PO. All you did was give the benefits of people being insured under ANY plan. What difference does a weak PO make if it is just another lousy insurance plan? We already got those in the bill. They were always there even in Bauchus’ plan.

I am glad Jane fought. It’s good to fight even if defeat is a foregone conclusion (which it wasn’t). It’s good to fight even if you get your ass kicked (which did happen).

Well I am not sure whether to thank the mod for saying “no” or upbraid her for saying “Sorry, no”. I suppose I shouldn’t criticise my main reading audience though.
———————————————————

At any rate,

If this were true [that the bill is worse on men financially than women] I’d just say whaaa

Then your concern over women’s rights is just hypocrisy and sexism. You admit you couldn’t care less if men’s rights were violated along the same lines. In fact the bill dis as I said, worse on men financially than women.

volunteering on jane’s single payer project

hope she will help publicly on backing S 703.

The pitch is the following which has the advantage of being the case. As more low risk enrollees enter the PO the overall premiums including theirs will go down. Mandated or not

An additional easy pitch to appeal to is the fact that their premiums in the PO go to pay for care and not for profit of bureaucrats, again which has the advantage of being the case.

It’s not clear how big the disparity in premium costs will be between private and public insurers. But if it is great for a given enrollee that means that private insurers will be offering greatly lower premiums than that of the PO. History shows that insurers are not in the business of just throwing away profits.

Also included in the current House bill is a provision for the removal of the anti-trust exemption from private insurers. For whatever that’s worth.

Lastly you really have no business using terms you are not familiar with. Moral questions arise when you have to choose among two important possible (emphasis on possible)courses of actions, each of which are of value to you. If your life depends on paying the premium offered by the private insurer rather than the PO then no question of morality arises.

Try pragmatic grounds that may be an easier concept for you.

You seem to be saying that the House version of the PO has no value. Yet the CBO says it will save $100 plus Billion in 10 years and more thereafter. As opposed to leaving it out.

It also has the nice advantage of insuring people that private insurers won’t, which I’m sure they will appreciate and consider it of value.

You also seem to maintain that the PO is worthless and yet that it affords the same benefit as regards longevity and costs savings as any old insurance plan.

Well which is it? A ittle consistency please.

No one is making the case that the PO is good but to make the case that it is better than nothing is a little harder to make.

The House health care reform bill was stripped down to a virtual nothingness in terms of a very weak so-called public option, covering only one in ten Americans, does not attempt to regulate an out of control industry, profiting over the ability to control the life or death of Americans for over 75 years, now. The bill is a, as usual, crumbs for Americans, while greasing the entire health care industry with a mandate promising them zillions more, while no cap on premiums, with an assurance to them, to boot, i.e., penalties to those Americans who do not purchase health care insurance — win, win for the obscenely greedy and disgusting health care industry. Sound familiar, kind of like the car industry, you know, you MUST have it, but what happens if you make a claim?

I do not feel something is better than nothing.* This House bill, as currently passed, is pathetic. Did not take too long to get the bailout for the scum on Wall Street (the sky is going to cave in) criminals to get their goodies though, now did it? But something for Americans, in the form of a half-way decent health care reform for their hard-earned tax-dollars? Naw, forget it, we are here to pay and STFU! (Pay for wars that we do not want, torture that we do not want, endless crimes, help the poor babies on Wall Street, every social program less and less funded, education suffering, no jobs, and on and on and on.) And, every effort by corporatists and our legislators to lay more and more on Americans, so we can satisfy their insatiable greed! But, dare WE, to even wish for a decent health care system wherein our citizens are NOT selectively decided upon for life or death!

The bill in the Senate, promises to be even more watered down than the House bill. The health care bill, at best, is a give-away to the scum in the health care industry.

All of us should start calling the Committee on Health, etc. and our representatives telling them to KILL THE BILL!

(*although, I mostly agree with much that you have to say on the issues, Jane Hamsher.)

@156

Wow. It’s incredible to me that not only do you consider this heap of shit a victory, but it’s what you aimed for! And of course, everyone who disagrees with FDL’s moderate, centre-left line is a “troll”. You should be fighting to kill this bill. No one who claims to be “progressive” or on the “left” should support this.

@367
“It also has the nice advantage of insuring people that private insurers won’t, which I’m sure they will appreciate and consider it of value.”

Yeah, I’m sure the insurers will. On the whole they should be delighted with what the people they paid for delivered, and what this site and others like it will shill for.

You’ve got to fight the hard fight if you want change, not con yourself that the least worst (not that this is even that) is good enough.

Are you sure about that? I couldn’t find that. What I found was a CBO score of a PO with medicare +5 (which this one isn’t) that did not compare it with a similar bill without the PO anyway.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/21/health.care.cbo/index.html

You also seem to maintain that the PO is worthless and yet that it affords the same benefit as regards longevity and costs savings as any old insurance plan.

Well which is it? A ittle consistency please.

It’s because it’s only another insurance plan that it is worthless. We have insurance plans already.

How more depraved can it be when you take the plight of the American people and attempt to capitalize on it? But we have no problem killing do we?

I bet they water this down a bit, add a trigger, pick up Snowe, then waft the reconciliation wand to bring in stray Senators, minus Lieberman. Orahma needs to slap a big ‘victory’ sticker on this. This is like those banks: too big to fail. But good luck bringing it down…

I’m very late in entering this great discussion, but I thought I’d try to contribute something. First, I’m foursquare with libbyliberal, selise, Larue, ralphbon, Knoxville, drlora2, NathanAsbacher, Inquisitr, David Byron, Hugh, and many others who have contributed here. I think it’s time to do whatever we can to kill this bill, and then to immediately reset to Medicare for All, single payer.

As this bill sits now, it’s worse than no bill at all, and it is likely to get still worse in the Senate and in Conference. It will destroy progressive and Democrat credibility and associate us once again with the corporatists, in opposition to the American people.

In addition, no one in this whole discussion of 367 comments has talked about what this bill would do in the interim “band-aid period” between now and 2013, probably 3.5 long years until the exchange is ready, as if that didn’t matter in evaluating the this bill at all. Many have said that the bill as written would cover 36 million additional people, and cite CBO for that figure. But as I see it, I don’t think CBO’s estimate takes into account the inflation we’ll see in premium costs during the band-aid period and thereafter. By 2013 alone, we can expect a 40-50% increase in those costs. In the years following that, the increase should be similar, and what will these increases do to CBOs forecast of the number of additional people who will take insurance? 36 million covered seems very unlikely to me without a complete revision of the income/subsidy table.

Even before 2013 however, how many additional people are likely to be covered? In this piece, I’ve guessed that over the band-aid period perhaps 16 million people would sign up for the high risk pool. In rough terms, that still leaves us with 31,000,000 uncovered and roughly an estimate of 31,000 annual fatalities due to lack of insurance, or roughly 108,000 fatalities between now and then. And this doesn’t count the toll from the millions of bankruptcies and huge numbers of foreclosures still to be expected because this bill doesn’t solve those problems.

Pure and simple, this is an immoral bill, and it is so because it is inadequate to end the fatality, bankruptcy, and foreclosure problems resulting from the health insurance non-system. This issue is beyond pragmatism. It is beyond expediency. It is beyond cleverness. It is a clear moral issue. The Democrats have had the opportunity to solve these problems with Medicare for All, their response with this laughable bill that they call “a historic achievement,” signals the moral bankruptcy of our Party.

Now I’d like to consider a few of Jane’s arguments in these exchanges:

Jane said:

“Here in the real world, your choice is between a) this bill with a public plan, or b) this bill without a public plan, or public plan with triggers, or a public plan with an opt-out.”

This is not strictly true. I can’t choose any of these things. What I can do, is to do what I can to support one of these alternatives, or others Jane didn’t list just above including the option of killing this bill. Now, my influence, even in joining with others is pretty small. So why ought I to support any of these three options, since I think they are all bad choices?

Of course, Jane would have us believe that these are the only options with any chance of being realized, and so it makes the most sense to choose the least of evils. But I don’t agree with this, because I don’t think that killing this bill is impossible — not with 40 Republicans in the Senate willing to kill it, and Reid seemingly unwilling to use reconciliation or the nuclear option to pass a bill with less than 60 votes. In particular, If Bernie Sanders filibusters this bill it’s gone. If Jay Rockefeller joins him it’s gone. If Al Franken decides he’s had enough it’s gone. There are a number of possible votes in the Senate that could kill this, and a number of pressure points we can use to try to kill it. Even if we fail in the Senate, we can go back to the House again and see if we can pick up those 14-20 votes that would kill it there in the final floor vote. We may fail in both those things, but right now I don’t think the probability of getting a PO as good as the House’s, if we support that, is any better, and it may be lower than the probability that we can help to kill this bill.

So my choice, in answer to the question, is to do the best I can to get progressives to deny Democrats the votes in the House and Senate finally pass this bill, and to try and get a few progressives in the Senate to filibuster it in hopes that they and the Republicans can defeat it. I think this is worth doing because this is a very bad bill that I don’t want the Democrats and the progressives to be tagged with responsibility for.

I’d rather that Democrats be tagged by the MSM with failure to pass any hcr right now. Obama and the blue dogs will then be faced with defeat in 2010. Then next year progressives can try again in the right way, by advocating for HR 676 and threatening to vote against any deviations from it. Then let’s see what Obama and the blue dogs do.

And in another reply Jane said:

“1) Do Democrats have a majority in the House & Senate and control of the White House?
2) Do you think this bill would be better without a public option?”

Of course, the Democrats have a majority. They have 58 votes, in fact. But that doesn’t mean that they can surely pass this bill, because unless they can get both Lieberman and Sanders, two Senators diametrically opposed on the PO, they won’t have the super-majority they need for closure. Of course, they can pass it without a super-majority. They can use reconciliation or the nuclear option. I think that progressive Senators who feel strongly about the PO and, perhaps, in a few cases, even SP, should make the Democrats do that, if only to weaken the filibuster and blue dog control over liberal legislation more generally.

Moving to the second question, I think the bill would be better with no PO, than it would be with a lousy PO. Why?

Simply because the absence of a PO, provides a much better basis for future political action supporting SP, than a bill that has a clearly (to us) inadequate PO, because the opponents of reform will just tell everyone looking for single payer, that everyone should wait and see how this wonderful PO that progressives fought so hard for will work. We have to remember that the idea of the PO has been oversold from the beginning, and since the “bait-and-switch” tactics of Democrats, HCAN, and other veal pen organizations have accelerated, more and more outrageous claims have been made for the version of the PO in bills “on the table,” until lately Alan Grayson has been saying that Nancy Pelosi’s wonderful House bill is going to end the fatalities due to lack of insurance. After all the claims they’ve made to get this PO passed, if they succeed, the Democrats are not about to back off those claims and admit that the bill with the PO is one that needs to be greatly strengthened before 2013, because it won’t end the deaths, bankruptcies and foreclosures, as they promised in 2009.

No, passing a bill with a terribly weak PO now, will set the Democrats up perfectly for waiting until roughly 2015 to get anything better. And if they try to come back again next year to improve the bill, the Republicans and the blue dogs will remind them of their lies and will tell them “give the bill a chance to work.” No hcr again until at least 2015 when we’ll know a little more about how things are working.

On the other hand, if we succeed in killing this bill because it’s lousy, or even if we weaken the Democrats enough that they can’t get the weak PO in the bill, then progressives can immediately come back with a vengeance and run against the bill that passes, saying that it won’t do the job and advocating again for Medicare for All, single-payer.

In yet another reply Jane offered:

“Here’s the world of options:

1) Try to kill the bill entirely. Which I do not believe will be successful, but anybody who wants to is welcome to try. If I thought we could do it, we would. And if there’s a movement in the House to do that, we’ll support it.

2) Try to make sure a public option stays in the Senate bill.

3) Give up and let Lieberman strip a public option out of the bill.

Which of these do you support? I really should put up a poll.”

I’d say try 1), and if that doesn’t work, then throw our weight behind both 3) and also stripping the mandates and the exchange out of the bill too, leaving only the other elements in. That would be a victory for the Democrats, since it would improve the situation, sane some lives , bankruptcies, and foreclosures, in the short run, without compromising future attempts, as early as 2010, to move the system toward Medicare for All, single payer.

And yet another reply of Jane’s:

“Do you think the bill will be stronger with it out? That’s the only question before us. Yes or no.”

The answer is above. It would be better without the lousy PO we have a chance of passing now, and even better if we can use the lack of a PO to strip out the mandates.

This has been a long reply, and I apologize for it. But I think the discussion merited it, and I also think that Jane’s arguments needed a very direct response that confronted both her logic and her assessment of the chances of getting certain things done. Again, I think we at FDL should now support defeating the bill that has emerged from the House and after that is done, I think we should immediately switch to Medicare for All, single-payer advocacy and only that, and follow the pattern that lib has called for.

Let’s make this a a human rights movement and let’s confront the “murder by spreadsheet,” the annual fatalities, the bankruptcies, the foreclosures, and the fundamental inhumanity of the insurance non-system as a moral issue that we will not compromise on. If the Administration and the Democrats will come along with us on this, well and good; but if they insist on continuing to follow the business as usual, bail-out the insurance companies course they’ve been following, then let us fight them and wnd both this morally corrupt administration and the existence of this morally bankrupt political party that spawned it, and that now does its bidding.

I’ve made the case that the House bill is worse than no bill at all, below, here, and here. Many others are making that case too: here, and here.

NP Libby -

Sorry I’m watching the 5th Element in BD :)

You don’t have to the read the bill if the insurance companies aren’t running full page color ads in the USA Today and if there aren’t any more crazy outburst from the “ruling classes lapdogs” better known as CNBC and Bloomberg to a lesser degree.

Now we want to rescue this f’in thing from the Senate? Are you kidding me?

Put the Kuninich Amendment BACK IN the House Bill, make SURE it stays in the Senate Bill when they are merged together to form the final bill. There is basically NOTHING to worry about. Its a tiny bit of Progressive Pie that most can live with. Insurance Companies will pull up and move to where they can commit more Corp Crime.

Until those Red States can’t tolerate it anymore, nothing will change.

We can try (and fail) to support S703, which is fine and I’m all for. But we have to do it like its the mos important thing we’ll ever do, which I find is MISSING from the last go around. All Progressives and Blogs jumped behind the Public Option without any definition using undefined words like “Robust” and “Strong” we shouldn’t have to use words like those.

Single Payer aka “Medicare For All” stands on its own merit and even a 5 year old can understand it. Everybody understand when you turn 65 you get Medicare. Okay so we’ll just move the requirement age down to ZERO – Done

Simple, Easy To Understand.

If Keith, Rachel and Ed have to have a Single Payer Advocate come on the show and spend 22 mins (with ads) every single day to EXPLAIN IT, then that’s what we need to do. Then you need to get Representatives from Canada, Great Britain and Singapore to EXPLAIN how their’s WORKS and please don’t have any ass-wipe fake detractors from those countries pipe up and say its lousy when that clearly isn’t the case.

Then we need to march and I do mean MARCH, if the Right can pay about 5,000 people to show up and then another 5,000 kooks show up = 10,000 idiots (not including Max and those that held by the laugher as they interviewed these “citizens”.

If Minster Farrakhan can get close to 1 Million Black Men to show on the Washington Mall, then how come we can’t get 2-3 Million Americans of every color on the Mall fighting for the most historic legislation since the Civil Rights laws we passed?????????

If we can raise millions to have Free Health Care Fairs that won’t amount to any pressure on the Congress (and trust me it won’t, its a night gesture though).

But that’s ummm about 1 Million, 30,000 dollars WASTED and the results will be less, far less than IDEAL.

So we need to REFOCUS our efforts and DRAW THE LINE IN THE SAND -

Number 1 Option: 100% Canadian Style SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE

Number 2 Option: Preloaded Jacob Hacker Public Option

Number 3 Option: Allow States To Adopt Single Payer

Anything less, blow it up, start over. Start with the Dems that didn’t vote for it in the House and start with the Dems that didn’t support it in the Senate.

The Red States are hopeless, start with the Purple States.

Tell Obama with a dead horse’s head attached to the message -

“Pass Single Payer Health Care in 2013 or no reelection victory”

Nader has lost it, he can’t even stay on topic anymore. We need a serious Lefty to primary Obama if that fails.

Got any ideas?

We know what we must do, if you want Single Payer, then its TIME TO DO IT.

The TIME IS NOW!

Following this healthcare “reform” has shown me just how hopelessly corrupt our system of government has gotten.
After Obama pressured Pelosi to strip out the state single-payer amendment, seeing his mug on TV gives me the same reaction as seeing Bush’s: nausea. What a back-stabbing corporatist SOB.

@ Hugh 72:

I’m sorry, but I disagree. A LOT of people have been frustrated with “more and better,” but it’s not a political loser. This was never going to be an easy effort and was never going to be a political strategy that could solve our fundamental problems in DC within 1 or 2 election cycles. “More and better” is a longtime effort that will take a very, very long time.

America is historically a Republican country. For every Democratic president elected, there’s been two Republicans. Reversing that trend for decades to come is no easy task.

The first stage is “more and better,” because once we get that, it’s much, much easier to just get “better.” Once we get red districts blue, we can then try to move those blue districts deep blue. Some districts are going to take 2-3 different democrats to get the “better,” but many of them won’t. We’ve seen a *tiny* bit of progress so far — and, yes, a real public option is progress (even if it’s not a good one) — but there’s obviously a long way to go. As for the Stupak amendment, we’ll kill that sucker in the Senate and then the Conference Committee, and if we don’t the final bill should be killed. We ended up fighting in the House to essentially a stalemate, but we have not lost — and progressives getting a stalemate in the House on health care Round 1 is more or less a historic win.

“America is historically a Republican country. For every Democratic president elected, there’s been two Republicans. Reversing that trend for decades to come is no easy task.”

Your historical analysis is incorrect. The Republican Party was dominant from 1860 – 1932, But the Democrats were dominant from then until 1980, a period of 48 years. Times changed over the period 1976 to 1980 and the Republicans did create a new Center right consensus in 1980 and dominated from then until 2008, with things starting to transition in 2006. That transition is hopefully still going, though Democrats may be botching it up badly. My general point is that there are periods of dominance of political parties in American history and that it’s a distortion to say that America is historically a Republican country.

You also said:

“We ended up fighting in the House to essentially a stalemate, but we have not lost — and progressives getting a stalemate in the House on health care Round 1 is more or less a historic win.”

I’m not sure where you’re coming from in this evaluation. First of all who’s “we.” Many people here began this process favoring Medicare for All, single-payer as the solution to health care reform. That didn’t even get serious discussion. We’re were forced to compromise before the fight even started by the President and our so-called leaders in Congress. Second, the rest of us started with a universal exchange and a Jacob Hacker type of PO as the centerpiece of a health care reform that would cover 100% of the population and end the fatalities, bankruptcies, and foreclosures due to lack of health care, take effect within one year, would be pre-loaded with 45 million customers, would have Medicare Rates and share the Medicare provider network, would provide subsidies only to Americans who were customers of the PO, and would have been expected to expand to 129 million people or more than 2/3 of those now in private insurance companies within a few years.

By a series of incremental defeats inflicted mostly by other Democrats, including a President who insisted on deficit neutrality for this reform and average expenditures of no more than 100 billion per year on the program, and who made deals with both the insurance industry and Pharma, and a group of blue dogs who have fought against a Government plan every step of the way, we now have a plan coming out of the House that provides both mandates and subsidies for everyone based on income, whose PO and exchange don’t go into effect until 2013 and even then are severely constrained in eligiibility onlt to the uninsured, whose effects will be to allow 108,000 additional fatalities and millions of bankruptcies, and foreclosures before its operative date in 2103, and which even afterward will leave 4% of the population and 11 million people still uncovered so that numerous deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures will still occur every year, which excludes coverage of abortion, which prevents use of generic drugs for those who can’t afford brand-named alternatives and need the drugs to live or to avoid extreme pain, which will begin without pre-loading (zero customers to begin with) and without a provider network, which will not use Medicare Rates but will have to negotiate rates, which will use only that part of Medicare’s provider network that chooses not to opt-out, and which is forecast to grow to only 6 million customers in the first few years.

You’re trying to tell me that this is a stalemate, but I tell you it is like being in a football game and being part of a team that has been kept on its on yard line all game long until late in the 4th quarter and is now behind 73-0. Some stalemate. I think you need to quit being a cheerleader and start being realistic about what has happened.

We took a pretty good beating. Now we need to come back and dedicate ourselves again to winning on this clear moral issue. The health insurance companies have been killing Americans at the rate of 45,000 per year due to lack of insurance, and driving millions more of us into bankruptcy amd foreclosure. For this they deserve to die as economic entities. We need to do as much as we can to see that happen, and to make it clear that other immoral corporations that systemtically act in a way that denies their social responsibility, will, eventually share that fate.

dj, sorry I haven’t seen your inspiring response til now. i am working on a diary about how the new bill is worse than no bill.

I am going to start making 10 calls to Congress a day to push for Sanders bill or to castigate House members for their betrayal.

See you soon on campus and will brainstorm and be looking for ideas elsewhere.

I see so many of my acquaintances totally apathetic about what is going on with health care. That “mystification” powerplay, this is beyond understanding, is so effective in discouraging oversight by the very people being super ripped off.

Gotta go but will check in again. Thanks for response!

I agree completely with your action plan! This is one of those pregnant moments in history! Congress is in partial disarray over the PO and the Abortion issue, the entire Left of Center is up in arms for many reasons due to this lousy bill. The Right is already mobilized against the bill! We have to make sure Congress understands that we are not only against the Stupid Amendment but the Whole Bill is unacceptable, for all the reasons listed in all of the above posts and…

Here is one more very important reason to Kill this House HCR bill in the Senate that is not listed above;
In the House HCR bill the CHIP program gets the final ax in 2014, 11.1 Million kids are covered by CHIP. These are some of the at risk people in this House HCR bill! Most of them are above 200% of FPL! In the House HCR bill Medicaid gets increased from 100-130%FPL to 150% of FPL with 91% of the cost of the new participants getting covered by the Feds not the States. But did you know that right now every state in the Union offers something; either Medicaid or CHIP to most children over 130% of FPL up to 200-400% FPL, already! So this increase in Medicaid along with the end of CHIP is a net zero for lower-mid income children! Right Now 7 states limit their Medicaid/CHIP to less than 200% FPL, 27 states limit their Medicaid/CHIP to between 200-300% of FPL, 16 states limit their Medicaid/CHIP to between 300-400% FPL. In the House HC bill at 200% of FPL, even with Federal subsidies for premiums in the Health Care Exchange, a family will have to pay at least 10% of their income on Health Care; premiums, copays, deductibles, where as now their children get CHIP subsidized Health Care. At 400% FPL, even with Fed. subsidies for their insurance premiums in the Exchange, a family will be paying 25% of their income to premiums, co pays, deductibles, where as now in 16 states, their children may be getting CHIP from the Feds/States! So this is a real net loss for the lower-mid income children in this country!!! Basically from 200-400%FPL, these families are losing very subsidized comprehensive CHIP care for their kids and trading subsidized but still too expensive, private insurance with ?benefits for the entire family!

I do not think this is a good enough trade!!! I think there will be many of those 11 Million CHIP kids who fall through the cracks of this bill, ending up without good Health Care!

I think that $60 Billion a year going as subsidies to the Private Health Insurance corporations and therefore partially going to Big Pharma, and remember the Sec. of HHS can also contract out to private corporations to administer the Public Option, is too much to spend for too little! The average subsidy in the exchange will be $5500-6800! There is NO downward pressure on the Insurance corporations or Big Pharma to control their costs, in fact they get rewarded!!! So all of us will suffer year after year with ever increasing premiums, copays and deductibles!!!

I think that $167 Billion a year in fines and penalties from individuals and small businesses who just can’t seem to afford the Health Insurance costs is too much!

I think the Stupid amendment is stupid and it sounds like it will be out of the final bill according to many Reps and Sens that I have listened to over the last 2 days!

We, Progressives must start calling Congress to Kill the Bill and try to get all the left of center organizations; HCAN, MoveOn, Unions to join us! At first I was saying Obama’s 8 points of Insurance Reform is the substitute and then later we approach Single Payer after we have built our coalitions but you are right, this is the moment to really …..

……….REFOCUS our efforts and DRAW THE LINE IN THE SAND -

You had your chance Congress and your solution is NOT good enough for us! We do not want to leave out 18 Million humans from the Health Care system. We do not want to cut loose 11 Million Chip Kids. We do not want to send all of our money to the Health Insurance corporations, they have done a lousy job over the past 20-30 years and we do not want to reward them!

We want you to vote no on HR 3962 and the Senate version too and consider, score and discuss HR 676, Medicare for All!

If we start this campaign we will win on at least some level, it is almost guaranteed;
-either we get the Stupid amendment out and a stronger Public Option in by the Senate,
-or we will Kill the Sucky HCR bill and open the field for what we really want; Single Payer
-or they pass a Sucky Senate bill too but we have empowered the Progressives in the House to really fight it when it comes back to them.

Please call for HR 676, Medicare For All as no#1! It is simple to understand, HR 676 is already written, we can never allow Congress to write another one of our bills, they are NOT CAPABLE of writing a bill that is going to be acceptable to us Progressives! Let us NEVER make that mistake again! We have spent the entire summer following their squiggly path to a completely weak Public Option. Let’s make a pact with each other right now, that we will NEVER allow them to write another one of our bills! We write it, at least 90% of it and we name it and then we give it them. We should only lobby for our bills and no others! WE CAN NOT TRUST CONGRESS EVER AGAIN!

I also agree with this list below in the order it is listed;

Number 1 Option: 100% Canadian Style SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE

Number 2 Option: Preloaded Jacob Hacker Public Option

Number 3 Option: Allow States To Adopt Single Payer

Anything less is unacceptable, Kill HR 3962, start over. Start with the Dems that didn’t vote for it in the House and start with the Dems that don’t support it in the Senate, they will help Kill the Bill.

The Red States are our friends on this campaign to Kill the Bill but of course they are hopeless for HR 676, start with the Purple States for that.

Tell Obama with a dead horse’s head attached to the message -

“Pass Single Payer Health Care by the Fall of 2012 or no reelection victory”

Nader has lost it, he can’t even stay on topic anymore. We need a serious Lefty to primary Obama if that fails….Kucinich/ Grayson/ Sanders!!!

Got any ideas? Yes, let’s start calling Congress before we get confused again!!!

We know what we must do, if you want Single Payer, then its TIME TO DO IT
Thanks to all for picking up the phone to Congress…..

drlora2, We need to kill this bill immediately. But afterwards when we reset to HR 676, we shouldn’t talk about 3 options:

“Number 1 Option: 100% Canadian Style SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE

Number 2 Option: Preloaded Jacob Hacker Public Option

Number 3 Option: Allow States To Adopt Single Payer”

We should only support and talk about one option. We all believe that this is a moral issue and that HR 676 or variations on it are the solution. So, this is our only option. Leave it to non-HR 676 supporters to talk to themselves about compromise. Let’s get them pre-compromising for a change. We talk only about Medicare for All, single-payer and all its wonderful advantages over other proposals.

because the absence of a PO, provides a much better basis for future political action supporting SP, than a bill that has a clearly (to us) inadequate PO, because the opponents of reform will just tell everyone looking for single payer, that everyone should wait and see how this wonderful PO that progressives fought so hard for will work. We have to remember that the idea of the PO has been oversold from the beginning, and since the “bait-and-switch” tactics of Democrats, HCAN, and other veal pen organizations have accelerated, more and more outrageous claims have been made for the version of the PO in bills “on the table,” until lately Alan Grayson has been saying that Nancy Pelosi’s wonderful House bill is going to end the fatalities due to lack of insurance. After all the claims they’ve made to get this PO passed, if they succeed, the Democrats are not about to back off those claims and admit that the bill with the PO is one that needs to be greatly strengthened before 2013, because it won’t end the deaths, bankruptcies and foreclosures, as they promised in 2009.

thanks letsgetitdone. this is an important point i had not considered. lots of good food for thought….

Thanks selise, Is it worth promoting this discussion further? Comment time will soon expire over here, But I think there is more to say.

yes, probably lots more. but fyi i’m pretty busy for the next couple of days (and trying to free up some time for something else – that i think/hope you may like), so may only be around here for a few minutes here and there (so please don’t think my absence is lack of interest).

Don’t worry. Be Happy -:) Hard as it is amidst all the anger.

Jane. FWIW, I appreciate more than I can say the effort and commitment you’ve expended on behalf of the public option. And, I stand in awe of your energy and dedication. What you’ve accomplished, in spite, to spite, despite the realities, is commendable.

Ditto.

I also didn’t have complete confirmation, until a week ago, that this notion held by so many people in the lefty blogosphere that DailyKos somehow retains some bona fides as even a mild “change-agent for progressive good in this country” … was just an utter steaming pile of horse-shit.

The Dean Progressives have lost there too. Completely outnumbered now by the centrist spawns who showed up in droves at the megamall after the unexpected midterm wins in Nov 2006. They came all-a-blazin to figure out what in darn tootin’ all this blogging thing was about that was flying in the face of Rham’s “20 Strategic States” strategy losing to Howard Dean’s “50-state Strategy”… From then on they’ve been breeding like rabbits.

The megamall still has its strengths in some key strong voices and writers and analysts. But by and large, it’s a joke to compare the site owner’s books message with the prevailing winds that drive that site now.

All of which is to say, to you Jane: As much decline as I’ve seen there since the real progressive days of the 04 Howard Dean election cycle, I never thought I would see the day you’re not only trashed on Page 1 of that site, and throughout multiple “Recommended Diaries”, but moreso that the site owner never once, to my knowledge, stepped in to slap that down.

Many a time he’s stepped in to slap down some negative talk about his former partner Jerome, or his buddy Peter Daou, but the way he let you hang in the breeze there, ruthless insults being hurled your way, and his turning a blind eye to it all… that disgusted me more than anything else I’ve seen go down there.

And I know, I know, there are those here who would say “why would you hang out there anyway?”, but to those who would, I would just say “you DON’T know” my history, because I am not a common poster here.

But I can track as well as anyone else who claims the gift of knowing every move and advance of the emergence of this whole lefty blogosphere since 99-2000… and I have never seen such insulting behavior in all that time as what I saw last week. And I’ve seen a lot, including such low points as when Joe Trippi tried to corral the Howard Dean activists the moment Howard dropped out — in a slick move called “Change for America” — which rightfully died a very quick death.

I am just so sorry for you Jane that you would be treated that way — and it really points to how faux so many so-called progressives are in reality. And way under-informed. I’ll just end by saying my Congresswoman is Madame Decider, Pelosi.. And I, ostensibly, live in a very liberal city? or district?

Not on your life. On any given day I could walk down the street in what would seem like a “liberal, progressive” area of San Francisco, and I kid you not, I’d be lucky if one in 100 people ever heard of the word FISA, and forget it if I were to ask if they knew that the hub for domestic spying in the United States was at the AT&T switching station on Folsom street downtown just 6 blocks from DiFi’s office, and about 20 from Nancy’s SF lair?

CLUELESS ! and this is supposedly liberal capital of the USA.

These centrists are everywhere — and they’re the least informed about what’s going on in the nation, or their backyards. To me, the only way to get some leverage is to go after and link-up with the remains of the old Meetup Leaders of the 04 Dean campaign. Those were progressives, and as far as I can see, they’ve been marginalized and sent packing — and the one thing that Dean always said about that powerful core of people: Most had not been involved in politics prior, in any way shape or form, because they were given no reason to be.

I’m looking here at a completely different gestalt from the specifics of the proposals put forth for health care reform over the past year. I’ve seen the undoing of the progressive movement, and I can tell you it’s not being helped by sites like DailyKos– those key exceptional voices notwithstanding.

While they pilloried you and called you vulgar names, I saw nothing but poise and clarity when you’d appear on Rachel Maddow’s show, or any other show. I am proud of you as well.

I like the SP orgs a lot and hope we can work together to marry strategy with policy. The best way to do that is not for me to jump in and hijack their plans.

Really???? Reluctant to jump in? Seriously, we are all on the same side for justice. I think they would appreciate some help right now.

I see this as a wonderful time for you to jump in and use your strength and the strength of FDL to give a jolt to the sell outs. To bring together, and you could if you had the will, to join the divided camps of single payer and public option. The separation had mutual respect though frustration usually. Why not throw some help their way and do it publicly? It would help all of us.

I am only catching this comment from you now. You are a leader of FDL that waged a PO war. The only chance progressives have is if the pragmatic progressives cover the backs of the non-public option progressives, now. The camp was divided. Can you see that, Jane? I pray you can. Help us unite with passion and fight for what is right.

You tried hard as did everyone to deal with these guys. But why not keep our eyes on the ultimate prize. They lost the right for increments. Because their way of compromise is to trick and to not really give, bait and switch.

I hope you as leader are strong enough to do some straightout now backing of Single Payer Medicare for All. To use your leadership for universal health care fight.

Why not back Bernie’s S703 and let that go on record. Are we afraid of failing? Shit. It’s worth it to do the rallying and we actually have a decent bill that is on the calendar.

WHY NOT?????

Thanks for bringing us this perspective, rhfactor. I don’t spend much time at Kos so I haven’t seen attacks on Jane there. Wish I’d been there to give them what for.

Jane and I disagree on the strategy to follow for hcr, but she’s the real thing and everyone here, whether we disagree with her or not think she’s a person of great courage and conviction who is really making a difference.