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Politico is reporting that President Obama is going to tell the Democratic senators to do anything to pass a bill with the title of “health care reform. His message will be that their only goal should be to pass something with the label of “health care reform.” Getting the something labeled “health care reform” is so important that Democrats should blindingly vote yes regardless of how much damage Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson intend to do to the bill. Obama’s message will be that the single most important thing is PR.
Standing on principle, keeping a campaign promise, actually solving our health care crisis are all a very distant second to Obama compared to the PR “win.”
Passing something called “health care reform”–even though it helps almost no one for four years, will not lower drug prices, will not slow down the out-of-control growth of health care costs, will make most Americans health insurance worse, will leave millions uninsured, provide no competition for the insurance companies, and not end medical bankruptcy in this country–is all that matters to Obama.
Obama might convince the Senate Democratic caucus that giving up all their principles to appease Joe Lieberman is a smart move. I don’t think he will ever convince the American people to vote en masse for a party that looks like it is made up of only unprincipled spineless wimps.
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Yes, call it “Health Care Reform” when it’s anything but. The Insurance Mafia gets a mountain of free money. The rest of us get a shit sandwich with a side of vomit.
madder than two wet setting hens at the moment -
enter the grown ups and principled pragmatists™ to tell us all a bedtime story of how it has come down to a progressive divide – reducing anything said here to “sloganeering”
I want every right-winger who reflexively defends Sarah Palin and the rest out of cultish loyalty, and who then accuses liberals of doing the same thing, to have FireDogLake thrown in their faces.
Maybe it would help us as a group to be instinctively groupthinky like right-wing authoritarians are. But we aren’t. Surprise, surprise, we actually have principles.
Well Happy Holidays to all of us. Barack Obama has just sold us down the river. It hurts — really hurts — to admit it, but this Chicago hustler has taken our good hearts and played us for complete suckers. Why do I feel like Tiger Woods’ wife?
This bill is worse than the status quo; it is an abomination. (Again I cannot easily express my disgust that the teabagger crackpots who called it an “Obamanation” apparently knew something that we did not.) $1000000000s to insurance companies courtesy of this smooth talking empty suited liar from Chicago.
KILL THIS TRAVEST OF A PAYOUT TO INSURANCE COMPANIES ***NOW***.
Can we credibly threaten to kill the entire bill–call on Repugnants?–and then lever that to strip out the mandate to purchase insurance measure? Keep the subsidies but make it VOLUNTARY.
Candidate Obama did not buy the notion that people without assets needed to hand over their last dime to buy insurance to protect assets they don’t have. In real world calculus, this is still true.
Bam gets something he can call “HC reform,” we get rid of the quite literally FASCIST part, and the insurance companies get a little more regulated. Because it’s VOLUNTARY, they’ll have to play a little nicer to attract customers.
No doubt this won’t work to keep costs down and it’ll be back, but without the fascist part–that is also a right wing Republican making machine. And with good cause!
Not ideal, granted.
Our government is no longer capable of acting in the interests of the people, when such action runs contrary, in the slightest, to corporate interests. We’ve been hijacked.