One of the most frustrating things about the health care debate is that virtually everybody who is discussing it is lying through their teeth. The president says he would rather have a bunch of Republican votes for 85% of what he wants than a party-line vote for 100% of what he wants. That’s bull. He wants a bunch of Republican votes for 100% of what he wants. The question is whether he will settle for 85%, but that is not what he wants. He’s trying to sound conciliatory, but a time will come when he needs to crack heads.
Then you have a bunch of Democrats, like me, who know that the single-payer system is the way to go but who, seeing the writing on the wall, are rallying around a public option instead. If we say a public option is the Real McCoy, we’re just saying that. It’s bull.
After that, we get these wavering Democrats who claim to be concerned about the cost of a public option. That’s bull. They’re concerned about facing down the health insurance providers and the American Medical Association.
On the Republican side you have a bunch of people who are pretending to negotiate in good faith when, out of the other side of their mouths, they are saying they will fight a public option to the death. They’re full of it.
The only honest people in this whole dispute are the single-payer hardliners on the left and the open opponents of any bill on the right. Neither of them want to see whatever weak-assed health care bill emerges out of the Senate’s bowels become law. They have different reasons for this, but at least they’re not full of crap.
And all the pundits, like David Broder, who say the really important thing is that the bill have bipartisan support are either painfully stupid or painfully dishonest. What’s most important is that we pass a health care bill that lowers costs while covering the 40-plus million uninsured people in this county. Nothing else matters. There are right answers in this policy dispute. I think that single-payer is the right answer and hope that a public option is a step in that direction. In any case, I’m not willing to let people die because we can’t pass the bill that is the right answer.
Bipartisanship has nothing to do with it.
yessir. absolutely correct.
this public option is total fucking bullshit and we all know it.
i am getting nagrier by the minute with the dilly dallying and bullshitting. Kent conrad’s office and I had words today, but my converstaion with mary landrieu, oh that was brutal.
no mercy.
Did you tell him he was being kind of a dick?
I got the feeling that Ed Schultz might have read my piece this afternoon.
Kind of? Conrad is just a dick. He isn’t even fit to lick Dorgan’s shoes.
His knees wobbled pretty dramatically on the Ed Show.
Conrad?
yes.
I can’t believe Schultz didn’t tear him a new one. Just yesterday he was in fine form. Today he wussed out big time.
Conrad, Baucus, Wyden, Carper – Stewart or Schultz or Colbert or SOMEONE needs to pick one of these guys and make an example of him – freaking DESTROY him. It’s not hard.
Company X pays Senator Y 2.8 million.]
Senator Y tries to water down health care reform (insert video collage of whiny dishonest statements)
Company X holds 4.8 billion in tobacco stock
Company X’s CEO makes 24 million a year
(insert story about pregnant woman dying of breast cancer unecessarily)
Do parody of Senator Y
repeat and embellish until the guy is as hated and laughed at as George W Bush.
Schultz wants him to come back on his show. Yesterday was Schultz giving Conrad the opportunity to back away from his comment about not listening to HCAN. Conrad backpedaled some; “I was overheard”; implication “I was not quoted correctly.” But it still was pretty wimpy on Conrad’s part.
nope. i just made his staff read the daily kos diary, “this is what losing your kidneys looks like” by river kitsap.
heartbreaking. with photos.
kent’s office didn’t like it. you could hear the shame.
It’s not often that I have a strongly felt opinion that I think is probably shared by the majority of the American public, both left, right, and
confusedmoderate.That opinion is this: It is shamefully cowardly to see our elected representatives crawling before wealthy pressure groups because they are afraid of losing campaign donations and thereby losing elections. It’s insulting, too: the people have voted against the better funded candidate on any number of occasions. We’re not all dumber than rocks.
But it’s the cowardice that bothers me the most. If you lose the election, then what? You go get another job, you fucking pussies. Almost everyone does it every few years, and we don’t get a lifetime pension when we’re laid off.
In this particular case, lives are at stake. The body count from inadequate health care dwarfs that of any mere war. To fail to fix our broken health care system for the sake of their convenience — like any of the wealthy pricks in Congress will have trouble finding work, if they even need it — is more than just cowardice this time. It is cold blooded mass murder.
Congress needs to understand this: there is no replacing the friends and family we lose because the healthcare system values profit above humanity, but you gutless chickenshits can be replaced at the next election. Now change your pants and do what we elected you to do or well find some vertebrate who will.
There are 50 million uninsured and 119 million who are unhappy with their present insurance and would switch to a pubic option if there is a viable one. That adds up to 169 million voters. A smarter senate would reach out to those numbers.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061109.html
An even smarter Senate would be very, very afraid of those numbers — so afraid they would see that writing on the proverbial wall — and join them now before the tide of history comes down upon them like a tsunami.
But they are Senators.
Not focusing on the requirements. All of the discussion so far has not deal with the practical requirements. For example:
Those are the things we should be talking about instead of these shorthand jargon “single-payer” “public option” “co-ops” that ordinary people don’t understand.
Which brings up 6.
6. If people don’t understand how it works and how it will be paid for, the situation is open for another successful “Harry and Louise” kind of attack.
I disagree.
Sure, there is much cynical posturing going on. But there really are people who sincerely fall somewhere between the positions of pro-single payer and anti-everything government.
While I am certainly in favor of a single-payer approach, I am also concerned about costs. And I am even willing to entertain the idea of a “co-op” approach, though it’s probably because I have no idea what that really means (and hope it’s mostly just rebranding the public option).
In any event, I do think it’s worth recognizing that not everyone is diametrically opposed.
Single payer will save us $350 BILLION a year
Having taken over all my mom’s health care paperwork over two years ago, I can report that Medicare and her supplemental insurance took care of virtually all doctor and hospital bills for various procedures in a timely manner, with a minimum of paper hassle and very little in co-pays. My own insurance that I have through my employer, not so much. Mrs. ID and I both had “insured” surgeries 6 six years ago and were left with bills of around 20K out-of-pocket. Count me as a leftie for socialized medicine, the sooner the better.
RIGHT. FRIGGIN’ ON.
Nailed it.
Only problem now id how do we fix it and give the dems and Obama some spine?