Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Obama to Abandon Bipartisan Health Reform
President Barack Obama is poised to abandon attempts to broker bipartisan health care reform and instead push through proposals using only the votes of Democrats.
White House officials said they had been forced to take the step by Republicans amid an increasingly bitter debate over the plans.
US President Barack Obama speaks about newly sworn in Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington in this April 28, 2009 file photo. The Obama administration appears set on taking the politically dangerous route of painting Republicans as health care obstructionists despite polling showing widespread concern among Americans. (REUTERS/Jim Young/Files) The
Obama administration appears set on taking the politically dangerous
route of painting Republicans as health care obstructionists despite
polling showing widespread concern among Americans.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, told The New York Times that the Republican leadership "has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama's health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day".
Republicans respond that they are simply opposing the trillion-dollar Democratic-drafted legislation and that the vocal public concern underlines the validity of their stance.
He campaigned on a promise of ushering in a new era of bipartisanship in Washington but since he entered the White House in January Mr Obama has struggled to win over Republicans.
Mr Obama's shift reflects the political reality that there is little prospect of agreement between Democrats and Republicans on the increasingly contentious issue of health care reform, which has triggered angry protests at public meetings across the country.
There are signs that any further movement to accommodate Republicans could lead to a split on the Left that would imperil reform. Recent moves to float the notion of abandoning an optional government-sponsored insurance plan have been met with fury on the Left, which is accusing Mr Obama of abandoning his principles.
After spending several weeks protesting that there was no plan for "death panels" to enforce euthanasia, the White House is again on the defensive, this time over the government insurance option. Over the summer, Mr Obama's personal popularity has plummeted, along with public support for health care reform.
Mr Obama's Democrats do, however, have the advantage of holding solid majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. The party's 60 to 40 advantage in the Senate, however, is offset by the absence of Robert Byrd of West Virginia, 91, and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, 77, who are both seriously ill and unable to vote. Democrats have to muster 60 votes to resist a Republican filibuster.
This means they need to woo at least two from a tiny band of moderate Republicans while at the same time preventing any conservative Democrats from defecting.
The White House is furious with Senator Chuck Grassley, who had been leading a small band of Republicans trying to broker a compromise bill, after he refused to reject wild claims that were "death panels" included in a draft bill on Capitol Hill.
Democrats have removed the controversial clause about voluntary consultations to discuss "end-of-life" care but the political damage had already been done.
The White House is now advocating the setting up of non-profit insurance co-operatives as an alternative to a public insurance plan.
Republicans, however, have rejected this as a sleight of hand. "It doesn't matter what you call it, they want to accompany something Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-bill.
73 Comments so far
Show AllIn the eleventeen-dimensional chess game of Amerikan political pragmatism, the King moves one step forward, two steps to the right, then two steps backwards.
Of course, it's not called a "king"; it's called a "Unitary Executive".
The rough beast of "No Insurer Left Behind legislation" is bound to be such an abomination that the outcome will be an Alphonse and Gaston act: each conjoined twin in the Amerikan duopoly will point to the other as the proud parent.
· Yr Obd't Servant
OS. Thanks for a witty and poetic post. Alphonse and Gastone were new to me. Very apt.
Cyon,
Alphonse and Gaston were cartoon characters created by the great turn-of-the-twentieth-century cartoonist Frederick Opper. The running joke involving these two French gentlemen was that their excessive politeness always got them into trouble. For example, the two would be riding in a dirigible, which develops a hole and starts to fall to earth rapidly. Gaston and Alphonse constantly defer to each other as the one to leave the ship first, with dialog such as "By your leave, Alphonse." "By all means, you first Gaston," "No, please, Alphonse," etc. Of course, the ship crashes to earth with both of them still aboard.
It is good that OS remembers such a wonderful reference which still has use today.
And here I am, comparing them to Chip and Dale.
"Obama is poised to abandon attempts to broker bipartisan health care reform and instead..."
Desperation?
The obvious solution, single payer, off the table.
the undefined "public option" quietly abandoned
The Democrats new excuse now for not doing what is needed to fix US healthcare...Robert Byrd, 91 is ill.
Even if the Democrats wanted to give Americans a half decent universal system like most want, they would be starting now at square one, having let the insurance corporations and their paid lackeys have the run of the pitch since day one of the Obama administration.
Obama has no choice but to declare bipartisanship dead or give up on a health care reform bill during his presidency.
Once he dumps bipartisanship, the Republicans will assume no ownership of whatever "reform" is implemented. If Obama then implements a system like a public option that doesn't succeed at cutting costs while providing universal care, the Republicans will forever be rubbing his nose in it. A single-payer system will allow Obama to rub the Republicans' nose in it.
Obama has no choice but to declare bipartisanship dead or give up on a health care reform bill during his presidency.
Once he dumps bipartisanship, the Republicans will assume no ownership of whatever "reform" is implemented. If Obama then implements a system like a public option that doesn't succeed at cutting costs while providing universal care, the Republicans will forever be rubbing his nose in it. A single-payer system will allow Obama to rub the Republicans' nose in it.
I do not see anything bi-partisan about this corporate structured non-health plan. The spineless dems have a majority and they flop over again. When will the american peeps recognize that we live in a one party fascist system?
Sorry about the double post.
I do not see anything bi-partisan about this corporate structured non-health plan. The spineless dems have a majority and they flop over again. When will the american peeps recognize that we live in a one party fascist system?
Well, we are getting from the Obama administration just what i thought we would get: A whole lot of nothing!
Except perhaps a pocket full of CHANGE and a few devalued greenbacks in your wallet?
This is not over. Maybe. Please get out there and scream and write and protest and call for Medicare for All. We've been out-organized again - let's fight back! Of course, it would be a lot of easier if the Dem leadership gave us anything to fight FOR, but there is HR 676 and the Sanders bill, both of which would set up single-payer systems. Let's fight for those.
Who gives a crap what Obama does?
Surely there is no reason to fight for his healthcare plan as it turns your health into a commodity on the trading floor of the insurance industry. Let it be defeated as the crap it is and press for single payer by supporting Hr676 and those that have signed on.
Blue Letter Week-
Blue letter week starts Monday Aug 24th.
Nothing like big bags of snail mail from lot's and lot's of supporters who want the President to see bag's and bag's of mail from people who support a public option.
Blue letter week is starts Monday Aug 24th.
( Monday Aug 31 is the delivery goal.)
Send a regular snail mail letter with the words:
"I want a public option" on the back of the envelope.
President Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
One letter and one stamp x 3 million people will get the point across.
Pass it along.
Well, this is a tiny bit better than one solicitation I received that everybody put a band-aid on their right hand and keep it there until health care "reform" is passed. What a gem of symbolism for an utterly inadequate health care reform. But if it makes you feel better...
Excellent idea!
When someone has a bandaid on, everyone's eyes go straight at the bandaid. Everyone wants to know how you cut your finger. I like it.
Thank you.
Great idea! I am getting the word out to all my friends.
Not to worry. Obama's henchmen will go running back to the HMO CEOs to figure out how to deal with the public option "problem."
As it stands, the public option is a watered down piece of crap legislation that is going to be run by the private insurance companies, so I wouldn't expect anything with teeth to be coming out of any "public option" this administration puts forward.
I smell a set-up.
Why do I get the sense that this "dangerous" move to actually use overwhelming majorities to pass a bill instead of pretending the minority can do anything about it will mean I will have to spend an additional 10 hours proving to my Dem-duped friends that this "health care reform" is STILL crap?
Great.
"Set-up" is right.
Obama is only making this move because he has the full support of the insurance and pharmaceutical industry. Ohterwise, why is he not using his majority for something that will actually be effective like single-payer?
I think this shows how difficult it is to go up against the mulitary / industrial complex.
I don't think there is much confusion.
Everyone would like reasonable single payer health care.
And I feel that we should get off the side issues and show our support.
Oh
And good for the President for calling a spade a spade ( no pun intended ) and speaking out against all obstructionists.
Obama has a problem. He arrived thinking he was going to be boss, but found out even his Dems were owned by the insurance industry. Only chance he has is to say "Sorry, folks. I am going to do what is in the best interest of the country. You right-wingers vote against me as you did before, but if this bill does not include a very robust public option it will be vetoed and they'll have to override me.
But I don't give him that credit. What we should have is single-payer, and congress is too bought to give us that.
Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net
You guys are really being conned - check out
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/19/nhs-healthcare-america
Maximus Decimus, I just read the article and the comments, thanks. It amazes me that we haven't heard more from thse who have experienced the application of some sort of national health care. I wish CD would make the article available for comments here
The person that wrote that article in the Guardian is a regular at a blog called "The Green Mountain Daily". You can comment directly to him there.
Thanks for posting that link. It was a very interesting read.
One thing I find very depressing is the lack of curiosity in regards to how other folks handle health care. even among my co-worker (I am in IT) very few seem to wonder how other people handle this issue. I suspect that intrinsically they know they are getting a raw deal but they cling to the belief out of pride.
As an engineer I work with application developers and sysadmins of all stripes. What I have found is that the most prideful of the lot will do all that they can to avoid change. For instance I used to work with an Perl developer who would write reams and reams of elaborate code to do things in Perl that had already been included in the default UNIX operating system. Things like renaming and moving log files to archive locations and such would require a custom Perl script. When I pointed out to him that we are not the first and only application shop to need log rotation and that the issue had already been addressed his look was one of wonder. It took me a long time to convince him to let go of the old way of doing business.
In another shop I worked in we had an issue with email. After listening to my clients requirements the staff was already to build some new experimental solution to the problem. The first thing I asked was, "Has anyone else on the web experienced this problem?" No answer. "What other firms using similar software and products have experienced this issue?" No answer. Finally: "Has anyone Google'd the problem?" No answer. They were a crack team of IT folks but in their haste to provide a custom solution to the client they over looked very easy and simple remedies.
Long story short I guess their is truth in that old saying; "There is nothing new under the sun."
Obama has proven himself to be a namby-pamby swish left and right and wiggle every which way to try to PLEASE LUNATICS, be they Republicans, or radical rabid right-wingers.
He thinks he has problems now?
Piss us TRUE Progressives off, and he and his (now) ilk will find out exactly how big a mistake it was to repeatedly kowtow to the Republicans.
First, it was universal healthcare.
Then, it was expand Medicare to everyone uninsured.
Then, it was a "Public option."
Then, it was not a big deal if we "have" it or not, and went from health CARE reform to health INSURANCE inform.
They are bullshitting us left and right, and need to know they are really pissing their SUPPORTERS off.
Wrong question. The right quest is how long before Obama abandons the White House? Be ready to stomp on any crap that Biden spews. He's even worse than Obama. The elite wants to confuse us. Don't let them. The prize is NO MORE WAR. But, for now, we'll settle for HR676. No surrender. No backing down. Our freedom is gone. This may be our last chance to recover some of it. For all I know, it may be too late and when congress sees they can't get around us, they'll just give us the finger and do a Tony Soprano, "WADA YOU GONNA DO ABOUD IT ?"
Wrong Again! The right question is how long before the Democrats realize that they will never get anywhere by trying to appease the Repugnicans still holding onto their seats? All the Repugnicans want out of this Administration is for it to FAIL. They are trying to take him down on any and all fronts - including health care and military spending - using the most obnoxious underhanded tactics ever employed in any "civil" debate. They start with spreading the most inane lies about the health care reform bill riling up the screaming racist idiots who resent having a black President to drown out any reasonable discussion that could be taking place and kick it up a notch by encouraging the mentally unstable ignorant racists to bring guns out to town halls and anyplace the President may be appearing. By the way, what "freedom" have you lost? It was Bush who took away your freedoms under the repugnant patriot act and even suspended habeas corpus.
The Republicans may want the Democrats to fail but the Democrats are failing themselves by playing kissyface with the Republicans. Stop your partisan talk. Dubya and the GOP may have done enough damage but the Democrats aided him too all those years and now most of them and Obama are continuing Dubya's policies.
You're living the fantasy that Democrats oppose Republicans, or Republicans oppose Democrats. They don't. It's all an illusion to make the gullible American voter believe there are two parties. They feign outrage at each other but at the end the powerful corporations will always win, the American worker will always lose. Please wake up.
This is Obama throwing some crumbs to his base. There won't be either single payer or public option.
"...the American worker will always lose...There won't be either single payer or public option."
In other words, don't ever try to do anything, since it's all hopeless. Stay home and play solitaire and watch cartoons.
I see way too much of this defeatism here.
Or you can be an activist, organize, get together with others and seize this moment before everything has been decided.
Without optimism and struggle, the status quo would never change.
You're correct but being an activist, organizing, getting together with others and still vote Republican or Democrat at the end is useless. Without a third or forth parties, hell, without a SECOND party, the status quo would never change.
I think the term "bi-partisan" is just about ready to make it into the lexicon of "mental conditions" in psychiatry.
We went from Manic-Depressive to Bi-Polar to Bi-Partisan.
NOTE: This condition applies to ONE individual or political party with seemingly radically different behavior of two opposing personality types.
It's time we started calling "third" party progressives the FIRST party. We represent over 80% of the people in health care issues. I'm sure it's just as high in hatred of war profiteering.
What we need is a nice list of news media editors for our folks to "educate" about what a First party is.
Too bad. I was an Obama supporter. His glib voice won me over. Besides, McCain and Palin were a disaster.
Oh, well, Obama, you had your three months in the headlines. Best you just button up, shut up and take the family to Disney Land twice a month.
Eveyone knows now that you were ill-prepared for office. You thought you had only to present your ideas and the USA and the world would stoop and groan for you. Well, they might have if you had lived up to your press.
So long and good luck. See you on the golf course.
He's an imperialist, though. Voted for all the Iraq spending bills in the Senate.
Did that not bother you? I'm just asking because I simply can't wrap my mind around "progressives" voting for a guy who is such a warmonger. This couldn't possibly have slipped past you before November. The evidence was everywhere.
But a lot of liberals are imperialists, too. As long as it is "their guy" that is doing the bombing, they don't care about the killing. They are willing to look the other way. :-(
re;" But a lot of liberals are imperialists, too." imo. those are neolibs, they could end up being worst than the neocons. a neolib always introduces a soon to be colonized country to a fish. but the neolibs never bring the fishing net.
Neoliberalism is an economic theory, doesn't have a lot to do with foreign policy whereas neoconservatism is primarily about foreign policy.
The fish thing went over my head. Sorry.
A public option. This is what happened when I called the office of Secretary Sebelius on health care.
The Disconnect on Health Care is for Real
I read in several newspapers and internet on-line columns that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, believes that a public option is no longer necessary in the amorphous Obama Health Care Plan. A call to her office is made to confirm this. I am told by the person answering the phone in her office that she does not know, but will transfer me to another number from which I hear a recording. It thanked me for calling. So what is Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, position on the public option? Does she believe that people without health insurance, which is 50 million people now, should have access to a public option?
So Obama is going to do all that now that the bill has been so watered down? It's just a silly dilly dumbshow between the two parties that's going on. Obama's outraged at no one. If he and his party really cared, they would have put Conyers's HR 676 and Sanders's S703 on the table first.
By the way, why can't Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd just allow young progressive replacements to step in? WV would be blue if Democrats would quit playing kissyface with Big Coal and MA? That state is so drenched in blue that any young politician taking Kennedy's place will be a Democrat ! I would prefer an Independent ala Sanders to replace those two though.
Hoo-ray for Jennifer! She even uses her name! Go Conyers!
But Conyers (as well as Dingell, he's been offering a bill since Jesus wore short pants), is in the House! Bills arise in Congress, properly. Sure he has influence, but the bill has to get through both houses of Congress, and they know each other better than he does. Me, I'm left to pursuade Kyl and the scion of an aristocratic war family whose name I will not mention.
OK, I gas I'm ready for another codeword, which, if properly grasped, will allow posting of my suspect message.
Mmmnn. May be time for a third party. We'll take what is left of the Labor Party, try to bring in the Greens, call out all the progressives, and call it the Progressive Labor Party, and write it in Green ink. Then of course, we'd have to see if any members of the Progressive Caucus, the good ones of course, might run under our party banner. Let's be realistic though--we need money, and lots of it, and we need activists, and we need to be a party for the working class and the poor, and not be afraid to talk about class. And we have to get the complicit wing of the union movement to finally take the side of labor and quit pal-ing around with corporate Dems, which may be harder than imagined.
Still raining, still dreaming...........
In the meantime get behind publicly funded elections which would solve the money issue and let third parties compete.
Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net
http://www.wicleanelections.org/
Ah! Thanks for the URL's!
Third parties may look strong for '10 and '12, what with all this foobarification.
There is already a third party which fits the bill. It is the Socialist Party USA. If you check out their platform (use Google), I think you will find a lot with which you agree. I started out as a Green, but I didn't think the Greens ever really fulfilled their anti-capitalist potential even though it is implicit in some of their Key Values. The Socialist Party has a good solid, progressive socialist platform.
As for a "Progressive Labor Party". There already is one. I don't think it is what you are looking for.
In Solidarity,
WhiteRose
Good for you. Yeah, the Greens are cappies, which is why I don't vote for them.
The Peace & Freedom party is looking to go national, so anybody looking for a socialist equality-based party has this also as an option, in addition to SPUSA.
Another good one is the Workers Party of America.
I'm still registered with the Communist Party, but Sam Webb really sold the party down the river when he endorsed Obama, so I'll probably change to the PSL (Party for Socialism & Liberation). I prefer the revolutionary parties.
Wonderful blogs. I'd give a big cheer for many of you, but CD has me on a suspect list and it's hard to read the funny letters and numbers. Anyone out there who can help an opinionated broken down and dim-sighted old lefty?
Re a third party. It makes me nervous. I'm actually more of a wobbly, but I'll settle for dimocrat in the interest of winning elections instead of dividing the vote and scattering the resources. The r's would love to see us divide into 3 parts so all would be their size, and historically (but not hysterically) our dividing ourselves according to pet projects has been our demise since Mitchell ran his Red Raids. And so I expose my traditional values.
Hoo-ray for our side!
I agree with many who posted (paraphrased): that if the Democrats are going to take the heat for failure on a healthcare reform, if one is passed, they might as well go for the gold, and work on an HR 676, S 703 compromise bill. Of course, with as much hell as was raised about a "public option" by the "other half", we might wind up in a civil war over Single Payer! I believe they would rather have anarchy rule, rather than anything "socialistic", except for the things they use every day that are "socialistic" like roads, bridges, police, fire dept., schools, libraries, VA, Social Security, Medicare(many don't know that it is govt. financed), etc.. How dare we think that our personal health ought to have the same protection as our homes from fire, our persons from crime, our vehicles from crappy roads,our children's minds from ignorance, our veterans, our aged, etc.. It only makes sense.
Repubbles out of the picture, let's renew the request for Single Payer.
The righist and libertarians I have spoken with would prefer Single Payer to the Kafkaesque Rube-Goldbergisms of the current White House proposal.
Not only is this not a matter of a more or less radical policy, both the legislators and most of the political spectrum realize that it is not.
Single Payer!