They should have been protesting in alarm eight years ago or thirty years ago when the current mess was instigated.

Disupting an AARP information meeting with rants about USA not needing big socialism blah blah blah is too rich a vein of irony.

The military-security-industrial-finance complex loves big socialism when it's for them.

But the stupid slugs of the mass class always get the message too late.

The New York Times did not see fit to use the following comment on Krugman's article, which I stayed up late writing and posted rapidly, in plenty of time to be posted:

"Obama’s health care bill is more than a thousand pages long. People do not understand it, and therefore it is easy to tell lies about it. People in America are frightened today and have good reason to be. They are losing their jobs and their houses. They have deliberately been kept ignorant about health care: where the money comes from, where it goes, and any analysis of real alternatives.

The only reason for a more than thousand page health care bill is to allow for more smoke and mirrors, to conceal the money trail. It isn’t true that Obama’s plan will force sick old people to be euthanized or any of the other outrageous fabrications that have people marching on Congressional offices with pitchforks. But these things are true:

Obama’s plan would not kick in until 2013. It would force people to buy private insurance or be punished. It would not cut health care costs, but only slow the speed of health care increases. Its price tag would be kept at a staggering trillion dollars only by cutting back on vital services. It would not be universal. It would not give Americans the health care they need and they already more than pay for.

Obama knows, and admitted candidly at a press conference last week, that the only way to insure everyone is with a Single Payer system. What he doesn’t know but must learn, if he is to regain the momentum that inspired the army of helpers that brought him into office, is that there is absolutely no way of placating those who profit from our present dysfunctional system. How could there be? The whole industry has been erected over the past fifty years of fake reform upon the a criminal premise: “Your money or your life.”

Obama had the sword of the people in his hands when he came into office but is rapidly losing it. Racism is part of it; racism has been a hidden reef in America for the past recent decades, but it is always present. But if Obama, when he was strongest, had enacted policies that aimed directly at keeping frightened homeowners in their homes instead of entrusting this job to the same 20th century whoopee boys who caused the crisis, he would have administered a powerful inoculation against racism to a whole bunch of people who could go one way or another, but who are falling now, out of fright, towards their worse selves-- towards racism. Give these same people a real, robust , fair and simple to understand (because it is without tricks), health care plan, and their better angels will prevail: they will defend Obama.

Obama is hurrying to cement a bad bill in place that will not begin to be enacted until his second term of office. Even were it to be passed and enacted, it would fail the tests of universality and economy. But, after 50 years of heel dragging and obfuscation, why the rush?

It’s shocking that, 50 years after Harry Truman first proposed a national health plan in this country, Congress has never formally requested or considered a full-scale analysis of the economics of Single Payer. Every American interested in health care reform, Obama included, needs to demand that Congress commission and consider a full scale Congressional Budget Office analysis of Single Payer. Economists who have studied it maintain that for a few years Single Payer would cost more than we presently spend, as people line up to get their longstanding unmet health care needs met. But expenditures would rapidly level off and then decrease dramatically. We not only can afford it, we can’t afford as a nation NOT to have it. When and if Obama grasps this and acts on it, he will get his groove, and his enthusiastic volunteer army, back.

Were Obama to spend the next year working with Single Payer advocates to come up with a decentralized Single Payer plan, and then take the bully pulpit to explain it, he would win over the American people, despite all the lies and the money of the industry, could go down in history as the greatest American President."

By the way, I have noticed that the NYT frequently closes the window of comments on health care articles very, very rapidly. It did so on this article.

But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.

----------------------------

Mr. Obama's backers are big pharma and insurance. They don't suffer from lack of conviction at all Mr. Krugman. They are winning the fight and successfully transforming our healthcare system into a mandate to purchase their overpriced drugs and worthless policies.

Perhaps the angry right (of which Mr. Obama is a part of although I do not know if he's angry) is succeeding because they have ready access to all media whereas progressives have been shut out.

Obama lost me long before he was elected when he lied about his determination to oppose retroactive immunity for the telecoms for spying on the American people. Since then he continues to lie about opposing torture, about governing transparently, about keeping people locked up forever without trial etc. He misrepresented himself to "progressive" people like me whose support he needed to win the Democratic primary. Once that was achieved we became instantly expendable to him.
The plutocrats are delighted. They are now represented by someone who does not look like them, who talks the talk of morality as well as any politician I've ever heard and yet is as certain to protect and enhance their interests as George and Dick were.
So "the prosaic reality of his administration" is the same prosaic reality of almost every administration that preceded it: the rule of the rich by the rich for the rich.

Of course there are people who are "afraid of socialism". But, let's face it. This plan/these plans are a farce.

Also, people are disgusted, in general, with what this gov't has been doing, particularly the bank bailouts. This is an easy anti-gov't target. And the right will play it for all its worth. If there was any integrity in these plans they couldn't succeed.

Finally, anyone who thinks we could get a decent, cost-effective health care plan out of this gov't, I believe, is delusional and living in a fantasy world.

I do not want gov't controlling any aspects of my life, much less health care. The new Director of the CDC thinks gov't needs to be more aggressive about obesity. If anyone of you who wants national health care in this environment is fat, look out. You will no longer own your life. If you have never used illegal drugs, you will find out what it's like when behavior that harms no one but, possibly, yourself is criminalized.

While the insurance industry has publicly supported regulations that would guarantee everyone coverage and outlaw pre-exising condition exclusions, insurance executives from UnitedHealth Group, Assurant, and WellPoint specifically refused to “commit” to ending the controversial practice of rescinding coverage after an applicant files a medical claim.

Watch a compilation of insurers’ refusal to end rescission:

Video from Think Progress:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/06/ignani-reform/

How do we know that all the lefty messages written here are not "trolls" trying to confuse us that the left is not for any step that involves Obama's plan to provide a public option for health insurance.

I have no allusions that Obama is not for big business but if more people can be covered by this public health care plan then its definitely a start of something good.

These townhall mafia style protests scare the lights out of me. All this even when the current health care plan is already compromised enough? What would townhall be like if single payer were on the table? I hope Obama and Congress get something done right on this and pass a reform bill that will improve health care for all at all.

'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.' There's no difference between the 2 political parties. We can stay with the status quo of rising health care costs and complete loss of insurance for the unlucky or we can move towards what I believe is a better system, but again, don't forget, there is no difference between the 2 parties.

"But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction." You're right Paul - he BETRAYED them all and every "Hope" they had for a better life. BHO did exactly what he set out to do - silence them - while continuing every destructive flat earth policy of the Bush Crime family while he continues committing the same Crimes. Overseer doesn't have a gender or a race, only a job description: Xfer all wealth to the top 1% and keep the plebs in their place. Couldn't be simpler. Welcome to Plan Columbia, American style. Haven't gotten to the death squads yet, but we will. We're Patriots....

This is not the first time America 'turned on itself'.

To varying degrees, Americans have always been a 'potential threat to themselves and others'.

When the Americans DO turn on themselves, they do so with much enthusiasm, and efficiency.
The "Civil War" of the 19th Century is an excellent example.
Many Americans are 'still fighting it' in many ways; but take these few points into consideration.
In four years the Americans killed and maimed more of themselves than all of the other wars they have been involved in ---combined. They introduced no less than 5 new weapons of mass destruction, and re-introduced 'total war', all of this ON THEMSELVES.
They have been directly and indirectly involved in wars and revolutions all over the world which resulted in untold loss of innocent lives and destruction most people would become ill from if the revelations were made public.
And so much more that space here does not allow details.

Yet, the Americans arrogantly hold themselves up to the world as the 'example' and brag that they 'promote freedom and Democracy to the world'----with their 'example'.
So now, they are willing to demonstrate to the world that the wealthiest nation on the planet has hungry and homeless children and elderly, a collapsing economy (as a result of the repetition of the many mistakes of the past), wars in diverse locations on the globe---that they are loosing; and now. The admission that they can 'put human beings into space' but can't take proper care of their medical needs while they are down here on Earth---unless they are wealthy.

Speaking as one who was born 'a prisoner of war in his own country'; I cannot think of a Nation in history that deserves the end that America seems to be headed for.

Total destruction, at their own hands.

America, the world cannot possibly tolerate you much longer.

Good luck America, you really need it.