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TechnoratiNot-So-Robust Public Option
The public option was always a compromise for serious supporters of health-care reform, who -- like Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate in 2003 -- knew that a single-payer "Medicare for All" system was what America needed to provide health care to everyone while controlling costs.
But, in the reform legislation debuted Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the compromise was even more compromised than had been expected.
Pelosi says the legislation is "historic," and celebrates the fact that is does still include a public option -- a component many pundits had said was destined for abandonment.
But, while there is a public option, it is anything but robust.
Progressives believe Pelosi has bent to far to the right.
And The New York Times suggests as much in its analysis, which declares that:
Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government...Ms. Pelosi said the public plan, which she prefers to call a "consumer option," would compete with private insurers. But the speaker was apparently unable to muster the votes needed for the 'robust' liberal version of a public plan, which she has repeatedly said would save more money for consumers and the government.
Translation: The "public option" Pelosi and her team have proposed a plan that would not make payments for care based on Medicare rates, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and key Senate Democrats have proposed.
Rather, under the Pelosi plan, the rates be tied to those of the big insurance companies. That's a big, big victory for the insurance industry, as it will undermine the ability of the public option to compete -- and to create pressure for reduced costs.
Pelosi's plan also drops a number of provisions that had been advanced at the committee level to promote consideration of "Medicare for All" models and to allow states to experiment with single-payer plans.
That's an especially bitter pill for House progressives, who has won support for state-based experimentation in committee votes.
Groups such as Progressive Democrats of America were quick to raised alarm bells because some of the most innovative responses to the health-care crisis are being forged at the state level. While single-payer proposals are being blocked at the federal level, PDA national director Tim Carpenter says the single-payer fight is ramping up in the states.
"Last week, members of the PDA national team traveled to Pennsylvania for a rally at the capital rotunda in Harrisburg, in support of Healthcare for All Pennsylvania and their single-payer bill," notes Carpenter. "The momentum for single-payer healthcare grows daily. It appears Congress will have to be forced to follow the lead of states like Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Ohio and Massachusetts --- all working to implement single-payer healthcare at the state level."
House progressives were quick to express disappointment, as they were counting on the House to advance a strong alternative to the Senate Democratic leadership's very weak public option proposal -- which would allow states to opt out of the plan.
Reviewing the details of Pelosi's plan in a passionate speech on the House floor, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, one of the chamber's most ardent advocates for reform asked: "Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance, guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies?
Kucinich continued:
Is this the best we can do? Government negotiates rates which will drive up insurance costs, but the government won't negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies which will drive up pharmaceutical costs.Is this the best we can do? Only 3 percent of Americans will go to a new public plan, while currently 33 percent of Americans are either uninsured or underinsured?
Is this the best we can do? Eliminating the state single payer option, while forcing most people to buy private insurance.
If this is the best we can do, then our best isn't good enough and we have to ask some hard questions about our political system: such as Health Care or Insurance Care? Government of the people or a government of the corporations.
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey, D-California, said she and her allies would continue to battle to muscle-up the public option.
"It's not even the fourth quarter,'' said Woolsey, who noted the public option had only recently been dismissed as dead by many pundits. "We will be insisting on (the option) being as strong as it possibly can be.''
Woolsey and other progressive Democrats are set to meet with President Obama Thursday.
"He needs to hear from us that he needs to support the public option,'' Woolsey told the Los Angeles Times. "He's not saying it loud enough. We want to make sure he lets the Senate know he wants a public option in the bill."
The focus on Obama is appropriate. He has the authority, as a man with a bully pulpit and a veto pen, to tell Pelosi that a soft public option is insufficient. At the same time, he can and should be more involved in challenging the absurd proposals -- advanced by conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans -- for "opt-outs" and "triggers," which threaten to weaken the public option to the point of meaninglessness.
57 Comments so far
Show AllCan anyone deny that Dennis Kucinich as President would have already ended the funding for war, thereby freeing up funds for single-payer healthcare at this point?
Obama was and is a fraud. He was straddling the fence in the Senate to get elected on a Democrat ticket. His votes in the Senate still convinced me he was a corporatist and an elitist.
Dennis Kucinich 2012 for President: Single-payer healthcare, end to war, end to NAFTA, free public college education, end to welfare for the rich, corporate and environmental regulations.
DENNIS KUCINICH 2012.
"Dennis Kucinich 2012 for President: Single-payer healthcare, end to war, end to NAFTA, free public college education, end to welfare for the rich, corporate and environmental regulations."
And then, after the Democratic Party machine marginalizes and shunts him aside once again, we can add the following slogan from Dennis K.: "Vote for all the Democratic candidates who oppose all of the above!" He does it every time--calling for people to vote for the mainstream Democrats who relentlessly oppose everything Kucinich claims to uphold.
That makes Kucinich just another party hack and phony, and the people who fall for his routine dupes.
There are two new reasons why I will vote for Dennis Kucinich if he runs against Obama in the 2012 primaries. He voted against the DOD war-funding even though the Obama administration had deviously attached the hate crime provision to it. His critique of the House "Health Bill" is bulls eye.
A Health Bill with a "states can opt out" provision is like a marriage with allowance for having affairs every now and then. Or worse: like a civil rights bill which allowed states to "opt out" in which case the public schools here in Texas would still have been desegregated today.
A lot of the blame goes to Obama. There's just no leadership there.
What puzzles me is that the dems in congress don't seem to want to win in 2010. Its as if they are intentionally diluting healthcare reform to a bunch of meaningless mush, just so they can alienate those that gave them the majority.
That is what really happened in 1994, after Hillary & Co. negotiated healthcare reform to a bunch of incomprehensible crap that the average person could not understand. The corporate media pre-packaged answer as to why dems lost congress in 1994 was to say they "overreached". That was bullcrap. They didn't reach far enough, and what they were supposedly reaching for wasn't identifiable. People see that, then get disgusted and don't vote. meanwhile, the republican crazies ALWAYS vote.
Here is my reluctant conclusion: The dems responsible for watering down healthcare reform would rather lose and go to work for corporations after they leave congress (ala Tom Dascle).
The Dems who genuinely want to stay in congress have to realize this point: People don't want democrats to pass healthcare reform: they want them to fight like hell for healthcare legistlation that is understandable and actually worth fighting for. They want to see exactly where the dems stand.
If dems do that, they will win in the long run with semi-permanant majorities and eventually get the public what it wants.
But if they keep going the way they are going, then dems & republicans will be viewed as part of the same party, only the republicans will keep their voters.
The Dems cannot cater to their constituencies and their sponsors both.
From the Pelosi proposal:
"income tax surcharge of 5.4 percent on wealthy earners, individuals making at least $500,000 a year and couples $1 million or more.
The legislation includes other taxes, such as a 2.5 percent excise tax on the makers of medical devices, expected to raise $20 billion over a decade. "
Those two tempting gems are the bait, folks. Let me tell what is wrong with this bait. The "income" definition will be "modified" so the first item will NOT affect the rich. As it is now many rich have "invisible" income; i.e. no obvious compensation and dividends go right into a tax free trust. What a deal! They have millions in capital but apparent poverty level income. Don't be fooled. Accountants have several definitions for "income". It's all part of the modern idea that only the "little" people pay taxes. And the second part is a joke. Whenever they say they are going to do this or that over a DECADE, it's bullshit.
HR 676 or bust, I say.
We need a million man and woman march on DC for single payer.
It doesn't have to be a million--perhaps that's over-ambitious at this point. If we could get 50,000 or 100,000 for starters, that would be good, and then we keep marching every year--the demos will get larger and larger until we reach the 1 million threshold.
This is how we did it in the antiwar movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s--there were mass marches on Washington every year or so, and they kept growing until they reached the half million range.
The single-payer movement in this country is very fractures--a half dozen organizations, often going their own way or working at cross purposes.
For example, right now there's a group promoting sit-ins and civil disobedience at insurance company offices. This seems absurd to me. Why protest at the insurance companies--they're never going to voluntarily put themselves out of business.
The protests should be directed against Congress and the White House. But I suspect that the liberal leadership of the single-payer groups doesn't want to give offense to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid et al.
This is why serious radicals need to start moving in on the single-payer movement, which is so splintered, impotent, and loath to take on the turncoat Democrats they supported in the last election and will no doubt bend over for again in the next election.
People should be e-mailing, calling, etc., ALL the single payer groups to demand that they unite to plan a peaceful, legal mass march on Washington for a Saturday next April or so in Washington, D.C.
This can happen if the single-payer forces decide that their interest in winning supersedes their fear of offending Barry and Nancy and Harry.
There's been some progress, given that two months ago the elites weren't even discussing the public option. Since then, activists have shown the elites they are willing to disrupt committee sessions, and the industry has displayed an incredible hubris with an essential threat to raise USan healthcare costs from 2x that in other countries to 5x in ten years, if they don't get exactly what they want. We may do well to encourage the extremist elites to continue with their excess, as the blowback may finally knock them belly-up.
But let's not get bogged down in the details because detailed negotiations with the class war aggressors (elites) are counterproductive to the people' agenda to emancipate themselves. The elites know that the detailed points are moot when the over-arching issue is the dull thud of their generalized aggression. The elites' psych-ops strategies to "legitimize" moot points and produce overly-complex bills filled with loopholes distract and intimidate the people from the very simple and most relevant point that the profit agenda has no legitimate role in serving the better interests of the society. The people should fight back by directly targeting the profit agenda, most generally, including direct statements of intent to destroy it.
All support to the holdouts!
Let's rip this bill up and return to single payer. The camps and the interests are roughly the same, so there's no support to gain by compromise.
I agree. Single payer for everyone, no deductibles, no copays, effectively putting private health insurance out of business.
This bill should have no amendments, no exceptions, and not exceed one page in length.
I forget who said it but it is apt here: "I won't compromise because I'm right."
If we accept a watered down reform that is just for show we will never get anything. I can hear the insurance lackeys two years from now: "We had health care reform passed, now let's move on to something else."
All this bullshit trigger stuff, co-opts, endless conditions---nothing at all is far far better.
Actually, many European countries with good nonprofit universal health-care systems--such as France and Germany--do allow the purchase of boutique or supplemental coverage; in France most of the companies that offer it are nonprofit, in Germany they are for-profit but very tightly regulated on policies and premiums, etc., in a way that U.S. insurers are not.
In France, some 90 percent of the population purchases the supplemental coverage, which is dirt cheap compared to U.S. private plans of any sort (the basic public plan covers about 75 percent of expenses, the supplemental plans the rest--the ratios are similar in Germany).
But the MAIN sources of health-care funding in both countries are nonprofit, as they are and should be in all civilized countries.
"...effectively putting private health insurance out of business." –(Nietzsche)
–And putting them 'out of business' with extreme prejudice by expropriation and nationalization.
Private health insurance will be allowed no 'wiggle room', no 'crawl space' or mitigating circumstances that will allow niche or 'boutique' opportunities for investment driven profits by capitalist opportunists.
Profiting from health care–at any point– will be a thing of the past, as it will be against the law. 'Two tiered' systems where the rich can leverage their wealth to purchase qualitatively superior health care will be eliminated.
Does that mean that Hillary Clinton will go to the same doctors, at the same clinics as the Mexican janitor? Yes, it does.
Radical egalitarianism in health care is not a contradiction in terms with the most exigent and technologically advanced qualitative standards for all. In fact, the former is the very pre-condition for the latter.
–(Jill Bains)
Actually, many European countries with good nonprofit universal health-care systems--such as France and Germany--do allow the purchase of boutique or supplemental coverage; in France most of the companies that offer it are nonprofit, in Germany they are for-profit but very tightly regulated on policies and premiums, etc., in a way that U.S. insurers are not.
In France, some 90 percent of the population purchases the supplemental coverage, which is dirt cheap compared to U.S. private plans of any sort (the basic public plan covers about 75 percent of expenses, the supplemental plans the rest--the ratios are similar in Germany).
But the MAIN sources of health-care funding in both countries are nonprofit, as they are and should be in all civilized countries.
By the way--you misused the word "exigent" in your post above. Here's a quick phrase of advice for you as prose stylist: less is more.
well said.
I never knew the Democrats could go so far to weakening an idea to nothing. It would save the public agony and anxiety if Congress would just give it up and tell them who their higher priority is. I expected them to pass something and had set the bar way too low and now the bar looks way too high. I no longer want them to pass this wretched curse. I'm siding with JenniferB, Cygnus, and the rest on the idea that Congress better let this bill fail and start over. Weakening this bill too far just to pass it is like trying to amputate one organ after another of a dying patient just to pretend hero. It's morally reprehensible !
The health care issue and Democratic policies in general - with a few shining exceptions! - have been a prolonged and aching lesson in betrayal, have they not?
Betrayal of constituencies by politicians that must satisfy their sponsors is nothing new to American politics, but the current example is particularly stark. The Democratic leadership has parted from its rank and file on every single high-profile issue.
Will the House Progressives cave in under pressure?
We'll find out, won't we?
Raul, Lynn and company promised they would not accept anything less than a robust public option, available to anyone, tied to Medicare rates.
See the CPC website:
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/
If CPC members cave in and accept a less-than-robust public option, after ALREADY compromising on Medicare for All, we should withdraw our support from them. We should help them out of office in primaries. And we should call them what they would be if they cave: non-progressive, corporate cowards.
If they DON'T cave and refuse to vote for a weakened public option, they will be heroes, especially if they can get more than 38, for that would prevent the necessary 218 votes, and would stop a weak, insurance-industry handout health insurance bill from passing. And that would be good.
It is completely laughable to watch Congress weakening the public option to nothing. Even Saudi Arabia and Iraq offer universal health care for their citizens if not anything else.
So laughable in fact that even the 'God of dark laughter' is given pause to vomit before he resumes his macabre hilarity.–(Jill Bains)
Professor Irwin Corey couldn't have said it better.
If there's a dollar to be made out of it, our uniquely American system will find a way to do it, even it causes death.
"...even if it causes death." –(hamster)
–More accurately, ONLY if it causes death." –(Jill Bains)
A weak public option will not get the job done and will be worse than nothing. Obama and the Democrats have failed us and need to pay for their betrayal. Third party candidate in 2012 is the only way!
And 2010 as well. We need Greens and progressive independents to challenge both corporate parties in statewide and federal elections next year. Even if we don't win, we can start building an alternative to the Republicrats!
I agree that this Democracy is hopelessly tilted against us, but if we vote third party aren't we ensuring a GOP takeover? We have a 'winner take all' democracy, and the forces arrayed against us do almost as well when that gov't accomplishes nothing constructive (as during the Bush admin) as when it actively works on their behalf.
I'm not saying I know the solution, but I'm trying to correctly define the problem. Both GOP and DNC are doing corporate bidding. And the 'do-nothing' alternative guarantees this continues, since the corporations already own the gov't. Essentially, we're trying to take it back, but without overwhelming support for all third party candidates in the next election we can't do that. And those candidates have the unpleasant task of making war with other Democrats, not Republicans, since the Republicans are already lost. I just don't know if a third party can sustain that kind of 'direct democracy' action. But perhaps it is the only way.
On the subject of healthcare, I've always been convinced that a 'middle way' exists. Single payer is NOT universal healthcare, its lifelong healthcare with a single provider (a public utility with a guaranteed monopoly, if you will). This is something we can strike for independent of either party. If those of us who want single payer just agreed to not go to work Jan 15, we could bring the economy to its knees. Another strike, Feb 15, and again Mar 15. Since HALF the country wants single payer, the threat of a strike may be enough to let us have it. This doesn't impact anyone but ourselves: we sign up to lifetime insurance through a public utility which is regulated to keep profits low and bargain with providers to get a low price. But we can't get out of it, and the public insurer can't dump us if we get sick. And those Americans who don't sign up for it never can (otherwise they'll swamp the system when they get sick and are dumped by their 'pro-choice' private insurers). Children will have the one-time-only option of signing up for it when they reach 25.
The gov't can independently figure out how to pay for universal healthcare, but I recommend that someone who can't pay for health insurance be compensated by the gov't for whichever plan he/she opted for while working(private or single payer).
This health care debate is similar to the debate about almost all legislation targeted at industry - they rule. We are only serfs working the land. The sooner we come to grips with that the sooner there will be enlightenment and progress.
Mandates to pay!no mandates to get a fair deal and they'll raid medicare so that the war money is not disturbed;that would be a no,no.Tony
If the President wanted to he could call in Joe Liberman and, like Johnson used to do, verbally beat an honest vote out of him.
Obama hasn't been bribed. He has money. I don't know what is going on. I think maybe our president, congress, and various agencies want us to be confused.
This does not mean that they themselves are confused.
It's the water. I think they put something in the water in Washington.
Kucinich, Anthony Weiner, and a few others apparently bring their own water.
So this is how Nancy Pelosi keeps her word to Rep. Anthony Wiener, to amend HR 3200 with HR 676.
We need to eliminate the opt-in and opt-out mess immediately!
The health-care opt-out option is unacceptable because it presents myriad unnecessary (and undiscussed) problems that other options, such as single payer, won’t encounter, including ethical, financial, and political.
If one explores how the individual states administer education and prison systems and provide for their mentally ill citizens (a high percentage of which are, ironically, in the prison system), it’s abundantly clear that states can’t be trusted to make the best decisions for their citizens.
Exchanges have been suggested in connection with the opt-out provision. Obviously, a group of states will have less bargaining power to negotiate fees and prices than the country as a whole. Furthermore, exchanges would necessitate the establishing of oversight bureaucracies, which will further decrease the potential savings of health care reform.
According to the latest information I have, one in seven American families moves in any given year. With the opt-out provision, it is highly probable that families will move in and out of states that do and don’t have automatic care. Such moving will create nightmares of expensive data tracking and continuing care for citizens with chronic illness.
How will the states decide whether or not to opt-out? The only purely democratic way of deciding would be by state-wide balloting, yet another unnecessary expenditure even further decreasing the savings. To have Govenors or legislatures choose would raise the enormous problem of having states go back and forth, according to whatever party is in power, from opting out and opting in.
A further and timely consideration concerns the status of those states that are currently under severe financial stress and likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. How will they, the states, be able to deliberate and act on healthcare reform legislation?
Excellent points. A lot of people seem to be ok with this idea of a country subdivided along more and more legislative fault lines, because of misplaced notions about bottom-up social/legal improvements, and because now the fear is "that's the best we can get". Gay marriage / no gay marriage states. Decent public health insurance states / corporate vulture insurance states. Yeah, let's make it even more challenging and confusing to live a life in an already shitty country.
Health care reform is stone cold dead and it's time Nichols admitted it. And how can Lynn Woolsey say Obama isn't "saying it loudly enough" (about supporting a robust public option) when he isn't saying it AT ALL? He flatly does not support any such option. He'll blow off the little meeting with Woolsey and her meager handful of progressive Dems the way he's blown off many other such meetings with proponents of real reform.
Pelosi is just doing her usual shadow dance on this issue. She won't fight for anything meaningful any more than Reid will. We'll get an utterly bullshit bill that only gives more power to Big Insurance to set rates as high as they want, over a hundred Americans will go on dying every day for lack of any care whatsoever, nothing at all will change and Obama will celebrate his great legislative victory with the fat cats who profit from this obscenity. The rest of us can bitch and moan and "progressives" like Nichols can eternally ask "What happened?"
John Nichols and the American 'Progressive' movement have become part of the problem.
Constantly, seemingly in perpetuity, they recycle the same pabulum, the same 'shocked' anger, as if they are somehow surprised at the same roundelay of betrayals. Next year and the year to follow, their doleful beseeching will rally the choir with more bad faith.
Nothing is more moribund, eminently stale or so tediously predictable.
Nichols' politics are so superannuated that the moldy, fungal emanations from his words arrive well in advance of when one actually begins to read them.
The whole discourse of American 'Progressive' politics is so tightly circumscribed by dead conventions, so underwritten in bad faith, so haunted by a terminal naïveté that it becomes an embarrassment to itself.
It would be more effective to assume the discourse without even mentioning the Congress or the President, or any such reflexive references that bind one to the status quo.
–(Jill Bains)
English translation:
At election time, John Nichols and his "progressive" ilk foster illusions about the very mainstream liberal Democrats whose betrayals they invariably bemoan after the fact.
Now, as for the following sentence: "Nothing is more moribund, eminently stale [notice that it can't just be stale--it has to be EMINENTLY stale] or so tediously predictable."
Here I venture a mild dissent--there IS something: the overwrought, show-offy pretension of the comic-opera, self-parodying, clotted high-German Hegelian prose of Jill "Never-Pass-Up-An-Opportunity-To-Use-'Superannuated'-To-Wow-The-Rubes" Bains.
Sorry--I got her moniker wrong. The official one is Jill "Ralph-Nader-Total-Piece-of-Shit" Bains.
I second Jerry's emotion, Ephraim.
I don't think it was Nichols, but I recently came across a comparable "progressive realist" comment arguing that progressive activists need to increase and improve efforts to "create the political space" for Obama to move in a progressive direction.
This argument, of course, relies on the bogus premise that Obama lives to be "pushed" to act by constituencies, and is unable or unwilling to substitute "his own" preferences.
It was probably in a CommonDreams article, but I can't be bothered hunting for it now. It irritated me, as those kinds of comments do, insofar as it suggests that the fault lies not in the Stars, but in ourselves.
Like a wretch trapped in Battered-Spouse Syndrome, expect the "what happened?" to include breast-beating blaming of progressives for not working hard enough to overcome a stacked deck and a table full of cheating card-sharps, and beat them at their own game.
· Yr Obd't Servant
YOS: Don't worry about finding another analysis than that of Nichols on the thesis of progressives creating a "space" within which Obama can operate, once they push him into this space. Virtually every edition of Nation and every day's article postings on Common Dreams (and they are frequently overlapping, as Nation seems to be CD's favorite source) will contain at least one, often more, articles with precisely that theme expressed in a variety of ways. Don't these folks ever tire of making the same flawed "blame the victim" points? Is repetition supposed somehow to make it credible?
Cynical enough to sound like the utter truth, which it is.
This comment is also a précis of why–Alexander Cockburn not withstanding–one should immediately cancel one's subscription to the "Nation" Magazine.
It is becoming unreadable, if not actually embarrassing, in its nauseous repetitions.
–(Jill Bains)
"It is becoming unreadable, if not actually embarrassing, in its nauseous repetitions."
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Ephraim: now here's a real "Jeremiad" for you. Thanks!
Someone is surprised?
Obama bores me-and those who keep tamping down expectations while advising that it up to the grassroots to advocate for change, are just mudding the picture and discouraging people from speaking out.
First off, I can't stop laughing over "consumer option,". Ha! The "citizens option" must be reserved for those in the top 30% income bracket, maybe higher.
Once this public option fails miserably, a majority of the under educated "consumers" will be fooled into thinking government run health care is a bad idea.
I believe several nations with nation health insurance started it on the local level, good old bottoms-up approach.
One can only imagine an alternate universe where Speaker Pelosi put impeachment on the table in 2006 and most of the high-ranking members of the "opposition party" were spending their golden years breaking big bricks into smaller ones for their part in an unending list of war crimes and a sundry of related felonies.
Single-payer would've flowed through the current congress with the ease of chocolate syrup down a sundae.
If only law and order had been restored.
If only criminals had the light of guilt shone on them.
If only truth was standing as the undisputed champion.
Instead we have a knot of lies, deceit, payoffs and misinformation so tangled no one can undo it.
So utterly, easily and sadly predictable.
All together now: "Thank you Speaker Pelosi!".
In the most literal sense, the senate and house comprise a deep-seated criminal organization. The justice department and the executive branch are complicit. What is there left to do about it? You know the answer, and so do I. But, so far, we are all afraid to take the necessary actions. Be sure to vote, now, y'hear?
Obama was for it before he was--BRIBED HIGHLY TO BE--against it.
I can see the mandate falling on it's face to people can not afford insurance now
the so called reform will not change that the court system will be so over loaded that it will tack 2 or 3 years before anyone pays a single fine and by that tine the system will be back loged 10 years
I don't see the insurance companies lowering there prices one dime as
a mater of fact I see the prices going way up double or triple with the mandate in place
never has a for profit company not taken advantage of having some one over a barrel
Who's been naughty and who has been nice:
http://jwalkerreport.blogspot.com/2009/10/whip-count-data-removed-by-hill.html
People should know that their representatives are voting against a public option that is robust. Scott Murphy NY-20th was listed as opposed to Medicare rates plus 5% robust public option when the votes were listed by The Hill magazine yesterday. This story is reported by FDL. You can't have it both ways Scott Murphy. I hope the good people of the NY20th district vote for a third party candidate next time, instead of this corporate parties duopoly crap. If they screw up HCR you can count on zero social spending to solve our urgent economic problems and the absence of jobs. Welcome to the new meanness.
This article is nothing new. The "public option" floated from the start was always "robust" for Big Insurance but never for those who really needed it. I'm sorry but I find John Nicols to be no more credible than Katrina van Heuvel. It is already obvious even to conservatives that the Democrat Party is a waffler party at best playing with the economic crisis. The author should just let it out and admit that with the Republicans, the progressives know what's coming to them but with the Democrats, there's no telling what will come next. Progressives should not expect anything more from the Democrats as they do from the Republicans if they want to avoid disappointment. And Lynn Woolsey, just be honest. The "public option" deserves to die. It cannot be strengthened other than for Big Insurance. Drop the whole plan, start over with HR 676 and S 703, and watch people from all political sides change their anger of mistrust to real hope and happiness for at least this issue.
P.S.: Thank you RichM for once describing John Nichols perfectly. I cannot imagine sleeping peacefully trying to defend a dying party at all costs unlike JN.
In a national teleconference I listened to with Dennis Kucinich over a month ago, Kucinich predicted that this kind of disappointment would happen. He was using the teleconference to urge his supporters to work to secure single payer on the state level, then carry the fight again to Washington. He believes it has to start with us working with our own state legislatures, and become a true national movement.
He predicted then that there would be no public option in the final passed bill, but it appears to me now there will be a pathetic figleaf of a public option included, which will certainly not compete with the insurance companies and most of us will not be able to get into.
I'm sorry Mr. Nichols, your heart is in the right place but yours is a far from "robust" critique of your beloved progressive Democrats in their behavior in relation to the health care legislation debate. Bruce Dixon puts it more "robustly" in his Black Agenda Report on the matter, accusing those progressive Democrats of using a "bait and switch" selling of a plan that contains a "public option" that is "robust" as one might say a clearly dying man has a pulse slightly more "robust" than it was yesterday.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/harry-reid-democratic-leaders-and-white-house-still-faking...
When Lynn Woolsey, says "We will be insisting on (the option) being as strong as it possibly can be," she is plainly wrong in predicting any actual spine among the progressive Democrats. "As strong is it possibly can be" is as strong as Pelosi, the Republicans and the blue dog Democrats will allow it to be. Even if they conditioned their approval to a higher standard of "possibility," there is nothing in their behavior to suggest they will actually "insist" in the form of refusing to vote for a bill that doesn't contain the "robust public option."
Who'd of thunk Pelosi would let us down...again?
- Rates not tied to Medicare
- Exclusion of the Kucinich amendment (state single-payer)
- Doesn't start until 2013
This is garbage.
Blow this plan up and start over again.