How tough is it for politicians to understand that the majority of people would welcome an opportunity to ‘buy into’ a program like Medicare if it will save them money( a savings of a minimum of $2000 is not unsubstanial for American families) along with the reforms of the most egregious tactics of the for profits health insurance companies?

How tough is it to explain?

Not tough at all.

If one has the political will to do so.

That’s what is lacking…the will to do it.

Um, no. It’s all about campaign contributions from insurance corps. and HMOs. Much more important than voters.

Is it too late to vote for Ralph Nader?

“It’s all about campaign contributions bribes from insurance corps. and HMOs.”

Fixed it for ya.

No Public Option run by the Government would mean we would now have to form a new political Party and oust not only the repukes but all those So Called Dems that refuse to give the People what they want. Single Payer run by the government with no copays or restrictions on what you Doctor says you need!
Real Simple isn’t it?
Just a drive by… off to see doctors at the VA… Thanks for the VA and the care they provide!!!

Individual mandate. Is there still an employer mandate being proposed? If not, it is the worst of all possible worlds (well, in the context of any change at all). Okay, taxing employer provided health care would be even worse.

No public health care coverage has to mean no individual mandates, which means no universality. No universality means no effective curb on costs. No effective curb on costs means no real health care reform.

Just for emphasis…

We’re all Spauldings now

All Hail President Smails!

And it’s amazing how cheap pols are: worse than a $2 hooker.

Passing a bill is not automatically a win, Rahm. Jettisoning the PO while establishing individual mandates is a big, fat, FAIL.

But I guess you’ll see that in 2010. Although you will blame progressives for losing D seats, no doubt.

The “public option” is shorthand for a public health insurance program that competes directly with private health insurance companies, provides quality coverage, is open to all, and pools the risk wiithout demanding a profit margin acquired through denial of coverage or claims.

sounds great but there is NO bill in congress that does this.

i’d be happy to fight for a public option if it was as you describe. but what our congress and friends are calling a public option is NOT what you describe.

Rahm and O think the libruls have nowhere else to go. And you know what? They’re probably right.

I’m getting that, had gotten it, but t thought hat perhaps the very strong poll numbers supporting a public option would somehow inject some steel into the spine of degenerate politicians…..HOPE has turned to cynicism in a what seems a blink of an eye

all i have to do is picture cheney running for president in 2012.

Way skankier, too. These dirtbags make a $2 hooker look like The Virgin Mary…

That’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen run up the flag pole. Can’t figure out what the point was.

Rahm and O are shapping up to be a complete disaster for the country. He’s a timorous corporate wanker with an incurable bipartisanship fetish. Let all the poisons come out.

Well, I can always go to France or Italy. I have some options anyway. How long before people disgusted with the U.S. begin immigrating from what has become a corrupt stinking cesspool?

Rahm ‘n O will happily blame the base for their losses in ‘10. But whether progrssives have a new place to go or not, all this scheming has brought the progressives together. That’s a step forward.

Wonder if the French royalty finally got it when they were being led up the steps to the guillotine?

Someone a couple of weeks ago suggested that the public option should be enough money to emmigrate to France. I’d vote for that.

Trying to make lemonade, huh?

I have really made an effort to be “flexible” about the parameters of health care “reform,” but I just can’t see how it’s realistically possible to suggest that anything would truly accomplish the stated objectives (supposedly) of the WH. There is no other vehicle that would be as cost effective, comprehensive, or accessible. I can see no other operation that would be as helpful for “keeping insurers honest.”
Barring single payer, it is the only moral choice, as well.
As I see it, it is that moral choice we have avoided. Sometimes moral choices will not bring an immediate discernible profit; in fact, often it’s the contrary. It was a hell of a hit to many a pocketbook when slavery was abolished, for example…and indeed it was the buck that allowed that skirting of the moral imperative for so long. The world was supposed to collapse and never recover when human beings were emancipated from brutal and bankrupt powerbrokers. (Strangely, it didn’t!)
It is the buck that drives this discussion, too. Not quite the same; but kindred in it’s cavalier disregard of genuine suffering and need.
So, I’ve taken a firm stand on PO.
I hope our better selves find a way to rise above the nickels and dimes.

I like that. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” forever! In the U.S. it’s “your on your own sucker!”

You know I am. But really, the Progressive Caucus is doing things it has not done before and Trumka has vowed not to give a dime to Democrats if no PO is included in the healthcare bill. I do see that as progress.

Jane has a post up we might want to read: “Day II Spin on the Death of the Public Option”

It should be interesting to see how Trumka reacts to O’s speech in front of him, when O announces no public option. Why do I think that has been pro-approved and that Trumka will cave?

was listening to some interview yesterday (i forgot which one — maybe one with bob altermeyer?) and that was mentioned. my first thought was “yikes! that would get me to vote dem.” your comment @12 about progressives having nowhere to go made me think of it.

“Public option sounding anything” turned into Trojan Horse for “bipartisan” codependent Obama adm. and souless, bribed Congress? More Bush rules. Change the direction diabolically of anything pointing toward reform. Wring its little neck. Yeah, and the bathtub metaphor.

Making my Frank Capra phone calls to Reps for Conyers 676 Single Payer vote in the House arranged by Weiner. Many voice mails are full when calling Senate and Reps at night. There is some pushback at least. Let’s hope they are messages from the sane.

But 72% or more demanding a robust public option or better does not impress Congress. 2-3% of the powered money population are calling the shots, so even if we get 97% of the population, …. the fix is in. The oligarchical coup has happened, hasn’t it? Corporate machine. Military machine. Corporate media machine. Lobby-luvin Congress. UBS et al., luvin-Obama.

New bases in Columbia. More war mongering and military budget bloating. And Blackwater still in the game and insane contractors in Afghan, too. Israel wants us to punish Venezuela? Is that what I read? Along with the rest of their not short list.

This country needs a benign “intervention”. Its roller coaster addiction is insane.

But there’s still community rating and a ban on coverage dropping and pre-existing condition discrimination even without an individual (or employer) mandate, right? That at least is a step in the right direction, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be easier to let the public option go–at least for now–if we eliminated the mandate? It would be less effective reform, but if the only other option is a mandate w/o a public option, then it seems prefereable to me.

I think the essential point is that the above reforms without a mandate is really going to eat into insurance company profits, because the healthiest people will still self-select themselves out of the system and they will have to charge higher premiums to everyone else. This is bad for consumers, but it’s really bad for insurers, since now they have to balance their books without the luxury of recission or discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions. If they don’t want to see massive losses in profit, they have to beg us for an individual mandate. And if they have to beg us for that, we can force them to take the public option whether they like it or not.

Do 51 Senators have the balls to try this?

Yep. That makes me nervous. There seem to be two possibilities. Either Trumka will cave on the PO and everyone will make nice about it, or O will try to make it seem like he supports the PO (as per the usual) and everyone will pretend that Trumka got his way and everyone will make nice about it.

It should be really easy to get a campaign going to strip out individual mandates from any bill without a public option.

Rahm and O think the libruls have nowhere else to go. And you know what? They’re probably right.

We could just stay home, not donate time or money. Or we could start running our own candidates beholden to us, not the Democratic party. I keep saying this, but we really need to break with the Democratic party. As long as we look at the Democrats as our side or on our side, Rahm and Obama are probably right. But if we break with that party, then it is a whole new ballgame.

I think Blue Dog Mike Ross in a rambling way suggested where things are going. Mandates will be dropped altogether, and so will the P.O.

A minute and half video here sums up where Blue Dogs are heading, imo.

and a different set of quotes made on the same day

Ross said his goal was never to kill health care reform completely, but to delay the negotiations until September. He said he does believe health care reform will happen this year. Any reform package, Ross said, should allow people to keep their insurance if they like it, make sure the government option is not forced on anyone, not provide federal funding for abortions or illegal aliens and prohibit insurance companies from excluding care for pre-existing conditions. Even though Ross said afterward that the public option was “probably not going to happen,” he said during his remarks that his goal was not to “water down the public option.” Dean of the Clinton School Skip Rutherford told me after the event that Ross had “left the public option on the table.” Yeah, but barely

.

Well Said Edgery!

If a PO gets through, like getting Helen Keller to fold her napkin, remember that scene, won’t it be a Trojan horse PO anyway, and by the time the spinning is over, public screwed over yet again.

Does Obama think he is saving himself in 2012 with all this betrayal to the left … no, to the entire citizenry?

Lucy and the football now on steroids.

Mandated private insurance? I’d rather die than give what little I have to the CEOs of big insurance. Shit, that means give me your money and I’ll continue to deny you coverage!

People getting those Obama/WH email updates should all together now hit “unsubscribe.”

It would be better if there were no employer mandate. We need to move away from employer-based health insurance. It’s a drag on our economy in so many ways. A PO, plus individual mandates would allow the PO to expand rapidly and to get large enough to compete better with the private companies. I think that’s what we want. The maintenance of an employer mandate in the bill, allows restriction of the PO to much fewer people and turns the bill into much more of a bail-out for the companies.

But we do have somewhere else to go. It’s called the primary system. If we want to be effective there, however, we need to build some new organizations: DFA, OFA, and Move-on are all sell-outs on health care reform.

Or at least enough to move to Canada.

More to the point, do they really want to try that, and send all those insurance company contributions to the Republicans for 2010? The system is really corrupt and I’m afraid we can’t get it back until things get much worse than they are. I don’t think the plutocracy can fall until unemployment and economic devastation get much worse. Will that happen soon? I don’t know. They may be able to keep unemployment at 10% or so on the average. That’s a level that will probably be tolerable enough to avoid “radical change” like restoring democracy.

Btw, I think it will take more than 50 + the VP’s vote to pass a regulatory reform bill for the insurance industry. That doesn’t sound like something that can be done through reconciliation.

It’s probably easier to elect progressives in primaries supporting people who make specific pledges about legislation we favor and also pledges to remove blue dogs from committee chairpersonships, in spite of any seniority they may have. As you know, the system is really stacked against the creation of new parties. We can’t change that until we take over. And I’m afraid that if we do take over, we then won’t want to change. Anyway if we can get enough progressive Democrats and we can place them in leadership positions, and purge the blue dogs from their chairpersonships, then they will probably leave the party of their own accord, making the Democrats the Democrats once again.

I’ll wait till Tuesday to lose it completely…but right now it looks like another Nobama. No prosecutions. No troop withdrawal. No end to illegal wars. No end to Blackwater contracts. No investigations. No public universal health care. No transparency. No mandate. No 60 vote filibuster proof majority. No reform of Wall Street. No end to renditions. No closing of Guantanamo. No fighting back on the swift-boat attacks. No guts, no glory. No, No, No, No. The audacity of NOPE.

He probably figures that the chances are good that he’ll get a wingnut in 2012 anyway, and we’ll have nowhere to go. But if he gets Romney, or Tom Ridge, or, (out of right field and don’t even know if he is a Republican), David Petraeus, then he’ll probably gin up some liberal moves in 2011 or early 2012 to persuade us that we really still have nowhere else to go.

I think our move now has to be focus on the Congress and getting some really strong progressives in there to take back the Party.

Thanks, MaineMan, I like this one.

If I refuse to buy health insurance under a mandate, will the Government throw me in jail and provide health care?

PS to MainMan @ 44: Amen!

I don’t believe in the primary strategy anymore. This past weekend the Montana Democrats passed a new rule making it more difficult for someone to run against an incumbent in the primary. The State Dems can now give money to the incumbent to stop what one guy called “a spoiler”. It was incredibly short sighted and anti Democratic. The Tester people persuaded Dems that they had to help Jon Tester by passing this rule. I voted against it.

Ditch the Dems otherwise you will keep being Charlie Brown playing football with Lucy.

Exactly.

We need to kill a bad bill.

Individual mandates without affordable options just means blowing the budget even more just when the economy is starting to recover. It means bankrupting families by making them pay premiums they can’t afford or taxing further to pay for their premiums, or increasing the deficit. If we don’t play our cards right with the deficit we will end up in an Argentine style currency crisis.

A bailout of insurance companies is not acceptable. If the health insurance companies are bankrupt then we need the public option more than ever. Shut them down and start a public plan.

post on Counterpunch about a Labor Party:

The only way to really make Democrats stop these kinds of betrayals is for labor to decide “which side it is on” and to actively oppose those who sell labor out.
Trumka, as head of the AFL-CIO, is in a position to make a fundamental change in labor’s relationship with the Democratic Party.  He should announce plans to encourage the formation of a new labor party, which would run its own candidates for office in key districts. Labor, uniquely, is in a position to do this.  It has the money and the numbers to be able to easily get on the ballot in every state even by as early as next year.

http://counterpunch.org/lindorff09032009.html

solves the ‘lack of infrastructure’ part right off the bat, also a good section on cross-listing, which could ease the transition for Democratic Party loyalists.

I like this idea. Maybe once labor gets some power it can restrict the “rights” of corporations. I for one think the corporations have too many rights vs we the people.

Medicare is a failure..as is the social security system, the Largest Ponzi scheme in The World.

Making our care political is not going to get it. We have the best care in the World due to Competition, collaborations, Medical Universities, The best technology and is why foreigners come to America.

From Danial Hannan (UK) Euro Union “America, you are our friends, our allies and we love you. We beg you not to go down this health care road.”

Lets put all the pieces together thus far and if it all is completed by 2012, we all will be going to soup kitchens to get our food.

http://www.praydailyamerica.com/id388.html

Cheney protected us all for over 8 years and is currently seeking another hunting partner.
Yet the partner must first produce a legitimate birth certificate.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

Obama wants to do for the insurance companies what he and Bush did for Wall Street. He has NEVER been on the side of the American people. He learned politics from the Daley machine.

Hold on a second, these are all “trial balloons”. When the WH was “maybe” backing away from a Public Option. FDL and other progressive reacted and ummm we’ll find Dems with steel for backbone.

The House I don’t believe will budge. They challenge is for Dems in the Senate to actually “Shoot Down” Health Care Reform.

Liberals will not have “hell to pay” please, they’ll still be in office. Clearly the problem is much larger than they are. The problem is Dems from tiny states with tiny populations, usually gun touting populations that when they fired the Republicans wanted “Republican Light” and not San Fransisco “lefty” (where all the fruits and nuts live, so they say)

Its not too late to vote for Nader actually, but are there REALLY enough people in America to back Nader when he can’t even get on a National Debate?

There have been liberal people running for the highest office in the land, how come George McGovern didn’t win in the wake of Bobby Kennedy???

How come Ted Kennedy didn’t win, how come Jimmy Carter only had ONE term?

The problem isn’t the CITIES, the Coast Areas and you know it, the its the SLOW MOVING, SLOW THINKING MIDDLE and DEEP SOUTH.

If it wasn’t for the Tenn Valley Authority, Muthafuckas in Rural America would still be using Outhouses and Coleman Lamps!

Look, the solution is to make the people CURRENTLY in power to do your bidding. If they don’t in FOUR years you can FIRE them. This is the 2nd time we have been lead to slaughter by a Corp Owned Democratic.

We have to MAKE Obama do it, he said as much…. So he could then tell is Corp Overlords “See the people made me do it”.

A Robust Public Option has the funding needed to compete with Insurance Companies, meaning… Enough money to set up offices, advertise on Billboards, TV, Radio and the Internet and hire the people to run it.

The problem with this is that it adds more Government, when Medicare can be expanded to handle the extra capacity and just add more employees to handle the load.

The line has been drawn in the sand, I just wish it was the Single Payer Line in the sand, then they would be begging for a Exchange, Co-Op or Public Option or Medicare Buy-In.

^5expat

For those that do not know of “The Daley Machine”

It is the “Chicago Mafia.” Which also includes all the advisers in the White House surrounding our Constitution like a circle of wagons.

They want it dis manteled!

Do You?

I was waiting for somebody to post that…

NHS has its opponents surely but Private Insurance is available in Britain and oh yeah its a smashing success.

Thatcher privatized the rail system in Britain, a running success – NOT

In fact I agree with the suggestion some Germans and Swiss have made in recent weeks which is Single Payer would be ideal because it crush the head of the snake so they couldn’t try and do business in other places.

Fact is Germany has Private Health Care systems which run at about 20% overhead compared to the State Run system which runs at 2-3%. The German state allows “Rich People” to opt out.

I’d be in favor of the Swiss model, oh but you balk at HEAVY regulation, their health care “insurance companies” (which they aren’t)are NON PROFIT and Phrama pricing is FIXED!

Britain has much the same problem we do, to a lesser degree with Conservatives, very much Pro Business, Anti-Government, yet run to the Government when there investments go PEAR SHAPED.

There all the same…

I’m all for moving abroad, in fact, that’s my goal. I’ll miss California, but you know what for my sanity, I almost have do it.

A Labor Party in America? WIN-WIN!

Just don’t let it become scandal ridden like Britain’s Labor Party

I know. Maybe I should have said, “what a public option should be” but at a minimum, the public option that is there would at least be open to all (pooling risks) and compete. I’d rather have to work to make a program better than have no program at all. And if the final bill has individual mandates (or employer mandates that translate into individual ones) without a public health insurance program, then I believe we’ll be worse off than with no bill passing at all.

Yes, these are trial balloons. And the purpose of a trial balloon is to gauge reaction. My reaction is what I wrote — I think the Democratic majority in Congress and the Obama administration would be making a very big mistake to pass a mediocre bill that doesn’t provide for a robust public health insurance program. One because there are hundreds of thousands of people who absolutely need it–literally a matter of life or death for some. Two because it will demoralize a newly-activated base in ways that could take another 25-40 years to overcome; leaving governing our country to corporate interests and loons (not mutually exclusive but you get the idea).

Mandate – public option = extortion.

France is one of the most advanced industrialized western European countries with government health care. Did not prevent 15,000 grandmothers (over and above the expected death rate) from expiring in one month, all because no one could afford a $98.00 Wall Mart air conditioner. The health ministry conducted an investigation.
http://www.usatoday.com/weathe…..heat_x.htm
Check out all of the coffins, and ask yourself in we need that here. England and Canada are the same.

It differs from state-to-state mm. We may want to follow a strategy where we try to take over the party in those states where the rules are open and start a third party in other states. The third parties could support Dems when they’re progressive and run against them when they are not. The big thing is that nationally there are great barriers to third parties and we need to influence Presidential choices also.