Question
If you believe that Congress cannot, and will not, improve the Health Care Bill if passed, then why would you believe killing the bill and starting over is possible with this Congress?
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Good question.
My question: If we scrap the bill and start over, why do you believe we’ll have a different outcome with the same group of people?
Another question: Why was the rest of the bill acceptable up and until they killed the triggered national non-profit? I understand not liking insurance companies, but the vast majority of Americans were going to be required to get their insurance through work.
Your first point was my point – only you worded it better. I really need an editor. Thanks!
Wishful Thinking, I suppose.
Or a never ending supply of optimism?
At this point I think totally scrapping it is not a good option – who knows when we will ever get this close again.
Steve Benen calls this fight the wonks vs. the activists. I call it the pragmatists vs. the purists.
Pandora: you analogy works, “if” your employed. There is no guarantee that corporations are going to continue paying your health care? Where is that written? Medicare costs 1% to administer, for profits 45%! 45% going to CEO Salaries, advertising and shareholders and not a penny towards health CARE! Do the math. Big Pharma gets trillions of dollars since there will be no drug importation. For Profits gets 33 million more people to screw over. There is nothing in the bill to prevent any of these insurance companies from tripling or quadrupling your premium?
Its not about “liking or not liking insurance companies”. How naive. It is about real reform that will truly reign in health care costs, or not. This bill does absolutely nothing to reign in costs.
This fight IS about activists. Those who have been at the forefront fighting for real reform fo decades, not a bunch of new comers who read a few articles and think the know all they need to know.
So Pandora your way of thnking is, more americans will be covered BY THE FOR PROFIT robber barons, and we should accept our fate. How liberal and how naive can you be.
Corporations are leaving this country every day. They have no allegiance to the citizens or our workers. We are now a liability, a risk which is why the banks are not lending any money to small business or people who are in dire straights. These corporations stole all they could from middle class americans, they destroyed the middle class. This health care bill will in five years destroy whats left. This bill will not save one job from going overseas. It will deliver billions of our tax dollas in subsidies to those who are too poor to buy insurance. Just like the Banker Bailout this is the Insurance company bailout. A wonderful Christmas gift.
“You want to be the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left”? Remember GlassSteagal Act was repealed under Clinton whose administration worked hand in hand with the republican party to torpedo financial regulation. Howd that work out for us?
The two party system is already a 3 party system. It houses a well meaning minority, middle level sellouts and batshit loonies. Worried about leaving your party don’t be, millions of americans are considering doing just that.
From: The Corporate Jackals screwing you!
Answer: Because maybe next time Obomba will actually show up and fight for the people who need Health Care Reform and not for insurance company profits. And progressive Dems won’t roll over and settle for these crumbs.
Question for you: If you believe that Congress should pass this bill and fix it later, what makes you think that they’ll “fix it” instead of making it worse?
Hey Just Kiddin – I just wanted to say thanks for your comments. Keep ’em up!
Just kiddin’ should work on keeping his commenters straight – not that I disagree with UI, but those are UI’s words. And you, and A1, never answered my question in the original post.
Why was everything acceptable until the killing of the “national not for profit” (and, hey, I love that description, but it’s only partly accurate)?
Because a public option would set the floor premium price, keeping the private players closer to real competition.
Because a public option, with no need to pad administrative costs, would force private players to do the same to stay, wait for the lovely conservative word again, competitive.
Because a public option, for ease of current benefit administration, would offer a comprehensive benefit set —- something that hasn’t been worked out in either the senate or the house version, and something that is needed for real health coverage.
The public option wouldn’t have existed until 2014 under the bill. Do we still not have time to put one in place?
If you believe that Congress cannot, and will not, improve the Health Care Bill if passed, then why would you believe killing the bill and starting over is possible with this Congress?
1. Because if the Progressive Caucus kills the bill, they will finally be on the White House radar screen – they will force the WH to negotiate with them instead of with the Blue Dogs. But if progressives vote for this bill they are showing their soft underbelly and will never get any progressive elements added to any bill ever again.
2. “Being able to start over” is not a requirement for killing a bad bill.
3. Clinton lost health care in 1993 and passed SCHIP in 1997. We can do something similar.
4. Once we kill the bill, all deals and all bets are off with insurance and pharma; we can fight them head on instead of trying to deal with them. We can introduce single issue bills for drug price negotiation and cherrypicking, recission, and pre-existing conditions, etc. and draw bright political lines, forcing Repubs and blue dogs to choose directly between industry and us.
So, anon, 4 years from now we could pass something incremental? Yeah, screw those people without insurance. Let ’em wait!
I don’t understand why we can’t keep pressure on the Blue Dogs and corporatists now. The public option and Medicare buy-in are now ideas out in the public realm and they’re both popular. We should keep pushing on those.
With the likely make-up of the next Congress, more obstructionists, I just don’t see how we’re going to get better legislation in the short term. People are suffering right now. I haven’t seen convincing arguments that keeping the status quo is better than the current bill.
I LOVE the public option, but the votes weren’t there – and they probably never were there.
So… if Nate is correct, and there never were, and still aren’t, enough votes for the Public Option… then what? Killing this bill will not result in a public option or expanded Medicare or single payer – not with this congress.
And that’s my point – and not one I’m particularly thrilled with.
pandora, all it takes to start over if this bill were (hopefully) killed is political will by Obomba. He happens to be the President and the leader of the majority party in each house. And, as I said, maybe he’d learn from his failure to lead on this bill, and actually, you know, campaign for real HCR.
So, anon, 4 years from now we could pass something incremental?
If we show some spine now, yes. If progressives flex their muscles and kill the bill now, we could introduce single-issue bills and dare Rahm/Obama/Reid to fight bans on recission, cherrypicking, preexisting, etc. But if we give up now we won’t be taken seriously again.
So it seems as if we have two choices: Kill the bill and produce something better (Risk: It may not happen) or pass the bill and make it better. (Risk: Making it better may not happen)
Given the risks on both sides, doesn’t this leave the choice between the bill and the status quo?
Anyone referring to Obama as Obomba isn’t a person I’d count on. Cute, but hardly productive in a serious debate.
Exactly, anon. If we accept crumbs, it is crumbs that we’ll get:
Progressives = Oliver
Obomba = Mr. Bumble
Reid = Widow Corney
[OLIVER]
[spoken] Please, Sir, I want some more.
[MR. BUMBLE]
[spoken] What?!
[OLIVER]
[spoken] Please, Sir, I want some more.
[MR. BUMBLE]
[spoken] More!?
[WIDOW CORNEY]
Catch him!
[MR. BUMBLE]
Snatch him!
[WIDOW CORNEY]
Hold him!
[MR. BUMBLE]
Scold him!
[WIDOW CORNEY]
Pounce him!
Trounce him!
Pick him up and bounce him!
[MR. BUMBLE]
Wait!
Before we put the lad to task
May I be so crious as to ask
His name?
[BOYS (whispering)]
O-li-ver.
[WIDOW CORNEY AND MR. BUMBLE]
Oliver! Oliver!
[MR. BUMBLE]
Never before has a boy wanted more!
[MR. BUMBLE AND WIDOW CORNEY]
Oliver! Oliver!
Anyone referring to Obama as Obomba isn’t a person I’d count on. Cute, but hardly productive in a serious debate.
Silly, pandora. Did you dismiss Molly Ivins for referring to Bush as Shrub?
Exactly pandora. I see the choice as between this bill and nothing. If you strongly believe we can start over I don’t understand why you don’t think we can improve the current bill.
If you can do one, UI, you can do the other.
And, A1, I’ve never been a name-caller. And you still haven’t answered the question of this post.
If you strongly believe we can start over I don’t understand why you don’t think we can improve the current bill.
Because if you try to pass HCR as a comprehensive package, that gives every blue dog senator a veto. When you give the Senate a whole basket of stuff to shoot at, there will always be six different Senators with six different problems with the bill who are willing to shoot the whole thing down.
But if you offer up a straight bill like banning recission or pre-existing, each Senator would have to make a very uncomfortable choice before opposing it.
If you strongly believe we can start over I don’t understand why you don’t think we can improve the current bill.
Recent history argues against the ability to improve social legislation. The evidence is against improvement. Remember, Medicare is part of Social Security, and was part of the promise New Deal Democrats made to complete the social safety net. But Medicare was probably the last real improvement to social insurance. After that, modifications to the social insurance framework have all been things like Reagan’s tax on Social Security benefits, and Medicare Part C and SCHIP that institutionalize the profits for industry (along with their cherrypicking, denials, and recissions of course).
pandora, read my post at 12:20. I answered UI’s re-statement of your question.
And politically, Dems have shot themselves in both feet with a bazooka.
Before the HCR compromises, Repubs were flat on their backs with nowhere to hide and no real friends except the mentally ill teabaggers, and grim demographic facts. Now Reid has allowed the blue dogs to lock lips with Repubs and give them CPR.
If you are a Republican you must be snickering as Dems vote windfall financing for the Repub corporate base, while Repubs can vote No.
Even as Dems kill the public option all by themselves, Repubs are readying their positive ads casting themselves as the heroes who blocked the government takeover of health care. And of course their negative ads will attack their Dem opponents for voting for the government takeover of health care. And those ads will be paid for by funds from the industries which Dems are enriching with this HCR.
All while Dem enthusiasm, turnout, and fundraising is suppressed by the progressive capitulation.
The future looks bright for Repubs.
Um… okay, how does Obama’s political will influence a Lieberman, Nelson, etc.?
I’m serious.
Listen I’m not mad or angry at A1, anon, PM or anyone who wants real health care reform. We’re on the same side. I just want to know what alternative we can pursue if we kill the bill that leads to better legislation.
What I’ve heard
1) kill it and start over
2) make Obama fight more and somehow that will convince Nelson, Lieberman or Snowe to vote for more progressive legislation
3) pass it incrementally
My issue: we’ll still have the same Congress when this over. Corporate Dems will still be Corporate Dems. Killing a smaller provision will be so much easier than killing a big one. The Blue Dogs will still be Blue Dogs and Lieberman will still be Lieberman.
I just want to know what alternative we can pursue if we kill the bill that leads to better legislation.
“If I don’t poke myself in the eye with this sharp stick, what’s the alternative?”
Christmas Morning, 2009:
Merry Christmas!
Here’s my bottom line DoomsDay scenario about this particular bill — outside of all the points we’ve beaten to death:
Premiums, especially for those who are currently self-insured and managing their premiums, and for small businesses, are going to skyrocket. Premiums for the end of the babyboomers (those of us 50-65) are going to skyrocket. Premiums for those with any health conditions will skyrocket. This will effect middle and upper middle class families the most — people who vote and who will complain. Because many may have to chose between paying the premium, cutting their own benefits, or paying the fine.
Only the young and healthy will have low premiums, and those low premiums will be supported by the increases on the ill and older, because the insurers need to get those young, healthy people in their company’s policies. And fast to avoid adverse selection. Marketing costs to this group will be phenomenal, and that will increase administrative expenses.
There’s also a real possibility that benefits will be decreased, especially for the self-insured and for small business accounts. (I suspect this is going to happen in conference.)
When the complaining starts, the bill will be chopped, not strengthened, because there will be no political advantage to strengthening it. The insurers’ profits will be far too huge for Congress to turn its back on them; the Democrats are going to lose seats next year and will have fewer votes to begin with; and real progressives know that the White House isn’t going to support them, so why walk out on a limb?.
The cutting first will come at the expense of those this bill was supposed to initially help: the poor and lower middle class. Because they have no political clout. Ben Nelson isn’t the only politician whose going to scream about the increased state costs of Medicaid based on this bill.
Is this better than the status quo? I guess, once again, that depends where you fall on the economic spectrum.
If we don’t have the collective political will to reign in the insurance companies by giving them the competition they keep saying they want, we certainly won’t have it later.
I hope this doesn’t happen. But there’s that word “hope” again….
nice, anon. If only