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Blogs Are Stubborn Things

by: Dean Barker

Tue Dec 22, 2009 at 19:40:02 PM EST
President Barack Obama, today in WaPo:
"I didn't campaign on the public option."
Candidate Barack Obama, 2007, on Blue Hampshire:
When I am president, everyone will be able to buy into a new health insurance plan that's similar to the one Congressmen enjoy.
And when you click on the link provided in that statement to the Obama campaign's health care plan, you get:
Under the Obama plan, Americans will be able to maintain their current coverage if they choose to, and will see the quality of their health care improve and their costs go down.  The Obama plan also addresses the large gaps in coverage that leave 47 million Americans uninsured. Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program, available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers,

...(1) OBAMA'S PLAN TO COVER THE UNINSURED. Obama will make available a new national health care plan which will give individuals the choice to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to federal employees.  The new public plan will be open to individuals without access to group coverage through their workplace or current public programs. It will also be available to people who are self-employed and small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees.

This is almost as dumb a White House strategy as attacking Howard Dean.

Just make the bill better in conference, and sign it already. Oy.
Dean Barker :: Blogs Are Stubborn Things
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Blogs Are Stubborn Things | 7 comments
Watching "Hardball" (4.00 / 2)
this evening, which I rarely do, and realized how the Republican strategy of blocking all reform, coupled with the arcane rules of the Senate, led to the watering down of this bill. In the past, socially liberal Republicans made up for the "Conservadems". Now there is no such thing as a moderate, let alone liberal Republican. (They used to exist when I was a kid. Really.) So the whole thing was held hostage to the likes of Joementum and Ben Nelson.

If the White House had crafted this instead of Congress, it would have gone nowhere. Remember what happened to Hillary, and that was before the heady days of the "Contract with on America".

This bill is not the end all and be all, but it's also not the end.

Bipartisanship (0.00 / 0)
is happening under the big tent. Not sure why folks think of the Democratic Party as a monolith.

There are currently Ds in states that we have no business having them. Unless, that is, we believe our own hype.


www.KusterforCongress.com  

[ Parent ]
Sadly, Barack is not the first President (4.00 / 1)
nor will he be the last, to discover how intractable the beast really is after taking office. Reality bites, and the warped reality that is the Village bites with particular venom and tenacity.

Although there is much here I find disappointing, I agree with Jennifer's line:

This bill is not the end all and be all, but it's also not the end.

The Civil Rights act wasn't the end of that story, and neither is this.

That would be a great line (4.00 / 2)
for the President.

But it appears that in HCR the WH strategy to the public is to be less candid and earnest than it is with lots of other issues, including Af-Pak.

Mystifying.  And it also betrays a kind of defensiveness which is unappealing, given the eight years of mendacity-cum-bunker mentality we got with W.'s press shop.

[ Parent ]
Personally, I wasn' t impressed with the health care agenda during the (0.00 / 0)
campaign and don't much care for another layer of middlemen now.  But, it's still a fact that the legislation is being crafted in Congress and there's no benefit to having it defined as Obamacare.
Medicare can be opened up to other age groups at any time there's a budget on the table.  Trying to regulate the insurance industry is a bigger challenge and the threat of making them totally irrelevant (as Medicare for all would do) is the only cudgel they can wield.  Private insurance providers do serve a function that's unrelated to medical care--i.e. they accumulate funds for investment in other kinds of enterprise.  When the federal government accumulates funds, they're expended on he spot and there's no trickle-down for the investment class.
I suspect that the investment class has dual interests.  In addition to deriving income without doing any real work, the investors have grown fond of their role as economic determinators--i.e. the people who decide which projects, programs and public services are going to be carried out and which not.  The control of money is the core issue.  If the federal government can regulate HOW money for health care is spent, then control will have moved from the private to the public sector.

Why are Republican politicians opposed to the prospect of exercising more power?  Because that's not what they signed on for.  Republican candidate selection is the essence of tokenism--the people they select for public office are supposed to give only lip-service to the public interest.  The Republican contingent in Congress is the epitome of feather-bedding.

I have to admit ... (4.00 / 1)
I took it at face value -- call it temporary face value. The phrase "campaign on it" is weasely, but the president was hopping mad during this interview, so in that sense, he meant what he said. I think he means, "It wasn't the core of my plan," and that's not to excuse him, but when I'm mad I sometimes say things that make no sense.

What's my evidence that he was mad? The grammar error.

"Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill."

Barack Obama, fumbling his grammar? Gotta be spittin' nails mad.

Now that I've said that, watch, next week it will come out that that was planned.


On the Republican part (4.00 / 1)
If you were to ever see so much bull-headed resistance as there has been this year you might conclude that something important is about to happen. Or not.

The Republican are fighting hard to crush the bill as it stands.

At the same time Senators like Jeanne are working to refine and improve it with her amendments, and she should be encouraged with a supportive call.

I would have liked a lot more in the bill but right now I know which side of supporting it or working against it is important when I look at the bottom line, a family of 4 making 36,000 a year will see their premiums drop by almost $10,000 according to CBO scoring of the Senate bill. This is far more progress than some progressives are admitting.

Blogs Are Stubborn Things | 7 comments
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