Health Reform: The Outlook

Oh good – a fresh All is Doomed Health Care post.

“polls showing falling public support (particularly among independents and older voters) for the current bills,”

Maybe because, unlike the framing that we get, it is because the bills are too weak not too strong.

“Asked whether they would support or oppose “a new federal health insurance plan that individuals could purchase if they can’t afford private plans offered to them” 79 percent supported it, including 89 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Independents, and 61 percent of Republicans”
AARP, National Journal and Penn, Schoen & Berland

Then why are Republicans working so hard to dismiss the possibility of a bipartisan deal without Teddy Kennedy?

Ted’s colleagues in the Senate are not going to come together and pass meaningful reform as a tribute to him. His supporters will, but their actions will be portrayed as politicizing his death as a shameless attempt to get their way.
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You’ve done some great reporting on the subject and I applaud your efforts. I also fear that much of it has been in vain. I urge you to keep trying though. It has to be frustrating to report on the details of the story while your colleagues report on the nut jobs that are spreading disinformation.
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I hope your vacation has been relaxing.

KT– I’m afraid to break it to you, but this is about Democrats. This is about Teddy’s passing galvanizing the Democratic majority. Republicans are out there stumping in whatever venue they can find, including your sources I suspect, trying to dampen down the rising sentiments to get it done for the old man. I’m not surprised that they get it, they had that whole “for the gipper” thing going for them. But I would appreciate if you didn’t go out of your way to carry their water, because this isn’t about them in the first place. Teddy knew it, why else would he have asked Deval Patrick to change the law? He hoped his death is doing what it is to unite Democrats and the changed in law would give Democrats the 60 they need to go it alone.

If, as Speaker Pelosi said last week, that any bill coming out of the House would have a public option then that’s one chamber down.

Let a bill hit the Senate Floor with a public plan and see exactly who votes “ney”. My guess is that when push comes to shove there are more “ayes” then people are counting.

If not, well votes have consequences. Voting against a president of your own party on a signature bill will have a result.

You know I saw the title of this post and just knew it would be pessimistic. I don’t want anybody blowing smoke up my arse but I defy anyone to find a single post on healthcare reform over the last 3 months on Swampland that could credibly be labeled optomistic. Mind you there are plenty of reasons to be optomistic, even if there aren’t as many as some people would say are reason to be pessimistic. But where is the balance? Who on Swampland has even made the case for a public option? Instead all we get is pessimism that it will be a bargaining chip. When will we get a breakdown of why people actually are so passionate about having a public option in healthcare above and beyond it being a “liberal” ideal?

I would encourage every single writer for Swampland to go back through and read every single post they have put up for Health care to see if there is any hint of optomism in any of them. And if you can’t find any you should understand that there is a problem. I realize that most of you won’t do this and will just reflexively defend the job you have done because OBVIOUSLY you couldn’t be letting your own cynicsm cloud the way you cover this story but maybe, hopefully at least one of you will take me up on the challenge so you can see exactly what we see and understand why many of us get pissed about how you are covering this issue.

Peace.

Goodbye blue dogs.

For instance, the uninsured would continue to show up for treatment in the expensive setting of hospital emergency rooms, and those hospitals would continue to shift those costs onto their paying patients.
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This aspect of the problem hasn’t been getting near enough play. While everybody’s decrying the additional burden that the currently uninsured will represent as new patients, such arguments ignore the fact that they’re already patients, but that the cost of their treatment is uncollectable. Add to that the fact that Hospitals routinely overcharge such patients (They negotiate lower rates with insurers for people who are covered) which looks good on their balance sheets as “receivables” but actually represents additional excessive burden on the people who want to pay and additional bankrupties that might be avoided.
The bottom line is that all the bad stuff that opponents fear might happen is already happening in full force.
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The last paragraph points to the problem coming from the left:
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Cut the subsidies and the mandate back too far, and insurance companies — deprived of the millions of new paying customers promised under broader proposals — could end their support of the deal,
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Many of the proponents of the public option seem to see it as a way to stick-it to the insurance companies that they see as engaged in a massive rip-off. Unfortunately the millions of Americans who are happy with their coverage and have their large corporate employer to thank for it, aren’t going to see things that way. If the arguments could more directly address just how insurance companies add to the total burden and not simply take it as a given, we could get broader agreement on why an affordable alternative is not only necessary but crucial.

That all depends on which colleagues you are talking about. Sure the GOP is going to say it’s politicizing, but that’s because they are afraid of Democrats coming together and they are trying to throw fear in the game. I’ll admit they’re good, but we don’t have to fall for it unless we’re just too stupid to see the obvious. Republicans aren’t going to change their mind, but in this brief space they have refrained from pushing their most egregious lies, perhaps gives the media a chance to pay attention to the truth rather than simply covering GOP propaganda. Morning Joe is working overtime trying to discourage Democrats from feeling like they can do this on their own, it is what they fear most, which is why they’ve got all their minions out pooh poohing the idea of colleagues coming together as if anyone was talking about them in the first place. Democrats don’t need a relaunch, they just need to regroup.
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I get that Republicans are trying to be careful here so they don’t come off as the scum they truly are, but it comes through anyway. McCain is especially shameful, as if he didn’t have the opportunity, Hatch too, to negotiate for bipartisan legislation n Teddy’s bill. To pretend now that if Teddy was here…Ask KT where is the story about that? I’m sorry but the notion of a reset, or relaunch is a John McCain theme just a variation on the slow it down meme.

“Many of the proponents of the public option seem to see it as a way to stick-it to the insurance companies that they see as engaged in a massive rip-off”
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You’ve made that point repeatedly. How many is many and is your conclusion hunch or polling based?

”But when Congress returns to Washington in September, few doubt that the war will resume with even greater force in the wake of an August recess that has seen dozens of town-hall meetings disrupted by raucous protests.”

Give me a break already. Do you get all of your talking points from Nancy Pelosi, Karen?

Why not use her now infamous words, “Astroturf” to describe the overwhelming debate by a large majority of Americans against Obama’s Healthcare Reform? Like Nancy, you have your agenda to promote at all cost, the most liberal of all “dreams” for America. Universal Healthcare.

Like Kennedy, Hillary and now Obama, you are wrong on this issue Karen. Americans are not stupid. We know that this type of bill is simply wrong. It will destroy our current healthcare system, put burdens on our existing healthcare workers, and create a single payer system that will also destroy the private insurance industry, plunging us into a NO CHOICE SINGLE PAYER BIG GOVERNMENT RUN INSURANCE PROGRAM.

Hardworking Americans who do have insurance will lose their healthcare benefits they currently enjoy so that a few who do not have insurance at this time may have coverage. You choose to risk nearly 70% of us who do have a very good insurance plan, to lose it forever. You choose to allow Medicare to be totally destroyed and leave our Seniors with basic coverage at a time in their lives when they need the most comprehensive coverage, so that your liberal progressive pie in the sky program is brought to reality. To set up a Universal Healthcare Program in order to memorialize Ted Kennedy’s life?

What will lay in it’s wake will be rationing of healthcare services, further budget deficits which we will never recover from and has the potential to actually destroy our Country as a whole.

Is that what you want to see happen Karen so that you can obtain Universal Healthcare?

Vilify all you want those of us who vehemently oppose this bill. But, we also know when something is wrong for America, and are willing to fight it tooth and nail so that it never happens in our lifetime.

Meaningful health care reform is dead. The WH is a joke. The Senate Dems, including Kennedy when he was alive, are largely worthless. The House progressives have been a pleasant surprise. But my guess is that, if a bill comes out of the conference committee with a sham public option that doesn’t kick in for years and few Americans can buy into, the progressives in the House will find it difficult to hold the line.

In short, we’re going to get a band-aid that will make some things better, some things worse, and insurance companies more money.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Based almopst entirely on the conversations here…
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Certainly not scientific, but the assumption that a government option will significantly drive down prices of private plans suggests the widespread belief that private plans have a lot a fat that can be easily trimmed.

Let’s face it: the system in which half a dozen draft bills are floating around has allowed everyone to hack parts to pieces. Why don’t we have 5 different versions of other bills so that they can be worked over.

1. The system in use is designed for failure.
2. There has been little effort by the Democratic poobahs to lay our a Public Option in some detail so that voters can see what is in store. So the world “public” becomes the ideal bulls eye.
3. Other than a myriad horror stories I have yet to see a piece that lays out details involving say 3 major insurers: what they cover, what they refuse; the rise in premiums; the profits earned. The point being insurance is a profit-oriented business.
4. The White House’s “leadership” is a standing joke. Republicans love it; they attack with impunity.
5 The White House “deal” with Pharma: what is this all about.?

Question: are Democrats sufficiently united to push this through? Doubt it.

Say what one wants about the Repugs: with Fox, Limbaugh and Co they have refined lying to an art; so much so that the MSM gives it equal time with the truth. Now lying is an opinion.

At the time of the Daschle debacle I predicted that the media would be the reason that health care would have a problem. It was the press that covered the corporate sponsored faux outrage at town halls. There are plenty of people in the public that think this was real and therefore there must be something wrong with the bills. By deliberately omitting the sources of what the public saw, they became a megaphone for GOP propaganda. Not one poster in the swamp has commented on CNN providing all day coverage of a town hall in their Atlanta headquarters, that was bought and paid for by Americans for Prosperity, a lobbying entity, they interviewed representatives of the industry, without telling the public who any of these people were, and Don Lemon, answering his critics on twitter implied that he was covering it because he was told too.
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Now you have media personnel all over the airwaves talking about how Kennedy was a proponent of incrementalism and that he knew you couldn’t get change in a day. Are these people kidding me? This health care battle has been going on longer than I’ve been alive.

I agree that we individually here in Swampland won’t fall for it, but you have to admit that the average Swamplander isn’t what you would call the average person by any stretch of the imagination. I think the protesters at the town hall meetings are closer to the average person than we are. They get their news in soundbytes and are quite content to do so.
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I’m not even sure that most republicans are worried about coming off as scum. They’ll say or do anything they can to get their way and it’s playing well with their base. What do they have left? They’re in survival mode now and they’re going to do what it takes to get re-elected.
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I do hope that democrats can come together and get something done, but I’m not holding my breath. They’re spending far too much time trying to convince people that the opposition is spreading lies (which should be the job of the media) and not focusing on what healthcare reform would mean to them as individuals.

But, Dee, Daschle got a private meeting with the Man and is supposedly helping. What does that say about the WH view about optics?

Ok Rusty it’s easy to say NO, but if this isn’t the solution what is? As a country we cannot sustain healthcare eating up 17% of or GDP and going up. As individuals we cannot sustain an average of $11K in health insurance premiums and doubling over the next decade. As a capitalistic economy we cannot effectively compete in a world economy where our healthcare is a added cost of doing business while those we must compete against do not have this cost. As a society how do we sustain 62% of all bankruptcies in this country being caused by healthcare bills.

I’m leaving the whole moral equation out of it

Bitter–we have a tendency to compare ourselves to Republicans and question why we can’t be as disciplined with deed and message as they are. But the reality is that it is a lot easier for Republicans to march in lockstep, when absolute allegiance to the party is a requirement of membership. Other than the two women in the northeast, where independence is still valued, every other independent Senator has been drummed out of office. Yes, Democrats may be less disciplined and we might find that frustrating at times, but as Democrats, we don’t value the qualities that lead the GOP kind of unity, that won’t speak ill of another Republican, no matter how egregious their infraction and values top down, trickle down, autocracy above all else.
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We are Democrats and for better or worse we believe in diversity, including diversity of thought, we believe in respecting all points of view, which is why we strive for consensus and we pay more than lip service to the concept of individual rights, which we respect when counting voters. Now it might be harder to be unified under our umbrella, but I wouldn’t trade it for the thugocracy on the other side. Think about it how far away is lock step from goose step. Give me fractious, rambunctious Democrats any day.

Paul D

I can’t speak for anyone else but I can speak for me and for what President Obama has said about the public option repeatedly. The benefits are two fold.

1. For people who do not have insurance it would provide a cheaper alternative to the private insurance industry especially in those areas of the country where one or two health insurance companies have a monopoly. That will allow people who have a hard time affording insurance for themselves and their families to now have coverage getting us closer to universal coverage.

2. For people who already have insurance the public option is away to help bring down costs within private insurers by providing competition which rules the market place. Remember when McDonalds came out with their dollar menu? Much of their competition thought them crazy but the a funny thing happened, McDonalds started making record profits because they provided food for people who didnt’ have much coin. Next thing you know almost every fast food restaurant now has a dollar menu. Similarly if the public option is strong and viable then it will help bring down or at least slow the rate of increase on premiums. It will also lower premiums by reducing the number of people using the emergency room as their health care. Those costs get passed on the consumer every single time an uninsured persong gets emergency care and the public option by helping to get close to 100% coverage would mitigate that cost.

Now I think that you may be conflating something here. Its true that many of us have absolutely no love and in some cases a rabid hate of health insurance companies. Generally this is borne of personal experiences where an insurance company or companies didn’t come through for someone we know and cared about. However the public option isn’t even principally about getting back at those people, its about doing better for the people who they are failing. If it was all about hate for the private insurers then most of the left would accept nothing less than a single payer system. But we are ready to compromise with a public option for the two reasons primarily that I listed above. At least I am and most of the people that i know of who are advocates of a public option feel the same way.

However I will say that you will rarely if ever see it spelled out that way here on Swampland by their illustrious bloggers.

KT, you mention that support for HCR is dropping in the polls, but which polls are you citing? Nate Silver, as usual, has a great post on HCR polling. He compares wording of questions in polls about the public option. The poll with the clearest wording about the public option, according to Nate, was Quinnipiac’s which showed 62% in favor of a public option in HCR.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/08/how-to-poll-on-public-option.html

In any case, the Dems will only be able to pass meaningful health care reform if they treat the Republicans as irrelevant and put a lot of pressure on Blue Dogs.

One more thing Paul,

Just about the only way to get close to universal coverage in this country is to have mandates. But if we have mandates with no public option then health care reform will likely mirror No Child Left Behind.
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What i mean is every person will have to go out and get insurance lest they be penalized. But there will be absolutely no mechanism in place to insure that health insurance gets any more affordable for the poor to lower middle class families. Even if subsidies are provided for low income families health insurance companies can just turn around and raise their rates again to keep the profits rolling in. So just like NCLB mandated that educators improve scores for their students without providing any financial backing to help them do so, health care reform without a public option will mandate everyone get coverage without making sure that it gets any easier for those who don’t have insurance right now because of their financial situation to get it and keep it going forward.

Thanks for checking in, SG.

One last thing
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For those of us who really want health care reform to pass this year what you would probably would want to hope for is that Gov Deval Patrick isn’t allowed to fill Senator Kennedy’s seat before next year. We never really had a super majority in the Senate because Teddy was already terminal and in pretty bad shape and Robert Byrd has been sickly as well. However very few mainstream media journalists ever made this distinction. Because of that they kept pushing the meme, and in doing so aided the GOP, that Democrats could pass health care reform by them selves as long as everyone voted for cloture. Now that there is no way possible for Democrats to over come a filibuster with Teddy’s seat vacant its a much easier sell to go through reconcilliation to get the bill through. And make no mistake about it, cloture was far from a done deal whether Kennedy or Byrd were health or not. This will give cover to President Obama and Democratic leadership in the Senate to go ahead and break the bill up into two pieces and push a public option through with reconcilliation. Trying to go about it by overcoming a filibuster will have one of two outcomes. Either Democrats won’t be able to over come the filibuster because no Republicans will cross the aisle and reform will die, OR we will have to give away so much just to buy one or two votes ala the stimulus bill that in the end we will lose by winning and getting those one or two Republican votes.
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Reconcilliation is the way to get this done before the year is out and have it still actually be reform.

That they care a lot less about optics than about moving Democratic Senators. Don’t you get it, all this talk about bipartisanship and trying to negotiate was always about stalling and keeping the story about Republican thugism rather than where the story really is on Democratic disunity.

The meme has been set, no poll will change that. The large majority of Americans have said over and over they want a public option but the MSM wil continue to insist that they are the ‘left of the left’.
How many times did you her that Bush was popular long after his poll numbers had plunged. Clinton was in the 60′s for much of his secound term but we constntly heard how unpopular he was with the American people. Facts don’t matter to the villagers.

Reconcilliation is the way to get this done before the year is out and have it still actually be reform.
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That’s something we can agree to wholeheartedly. Keep the Health Reform Bill OUT of the hands of those who would destroy it just to make a point!

The atmosphere is so ideologically charged and partisan that Kennedy’s death will probably have the opposite effect. Republicans are already preparing to accuse Dems of taking advantage of Kennedy’s passing on health care. The GOP will make it very ugly.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

It’s their irrational (but plausible to the feebleminded) excuse for their continued refusal to participate. They’re saying “Gee, isn’t that a shame… if only Teddy were here I’m sure his reasonable approach could get us reasonable Republicans and those extreme socialist Democrats together to find a fair solution we could take credit for. Since he’s gone, this is our chance to blame failure on the ones who are making an effort for success.”
This is Orwellian malevolence at its worst. As soon as the GOP’s lifelong personification of evil liberalism is dead, they magically repackage him as the reasonable solution tragically taken from us all.

Dee:

Republicans have an allegiance to principles not a party. I know as a liberal you have a hard times understanding principles

The reason “health care reform” is failing is not the fault of the media. It is failing because it is not health insurance reform but another entitlement program with government interfering in people’s private lives. It also mandates taxpayer handouts to certain interest groups (liberal interests) and a horse-choking amount of deficit burden to our children and grandchildren.

Liberals never run out of excuses for who to blame when their insanity is inspected in sunlight.

Yes, the people who are literally calling Obama a Nazi Stalinist would be on board for HC reform, if only Kennedy were alive today, despite the fact that Team Obama has already offered them any compromise they want.

When you have Howard Dean telling people that tort reform is not being addressed because Dems don’t want to take on the trial lawyers, Besty Markey telling old folks that they are going to have to give up things to get health care reform done and other off-message stuff from Dems (e.g., Landrieu), you guys have serious problems.
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Gotta love Howard Dean. Dems should have run him in 2004.

What a lovely sentiment Mr Freep. Too bad events of the last 9 years have proven it to be disasterously false.

I don’t recall all too much concern over deficits when two entire wars were being funded with ‘emergency appropriations’. I don’t recall too much concern over keeping government out of personal medical decisions during the Shiavo fiasco. I don’t recall very much concern over records pricacy when ATT was busy handing calling logs over to the NSA.

In fact, it’s clear that every Republican principle in existence is subject to renegotiation anytime a Republican happens to be in power.

If this is true, it’s pretty ugly:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2M2YWQ1ODQwNjZiOGVmZWU3MzQ2MmZmMDk4MWExZGY=

KT reads comments and she reads Nate (but maybe not this article?) so it’s worth it to offer the link. In any case, I’m not convinced the msm has as much control over public perception as they did during Clinton and Bush administrations. One of the dynamics that’s been interesting to watch is how DKos, Firedog Lake, and hosts like Olbermann and Maddow have responded to Obama’s equivocation on the public option. They have turned up the heat to pressure Obama to live up to his vision. During the Bush years you could count on Faux News to be a reliable echo chamber for any noxious gas emanating from the WH. Liberals, it turns out, are not so pliant. So I’m gonna keep hollering.

And then there’s this schism:
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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9ABB88O1&show_article=1
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Hardy har har.

[...] post: Health Reform: The Outlook – Swampland – TIME.com Tags: democratic, health, media, obama, people, public-option, republican, [...]

jsfox :
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1. Pass tort reform in legislation which is mandatory across all states. I believe this one thing will help to drive down costs to hospitals and physicians, and that alone will put pressure on them to lower prices.
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2. Pass regulatory reform for insurance companies. Do not allow them to terminate someone’s insurance due to pre-existing conditions. This will eliminate the un-necessary bankruptcies that You and others have cited as a reason for single payer / Government Option. Also allow a former employee to continue their benefits, even if they want to pay 100% of the cost. Eliminate COBRA.
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3. Revise the regulations currently in place for Medicaid, allowing for more people to qualify for this already existing Government backed program.
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4. Put a price cap on costs with heavy fines for abuse. For any hospital, Doctor or other healthcare provider. No more $1,000.00 per pill charges for Tylenol or other drugs. Shorten the time period to drug patents so other drug manufacturers are allowed to offer a generic brand to a popular brand name medication, sooner.
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5. Once these changes have been made, then offer a “Public Option” for competition, but have limits as to how much the Public Option can be tax payer subsidized.
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6. Legislate inter-state and inter-country sales of insurance plans and medications. No longer allow the many restrictions which are currently enjoyed by the insurance industry having State by State protections against competition.
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Passing these 6 simple proposals will drive down the costs, and still provide the level of care we have come to expect in the United States.

Well said, SG.

Good question. In this case, I’m talking not about the public option, but rather, the entire effort. One measure is in the fact that the numbers on Obama’s handling of the issue have been dropping. We saw this beginning in July:

And this is something that the President himself acknowledged he is seeing in his own polls when I interviewed him in late July.:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1913410,00.html

I’m not sure what to make of the public option questions. Nate makes a good argument. But here’s a discussion at pollster.com as to why it is so difficult to poll that one:

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/the_public_option_no_perfect_p.php

Sorry, here’s that Gallup link. Note the number among independents:
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/121814/more-disapprove-than-approve-obama-healthcare.aspx
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Worth noting, though, that RCP is citing a Rasmussen poll to indicate that opposition may be peaking:
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http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/08/27/opposition-to-obamas-health-bill-peaks/

Paul:

I would agree that some Repubs turned away from their principles and they were punished at the voting booth. However I would weigh those 9 years versus the demos last 60 years and believe Repubs are way ahead.

Maybe the reason you didn’t hear concern over the debt then due to the war then was the left was just screaming about the war. And maybe you hear about the deficit now is the left has gone mute over the war since once again we have a liberal who has all the answers during a campaign to end the war but now it is clearly above his pay grade. Who is screaming to hear Obama’s exit strategy now that we just experienced the deadliest month yet with the Community Organizer in Chief now at the helm.

Again the left was apoplectic over the Patriot Act but are sanguine over the takeover and intrusion of a health care “reform” and other government activities of this administration. And you cry over the Repubs trying to save the life of Schiavo but are mute over the killing of new borns or you protest the execution of murderes who have reneged on their membership in the human race. Your right the leftists are fine upstanding folks by comparison (to other leftists).

Based almopst entirely on the conversations here…
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Certainly not scientific, but the assumption that a government option will significantly drive down prices of private plans suggests the widespread belief that private plans have a lot a fat that can be easily trimmed.
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How do you get from acknowledging the inefficiencies in private delivery of health care to supporting the public option in order to “stick-it” to the insurance companies? And actually, most supporters of the public option don’t think that there is a lot of fat in private plans that can easily be trimmed. That’s why they’re supporting the public option. Otherwise, they’d belive that adding a little more competition and negotiating power through things like exchanges would solve the problems.
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Look, the supporters of the public option are making one very simple assumption: the unique nature of the American health care system is largely responsible for its unique financial costs. Obviously if you reject this logic, you have the burden of suggesting another reason why American health care is vastly more expensive than health care in any other country. No serious discussion of health care can ignore that question.

Ok some good suggestions. I am all for tort reform however it is not the panacea that many think it is. Malpractice accounts for less than 1% of healthcare costs. Not saying this isn’t real money but by putting it first you imply that this would amount to a huge savings it will not.

As for your other suggestions all good and pretty much what being discussed now. Accept maybe COBRA which isn’t a bad idea.

As for the public option it is estimated it won’t be much before 2013 before it could be implemented so why not work it out now so it when it does come on line it comes on line effectively.

Amazing when you take the liberal/conservative labels and vitriol out of the equation a constructive conversation can happen.

The Dems are starting to fray. Pete Stark’s comments were not helpful to the cause, and what to make of the Alabama congressman who called Pelosi “divisive”. Landrieu and Lieberman tossed cold water also.
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And then you have Howard Dean, who basically dared the GOP to make tort reform a huge issue.

Land of the wretched?

I have a dream of a land where health care is a right of birth and citizenship: That anyone can freely access the best health care offered at a public hospital in the land – any time of day or night.

Heaven? Can the dream be a reality on earth?

Of course not in the land of the only superpower USA – the land of opportunity, the land of freedom, the land of our (Indian) forefathers, the ‘gentler land of a thousand points of light’ – but in many of the third world countries.

Now, where are the badlands?
Where are the civilized?

[Note: It is said that a robust democracy has a foundation in a well-informed (literate) populace with access to information and a free media. Well, the current debates on health care and the BELIEF in HC myth by a majority of Americans - who otherwise have access to the facts - does not give us comfort.]

Paul:

Here are a couple of other gems where liberal silence is deafening:

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and “other information as is prescribed by” regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for “affordability credits.”

But watch out for those sinister Republicans!

Paul:

Yes we would not want those dastardly American citizens get in the way of liberals wish list for entitlements

Yeah, grant to many entitlements and pretty soon people will be demanding that the government come bail them out if their house catches on fire or if their ever burglarized!
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Slackers!

Thanks for the reply and the links, KT. Approval for Obama’s handling of HCR is definitely falling—among dems. The people most disappointed about how Obama is handling HCR are the people who were out this fall working their tails off to get him elected, and Obama’s equivocation on the public option is the focal point of that disappointment. Last weeks R2k poll for DKos confirmed that Obama’s base is losing patience and that trend continues this week. Obviously, you can’t say that that’s the only issue, but a lot of Dems are frustrated by Obama’s willingness to to let Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus determine the shape of HCR.

Also meant to post the R2k link:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/21/770252/-Weekly-Tracking-Poll:-Impatient-Base-Drives-Democrats-Down

And spob, Stark’s comments about co-ops can only be construed as unhelpful if you still think there is the possibility of some kind of meaningful compromise with Republicans. Since most Dems have realized that Republicans aren’t negotiating in good faith and never were, Starks comments are right on the money. And Landrieu and Lieberman? Please…

Dean’s comment about tort reform should be getting more MSM ink than it is . . . .
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KT, any thoughts?

Paul:

Nice to see you can find duties of the federal government as granted by the Constitution. When you find “provide health care” let me know.

And before you use the canard of “promote the general welfare”. Look up the word promote which does not imply to mandate,enforce or fund

Damn straight, free! That’s why I think we should tear up the federal highway system, starting with I-95.

I agree. The Republicans have proved to anybody with a pulse that they don’t want to deal. The GOP has 1 rep in the North East in the house. They are a regional rump right wing reactionary party. This is fine. If that is what members of their party want.
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You can’t bridge a gap though when it’s a chasm 50 miles across. There is no middle ground between universal coverage and corporate titans need to make profits first before anything else.
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Kennedy’s death can and should only be used as a battering ram against Conrad, Baucus, Nelson, Landrieu, Lieberman et al. If Snowe and Collins want to join too fine. It’s reconciliation and 50 votes plus Biden. There will be nothing that isn’t absolute dreck otherwise.

Perogi:

Feel free 95, 476 76 78 take your pick. Then where would all those hard working union folks find a place to lean on a shovel?

jsfox:
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Thanks for replying yet again. I am glad you agree for the most part.
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However, “1%” of the total healthcare is I believe a great deal of money in savings.
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If my calculations are correct, and the purveyors of information on the internet correct, we could potentially save well over 300 billion dollars with tort reform.
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If Healthcare which estimates at 16% (2.28 Trillion) of GDP (14.3 Trillion Dollars) is correct, and you take 1% of that amount you are talking approximately 327 billion dollars. (Math is not my strong suit).
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I do not see 327 billion as anything to stick my nose up at.
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But, even if it was 327 million dollars, that alone is a great savings and could be used for much better things than to line the pockets of lawyers.
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So far as waiting on the implementation of the Public Option, my thoughts are that you cannot implement it right away. There will need to be time so the private insurers can adjust to the new regulations, requirements and mandates. Allow them sufficient time before the public option is put into place so that the entire private system does not fail simply due to an ultra competitive environment.

I think we are saying the same thing only a bit differently re the public option. I agree you cannot and should not wake up the next day after a bill is passed and all of a sudden find a public option. Not to mention it would pretty f’ing impossible My point is write the plan now, pass it, and do not implement until 2013 giving the private insures plenty of time to adjust to a changing landscape and the new regs you and most others are suggesting. And even then it should roll out gradually in order to test what works and what doesn’t. Now I know some would like to see it happen immediately, but that’s just unrealistic. It couldn’t happen even if everybody agreed it should.

freeinpa:
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Please provide a link for that quote.
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As a member of the ACLU and EFF, I would be very, very troubled if such a thing were the case.