I’m not an optimist. I think that in some general sense we’re fucked as a society. Our public dialog is mind-numblingly stupid and the likely end result of that will be second-world status, unless the rest of the world is as screwed up as we are, and in that case, things will be even worse.
All of that said, I think you’re gonna find — when all this health care shit is over and done — I think you’re gonna find Obama one smilin’ motherfucker. Democrats in Congress know what happened last time they dropped the ball with health care. Pelosi will get something through the House because she could get a ham sandwich through the house, or whatever the right expression is. And there’s no way on earth that Nelson, Lieberman, Bayh, and Lincoln will end up filibustering something this big indefinitely. I think there will some kind of for cloture but against the bill type compromise those guys go along with. In the end, almost anything that passes will be be better than the disaster we have on our hands right now. The people who don’t have insurance now who have it afterwards will be grateful, and they’ll be inclined to vote Democrat in the future.
Nate Silver describes exactly what I think may happen as a result of the delay on the vote:
I also believe that the media can, in the short term, amplify and sometimes even create waves of momentum. But almost always only in the short term. And that is reason #1 why it’s not such a bad thing that the Democrats are getting a breather on health care. They’re at, what I believe, may be something of a ‘trough’ or ‘bottom’ as far as this media-induced momentum goes. By some point in August, the media will at least have tired of the present storyline and may in fact be looking for excuses to declare a shift in momentum and report that some relatively ordinary moment is in fact the “game changer” that the Democrats needed. This is not to say that the real, underlying momentum on health care has especially good — and the Democrats’ selling of the measure certianly hasn’t been. But it hasn’t been especially poor either . As I’ve said before, the health care process has played out just about how an intelligent observer might have expected it to beforehand.
A lot of the pessimism about health care is because of the “Dems in disarray”/”Liberal suicide march”/”It’s 1994 all over agin” type headlines. And those headlines are getting more attention than they might because not much else is going on.
But things could change in a few weeks. There could be a flurry of celebrity deaths. Or shark attacks. Or giant squid attacks. And while the media is distracted by that, it may be possible to get something done.
anonevent
You left out “or suspicious police arrests.”
matoko_chan
Something is going to happen in Iran on July 30th, the 40 day mourning for Neda Agha Sultan’s martyrdom.
Perhaps Evin will become the Bastille.
Of course, no one but Nico is covering that right now becuz Sully is offline and THE STUNT DOUBLES SUUUUUKKKKKKKKK!!!!
But Sully should be back Monday.
Also on July 31 there will be GNP report.
Yutsano
It’s gonna be a bloody week in Iran period Matoko-chan. Ahmadinejad’s inauguration is supposed to happen at some point, and knowing him and his wonderful foot-in-mouth disease he’s going to say something that will start the rioting all over again. The leadership in Iran has to realize they can’t keep this tension bottled up forever.
DougJ
Of course, no one but Nico is covering that right now becuz Sully is offline and THE STUNT DOUBLES SUUUUUKKKKKKKKK!
This particular batch is terrible. One of them talks about dating tips. Ouch!
matoko_chan
the rioting hasn’t stopped.
exploiting the martyrdom mourning cycle was instrumental in overthrowing the tyrant Shah.
the only thing that might bottle up the Green Wave for a while is if Khamenei still has enough army backing to pull off a Tianamen.
matoko_chan
Yeah, the sukkage amplitude is off the charts.
Besides the dating tips Friedersdorf linked to Schwenkler TAS post with a hundred comments about The Giving Tree.
Bourgie conservatives stroking their e-peens.
Nico and I both tried to get the stunt doubles to link Nico’s callin about getting Trita Parsi on the foreign affairs panel.
crickets.
Rey
A National Health Care plan will come to the US by the end of the year. The plan will limp on to the scene with two bruised eyes, a broken leg and an arm that’s barely hanging on but, by God she will be here. Congratulations, all you damned Socialists!!!!!
Shibby
@matoko_chan:
I’ll second (or third) that Sully’s standins have been terrible. I searched for the word “health” just to see if any of them had said anything on the subject. 3 posts came up, 2 of them talking mostly about Gates and mentioning in passing that it might affect the health legislation drive. But we got tons of crap on atheism and dating! Oy vey!
I also forgot to mention the linking to viral internet vids that have literally been around FOREVER. It’s like something my mom would send me.
General Winfield Stuck
Me neither, at least for a period of to begin not too far off. I look for something like a regional cold war or sorts, mainly drawn between north and south. An ideological splitting with more and more pockets of rebellion on economic issues. Maybe hot warring, but hopefully not a lot.
And the rest of the western world is not as screwed up. They’ve had their bloody wars of political systems of every sort and made themselves deeply ashamed with just as bloody Colonial pursuits, till they’ve made some collective choices to evolve past that. We haven’t quite yet. We still have too many unrequited imperialists thinking we should use our power to exploit and conquer economically other weaker nations. Some are called neocons, others just your average wingnut. Then also we have the paleo conservatives who long for the Oligarch life of the Old South.
DougJ
I’ll second (or third) that Sully’s standins have been terrible. I searched for the word “health” just to see if any of them had said anything on the subject. 3 posts came up, 2 of them talking mostly about Gates and mentioning in passing that it might affect the health legislation drive. But we got tons of crap on atheism and dating! Oy vey!
I may do a post about shitty they have been. In the past, they’ve been very good. I don’t know if it’s the same people because they all have funky-sounding names and I can’t keep them straight.
AhabTRuler
Because Sully the Pooh’s views on health insurance reform are so informative and well thought out?
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
He would have been well advised to leave the blog in the hands of his full-time assistants, Patrick and Chris. The Conors have been eight pounds of bad in a five-pound bag. Next time you go on assignment or vacation, Ahn-drew, just get TNC to pull double shifts.
Jason Bylinowski
@DougJ:
“This particular batch is terrible. One of them talks about dating tips. Ouch!”
Yeah I’ve always noticed that things tend to get a little frivolous when Sullivan is gone; I’m sure he picks ’em that way on purpose just so we miss the old drama queen that much more. (Which I always do, for some godforsaken reason. He’s the blogger I hate to love, for many years now.)
Anyway, great points in yer post there re: media coverage of healthcare, couldn’t agree more, please subscribe me to your newsletter, etc. I would like to say that I do hope that whoever takes over the mantle of Superpower after we argue ourselves into Civil War: Part Deux does a better job with it than we have, but I especially hope they don’t do a WORSE job than we have, because in some ways, you know, cooler heads have prevailed with regard to nukes and other icky stuff. I just can’t see China doing anything other than ending us all somehow, probably because of some bureaucratic error.
Scott
@DougJ:
You mean it’s not just me? I don’t even go near The Dish anymore. I think it’s a plot to make us appreciate Sully and pray he stays healthy. Don’t pick on him or he’ll bring back the 3 stooges of bloggery…
Cheers all
S
SpotWeld
The media pretty much like to play things out to a set formula.
Right now they seem to be locked into a “80s sports movie” template.
Right now we’ve moved though the “bumbling misfits get a new coach” act 1 and just starting the act 2 beginning of “hey these guys find out they want to win”.
Expect an upbeat training montage and then the media will try to roll out either the “underdogs win the day” act 3, or the “they had a shining moment, lost, but still learned a lesson” act 3.
Joshua Norton
By some point in August, the media will at least have tired of the present storyline
I think that’s a good point. After weeks of being bored to death hearing all the mighty Wurlitzer knee-jerk rants about “socialized medicine”, “deficits” and “England, France or Canada”, blah blah blah, everyone will be rolling their eyes when the wingers come back to congress and try to raise those same strawman arguments.
That’s pretty much how Obama played it with Sotomayor. He let all their fake outrage and cliche talking points burn themselves out before the confirmation process even began.
DougJ
I just can’t see China doing anything other than ending us all somehow, probably because of some bureaucratic error.
The idea of Chinese world domination is fairly terrifying. I don’t think it will happen. I think we may tend towards a world with no real superpowers. The Weekly Standard crowd will go nuts about how destabilizing it is to be post-superpower.
Yutsano
A lot of the pessimism about health care is because of the “Dems in disarray”/”Liberal suicide march”/”It’s 1994 all over agin” type headlines. And those headlines are getting more attention than they might because not much else is going on.
I still think Obama did something today that was nothing short of pure genius. He basically dared all of his detractors to justify their opposition to health care reform. It’s a good lawyering strategy; he put out his case, now he needs to see exactly what the other side has as an argument so he can rip it to shreds. It was pretty awesome of him.
Yutsano
Bleah…never accidentally double-click the submit button.
amk
Let’s kill some more celebs/arrest some latinos (rick sanchez comes to mind) in their porch to keep teh media distracted and let the real shit get done in the background noise.
Steeplejack
@DougJ:
Yeah, they have been teh suck this time around. I can’t find the link, because I’m too lazy to look right now, but one of them actually did a post about “I’d like to get a conversation started” about something–apparently ignoring the fact that Sullivan’s blog does not allow comments! Epic fail.
. . . Damn it. I couldn’t let it lie, so I went and found the link: Conor Friedersdorf, “The Mistakes We’re Prone to Make.”
Arrgh! Yes, by all means write in, and Conor will filter and censor the submissions and show you only the best.
I hate that Sullivan does not allow comments on his blog.
PeakVT
Our public dialog is mind-numblingly stupid
It is, and a good health care bill might be the only way to break out of the pattern before having a crisis as intense as the one in California. Of course, the pattern is unlikely to give us a good health care bill, so…
I’m an optimist about a third of the time because we already have the solutions to most of our problems on the books and available for everyone to see. But we’re cultural creatures and in large groups we can be amazingly limited by existing power dynamics (read The March of Folly to learn about this). When I think about overcoming our stupidities (gas tax, anyone?) I tend to get a bit discouraged.
Joshua Norton
The idea of Chinese world domination is fairly terrifying. I don’t think it will happen.
Never in a million years. We may owe them a ton of money, but if they ever tried to take things over those debts would be canceled in a flash and the missiles would fly. With the USA and its allies, they have a tiger by the tail.
xj - not the auto
@dougj
interesting title to this post. Hope health care legislation has a better conclusion than the song. I had a good chuckle at some of the associations that could be made.
It should be noted that Silverman was toasted by commenters for changing his mind on the benefit of having a break, but what he says makes some sense, as do your comments.
Comrade Kevin
I see an Ann Coulter ad on the left. Do you suppose she wears a snake skin suit and alligator boots?
arguingwithsignposts
who the hell is talking about health insurance reform? All I’ve heard on the networks for the past three days is some black guy getting arrested by a police officer and how Barack Hussein Obama has ratcheted up the problem. The only MSM person who’s really keeping the light on health insurance reform seems to be Ed Schultz, for which he should be commended.
Still, I agree with DougJ. We seem to be truly fucked by these tone deaf congresscritters.
DougJ
Do you suppose she wears a snake skin suit and alligator boots?
Ha!
LD50
I can’t imagine that China wants to run the world, or at least the parts far away from China. America is China’s ATM, why would they want to screw that up?
Zandar
One of two things is going to happen.
Either the GOP will finally, finally go too far and the game changes, or Obama will suffer death by a thousand articles over August.
We’ve gotten to the Clintonian point of “Everything bad that happens on Earth is proof Obama is the most evil guy around.” Either that’s going to stick and by September, Obama’s poll numbers will be well under 50% and heading towards Bush country, or the GOP will find some way to actually cross the line and overplay their hand in such a blatant and foul manner that even the Village concern trolls have to throw the flag and Obama is able to break through the noise and get a bill he can sign.
We’ll know soon.
gnomedad
@Steeplejack:
Arrgh, indeed! Apart from any issues of suckitude, this part really felt like rubbing salt in. Don’t feel like tossing my comments into a black hole, thanks very much.
DougJ
All I’ve heard on the networks for the past three days is some black guy getting arrested by a police officer and how Barack Hussein Obama has ratcheted up the problem.
True. And that’s just as bad as the Dems in disarray stuff, in terms of the effect.
But we’ll be better off when they go back to discussing Susan Boyle.
bago
The only annual meeting in Alaska worth a damn is the Fur Rendezvous. Cute how the website is renamed to avoid teh evil French.
InflatableCommenter
Everything, and I mean everything, is wrong with this idea.
First, it sounds like Criswell Predicts. What next, a list of dire predictions for the next year? Jesus.
Second, it’s anti-democratic, small d. I know of no reason to think that the American Experiment will fail. And what the hell does “fucked as a society” mean anyway? Only a few years before I was born, Doug, they were stringing black men up from trees for looking the wrong way at a while woman. Are you seriously going to argue that “society” is marching backward?
Come on man, you are too smart to fall for and serve up this crap. Unless this constant refrain of yours is just theatrical and designed to provoke. In which case, it’s getting old.
Get some new material.
Yutsano
The only annual meeting in Alaska worth a damn is the Fur Rendezvous. Cute how the website is renamed to avoid teh evil French.
I wonder when we bother to disclose to the Republicans that English is a Germanized bastardization of French (that whole Norman invasion thingie). I suppose it would be worth it just to watch their heads explode.
pip
Public dialog sucks, that’s for sure, if you mean all of those over paid people on my tv.
We’ve recently hired a live one at my employer. Earlier this week he was chatting up the secretary about Paul Gigot’s (sp?) income tax numbers — in New York some people will pay 67%!!111!1!111!!!
I was making copies in the same room and chimed in with, Buy Gold!!1!!!!!!!!!!1111!!
He said, yes, exactly right!
I said you know I was being sacrastic, right?
Same guy thought Governor Goodhair’s proclamation of secession was a good political move.
robertdsc
I don’t agree for the simple reason that the Senate isn’t even close to the House on the public option. Baucus has completely ignored everything going on elsewhere in the House and the Presidency in favor of Conrad’s stupid co-op idea.
If Obama doesn’t lay down the public option-or-I-veto card one of these days, it’s not gonna happen. We’ll get a craptacular bill that won’t do a thing except transfer more wealth to the private insurers.
pip
I have this one hope, that there are people like me. I am fucking tired of the nitpicking. I am tired of every last damn teevee and radio talk person telling me that my vote was wrong and that Obama fails on this that or the other.
Sick and tired of it.
What I am also sick and tired of is radio talk show hosts who claim to have an audience of MILLIONS shout victory at having 700K “people” sign some sort of “Free Our Health Care” petition.
That just doesn’t add up.
kay
@robertdsc:
I’m worried about that, too. I’m afraid the delay was designed to kill the chance of a public option in the Senate, and I don’t see how it works without one.
One thing Pelosi did well that she’s getting no credit for was make the public option a given. She made it the default, when it began as this hotly contested “radical” inclusion, and the media moved on to “costs” and their newest hobby, which is actually reporting CBO numbers, but only those numbers that are incomplete and make reform less likely.
I think that’s why Baucus skidded to a stop. He’s got to change that discussion, and get it back to where it was: “the public option is impossible and radical”.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
I usually like Sullivan but have wondered if he doesn’t get better subs because he’s protecting his turf and doesn’t want the competiton. He calls them his underbloggers. That tells you something. I too stopped visiting his site when I couldn’t find a damned post on health care.
Punchy
we aint getting healthcare reform. the Sen. Dems will kill it. just u watch
Jason Bylinowski
@InflatableCommenter:
You, sir, are 100% grade-A bad-ass.
Seriously, thanks for putting things in perspective. I tend to be somewhat pessimistic. You must admit, things are changing on the media front in a way which is quite disconcerting. I mean, the fourth estate is at least as important as any other part of a healthy democracy, and right now the media seems to be failing everyone except for their parent companies. But then, I have to remind myself every so often that, 20 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all if not for the internet. And so then I feel a little better, because at least I can say that I have a real voice, and assuming I have something to say worth listening to, people will hear it. So it’s not all bad, is it? And yet……..it must be an eternal struggle, trying to stay free and happy.
mcd410x
I respectful disagree that this bunch of Sully standins is the worst.
Having Jamie Kirchick over was the worst. He got the mustard out.
Comrade Kevin
That’s more like it.
aschup
Sullivan’s health care blogging consists almost entirely of foreboding/Orwell-stroking allusions to the NHS and shitty links to Mankiw’s blog. Why anyone would miss that is beyond me.
Mark S.
@DougJ:
I sometimes wonder if we aren’t already there. I mean, our military is stretched to the limit occupying two third world countries.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@arguingwithsignposts: Yeah, it took me a while to warm up to Ed’s show; his voice drains my body of vitality. However, sometimes it’s a soothing balm to my nerves to hear a flat out liberal speak his mind without fear.
cleek
the Dems are going to screw this up. of this i have no doubts.
Silver Owl
The American people will choose to live. It is human instinct. Few say, “Hey dude! I’m willing to die for your silk undies!” As history has told many times over the “aristocracy” that deems other wise has always met with a very poor and ugly demise. There are always fewer of them than those they propose to kill and sicken. It is just a matter of time.
Either republicans will jump on board of the living or not. They do not strike me as being very smart nor do they ever think long term.
simonee
@DougJ: Please do. They didn’t even bother with Obama’s nationally televised press conference, save for the obligatory snippets from a couple of blogs.
Nellcote
So gop representatives will go back to their states and hold townhalls, filled with people demanding healthcare vs. people demanding a birth certificate. It could get interesting.
Surabaya Stew
DougJ, you need to travel outside the USA more. Of course the rest of the world is screwed up, usually more so than we are! For one thing, some places don’t even have such a concept as “public dialog” at all. For another, “mind-numblingly stupid” is par for the course everywhere else you go when it comes to the people/politicians determining important matters. I could give examples of this, but just ready any selection of newspapers from another country to get the point.
All in all, the rest of the world has given me zero confidence that non-Americans know better than than us how to make government work well. So cheer up, we’re all in the second-world together!
matoko_chan
Well Sully has been awesomesauce on Iran.
Have you ever wondered why rightwing blogs like Hotair don’t cover the green wave except for broadsides of students vs the “mad mullahs” and screaming simultaneously about Obama doing nothing about NEDA!! and Obama causing Neda Agha Sultan’s death because of his weak-sister Cairo speech?
It is because AllahP’s (and the rightwingers) sympathies are really with Nejad. Nejad’s conservatives are just like ‘merican conservatives…..older, ostentatiously pious, rural, lowtech, ethnically “pure”, socially conservative, poorer, less educated….also soon to be crushed by the burgeoning youth demographic.
Nejad isn’t the mahdi, he’s the second coming of George W Bush….he has even driven the Iranian economy into the toilet just like Bush did with ours.
Then you have the whole Conservatives-for-Nejad neocon posse, headed up by McCain, who are working furiously to advance their bombbombbomb Iran campaign so that we can protect Our Super Best Friend Israel.
/spit
Comrade Kevin
@Surabaya Stew: Your attitude actually helps prevent improvements in this country.
matoko_chan
And I ALWAYS call them conservatives, ever since John Schwenkler got all pissy wid meh when I called him a republican.
defn.– a conservative is a republican who is desperately trying to scrape the GW off his shoe while no one is looking.
oh really
That’s where you lost me.
There are many possible outcomes that could be worse than what we have now, if they do not solve the problems we have, but are used to deflect any further call for reform for years to come.
matoko_chan
Also, is there any human alive that is stupider than Bob Wright?
It is tribalism, dumbo.
it isn’t science vs religion, it is tribe New Atheists vs tribe religious.
Yutsano
There are many possible outcomes that could be worse than what we have now, if they do not solve the problems we have, but are used to deflect any further call for reform for years to come.
I have to disagree here. As long as a public option (which is in the House version regardless) gets in, there will be something that can be adjusted, but the structure needs to be there now. And that will be an improvement for the millions who right now have nothing.
Mnemosyne
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s funny that senators and representatives seem to think they’re going to be able to escape from the healthcare question when they go home for the summer, but I guarantee you that each and every public event they go to will be filled with people demanding healthcare. If there isn’t a bill before August, they’re going to have to answer why in every venue they go to.
The media may have forgotten about healthcare in the excitement over Skip Gates, but I guarantee you no one’s constituents have.
Yutsano
The media may have forgotten about healthcare in the excitement over Skip Gates, but I guarantee you no one’s constituents have.
Ask Max Baucus. He went back to Montana early on in the health care discussion and got his ears pinned back because of his intransigence regarding the public option. Suddenly his speech was moderating. I’m anticipating a similar effect, only multiplied by 535. Trust me if I get within 1,000 yards of Maria Cantwell she’s getting an earful out of me (Murray is behind the public option so she’s safe so far).
bago
Cantwell is slacking? Doom upon her! Contractors unite!
Mike D.
“The people who don’t have insurance now who have it afterwards will be grateful”
Except maybe some of those who are forced to buy it via the individual mandate Obama said he was against.
bago
@matoko_chan: Yeah, but the tribe is your parents. You have to ease them out. Getting southerners to decide between the deuteronomic texts involving shrimp and gays, they will be hard pressed to come up with a logical solution.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
This is why I said the other night that L’affair Gates is Kabuki theater. Barry’s perfectly happy letting the media trip over each other’s dicks, chasing a non-story, while Barry sharpens his ax and starts looking for heads.
Xel
If the Blue Cross democrats end up with a bill in front of them, they will have to vote for it. If they never have to see it come to a vote, they might be able to blame the “MoveOn” crowd for being “radical”, but they’ll never survive actuallly voting against anything.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
Actually, I haven’t noticed that much of a drop-off over at Sully’s house of navel-gazing. No jeremiads against male circumcision, but other than that, just the same stuff Sully does, only from a twenty-something perspective–the Junior Sully Club is callow, whereas their leader is jaded.
Comrade Jake
Or the President could make some less-than-precise remarks about racial profiling. Just saying.
bob h
I’m optimistic that we will get an overhaul because the private insurers need it, too, though without the public option. They face a dismal future under the status quo, having to offer an increasingly unaffordable product to employers who want to drop it.
An overhaul that pulls in tens of millions of the uninsured, helps small businesses pay their healthcare costs, requires reform of obnoxious insurer practices, and costs only a paid-for $1 trillion will be a good first step. Though the public option might have to wait years for the next major push at overhaul.
matoko_chan
Do you know the real reason AllahP doesn’t cover the green wave like he did the cedar revolution?
Because Iranian protest babes cover.
They are observant shi’ia for the most part, and that fucks up AllahP’s simpleton narrative of the westernized students against the “mad mullahs”.
Cuz theres mullahs on both sides, and the crypto-neanderthals can’t gin up the old outrage engines for the Global Islamic Pogrom.
angler
Koka Kola
Surabaya Stew
WOW!!! Never knew I had all kinds of power like that…
Tony J
I wonder when we bother to disclose to the Republicans that English is a Germanized bastardization of French (that whole Norman invasion thingie). I suppose it would be worth it just to watch their heads explode.
Other way around. English is basically a dialect of Middle-German that absorbed a lot of loan words, starting with Norman French, but not stopping there.
Or to borrow a phrase, English doesn’t so much ‘borrow’ from other languages as it follows them down dark alleys and mugs them.
ChrisNBama
I’m an optimist on Health Care. Reform will pass this year. Republicans want reform. Democrats want reform. The American people want reform.
The central point is if reform includes the so-called “public” option or not. To be honest, and as a democrat this is heresy, but I really don’t care if a public option is in the final bill. If we craft a system that creates and foster’s competition, extends health care through an affordable process, and removes obstacles to care (pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, job, etc.), then it’s a major, monumental win as far as I’m concerned. The sort of victory that will earn this administration a place in history.
For all the hand wringers out there (including Mr. Cole), chill out (remembering the “Chill the fuck out. I got this!” banner from the campaign). Mr. Obama has received the support of many of the powerful forces in this country that stood in the way of reform before–lobbyists, special interest groups, etc. Even small business groups and PHARMA are doing advocacy ads to embrace the reform efforts!
This will happen. It reminds me of a talk Obama had with supporters at a fund raiser recently, when he forewarned his audience that there will be many headlines in the future that reform is dead, or stalled, but that such things are not true. It’s all happening as he predicted, and I have no doubt as to the outcome of this debate.
ChrisNBama
By the way, one way you can tell that the debate is actually moving forward is the that Party of No has morphed into the Party of Slow!
sparky
@ChrisNBama: no. buying industry off is not an improvement. and there is no evidence that poor people will be able to afford insurance. as long as the profit motive remains, someone is going to have to pay the rakeoff. if all we are doing is moving the payors from inside the system to the general public i have a hard time seeing how that’s a good result. what’s the difference between that and giving tax dollars to GS so they can dole it out as bonuses?
Corner Stone
@DougJ at the top:
I’m still not sure why you and others, including the President, keep mentioning health “insurance”. The problem isn’t access to insurance, it’s access to health “care”.
Insurance can be taken away from you, or rescinded, at any moment a private insurer feels like – as we’ve seen. Why would forcing poor or middle class people to pay for “insurance” help anything? Except for the private insurers?
I’m still not sure why single payer is verbotten in discussions of possible resolutions? Obama mentioned it the other night in a half-assed dismissive way. He was asked about covering all Americans and he said something like, “There’s no way to do that unless you had some sort of single payer.”…..isn’t that the answer then? A sort of Medicare for All?
sparky
@Corner Stone: yes–this is like privatizing social security–all upside for the profit sector pretty much down for everyone else, and not of any utility to the uninsured/uninsurable.
Jody
What’s with Balloon Juice today? It’s laid out all funny.
Edit: It seems to have healed itself. Huh.
ericvsthem
Excellent Clash reference, Doug.
Yutsano
I’m an optimist on Health Care. Reform will pass this year. Republicans want reform. Democrats want reform. The American people want reform.
You’re two-thirds right. The Democrats are interested in reform for their election chances. The American people are interested because they’re literally dying without. Republicans need a win against Obama bad, they will do whatever it takes to get that win and taking down his big signature issue will be seen as a huge score for them.
Mike D.
@matoko_chan:
Re Bob Wright:
I don’t know if he’s stupid — BhTV is a pretty brilliant platsorm in terms of humanizing opinion on the internet.
But his pop-philosophy version of the new God is so cracked it’s impossible to even figure out how to address it (though some have done well). His preaching and misrepresentation about New Atheism is absolutely impossible to listen to. And the thing he did to Dan Dennett after Dennett gave him a full hour to hector him about his views on directionality and purpose in evolution was unforgivable, no matter what you think of Dennett.
Mike D.
@matoko_chan:
Re Bob Wright:
I don’t know if he’s stupid — BhTV is a pretty brilliant platsorm in terms of humanizing opinion on the internet.
But his pop-philosophy version of the new God is so cracked it’s impossible to even figure out how to address it (though some have done well). His preaching and misrepresentation about New Atheism is absolutely impossible to listen to. And the thing he did to Dan Dennett after Dennett gave him a full hour to hector him about his views on directionality and purpose in evolution was unforgivable, no matter what you think of Dennett.
IndieTarheel
@Comrade Kevin: @Comrade Kevin: [quote]I see an Ann Coulter ad on the left. Do you suppose she wears a snake skin suit and alligator boots?[/quote]Not sure about the boots, but the snakeskin would be a fashion statement similar to that of the Buffalo Bill character in [i]The Silence of the Lambs[/i].
d. b. cooper
The march toward Idiocracy has already begun.
Ron
Good god, every time I look around I find a dumber quote about a public plan from the GOP
From Democracy Now (via Sadly , No!)
REP. LOUIS GOHMERT: Well, if you go to the socialized medicine countries, you find about 20 percent worse results. You get it? One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine! Now, I’ve got three daughters and a wife. I would hate to think that, among five women, one of them is going to die because we go to socialized care, and we have to have these long lists.
This line is such epic fail I don’t even know where to begin.
mclaren
No, a lot of the pessimism about health care is because politicians are going up against the second of the big three powers in American society: remember FIRE?
Finance?
Insurance?
Real Estate?
These are the giant economic powers in America today. We’ve outsourced everything else. Manufacturing, science, technology, that’s all gone, that takes places overseas. If you want a hot new mp3 player, buy from South Korea or China; if you want a cutting-edge motherboard or laptop, buy from Taiwan. America is now a third-world country…except for our gigantic colossal world-girdling Finance and Insurance and (until recently) Real Estate corporations that now account for most of the profits made by business in America.
The politicians in Washington went up against the Finance part of FIRE, and they got ass-raped. The Federal Reserve refuses even to tell Washington D.C. what the money they voted for in the bailout was spent on.
Now the pols are going up against the I part of FIRE, the musclebound 100-mile-tall Insurance colossus, and this time they’re going to get ass-raped with a freight train.
That’s why everyone’s pessimistic about health care reform. Because Insurance, along with Finance and Real Estate, are the only profit centers left in the entire American economy, and nobody is going to let that evaporate. So nothing will ever be done to fix health care.
Too many Americans make too many trillions of dollars a year by denying coverage to sick people and laughing at them as they suffer, scream, and die. FIRE owns America. Grovel before your masters, bitches.