The Chris Matthews and Darcy Burner (who is really charming and I wish had won last year) discussion about Joe Lieberman on Hardball is going to be one for the ages, and really highlights the unreality of this notion that somehow we could have gotten a radically different bill out of the Senate.
If anyone has the video, let me know.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Max
Is this the discussion with Nate Silver? I can’t wait to see that.
@ work on the west coast. :(
Thunderdome
Health Care Reform Cage Match.
Two Senators go in – One Senator comes out.
Quaker in a Basement
And thank you again. That’s twice in a week that you, nearly alone amongst bloggers on the lefty side, have paid heed to the simple and obvious facts. I don’t understand why so many “true progressives” seem to believe it was within Mr. Obama’s power to make the GOP Senate caucus stop acting like children.
jnfr
I love Darcy Burner, and also supported her in her election, and enjoyed listening to her talk here in Colorado at the Netroots Nation conference here. But I’m afraid her talk in that segment really confirmed that some of the left are not in touch with reality on this bill.
And yes, it was the segment which included Nate Silver.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I just happened to be watching the latter portion of it and was given yet another shining example of what a monumental cocksucker Matthews is. Shouted her down a couple of times for no other reason than he loves the sound of his own voice. As for the Nate Silver, he got about three words in edgewise. I missed the first couple of minutes but if it was like the last couple it wasn’t worth it.
Twisted Martini
Not trying to be a smartass, but why couldn’t he have called for reconcilliation to get the bill passed?
R-Jud
@Quaker in a Basement:
This. I’m sure someone here has already said this, but you go to legislate with the Congress you have, not the Congress you want or wish to have.
kid bitzer
though burner has been saying we should kill the senate bill because it’s not progressive enough.
she may be charming, but i’m not sure she’s in your corner, john.
gwangung
@Twisted Martini: Heh. Heh heh.
(Budget matters only. And good for only a few years. Not applicable to large parts of the bill).
MikeJ
@Twisted Martini: For one thing the bill would have to come out of the Budget committee, which is where the biggest holdup was any way.
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
I have been generally avoiding some of the liberal blogs to keep from reading how horrible “Obama” screwed us all. Today I broke down and read a few.
I think most of the liberal oppositon to the health care bill has nothing to do with it not providing insurance to more people. They are just pissed becuase the insurance industry wasn’t totally screwed in the process.
FDL has a list of 35 or items to “improve” the bill. Most of them either deal with punishing the insurance industry more (not necissarily and bad thing) or are totally pie-in-the-sky concepts like single payer.
More progressives seem pissed at Obama than any single member of congress for the bill not being the perfect vison of socialist health care. Might Obama have pushed more for this or that? I am not sure it would have helped. I am pretty sure that ass Liberman wouldn’t have budged considering he endorsed McCain for President.
Someone needs to come to reality or at least retake junior high government and concentrate on “how a bill becomes a law”.
Jim C
God you are such a clown. If Harry Reid gave a single fuck about anything but himself, he could have started under reconciliation with a public option or medicare for all.
A lot of the people who said they are against things would never actually be the ones responsible for voting against something with strong public support.
But, no. Assclowns like you somehow want the changes, but expect normal style democratic pussyfooting to work.
The democrats could have rammed this through with 50 easy.
Harry Reid & Rahm Emmanuel are corporate whores, I know you know it, and that makes you one hell of an idiot.
donovong
Oh for chrissakes – Green Balloons.
GREEN BALLOONS DAMMIT!!
Now I’m asking for Tunch pics, and I’m a dog fan.
Cain
@MikeJ:
Which is also controlled by a blue dog type I believe who would have strutted like a peacock in front of the cameras. You would have just dropped lieberman for some other jackass.
cain
Cain
WTF, what happened to my edit buttons…
cain
WereBear
I do think that some segment of the Progressives have discovered what I call “making a great big noisy fuss.”
(From the Ramona stories by Beverly Cleary, in which even toddler Ramona gets her way with more alacrity than her good-girl older sister.)
And it is useful, it cannot be denied. Because the heads on the teevee are discussing our view on the subject, and let’s face it, any Progressive angle is a start. Somebody out there will stop laughing and say to themselves, “You know, now that I think about it…”
And may I add at this juncture that I am sorry I missed the bra thread. I would have ranted about the underwires in A & B cup bras being delusions of grandeur.
MikeJ
@Cain: Indeed, that is central to my point.
John Cole
@Jim C: Name the 50 votes to ram through the progressive dream bill in reconciliation.
Come on. Give me the 50.
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
@John Cole:
Considering they had only about 56 a few weeks ago for this bill – cannot be done.
mr. whipple
I’d settle for more than 5.
Annie
@Quaker in a Basement:
Exactly…Sometimes progressives seem to believe that Obama has some magic wand, which he is not using and which if he used would suddenly make governing easy and Republicans fall in line and stop obstructing the entire progressive agenda.
John Cole
I’m really intrigued by this notion that Senators like Nelson and Lieberman and Bayh and Landrieu and Carper and Lincoln and on and on would, if Obama had come out hard for the public option, suddenly find it within their latitude of acceptance and vote for it. The only reason that would have happened is if there was significant external pressure from their constituents, and that clearly was not there. In fact, it is the opposite. The bill as is is polling at 29% in Nelson’s state. I mean, we all like to think these Senators are stupid, but they really are not so stupid that they would say “Hey- I was opposed to the public option, but now that Obama has come out hard for it, I think I like it.”
Progressives who make these claims are engaging in the same kind of magical thinking that got us such memorable notions as “the war will pay for itself” and “we will be greeted as liberators.”
JenJen
You were able to hear what she was saying? I couldn’t get past that Sgt. Pepper-meets-Nutcracker outfit she was wearing. Yes, yes, shallow, I know. But really, you have to see it.
Zifnab
@Quaker in a Basement:
“True Progressives” expected Obama to bring Lieberman to heel and buckle under on the Public Option. They expected him to either cut a Ben Nelson and shovel Connecticut a giant bucket of cash or (preferably) to threaten Lieberman with his seniority and pull rank on the cooch until he knuckled under.
Alternately, they wanted to see the Senate whip out Reconciliation on the spot and hammer a public option through with a 51 vote majority.
Maybe Obama’s hands really were tied. But after campaigning on a public plan straight back to his initial “I’m Running for President” white papers, I’m not sure why you’re surprised when his base was shocked and upset that Obama caved on the plan.
JGabriel
For what it’s worth, I think some of the noise on the left serves a useful function in that it reinforces the idea that this bill is not the end goal, but just a beginning.
.
Chuck Butcher
@John Cole:
Does this apply to the “we’ll fix it” theme as well?
Maus
@Quaker in a Basement:
It is 100% within his power to stop treating the GOP Senate caucus as if they’re anything but children.
MikeJ
Great. What’s that have to do with getting a bill passed?
Zifnab
@John Cole:
It is worth noting that Democrats were not running around claiming Bush’s Iraq Adventure would result in nuclear war with Russia, or screaming about how he was going to sweep college students off the streets and throw them into press gangs. IE, the Democrats weren’t tossing around highly publicized bald-faced lies when opposing the war.
Your little sound bites were outright falsehoods used to badger Senators into voting for the war. By contrast, progressive demands and pleas to keep health care alive by forcing the bill into a true filibuster weren’t based on magic math or fanciful bullshit. They were based on Senatorial procedure, and they were predicated on the notion that popular support would develop for the health care bill once Republicans were forced to publicly rail against it from the Senate floor for days at a time.
arguingwithsignposts
Your obligatory Smudge photo. Jane Hamshers of the left, indeed. I’m so glad for an open thread.
qwerty42
@Jim C: …he could have started under reconciliation with a public option or medicare for all….
I think Ezra Klein covered this maybe last week or so, but reconciliation can only include budget items, not even near-budget items. Public option, medicare, etc could not have been in that.
Joy
You would have thought having free health care clinics in their states (Lincoln, McCaskill, et al) would have embarrassed them or shamed them or made them think about the public option. IMO, not that it’s worth anything, if these clinics did not convince these holdouts that their constituents needed affordable health care, then there is nothing that would have caused them to vote for reconciliation. The poll numbers were not there and that’s what drives these people.
CaseyL
@JGabriel:
I think the noise is useful because it’s reframing things a bit leftward. (I could say “moving the Overton window” except that I’m tired of that expression).
Does anyone know what the main HCR proposals were before the Presidential Campaign? I don’t recall the details, but it seems to me that this bill is better than what we dared to hope for then, before the Hillary v. Barack primary wars played escalatio with peoples’ expectations.
R. Johnston
Do you honestly believe that a single one of those Senators actually has any kind of ideological or policy based opposition to a public option? Do you think that, given Obama’s previous fundraising prowess, they’d really prefer insurance company contributions to Democratic party support and Obama holding fundraisers for them?
If Obama had come out strongly for Medicare for all, backed by the hippies, then we’d have at least a negotiated public option with phase in tied to medicare rates right now. All the “centrist” narcissist contingent really wants is to let everyone know that they’re to the right of the Democratic party and to be kowtowed to. You can give that to them without fucking the country over if you start hard left and graciously allow them to force you two steps to the right.
JGabriel
@John Cole:
Who are the “on and on” here? As far as I know, those six were pretty much the extent of conservadem opposition to the bill. Assuming there’s maybe 1 or 2 more whom I’ve forgotten or never learned of, that still leaves about 52 votes for a stronger, more robust bill.
I’m not arguing that we should have gone for reconciliation — I honestly don’t know what the best route would have been and I’m agnostic on the issue. But it seems likely that 85% of the Democratic Senate caucus (51 votes) were “gettable” for a stronger bill. Arguing otherwise seems like a weak point, and kind of churlish.
.
Jean
@Zifnab: @JenJen: Yeah, what was with that jacket? I had the same reaction. I just kept staring at it.
jeffreyw
Green Balloons!
OK, OK, they’re green pickles.
PeakVT
Even better than Chait’s article in TNR is this one from Scheiber bashing B-schools.
Annie
@Zifnab:
Campaigning and governing are very different processes. Where was the vocal public support — those that supported Obama — during this HCR process???? Not so loudly vocal. Where was the public outcry at Republican obstruction, and Republicans capturing the narrative with bullshit like Obama wants to kill your grandmother and your unborn child, and make you stand in long lines for health care, only to have some government body deny you coverage? Largely absent…
Zifnab
What I really want to know from the “Good enough for me” supporters of the current bill is…
Do you guys really think this is good legislation? Not “the best legislation we could get” but actual good, solid, effective legislation? Do you think it will guarantee increased coverage and care for all Americans? Do you think it will “bend the curve” on escalating health care costs significantly? Will this bill benefit the lower and middle class workers that require improved coverage?
Because I’ve heard a lot of “Obama gave it his best shot” and “You progressives are asking for too much!”, but other than the occasional link to Erza or Krugman, I haven’t seen a lot of genuine excitement at what is the biggest health care overhaul since Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare.
Mostly, it’s just John Cole strutting around telling those DFHs to sit down, shut up, and like whatever crumbs you get.
gwangung
Maybe. On the other hand, as you and John point out, the problem is on a smaller level, in the Blue Dogs’ states, as oppsed to the Senate as a whole. And not all states are as leftward leaning as mine, and not all Senators may be have amenable to the available political bribery. I think it’s more useful to look on this lower level, as opposed to the larger scale, at least on this issue.
Jennifer
@Maus:
I try treating my kids like adults. Amazingly, they still act like children.
Yossarian
“They were based on Senatorial procedure, and they were predicated on the notion that popular support would develop for the health care bill once Republicans were forced to publicly rail against it from the Senate floor for days at a time.”
They were based on a senatorial procedure that those supposedly hard-edged lefty realists have demonstrated no real understanding of. And if you think endless days of Republicans “railing” against the health care bill would have substantially INCREASED support for those provisions, well, you should retire from blog commenting in order to spend more time with your naivete.
ellaesther
@John Cole: I ask this in an entirely conversational way, because I just plain don’t know a lot about it:
I recently read something on the tubez floating the idea that the Administration kind of shot itself in the foot, in terms of legislative wrangling, when it pulled so many working members of Congress out of both houses to serve in the government (the only two coming to mind right this second are Joe the Biden and Ray LaHood, but LaHood is a Republican so I may be shooting myself in my own foot here) (mind you, the POTUS used to be a Senator too, now that I think of it!).
Do you think that greater party discipline might have been brought to bear if the hierarchy of the two chambers hadn’t been so shaken up? Or am I overstating something that I clearly don’t know much about?
kay
@Bob (Not B.o.B.):
I think they knew, every day, how many votes they had.
I think the charge that Rahm Emanuel is not ideologically liberal is dead-on. I think the charge that he is “conservative” or a “corporatist” is not. He is where the votes are, and he is where the seats are. A liberal vote is “one” and a conservative vote is “one”, and one is no more desirable than another, because he needs a certain number.
All he does is count votes secured, just like all he did in 2006 was count seats won.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think at this point we’re all ready for 12 Rush Limbaugh posts in a row.
John Cole
@Zifnab: Thirty million people will gain access to coverage or coverage. Massive expansion to medicare and medicaid. Get rid of the gravy train for insurance companies that was Medicare advantage. Get rid of lifetime and annual caps. End the ability to ban people for pre-existing conditions. Large subsidies to the poor and working poor to gain access to health insurance. And on and on.
Yes. There is a lot of good shit in it. Jesus christ, you think Feingold and Sanders and Wyden and Durbin are voting for it to punch hippies?
Notorious P.A.T.
Dead horse alert, but I really wish that a certain someone who liked to talk about how he was going to change things had chosen to back the Democratic candidate running for Lieberman’s seat in 2006.
gwangung
@ellaesther: That seems to be more of after-the-fact Monday morning quarterbacking/post mortem, rather than a catastrophic blunder. Yes, it may be a factor, but it seems to me that there were counter balancing factors in favor and the entirely reasonable expectation that the remaining Congress critters could handle it.
Just Some Fuckhead
We’ll never know so there’s no reason to keep beating it to fucking death.
Yossarian
@Zifnab:
Yes. Unequivocally and without hesitation. The fact that it could have been a hell of a lot better doesn’t mean that it isn’t really, really good.
But the frame of your question is entirely wrong. You cannot credibly discuss the legislative process without asking yourself “is this the best we could get.” You can discuss a lot of things in life this way, but not legislation, because there’s not a single large piece of legislation in the history of the United States (or any other advanced democracy, I’d wager) that was the absolute best it could have been upon initial passage. I’d be happy to be corrected if anyone could demonstrate otherwise, but I doubt they can.
ellaesther
@Notorious P.A.T.: I have to say that it’s entirely possible that no one anticipated (genuinely!) just how big a wank stain Joe Lieberman would turn out to be.
I mean, there came a point last week that even my mind reeled, and I’ve loathed the man for a very long time. Surely I wasn’t alone.
Anya
@Quaker in a Basement: I must admit I did not expect the level of insanity. I expected the Grand Old White Party to be obstructionist but not to this extend. I also thought they will at least keep their spite to a minimum the first year.
Zifnab
@Annie:
Wow. You don’t get around much do you? There were email campaigns coordinated by DKos and FDL. There were phone banks organized by the White House itself. I, myself, happily donated money to various Dem Congressmen on Senate and House committees and made desperate quixotic appeals to reason to my state representatives, John Cornyn – the head of the NRSC, Kay Bailey Hutchenson – currently in a conservative pissing contest with Rick Perry for the GOP Governor primary, and total lost cause wingnut John Culberson.
The liberal public support was loudest and proudest when it came to the various schemes for providing public coverage. Progressives rallied hard for a vote on Single Payer in the House. But that got bartered away in the Stupak coat hanger fight. Then we went hard for Obama’s promised public option. And when even that was looking grim, the liberal netroots hung out hope for Medicare Buy-In (something even Lieberman was supporting a year ago).
So the support for the HCR process has been long and involved and deeply personal for millions of Democrats. Watching the crown jewel of the bill go down is a very, very, very big fucking deal. The push back on the death panels was as public as the DFHs could make it.
I can’t believe you completely missed all that.
qwerty42
@qwerty42: no. I checked further and found one of his posts on reconciliation here. Here is a quick version:
I thought the public option (done right) was a great idea, but was willing to settle for the Medicare buy-in, and still cannot fathom Joe’s irrational objection to it. That said, I’ll take the bill.
mcc
Yes.
Yes, assuming minimal competence from the department of HHS and the Obama administration in general in reacting to the changing conditions once the bill starts being implemented.
Nope. (In either direction.)
Yes.
Yossarian
Obama backed Lamont in the general election after he beat Lieberman. The idea that he somehow kneecapped Lamont in a way that redounded to Lieberman’s benefit is simply false.
J.W. Hamner
@John Cole: Right… I’m not sure who said it… you, Yglesias, or Drum I think… but the idea that Senators in states that didn’t even vote for Obama are more likely to vote for more progressive legislation if he gets personally involved… is just totally at odds with reality. What Ben Nelson wants is to pass health care reform but distance himself from Obama at the same time… and that’s what he did.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Zifnab: You forgot about the conference committee ponies. And how we can fix it after we pass it despite likely having a worse political landscape going forward.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic bill. Health Care Reform will be that bill. Better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster.
I’m in an italicizing mood.
cleek
@Zifnab:
neither of which are Obama’s to deliver.
Paddy
Darcy Burner on Hardball today.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
All of those named except Lieberman are on record in the recent past as either for a public option or not opposed to it. Repeat: all of those named except Lieberman are on record in the recent past as either for a public option or not opposed to it. Somehow, their support or openness to the idea evaporated in just the last few months.
snarkout
Assuming there’s maybe 1 or 2 more whom I’ve forgotten or never learned of, that still leaves about 52 votes for a stronger, more robust bill.
Feingold has specifically said he’s opposed to using reconciliation, and he’s not an opponent. So now you’re getting into a land where a bunch of reflexively cringing centrists like McCaskill and Feinstein and Conrad get accused of Teh Liberofascism for using reconciliation, and you’re dependent on them not buckling.
Plus, as has been mentioned, you can’t do anything related to regulation under reconciliation, so there’s no community rating or end-to-recission or caps on annual payments or floors on health care spending by insurers. I’m not sure, even if you had the 51 votes, that you’d get an objectively better bill.
(This is not to say that Sanders or someone shouldn’t be bringing up Medicare buy-in, again and again and again, and daring Republicans to vote against it. Pick a time when nothing else is going on, and make them stage a filibuster; even if we lose, it gives the Senate idiots something to run on in 2010.)
Notorious P.A.T.
@PeakVT:
That is a good one. Thanks for linking to it.
jl
No use arguing about it now. The Senate mess is going to pass. Improving the thing as much as possible in conference should be the top priority for those who think it is salvageable.
I don’t mind if some blogs want to kill it. If they give their reasons, you can agree or disagree.
I hope at least one blog produces a list of feasible improvements, so the public can exert pressure.
I think moving up as many reforms as possible so the voters can see a benefit in the next couple of years is the most important.
Also, the move to near universal care absolutely has to be maintained. Universal care is not a ‘fetish’ as Robert (not the late Paul) Samuelson claimed. David Cutler, a much better economist than R Samuelson explained why universal coverage is solid platform for future improvement and reform, and cost containment, but I don’t have the link now.
ellaesther
@gwangung: Sigh. How often have I gotten in trouble because I was holding on to reasonable expectations?
But aside from that, it was just really interesting to me because it plain didn’t cross my mind at the time. I was thinking “Oh good, they’re picking all these people who know how things work in that company town, people with really good records and interesting ideas,” etc, etc. It didn’t cross my mind to think about how it would effect the layout of Congress.
Which may be why I’m not a planner with the DNC.
kay
@JGabriel:
I think you have to consider why only 30 Senators signed Sherrod Brown’s letter committing to a strong public option. He introduced it on the floor for the express purpose of showing Reid he had support.
If you add those Senators to the Senators who passed a bill out of committee with a public option, the count is 44.
It is imaginable that they did not want to commit to a vote they saw as politically perilous prior to when they had to. But why did they see it as politically perilous?
Had 50 Democrats gone to Reid and said they wanted this, I don’t believe he would dismiss that. Reid’s whole career was already on the line. He had nothing to lose.
jnfr
@Zifnab:
Compared to my dream bill? Not so much. Compared to current coverage, very definitely yes. A solid improvement on most fronts, with better coverage and care, and at least some cost containment. And with some significant reductions in insurance company abuses as well.
This chart from the Wonk Room over at Think Progress is pretty compelling for me.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m supposing none of you know what open thread means? Put down the goddamn HCR gun, OK?
ETA: Here’s some kitteh for yah.
Yossarian
Zifnab’s last post is what has always aggravated me about this debate, really. The idea that a public option was the “crown jewel” of health care reform never made the slightest bit of sense to me, so watching progressive hysteria over its collapse leaves me absolutely cold. The fucking crown jewel is universality. It’s always been universality. It’s been universality since Harry Truman first pledged the Democratic Party to health care reform, and the idea that universality (or near universality) should be sacrificed for some pissant little public option that a vanishingly small number of people would take advantage of, and that in its weaker form wouldn’t even drive down premiums, is a fucking disgrace. I have no sympathy for those who argue otherwise.
John O
I’m a single payer guy, and I still can’t believe they’ve gotten things this far.
My biggest problem is the delay built into it. I’m not sure how the Dogs complain if the all the House can get out of reconciliation was moving some time-lines up, because it’s clear to me the Dem holdouts in the Senate have all the cards, but voting against something you allegedly support just because it would happen faster is a weird thing to try to finesse, politically. (Not that they’re not capable.)
I think Obama did OK trying to explain why he supported a public option, and the public didn’t care, likely because they never believed a final bill would come to pass. Pavlov’s dogs and all.
General Winfield Stuck
Charlie has run off. I been driving around half crazy, the little rascal. Got the scent of a deer and off he went.
Zifnab
@John Cole:
I think they are politicians who worked long and hard to bring this baby to term, and their political careers and egos aren’t going to just let a bill they’ve worked this hard on die.
That said, you’re right. There is a bunch of good stuff in this bill. And I’m happy to see a lot of it pass. But, from a political angle, the insurance companies have a lot of leverage to buck the rules. The SCOTUS is very conservative friendly right now, and these regulations are ripe for overruling.
The regulations may stick, or we may need to rename this bill the Insurance Lawsuit Act of 2009. It would have been heartening to see a public option that we could be confident would play by the bill’s rules, rather than trying to fight every clause and amendment through every channel of court.
As for the subsidies / mandate insuring 30 million people? Again, that all depends on whether the private companies we’re enlisting to enact this legislation are willing to knuckle under and play by the rules. This could work, or it could just be giant hand outs, with all the money getting channeled through lobbyists and lawyers to deny these 30 million new clients any real coverage.
I mean, time will tell. But after the last ten years of corporate bullshit, I’m not encouraged.
I simply don’t trust private industry to do the right thing. And I don’t trust the judicial branch of the government to compel them to get in line.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Yossarian:
Oops. Missed there too.
AnotherBruce
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What he said, give it a rest man. People will settle down and we’ve got more fights ahead of us. I myself would like to fight Republicans.
Midnight Marauder
@Zifnab:
Yes. I think that “the best legislation we could get” from the Senate is still good, solid, effective legislation. Again, it could be better, but it’s still good. In other words,
JGabriel
kay: Thanks, Kay. Those are good points.
.
John O
@Yossarian:
For me, Yossarian, the crown jewel was an option to buy health insurance from someone other than a for-profit organization.
Robust enough, it would’ve solved your crown jewel, too.
To me it was a big let-down, and I’ll still take the bill(ish) and hope it gets better down the road. These things usually do.
We want stuff fast, but history moves slow.
burnspbesq
@R. Johnston:
I’d like to hear more about the fantasy world in which you reside.
jeffreyw
@arguingwithsignposts: fuck, I tried earlier
Let me give it another shot.
SGEW
@arguingwithsignposts: This is going to sound weird, but I’m kind of in love with your cat.
Jason R
Right now my frustration with the “kill the bill” liberals and progressives must be approaching the levels that John Cole experienced with conservatives in the whole Schiavo debacle.
Because of the pain she was in my mother had to literally liquidate her assets and force her self in to poverty to get medical coverage. Based on the details of the Senate bill my mom would have been able to afford coverage and wouldn’t have had to essentially bankrupt herself. The Senate bill isn’t perfect or what I would want (I believe in single payer) but it will help many and save lives that are being lost now. This all or nothing bullshit will kill people, I hope that these “kill the bill” drama queens realize that if it isn’t this bill it will probably be another generation before we have another chance to fix this and hundreds of thousands will suffer and die because of it.
John O
@arguingwithsignposts:
LOL. True enough. But this IS a place for political junkies.
I believe for the first time since I was a little kid, worshipping Bobby Hull and Stan Makita, that my home-town hockey team has a chance at a Cup this year.
So there ya go.
JenJen
@Jean: Just to keep it light, this was my favorite tweet-o-the-day:
jeffreyw
@General Winfield Stuck: Oh no!
John Cole
And now Adam Green is on Ed Schultz quoting Lieberman. Glad we all find Lieberman trustworthy now.
MikeJ
@arguingwithsignposts: I was about to say something very similar. NEver mind that I got sucked in and wrote about HCR too.
Green. Balloons.
Let’s go back to this morning’s Truffaut discussion. Tell me about how his script for Godard’s A Bout de Souffle mirrors Michael Curtiz’s Angels With Dirty Faces, and how ending with the line, “Il a dit que vous êtes vraiment une dégueulasse” is like Pat O’Brien telling the Dead End Kids that Cagney died yellow.
les
@Jim C:
Yeah, this!!1! Except that there weren’t 50 votes for reconciliation, and the budget committee, and such. And the coming up for reaffirmation in a congress likely to be less progressive. When did supposed progressives adopt the bushite “reality is what we make it” idiocy? If the HCR fiasco has taught us anything, it should be that the US Senate is not markedly progressive, has not been trending progressive over the last 40 years, and is not likely to turn progressive in the foreseeable future. I thought we were the reality based community?
Notorious P.A.T.
Obama said he wanted Lamont to win. . . and did nothing else. That would turn out to be a sign of things to come.
BR
I’m frightened that I was actually in agreement with Chris Matthews here. (Not on style, but on content.)
Yossarian
@Just Some Fuckhead:
An excellent point. Getting to 94 percent (in the Senate version) is something to airily dismiss because insurance companies weren’t sufficiently screwed. And here I was getting all excited about those 30 million Americans. Fuck me, huh?
arguingwithsignposts
@SGEW:
Yeah, so am I.
SteveinSC
@John Cole:
I had swung to “make the fuckers fillibuster til they faint” until Bernie Sanders got on TV and said go with it. When Sanders, the Senate’s only socialist gives it the nod, its good to go.
Comrade Mary
I’m making tourtiere tonight. Should I post my recipe?
gwangung
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Aw, come on…in 2006?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Yossarian:
Well, first you’re confusing health insurance with health care. And then yer assuming many won’t opt for the cheaper fine, right? (Serious question.)
Otherwise.. yeah, whatever.
Annie
@Zifnab:
While I take your points, I still stand by mine. And, I do get around. I am heavily involved in Northern Virginia. Congressmen and women are heavily influenced by their constituents. And, the media is influenced by visible public outcry. Why have the Republicans managed to control both the narrative, the media and Congress? Why have public opinion polls (and I do admit that most polls are highly dubious) not been strongly for the public option?
gwangung
@Comrade Mary: If it’s on topic….
itsbenj
Very imporant advice – NEVER ask for more than you want to get. Never shoot high so as to try to get as much as you can. Listen to people like John Cole and the bunch of “sensible liberals” here and don’t ask for anything, ever. Whatever we get offered is what we should accept and be happy about, no matter what it is. That is the way politics is supposed to work, right? Everyone agrees? Great. Martin Luther King? Typical ‘manic progressive’. You see where that got him. God damn, slaves would have had equal rights back in 1860 IF ONLY THE LEFT HAD SHUT UP.
Do what all the right-wing Dems say – have NO expectations what so ever, then you won’t be disappointed. Yeah.
Zifnab
@Yossarian:
I think you have “insurance companies weren’t sufficiently screwed” confused with “we aren’t sufficiently protected from another round of escalated insurance company ass rapings”.
Annie
@General Winfield Stuck:
Oh shit….Is he back? Please let us know….Please!
J.W. Hamner
OK… with the open threadness… I’m really enjoying Torchlight, a recent action RPG that will run on a netbook, since I bought it on sale from Steam for $10 (unfortunately no longer on sale). It basically plays just like Diablo, but you get a digital Lily or Tunch that will take your shit back to town to sell it for you and turns into a monsters when you feed it fish.
It’s definitely got the loot crack of Diablo down to a science. A nice time waster to get your mind off of HCR.
mcc
@Yossarian: Remember, the bill with the public option didn’t get the “crown jewel” either. It got us to 97 percent. Better! Neither there, nor as big as the difference as the difference between the bill we’re getting and no bill at all.
gwangung
I repeat myself…after being in civil rights stuff and minority representation issues for the past three decades…I’m getting an awfully bad case of deja vu.
arguingwithsignposts
@Comrade Mary:
Only if it includes a robust public option for all of us to eat. (ducks)
Just Some Fuckhead
@AnotherBruce:
Log into my Faceborg account and go for it.
Annie
@arguingwithsignposts:
thanks. I now live for Tunch and Lady Smudge pictures. She is so sweet. Have you tried the rope game yet???
John Cole
@itsbenj: SO now I’m a sensible liberal?
arguingwithsignposts
watching “From Dusk til Dawn.” Cool movie. Keeping with the open thread.
jeffreyw
@Comrade Mary: yes, along with pics
SATSQ
Yossarian
@Just Some Fuckhead:
On your first point– what? Unless you want to argue that not having insurance does not negatively affect your access to health care, you are playing fun word games. You’d further have to argue that a weak public option with higher premiums would solve this problem. You’ll forgive my tone if I say that both positions seem, well, dumb to me.
On your second point, are you arguing that the mandate should now be stronger? Color me confused, because I thought the “small fine” people would have to pay for avoiding the mandate would effectively subjugate working people to the evil whims of insurance companies. I was told this by most of the lefty bill-killers, so if that talking point no longer pertains, someone should send out a mass e-mail.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Yossarian: Thank you.
arguingwithsignposts
@Annie:
Got the rope game going, and also the balled-up piece of paper going. She’s hiding now, probably from the HCR debate.
mcc
@itsbenj:
The self-serving implication of your post is that the people mocking you here didn’t want or didn’t fight for the public option. Some of us fought for the public option, fought the mandate, but just happen to have come to the conclusion insuring 36 million Americans is worth fighting for, too. Even if it means fighting you to get it.
Incidentally, it’s funny, a bunch of discussions I’ve seen this year on wildly different subjects in which someone is trying to justify possibly going over the top in some sort of argument the democrats didn’t go far left enough, they always seem to want really badly to compare themselves to Martin Luther King. Nobody ever wants to compare themselves to Malcolm X. I don’t get this. Malcolm X was pretty awesome in a lot of ways!
Doctor Science
Since it’s officially an open thread:
Today’s puzzle: Geminid aurora.
Today’s book (really yesterday’s, I fell behind): The Discovery of France, long review with reading notes.
Annie
@arguingwithsignposts:
Smart girl….
itsbenj
@John Cole: I’m just saying, there is a gross disconnect between what ‘progressives’ are trying to achieve, and what you think they’re trying to achieve. And people keep making the mistake of finding the one or two most frenized people out there and ascribing their POV to everyone who can be loosely categorized as ‘progressive’. And then, once that turns into a big enough clusterf#ck, you get people actually arguing that trying for a public option or medicare expansion or what have you are genuinely bad ideas, just to spite people on ‘the left’ that you think have gone off the deep end. And by the time someone gets there – it’s self-parody time. Logic becomes a pretzel. Up is down, bad is good, etc.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“I do think that some segment of the Progressives have discovered what I call “making a great big noisy fuss.”’
Well, as the Villagers and Leiberman think a key part of a bill should be that the DFHs get screwed over, the freak-out on Dkos etc. helps reduce the chances of Leiberman screwing us over again if/when the bill comes back from conference. So there’s potential win.
Maybe the problem was the freak-out didn’t happen earlier.
If Ezra Klein hadn’t argued that the Medicare buy-in was actually a better deal than the anorexic public option we were trading for it, maybe we’d have had the DFH freak-out earlier, and Leiberman would have voted for Medicare buy-in instead of threatening to filibuster a policy he supported *three months ago*.
But its understandable. The left and the liberals have been focused on dealing with the healthcare problem. The centrists have been preening narcissists who extort concessions (Nelson) and then don’t necessarily vote for the bill they helped shape (e.g. Snowe, Collins). The right is on Planet Xob.
mcc
@itsbenj:
Here’s another possibility: People are attacking the one or two most frenzied people out there, on the grounds that they are (1) frenzied and (2) run large and relatively influential blog sites and also appear on cable television periodically. You are conflating criticism of those one or two frenzied people with criticism of “progressives”, even though in many (most?) cases those criticisms are actually coming from other progressives.
Warren Terra
Oh, for heavens’ sake.
A quick primer on the goals of health care reform, what this bill does (and doesn’t do) towards them, and the so-called alternatives.
First, the goals:
1) Regulate insurance, so everyone can get it (guaranteed issue or no-preexisting-conditions), so they can rely on it (no rescission). Make sure they can afford it (community rating so the companies can’t quote enormous rates to expensive individuals; and subsidies).
2) Stop the insurance companies from being able to gouge people for profit (the famous Public Option; better yet, true Single Payer).
3) Bend the cost curve, as medical inflation threatens to consume our whole society.
We gave up on (3) months ago, except for some small measures and pilot projects that are still in the bill. (2) was watered down to near-insignificance (with a late resurgence as Medicare For Some More), and then killed entirely. No version of (2) approved as legislation by any committee or chamber ever meant much. As a small part of (2), I believe the current legislation still ends the awful, exploitative Medicare Advantage program which overpays private companies to give insurance to seniors. Given all this, (1) is the part that matters: you will be able to get insurance. You will be able to trust your insurance. With community rating and subsidies, you should be able to afford your insurance. All of these are huge improvements; together, they’re genuinely good news.
Now, the alternatives to passing this bill:
A) Do nothing, and we’ll get a better bill later. Lets 50-some million Americans continue to have no insurance or none they can trust: not a good idea. There’s no chance of starting over during this Congress, or indeed this Presidency. If this effort fails, we have to assume it will be at least another ten years before the next effort.
B) Fnck Lieberman: use Reconciliation. As mentioned upthread, you can’t regulate private companies through Reconciliation (Reconciliation Legislation is only about spending federal money), so you lose (1) entirely. Only remotely worth it if you think you can get 50 senators to approve such a strong public option that it’s better than regulating insurance. Seems implausible.
C) Fnck the Senate: kill all filibusters. You can make an argument for this, but it happening is even less likely than 50 Senators backing a strong public option.
D) Lose the mandate. The bill includes guaranteed-issue and community rates, so in theory you could acquire insurance only once you’re already very ill, and at community rates which would make insurance companies untenable. The regulation only makes sense in the context of a mandate. The three are a package, and the guaranteed-issue and community rates are worth the mandate. In any case, if you want to game the system you can: get no insurance, which means you pay the 2%-of-your-income-fine, and then get insurance in the middle of an emergency.
E) Pass this bill, then use Reconciliation to add a Public Option. No chance this actually happens, though it would be nice.
MikeJ
@Doctor Science:
I’d have to check, but I’m fairly sure that book is on my amazon wish list, which mean there’s a good chance that before the week is over I’ll have it. Hope it’s good.
Steeplejack
@General Winfield Stuck:
Oh, no! I hope you get him back soon, Stuck.
WaterGirl
@General Winfield Stuck: Oh, no! You must be in a panic. I held my breath for 5 days when jeffreyw’s Jack (?) was missing, and he came home safe and sound.
Surely your little guy will come home soon!
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
Thank the FSM, got him back. A lady called that she had him, the tags with phone number saved the day. The little fucker, no more off leash. I should have known better, him being a stray.
arguingwithsignposts
More kitteh pics. Because I’m tired of this shit. I tried to warn you.
Zifnab
@Annie:
The news media – particularly the cable news outlets – are run by and for conservatives. The newspapers of record – the LA Times, the NYTimes, and the WaPo – have been heavily co-opted by conservative opinions. And anything on the radio that’s left of Glenn Beck is a rare gem indeed.
Combine this with the media’s general fascination with Tiger’s wood and Sarah Palin’s Facebook, and you’ve got a recipe for gratuitous amounts of stupid. You’re playing on the GOP’s turf.
Congress is decidedly NOT controlled by Republicans.
Democrats clearly control the House, and the Senate is only roadblocked by a handful of conservative Democrats who have been generally pliable, with a few obvious exceptions.
As for opinion polls, the health care plan has maintained a steady 40-50% approval rating:
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/healthplan.php
Opposition has been steadily increasing, but there are a host of reasons for how and why the plan has hemorrhaged support, not a few because those on the left feel it isn’t strong enough.
Case in point:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/21/817673/-Good-Polling-News-For-Democrats
Support for reform is strong. Support for this reform is shaky. That doesn’t mean the general public expects less from Congress. On the contrary, it appears that 6 in 10 want more in the form of regulation and cost controls.
General Winfield Stuck
@WaterGirl:
I shed some tears when the lady called. Don’t do that very often — thanks.
General Winfield Stuck
@Steeplejack: thanks
Jim
Sweet mother of mercy. I agreed with Tweety for almost all of that segment. I must now bathe and drink.
jeffreyw
@General Winfield Stuck: Great! That collar with info has worked for us before, 25 years ago when we were moving to our present home our boy dog jumped out of the P/U bed, we never noticed. Got a call hours later, he had made some new friends.
We are really liking the GPS collars.
Jim
@Notorious P.A.T.:
He issued a press release endorsement and sent $5,000 from his PAC, and nothing else. Exactly the same as Hillary Clinton. And Russ Feingold.
Annie
@General Winfield Stuck:
Wonderful news. Give the little guy a kiss from us, and then give him a good talking tooo. He needs to know that the entire BJ crew held their collective breaths until he was save at home…
Something Fabulous
@arguingwithsignposts: Ok, I know all these other ‘experts’ are saying what is cutest about her is the ears, but I, I bravely stand alone and say no! It’s the nose!!
SGEW
@Something Fabulous: I concur. Heartily.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Zifnab:
Thousand miles, single step, and all that. It’s a toehold, and as such it has value. Passing this bill gives cover for passing a better bill in the future, after the Hamshers have calmed down a little and stopped calling for blood sacrifices from the insurance industry.
It’s not going to be the last word in HCR before 2012, or 2016. Look at the history of the Civil Rights Acts of ’64 and ’68. This scale of change is going to take the better part of a decade to hammer out under the best of circumstances, never mind the environment we have now.
Steeplejack
@MikeJ:
I could have sworn that TCM was going to show Children of Paradise sometime this week, but I can’t find it in the schedule now.
They are showing a big helping of Bogart on Wednesday. Overlooked gem: Dead Reckoning (2:30 p.m. EST).
Something Fabulous
@arguingwithsignposts: Yep. The nose. Definitely, the nose.
Dannie22
@steeplejack
Les enfants du paradise was on last night at 2:45 am eastern time I believe
Something Fabulous
@SGEW: Yay! A few more and do you think we’ll have… the long-sought… nose-ularity?
Steeplejack
@Dannie22:
A-ha! Thanks. Another one that I never get tired of watching.
Annie
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Yes, I agree. Passage begins to change the narrative. While corporate interests control a large part of the mainstream media, they are still businesses, and therefore are sensitive to public opinion. People do want change, as the present health care system doesn’t work. I would still argue that even small steps in the right direction trump no steps.
Annie
@Something Fabulous:
The eyes…
Annie
@arguingwithsignposts:
What a wonderful Christmas. We have Lady Smudge pictures to look foward tooo…Thanks. And, of course, pictures of Charlie, now that he has returned home.
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck: So glad to hear it, Stuck!
BFR
@John Cole:
Big Burner fan (donated to her last year) but she really looked bad when Tweety went after her for quoting Lieberman.
When you’re star witness is a proven liar (who also hates you), you should really reconsider your position.
scudbucket
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I agree. One of the underemphasized motivations for HCR is that it is beneficial to US business. Chipping away at the insurers and the providers seems quite likely to me. More tweaking to come.
John Cole
@BFR: It kind of betrays a lot of what this is about to many progressives- Joe Lieberman. She could have cited Feingold, who said the same thing, but didn’t. Why? Because to a lot of folks, this is about Lieberman, and not the bill. It is the photo negative of why Lieberman was such a prick- to bash hippies.
Chuck Butcher
Taking out what the regs say about what ins cos are supposed to do, what does this actually accomplish as far as health care is concerned? I do NOT mean insurance, I mean actual outcomes.
To start with, will this get people into doctor’s offices? Will it pay for primary care, at all?
Does it keep $10K bills from happening to people who will bankrupt over such a number?
Does it or does it not mandate the spending of 1/12th a person’s income?
Would it not passing keep people out of doctors offices more, would it not passing keep people from being treated in hospitals? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then what is it that the mandate actually accomplishes in regard to the uninsured? Yes, it will keep their pretty big bills from not being passed on – that is somebody’s benefit other than theirs. What impact does it have on their health care?
Jim
@John Cole:
Kinda fun, though, to see Tweety so contemptuous of Holy Joe.
geg6
Just Some Fuckhead: Know that, if no one else is crushing on you much around here lately, I certainly am. And I agree that this isn’t the great thing everyone else thinks it is or that there is much chance of improvement of it before the public sees how bad it is and tosses more Dems out in 2010 than anticipated. But I think what I find infuriating is that people don’t really seem to accept the logical arguments I have and immediately start telling me that I’m as bad as a teabagger, a Jane Hamsher of the left, just plain stupid, or want 30 million people to die for a pony and a pat on the head. The bill is gonna pass. I’m still open to congressional Dems and the White House doing something from the agenda I worked for when I volunteered for Obama two years ago and not tinkering around the edges or punching hippies along the way. I want this Dem president to get a lot done over 8 years. I’m just not hopeful for any of that at this point. I suggest someone, WH or Congress I don’t care who, think about that and find a way to repair those relationships. I, for one, would prefer something in the form of simply starting all negotiations with Blue Dogs with the good progressive ideas Obama campaigned on and making concessions incremenatally from there. Obama may be center left, but he hasn’t shown much of the left part of that equation since the Inauguration. He could at least appear to give some of those progressive priorities some lip service and action, even if it’s all kabuki. You simply can’t throw away a large chunk of your GOTV foot soldiers by being the opposite of inspiring.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s not hard to imagine the deal Obama struck with the insurance industry at the beginning of this thing was predicated on no public option. It’s unfathomable to me why Joe Lieberman would express support for the medicare buy-in only three weeks earlier and then kill it with nary a peep from the Obama administration. To get at hippies? Come on. Why not just kill the whole damned thing then?
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You got it. An Obot conspiracy.
Just Some Fuckhead
@geg6:
haha. You noticed that too? No worries- when I’m on their side next time, they’ll love me again. They’re pretty fucking predictable that way.
General Winfield Stuck
@geg6:
LOL. Center left. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Politics doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, dumbass.
Annie
@General Winfield Stuck:
Good to have you back. And you and Charlie safe and sound…
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And what would you know about politics? Nothing whatsoever.
Tell us a joke. It’s what your good at.
General Winfield Stuck
@Annie: Thanks Annie!!
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Jesus, Stuck. You must be suffering from early onset Alzheimers. Have you been checked for dementia?
bey
@arguingwithsignposts: that is one cute kittykins you got there. Congrats on your promotion to Cat Staff!
I saw your posts earlier about Christmas, but was at work so I couldn’t weigh in. But if you’re still in the market for ideas, here’s one from me.
Rent The Lion In Winter (O’Toole and Hepburn)- the foundation on which all those lesser Dysfunctional Family Christmas movies is built. Make your very most favorite things for dinner and noshies. Make something special for Smudge too. Do things you love to do and remember that you have people all over the country thinking of you. And a cat who thinks you hung the moon.
At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark movie – pain is proof you can feel things deeply. The tradeoff of having a pain-free life is never having any deep attachments. Love is risky, but worth it.
So love that kitty, love yourself, and celebrate as well as you can.
/hug
Chuck Butcher
I’m in a much better humor now that I managed to get the Harley out for an hour or so. The alley my garage is on was a challenge between slush and ice, but most streets were fairly dry and temps almost 50F. The damn alley is shaded too much of the day to clear off, extreme care was called for on that.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Lame
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: Damn it, but that is one adorable girl. Really really adorable.
@jeffreyw: You continue to tease me with your culinary sleight-of-hand.
@General Winfield Stuck: THANK FSM you got him back and that I wasn’t here when he took off!
donovong
For the last time:
GREEN FUCKING BALLOONS!!
Don’t make me stop this car!!
Lisa
@itsbenj:
Ohhh the drama. The dramaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Now you just need to break into a full throated “And I’m tellin’ you…..I’m not leavin……..” for the Oscar.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Someone put the dog in the fridge, didn’t they???
NR
If Obama had really wanted to push for a better bill, he could have called a press conference, played the video of Lieberman supporting the Medicare buy-in three months earlier, called him out as the liar he’s always been, and publicly humiliated him in a dozen different ways.
Now, this would not have gotten Lieberman’s vote. But it would have utterly destroyed his credibility with the general public, and Obama could then have leveraged THAT if he’d chosen to.
But anyway, it’s a moot point. As Russ Feingold has been saying, this is the bill that Obama wanted.
Lisa
Seriously, I think this is the bill that the Obama Administration wanted. No conspiracy. It just is what it is.
Blog/comment hysterically about what a fucker he is and how is supposed to be the Noble Negro who makes all your progressive dreams come true, but this is the bill he wanted. It was clear from the beginning that he was NOT the socialist that the right feared and that the left (the quivering, delighted netroots) hoped for.
He was just this guy, you know?
General Winfield Stuck
@asiangrrlMN:
Thanks asiangrr!
asiangrrlMN
@donovong: Ha! Funny. Futile, but funny.
theturtlemoves
So, according to Nate Silver in that clip, who I have no reason to disbelieve, insurance company margins are around 3-4%. I used to work for a biotech company that manufactured reagents for biological research, among their biggest customers being pharmaceutical companies. We manufactured reagents that cost a couple bucks to produce and sold them for, say, $200. For a profit margin of what, 10,000%? Aggregate margins of under 30-40% were considered pretty bad for a product line. And that is just the first link in the chain. I’d guess Eli Lilly isn’t pulling 4% margins, either.
I’m not saying insurance executives aren’t jackasses, but they aren’t the major contributing factor to health care costs and maybe all this ire should be directed a little more efficiently. I personally will focus mine on those middle-aged limp-dicks singing about their magical penis pills or bathing outdoors in picturesque settings during the evening news that I have to sheepishly explain to my young children.
Fern
@JGabriel:
The fact that there were 52 votes for the bill as it was written does not in anyway suggest that they would all have voted for a “stronger, more robust” bill.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
Crickets?
Corner Stone
@John Cole:
This is kind of like trying to prove a negative. How the hell would we know what constituents would’ve done? Organizations that ramped up to support Obama’s candidacy?
We’ll never know will we? And the use of this polling is disingenuous at best. The fucking thing’s polling in the toilet because a lot of sober, sane and reasonable people realize that along with a little good a whole lot of “WTF?” is coming right along too.
The bottom line is that we could argue a lot about what effect Obama doing lots of things “could’ve” resulted in. We will never know. And neither will you.
Corner Stone
@Annie:
This is just an amazing statement. Really? You really want go here?
Corner Stone
@kay:
Anyone who can logically assess Rahm Emanuel and come to the conclusion he is not a corporatist? Not very credible on any other assessment.
mo
@Warren Terra
This is a really important point and proof to me that many in the loud “kill-the-bill-and-go-through-reconciliation” crowd are not being “reality-based” and are being driven by some combo of: blind ideology, spite, willful ignorance, or power politics.
What would come out of reconciliation would be better for insurance companies and worse for the sick, EVEN WITH A ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION (which probably doesn’t have 50 votes): Because reconciliation wouldn’t allow regulation of insurance companies, any bill that emerged would force all older people and those with pre-existing conditions onto the public option. Insurance companies, in turn, could offer attractive rates to the young and healthy, especially those who qualify for subsidies. (They do this now, but this customer base would expand because of the subsidies.)
Basically, without insurance regulations even a robust public option would end up being really expensive because it would be the only “option” for the sick and so would probably be much worse for them than under the current bill. AND insurance companies’ profits would increase because they would receive subsidies for new customers but only have to cover the healthy.
Update: I just reread that first graf and it’s harsher than I meant it to be – at least as applied to commenters and people who don’t follow this for a living – this is hard to sort through and I understand people’s misgivings, even if I think they are wrong-headed. I do mean my comments to apply, though, to the very public advocates of “kill-the-bill,” who have lost a bit of my respect.
Corner Stone
@itsbenj:
Sir/Madam –
It’s actually never ask for more than you can get, but really just learn to appreciate the things you end up receiving. There’s no point in pushing too hard, people will call you icky names and tell you that the votes just aren’t there. It makes no never mind that no one will ever really know if the votes ever “could’ve” been there if someone had tried to make them be there. Nope, it’s our proven tautology here at BJ HQ that the votes that are here are the votes that are here. They weren’t there because they weren’t there. They were never going to be there because they were never going to be there.
Just sit back and enjoy the ride amigo/a.
Corner Stone
@Jim:
Yep, nobody wanted to upset the old boys club that is the US Senate. Agreed.
Now wtf does it matter what anyone else did or didn’t do wrt what Obama did? Hmmm?
You the type that jumped off the ledge cause little Jimmy Johnson down the block did?
Robin G.
Nate Silver is HOT. How did I not know this?
mo
@NR
Except that we all agree that Lieberman is spiteful and “Obama” would have lost his vote for good. So we lose healthcare reform so that Obama could prove that he respects the left??
WaterGirl
@Robin G.: Smart is sexy.
Mnemosyne
@Bob (Not B.o.B.):
That has a lot to do with it. A lot of people are rightfully pissed off at insurance companies. It’s pretty hard to swallow that in order to get the results that we want, the guys who’ve been screwing us for a decade get to keep doing it, even if they don’t get to do it as hard.
The insurance companies are such perfect villains that they give cover to where the real financial sinkholes are — the provider side.
Robin G.
@WaterGirl: So are those glasses.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne:
And what did we do on the provider side? Not damn near enough.
Look, lemme tell you what would be useful in this discussion. What would be useful is if you fools would stop trying to assign the worst motives to anyone that doesn’t agree with you or otherwise engage in mindless mindreading. People that don’t like the bill have been ungodly clear about why.
Me, I don’t like the bill. I’ve also made the case in the comments plenty of times that insurers aren’t the issue that health care providers are.
Just stop please. Give it to Jesus. You got yer bill. Now breathe. Let it go. There, there.
scarshapedstar
The only thing that pisses me off about the “hard-nosed realist” line is the assumption that the Lieberdems were negotiating in good faith. Don’t try to argue that they have principles and the bill had to be adjusted to meet their requirements. Truth is they simply do not want the bill to pass, hence Nelson seizing upon a thinly veiled abortion ban as the very most important issue – give me a fucking break. Hence Lieberman, well, ’nuff said.
They didn’t want a bill to pass, and if they absolutely had to they wanted to strip it down to “mandate plus nothing”. They got pretty close. But those were their only goals; they never gave a rat’s ass about coverage, affordability, or human life. All they wanted to do was keep the insurance company
bribescontributions flowing.And this is what we negotiated against.
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead:
No way you moronic wanking troll with an agenda! We haven’t punched hippies yet!
ImJohnGalt
I don’t understand this argument. Aggregate profits of the insurance industry are indicative of exactly nothing. If I raise executive salaries by umpty-millions (and I recognize I’d need board approval for this), I can make profit margins 0.5%.
What’s important is how much of overall health care spending goes to insurance companies vs. health care provision. I guess Nate was trying to soft-pedal exactly how much of a boon this would be to insurance companies, but I remain unconvinced.
That said, count me firmly in the “this bill over nothing, anyday” camp.
wrye
That jacket looks for all the world like one thing and one thing only; a mountie uniform. Which makes no sense, unless it’s a deliberate nod to Canadian-style single payer healthcare, in which case I say: well played, and in charming fashion.
Corner Stone
@Tonal Crow: God but I loves me some punchin’ hippies. I mean, who doesn’t amirite??
Jane_in_Colorado
@Yossarian:
I believe the reason the public option was considered the “crown jewel” is because it was seen as the thin end of the wedge that would lead to single-payer. I myself support single-payer, though I believe it is a political impossibility at this time. As it was described in the earlier bill, though, I believe it would have made little practical difference. The importance attached to it was, I believe, primarily for its symbolic value.
BTW, isn’t Nate Silver, like, the biggest geek in the world? I mean that in an admiring way–truly. I think the guy is awesome.
Darnell From LA
30 million, 30 schmillion….I want my public option!
And if I don’t get it me and Jane Hamster are going to put on colonial style hats and march along side Glenn Beck and G. Gordon Liddy. Take that, you DINO sons of bitches!!!
Also, too!!!!!
Palin / Hamster 2012!!!
oh really
Chris Matthews is a rude, big-mouthed buffoon.
The job of the president is to move the country in the direction it needs to go, not capitulate to the spineless and stupid. You can’t get a better bill if you don’t try, and I think Darcy is right that the president didn’t try.
Nate typifies the nadir that the discourse in this country has reached: he calls it a great, historic bill and then admits that it falls far short in many ways. If…if…the bill stops rescission and excluding people with pre-existing conditions (the language that I’ve read won’t stop any private insurance company worth a damn), then there will be some short term benefits. In fact, since the bill doesn’t do anything substantial to rein in costs, it won’t be long before this bill will be completely inadequate. We’re supposed to believe that this was our only shot at reform (for generations, eons perhaps), but somehow we’re going to keep re-raising the issue to improve the bill (one assumes with smaller Democratic majorities and possibly a Republican president). Wow, that’s a bet I won’t take.
John writes off the possibility of a better bill, which allows the president a pass for not trying. The word historic does apply, I believe, to the mess this country is in. And patting ourselves on the back for half-assed bills (that would be embarrassments in any other developed country) is a great way to avoid facing how serious our position is. I think one reason why some on the left wanted to believe that Obama is something he is not, is because they believe (or realize?) that we need a great president, not a timid, corporate-friendly, moderate who thinks “audacity” and “caution” belong in the same sentence.
I’ll grant this to John — with this president and this Congress this may be the best bill we could have gotten. And that’s why we’re screwed. We have a risk averse president in a time when we need bold action, a thoroughly corrupt, dysfunctional legislature, thoroughly dysfunctional media, and an inadequately educated and informed citizenry.
What me worry?
Will
Did Darcy Burner come straight from the set of a Michael Jackson video? What on earth is that jacket she’s wearing?
Lisa
LOL Will! I was wondering whether I was the only one to notice that. She looks like she mugged Corey Feldman (after he mugged Michael Jackson).
oh really
@Will:
I hope you were standing at attention when you asked that question.