Maybe someone should ask Olympia Snowe whether she would vote for a bill with watered-down protection for pre-existing conditions. Otherwise it seems rather silly just to toss it out there.
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David
Arrrghh!!!! How is that an improvement over the Senate bill? How does negotiating with conservative Senators improve a bill that’s not liberal enough?
Kryptik
@David:
It improves it because ‘Shut up hippie, we failed because we were too leftist’. That’s how.
But yeah. Anyone who thought the bill would actually be improved at this rate obviously hasn’t been hippie punched enough yet by our stalwart leaders yet.
Ailuridae
@Kryptik:
Sadly the hippies were doing the punching this time by demagoguing a perfectly adequate piece of legislation. I just hope John comes in from that branch he marched out on before he snaps out from under him. Lets hope he recognizes the bloody Doc Marten foot prints Jane Hamsher left in her hasty retreat
Citizen Alan
This is why I am now begging my Blue Dog congressman to pass the shitty, shitty Senate bill — because I think
CarterObama is so desperate to not have HCR fail on his watch like it did in ’94, that he will accept anything — anything — in order to get it passed. Even more onerous anti-abortion provisions. Massive tort reform up to and including the abolition of medical malpractice. Complete abandonment of the preexisting conditions exclusion and the recission ban. I don’t think there is any limit to how badCarterObama is willing to allow the HCR bill to be so long as he can say he passed it with bipartisanship and Kumbaya and blah blah blah fishcakes.David
The bill has only gotten worse over time, why would it start getting better now? Just pass the damn bill already.
Um Yeah
Obama should just take whatever lands on his desk and issue a signing statement instituting single payer.
I am not even sure if I am kidding.
inkadu
Did I pick the wrong two days to step away from the computer.
gwangung
Yeah, that gets me. HCR opponents have been getting nothing but wins. You start over this year and you think they’ll roll over? YOU HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING TO CHANGE THE CONDITIONS!
I don’t get it.
General Winfield Stuck
@inkadu: You took the wrong day to come back to it.
MobiusKlein
Well, it does seem possible to leave the existing bill from the Senate in limbo, you know. As long as they don’t actually vote it down, then can go back to it.
When the Senate makes a worse bill, tells the House to eat shit and like it, they can eat the first bill with 50% less poo.
Libertini
I would say “Just shoot me now,” but if it weren’t fatal, that shooting would leave me in a terrible bind. I have no health insurance.
I’ll leave you with a little comic relief, Jerry Clower’s coon hunting story, with the newly revived popular phrase, “Just shoot up here amongst us…”
==-+
This country is seriously fucked. Period. I applaud Tim for whipping the House, and no that’s not just a throw away line, I do. However, here’s the situation.
We have two parties.
One party is feckless and scared of their own shadow. As much as we like to bag on the teabaggers for pissing their pants about terrorism, the Dems are worse.
Then there is the GOP, who are more interested in getting back into power than governing.
We can’t raise taxes because the Dems are fucking pussies, we can’t cut spending because both the GOP and the Dems won’t rock the boat called the “status quo”. Oh and anyway the only thing on the table for cutting is the social safety net. Not that big bag of waste called national security (TSA, Blackwater…looking at you to begin with).
The GOP is going to kill in 2010, and you know what? The Dems deserve to be trounced. They haven’t done shit, aside from argue among themselves and protect their big money interests. While they may not be as blatant as the GOP in sucking on the big corporate tit, they’re just as bad.
And then there is the ignorant American Public. We are a bunch of rubes. We are. I’ll betcha, for every person you know that really is informed, you know 10 that couldn’t name the Speaker of the House, or the VP. The bedrock of democracy is an informed electorate. 90% of the American public would rather watch American Idol than follow current events. Fuck, for most of them, American Idol IS a current event. Of that 10%, more than half has bought into the Roger Ailes propaganda machine anyway. Last I looked at TVNewser Fox had almost more views than all other nets combined.
And for those of you that blame the media, I call bullshit. The News media exists to make a profit, and you know what? Trash sells, Drama sells. They are just giving the public what it wants. We are the problem, not them.
Lastly I’m not breaking new ground here by stating that the Californication of the US is in full effect. Problem is I don’t see how this works out. I don’t see how we get our country back. The minority will hold the majority hostage. And it now gets worse. We’ve always had the best Congress money can buy. With today’s Supreme Court ruling now corporations have freedom of speech. They now have all the benefits of being a person without the corporal responsibility.
Bookmark this post. I’ll donate $10 to your charity of this blogs choice for each wrong prediction.
– HRC fails
– Meaningful Financial regulation fails
– Part 2…in fact something will pass that will actually benefit the banks.
– Unemployment hovers around 10% for the rest of the year.
– DADT not repealed.
– Bush tax cuts will be extended.
– While the Dems have reconciliation as an option for some reforms, they will not use it.
This country is quickly slipping into second nation status, and the GOP is rooting it on, the Dems are too incompetent/beholden to their own campaign $$ to do anything about. To top it off, the only somewhat, sorta valid third party alternative seems to be the ‘baggers. Even then they are (thankfully) ripping themselves apart.
Bottom line: We’re fucked, and you know what? It’s going to happen on the Dems watch and they’ll get the blame.
SGEW
“We” are the ones “we” have been waiting for. “We,” here, meaning “the citizens of the United States, in toto“; and we, my friends, are bloody ignorant apes.
You know who’s really disappointed right now? Barack Obama. He might have really believed the hype of hope. He called it “audacity.” Alas, I fear, the better word may very well be “temerity.”
Me? Eh, I still have a ways to go to hit the same state of cynicism that I was occupying circa 2005 (“History reeks of nothing but blood and bullshit, and any small scent of hope has been buried neath the rest of it”). Just the fact that the U.S.A. hasn’t invaded anyone under false pretenses, has apparently stopped torturing innocent people to death on an institutional level, and is not actively impeding international attempts at climate change mitigation elevates my political-philosophical-emotional state a damned sight higher than where I was five years ago, when I was trolling this place as a crazed left wing lurker.
So, where are we now? A tentatively declining, increasingly plutocratic status quo, minus the warmongering fascists in positions of executive power? I’ll take it! I’ll take it! To ask for anything more, my darker fears murmur, is to tempt destruction. Historically speaking, things could be oh so very much worse.
SGEW + [redacted]
mey
@Ailuridae: Lol! Yeah, it was the hippie’s fault. It’s was always the hippie’s fault.
Ailuridae
@mey:
Again, there were perfectly legitimate criticisms to be made of the Senate bill, the excise tax it contained and the excise tax broadly. Those weren’t the arguments made here, at FDL or at dKos. Those arguments were dishonest, brutally so, and adopted right-wing talking points and tactics. You can’t attack from the left using right wing arguments. That’s what Jane et al were either duped into or went along with willingly.
And now an incredibly progressive and just piece of legislation won’t see the light of day because its merely foundational and not progressive enough and doesn’t have a pony included. Yay!
Citizen Alan
@Ailuridae:
I disagree that it is incredibly progressive and just. I think there’s a 5% chance we can build on it in the future to something decent and a 95% chance it will be a disaster for the Democratic Party and for the American people. I have finally come around to supporting it only because, for the reasons I stated above, failing to pass it now will lead to passage of something even more hideous later one after
CarterObama gets done “reaching out” to the GOP.Uriel
@inkadu:
No, you picked exactly the right too days to walk away from the ethernet umbillical.
Your mistake was only taking 2 days. You should have made it 5, so that you could start fresh with the new “everything’s going to hell” news cycle.
==-+
@Ailuridae:
‘zactly. The Senate bill sucks. But it sucks less than the status quo.
Ailuridae
@Citizen Alan:
40B a year for Medicaid. Finally closing the untaxed hose of compensation running from corporations to insurance companies. Substantial insurance reform. 30M people covered. Preserving Medicare for a minimum of another ten years.
Yeah, its imperfect. And if they had acted faster in the Senate or held Coakley’s seat they would have passed a better bill. But you bet your ass its fucking progressive and nothing on the social justice side sniffs it going back to 1965. And, again, a huge contingent of the Democratic Party can’t support it because they didn’t get what they wanted.
Uriel
Just t pointing this out, but this “comprimise” isn’t some big white flag- it’s the natural outcome, if what you eventually decide to do is turn the larger bill into a buffet style “take only the best parts” series of mini-bills.
As much as people wanted to vilify it, the only thing that made the no-pre-existing-conditions and no-rescission parts of the bill even vaguely tenable politically or financially was the mandate. Given the political heat from both the left and the right over that exact issue, once you adopt cafeteria style legislation, you have to accept that that will be the first thing to go. The only other option is political suicide and an even more unstable health care scene, with everyone involved scrambling to figure out how to
get aroundaccount for the obvious outcome of people popping on and off the insurance rolls depending on how they feel that morning.So it’s inevitable that, once you allow the feel good option of eliminating the mandates, you have to account for that in some way. This is what this is, nothing more. Thank the “no mandate” hardliners if you feel like it, but don’t complain that it’s out of left field or a betrayal.
To be honest, absent the mandate, guaranteed insurance coverage for kids who suddenly find themselves afflicted with leukemia or liver disease is pretty bold, politically. It sucks, in the larger sense, to be sure- but if all you want are the cherries, your sundae is going to be a lot smaller.
I’m not sure what the “shit sandwich” version of that metaphor is, but I’m sure someone will come along and provide it.
Citizen Alan
@Ailuridae:
Fine. Whatever. I don’t care anymore. Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the fucking Senate Bill carved onto a golden tablet. I don’t give a shit. Pass the fucking bill already, because if we keep dawdling,
CarterObama and Evan Fucking Bayh won’t have time to completely dismantle Social Security before the 2010 midterms.Sleeper
@Ailuridae:
It’s really annoying that you keep insisting that any opposition to the Senate bill is just hippies being egotistical or selfish. Go ahead and keep doing it if makes you feel superior, but don’t think you’re persuading anyone who doesn’t agree with you.
Ailuridae
@Sleeper:
I’m not trying to persuade anyone who disagrees with me. I’m trying to provide hard evidence of what’s actually in the bill to those people who post who
1) don’t have time to understand its contents
2) are prone to believing the worst about every piece of legislation
3) struggle to understand issues or finance, taxation and insurance.
If it makes me feel “superior” in some way its not intellectually. Its that I find it fucking loathsome to deliberately misrepresent facts to scare the shit out of people because I didn’t get what I wanted from a piece of legislation. Almost all objection to the bill in this thread adopts language and tactics off of Heritage or Redstate and openly misrepresents the contents of the bill. Sorry, thats fucking loathsome.
I wanted a much different bill. But just because I didn’t get my ideal ‘Ailuridae’ plan doesn’t mean I can’t honestly assess the bill as a huge progressive victory and an imperfect starting point like Social Security in 1935 for a great social good.
mai naem
@Ailuridae: I am sick and tired of your assertion that it’s all the left’s fault. Excuuuse me but it was Max Baucus who wasted 4 fucking months in the finance committee kissing up to Grassley, Hatch and that idiot from Wyoming. And then there was time wasted on kissing Oympia Snowe’s eighty year old ass. And this bill that you claim is so progressive is only progressive because the left fought for what little good is in it. The only thing that is in the bill that was in it from the beginning was the preexisting conditions and apparently now even that is up for “compromise.” I support passing it now in the House but stop the blame the left. Oh, and if you read the post yesterday you would know that Bart”Family Fundy” Stupak says he had 10-12 votes to stop this bill because his religion says no abortions under no circumstances.
scarpy
@mai naem
No, the pre-existing coverage is not the “only” thing that is in the bill that was there from the beginning.
It IS, though, one of the only things that’s in there that directly benefits the middle class in a big way. (Actually that’s not even true — the subsidies would reach a huge portion of the middle class. But in Washington-speak, a “middle class” family makes between $100K per year and $500K per year, and that’s who ALL of these politicians are catering to when they’re not catering to the super-rich.)
And that’s the issue: the freak-out of the so-called progressives is nothing more than another variant of I-got-mine, go-fuck-yourself. To be fair, they are just the last in a long damn line of people with that attitude, and they are coming to the party only after everyone else has saved their corporate sacred cows.
But let’s be clear: the Senate bill is now tanking because no one wants to tax the upper edge of union health benefits. Union members on average do better than the people this bill would benefit. But not well enough that they or their advocates are ready to take on any of the burden (and they’re only being asked to take some of it) to insure poorer, often browner people.
This is the “progressive” objection, among politicians if not the activists. That, and the fear that imposing the taxes necessary universal coverage — under ANY scenario — will destroy the Democratic party for a generation. The rest is window-dressing.
So no, you certainly can’t blame ALL of the failure on progressives. In fact, most of the responsibility for failure lies elsewhere — with the GOP to start, and then with centrists. But you know what responsibility DOES lie with progressives? Covering the uninsured. Because that is something that they, and really ONLY they, care about. It’s THEIR priority, not the centrists’. Certainly not the GOP’s.
For the rest of them, failure is success. Oh, sure, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad will bleat about the tragedy of health care’s failure. But they don’t care that much. They get too much insurance money, and it will continue to flow either way. And obviously the GOP, and their base, want the bill to fail. Blaming them wins you nothing in the election because that’s just crediting them with victory.
Progressives are the only ones who are supposed to give a shit about covering the uninsured. But at this point they are discovering that they are just as much in thrall as the centrists to paymasters uninterested in universal coverage. And that is what you are seeing, not some principled opposition to a corporate give-away. They have it in their power to take one vote and achieve something they say is a core principle of their politics, and tweak it down the line. But instead they want to keep (some, not all!!) unions happy and shift the blame.
Robin G.
If the pre-existing condition clause goes… I don’t see the point anymore. The people who need it the most, who *want* it the most, still won’t be able to get insurance. I won’t say it’s worse than nothing, but if the Dems think this is going to appease anyone, they’re mistaken. I don’t intend to fawn all over them for offering me a Tic-Tac when I haven’t eaten for days.