NEWS JUNKIE POST
Dec 17, 2009 at 3:51 pmDean’s Rx for Senate Health Bill: “VOTE NO”
Too bad Howard Dean’s not calling the shots. If the former DNC Chair–who’s also a physician–was at the helm the so called Senate Health Reform bill might actually contain change we could still audaciously believe in. Dean drew the ire of both the White House and Senate Democrats when he said yesterday that the bill in its current incarnation should be killed. ” The way it is now, I’d vote no,” he said on MSNBC. Dean is pushing Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid to call for reconciliation, which would enable passage of a more progressive bill with a simple majority. “The Republicans would just ram it through,” he said. “Democrats have to get tough. We don’t have to be mean like the Republicans, but we have to be tougher.”
Today, as the nation’s largest union, the AFL-CIO joined the SEIU in vehemently opposing the current legislation, former President Clinton issued a stern statement calling opposition “a colossal blunder.” Clinton said the bill may not be perfect, but passing it is “the only responsible choice.”
As it stands the Senate version strips virtually all real reform out of the bill. Long gone is a public option, robust or otherwise ( a minimal public option remains in the House bill), And thanks to what “say no Joe” Lieberman called the “tyranny of the minority” when he co-sponsored anti-filibuster legislation back in 1995, so is the consolation prize Medicare buy-in option for folks over 55.
What’s left? For one thing, the mandates remain. Yeah, it seems the provision that would require practically every citizen to purchase private insurance or face a fine is encased in the cement of both the House and Senate bills. And the bill would put the kibosh on pre-existing conditions. But it’ll cost you. Something between three and five times as much as the “young, healthy rate.” Many of the widely ballyhooed penalties lodged against insurers vis-a-vis maxing out benefits and dropping coverage are dubious. Former Cigna VP turned industry whistle blower, Wendell Potter says the bill is filled with loopholes and the companies know just how to use them. ” This is a real gift to the insurance industry. This is the bill they wanted,” he said on ” the Ed Show’ on MSNBC Wednesday.
For his part, Pres. Obama continues to confound. He has stayed so far away from the legislative “sausage making,” choosing to spend inordinate political time and capital courting “bi-Partisan” support in the guise of Sen. Olympia Snowe and now has squandered the last two weeks coming out on the losing end of negotiations with Lieberman whose bitterness to the party that ditched him ( rightfully so) and allegiance to the health insurance industry that holds the deed to both his soul and that of his wife an ex-lobbyist for health insurance ( she’s under fire from Fire Dog Lake and others for her paid gig with the Susan G. Komen Foundation) made a brighter outcome improbable.
The GOP is a dead deal, Mr. President. Accept it and move on. They’ve been gunning for the bill from the get go. And anything else you come up with. The Republican effort is best summed up in the “Die-In” wackadoodle Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann staged earlier this week, and the “Prayer Fest” fright wingers including Bachmann and Senators Brownback and Demint held on the Internet Wednesday night to “kill the bill.”
Obama seems hellbent on getting a bill–any bill-passed so he can sign historic legislation and claim victory for the Democrats and his legacy. He admonished Senate Dems on Tuesday to stop fighting over” every element of the bill.” Some provsions may have to be dropped. You know, like all the good stuff. Just get him something, anything he can sign.
Seems short-sighted, no? Obama’s disappointed a lot of people and infuriated his base. And it’s showing in his approval rating, which has slipped to 47%( the first time he’s been under 50%). A new Wall Street Journal-NBC poll finds only 32% supporting the reform bill as it now stands; and 44% believe doing nothing is better than the reform in its current incarnation.
“There’s still time to get–not a good bill-but a less bad one, ” said Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas on Wednesday’s “Countdown” on MSNBC. “But all the bad stuff will be on the backs of the Democrats.”
Progressive stalwart Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa–a proponent of universal, single payer insurance–thinks there is enough good in this bill to vote for it. “It’s like we’re buying a starter house, not a mansion,” he said Wednesday’s “The Ed Show” on MSNBC. “We have a solid foundation to build on.”
But Dean, Move On, the unions and other progressives strongly disagree. In a bold “special comment” on Wednesday’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann called for a citizen boycott of any plan that forces mandates without providing a public option. “No public option, no sale, ” Olbermann said. “Fine me if you have to. Jail me if you must. I will not pay.”
As for me, I think I’ll move to Whoville for a while. At least there’s only one Grinch there. And in the end his heart grows so big ( hope he’s got coverage)he does the right thing, Maybe there’s still time for our congressional grinches to follow his lead. ’tis the season for audacious true believers, after all.
Bill Clinton had NOTHING to say when Bush unwound the government and intentionally crashed the budget, foriegn policy and flauntiung oversight from congress – NOW he is to be trusted with a position on an initiative he failed at??? Clinton rolled over for the Republican’s on monetary policy that led to this crushing recession.
He needs to be put in place – he evaporated for the 8 years that Bush undid America – let him stay under whatever rock he calls home.
What a ‘far left’ written article. This is the kind of partisan stuff that turn off so many people from the so called ‘news”. Its all an open table to skew current events to push your beliefs.
How is it partisan when it attacks the democrats? Are you familiar with the meaning of that word?
As a Canadian now living in this once (and hopefully will be again) fine nation, it never ceases to amaze me that the “left” and “right” are more than willing to squabble and bicker about “politics” and “policy” when the real decisions are made by the large corporations that actually run the country with a blatant disregard for its citizenry.
@ Bill Johanson – This ain’t that far left. This is a meat and potatoes assessment of a legislative strategy going awry. It is not even hinted at as a straight news piece. Learn what news is and does before you go slurring the left.
Visa vie? You mean vis-à-vis?
sorry but if the dems and the President think this is what the base wants, I have to ask them for a reality check. I voted dem, and support most of their measures. but this one just doesn’t make sense any more. However Dean and the unions are making sense to me. I would love to see the senate bill killed, and reconciliation take place. I like the fact that the majority rules. those that say reconciliation isn’t supposed to be used to dictate policy; I say “majority rules.” I understand the GOP supporters hating everything that their group did not propose, but its time that we take control out of the hands of the insurance companies and place it back with the consumers. If auto insurances were allowed to pull the same games that health insurers do; it would be outlawed.
thats my 2 cents
Auto insurance works pretty well in this country. Don’t like Allstate? Try Geico. Or Progressive. Or one of dozens of others. Auto insurance works well for three reasons: The insurers all have to compete with each other across state lines, you can buy auto insurance on your own without having to go through your employer, and the federal government pretty much stays out of it. If we could apply these three things to health insurance, we would get real reform.
Unless your goal is to create more government jobs (unions) or more government control of the economy (socialists) taking control away from the insurers and giving it to the government will just make the problem worse. The free market works best for consumers.
The Free Market gets bandied about like it is a THING – like it has proper weight and substance of it’s own. It doesn’t exist – it never did!! It never existed in the way it is talked about by apologists for the supply side. It is a theory that NEVER worked the way it’s deluded captives beleive.
What is called a free market is a scheme of extortion. Wall off materials and production – keep the specialized, isolated producers of the product away from the exchange process and keep the spread, which can be based on a host of factors – some imposed and some invented. That, in certain circumstances is a crime!!
Yes all of the unions want it, they have been bleeding the carmakers for many years with high pay for low quality no education jobs wiping bumpers for $40 per hour, long vacations, paid insurance policies for life, etc, etc. No public option is necessary, medicare is already running out in 2017 and they want to put younger people in it? No logic in any of this bill it should go down the drain….
Bob, unions are not the problem, corporate greed is. The corporations who have hijacked our government have given us this severely watered down HCR bill. This is the same government that pushed through ‘free trade’ agreements without labor or environmental provisions. Therefor, American workers can’t compete. That doesn’t mean unions are at fault, or bad at all. They protect the rights of people who create all of the wealth that everyone enjoys.
The real question is why is our economic distribution system so brutally tilted so that an American CEO makes 450 times what an average worker at his company makes? The rest of the western world is only about 30x.
Too many entitlement programs in this country as is, and now Dean and the rest of you liberal sheep want there to be more. The nation was built on the spirit of self reliance, we need to get back to that. If you are old we do give you Medicare, and I am o.k. with that. If you are in extreme poverty we have Medicaid, and I am o.k. with that but the poverty has to be extreme and the liberal dems want that poverty line raised. I am capable of and do work for a living, and guess what I have good health care. The company I work for would hire a good individual if he came along but I don’t see many come in here asking for jobs. Others who are capable of working need to get off their asses and figure how to bring some value to the table, and then they would have health care like I do, whether privately purchased or sponsored through their respective company is immaterial because ultimately it is the same expense either way. If you are capable of but won’t get a job you can die off as far as I am concerned. And sure that may sound mean, but is it not equally as mean to future generations to saddle them with our own incompetence and irresponsibilty? And is that not precisely what we continue to allow our government to do when it enables laziness. Get a job, buy healthcare, take care of yourself and your family!
If you life calling is to fight for social change, you were born at the proper time and place if you happen to be American. If you’d rather just live with the benefits of scary socialist government, I recommend emigrating to Canada, and it’s not a joke, I’m being completely serious/rational/logical. If you want to fight for the changes that will slowly come at their own pace, then fight. If all you want is to live in a place with public health care and education, just move. Trust me, they have net north of the border.
Sorry, I’m Canadian… and you’re full of it, proverbially and otherwise. The health care system there is rickety but works, there’s a better and less corruptible legal system, and better public education… with no gun-toting students. All that said, the American constitution is the finest political statement ever made, and I believe that this nation does have the capacity to renew itself in the spirit of innovation. But all this post-emperial bickering is such a waste.
Really do not care who is blamed for stopping this BS as long as it stopped.
In spite of America’s desperate need to reform the health care system, I applaud Dr. Dean’s honest and accurate commentary regarding the last balance of harm vs. good in the final draft of the senate bill.
There must be intelligent reform, especially given the complexity and stake of the matter, or nothing, except except further mistrust in politics will be achieved.
discussed with both parties and so is everyone else I’ve talked to
instead of trying to pass some basis needs of the people pre-existing conditions, competition across state lines so insurance co. can’t bleed the consumers, ability to purchase drugs at a fair price here in us so we don’t have to cross borders seems all our so called leaders are doing is trying to make political hay with very little or no concern for the general public. they certainally don’t have a problem giving themselves pay increases and increasing benefits.
Crossing state lines is not a solution. The country tried that with credit card companies, who all flocked to the state with the least regulation and most slack consumer protection laws: Delaware. Health insurance companies would do the same thing, so it wouldn’t make a better product, it would only make things worse.
I can’t believe that Howard Dean and I can possibly agree on anything, yet alone public policy. KILL THIS BILL. Restore a public option (not extend Medicare down to 55). Call for Reconciliation and pass it without all the BS amendments that have been tacked on trying to get 50 Liberals to agree. The only thing that that many Liberals could EVER agree on is that they hate GW.
And, of course, I meant 60 Liberals not 50.
@ Bill Johanson – This ain’t that far left. This is a meat and potatoes assessment of a legislative strategy going awry. It is not even hinted at as a straight news piece. Learn what news is and does before you go slurring the left.
Break this bill up into individual components or put a strong, robust public option back in and use reconciliation. Appeasement has broken this bill.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by NewsJunkiePost: New blog post: Dean’s Rx for Senate Health Bill: “VOTE NO” http://newsjunkiepost.com/2009/12/17/deans-rx-for-senate-health-bill-vote-no/...
Excellent article – and why can’t we scrap this ‘lemon’ and start fresh with something that will be the RIGHT thing for everyone. This is so watered down at this poiint that it will be useless and costly to everyone but beneficial to – you guessed it the insurance companies. Thanks for putting it out there.
Hi, I found your link on Twitter. I am ashamed for how the politics is done in the US today. Chicago style is a mild way to say it. Last nights vote is a prime example, one of many.
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