Republicans Will Be Toast In 2010 If The Dems Pass Health Reform, And They Know It

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/politics/141440/republicans_will_be_toast_in_2010_if_the_dems_pass_health_reform%2C_and_they_know_it

Republicans Will Be Toast in 2010 If the Dems Pass Health Reform, and They Know It
By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet. Posted July 21, 2009.

If Obama and the Democrats get health care reform done, the Republican Party is finished in the next election. So it's pulling out the stops.

If President Barack Obama succeeds in signing a major health care reform bill into law -- one that provides a public plan for people currently priced out of the system -- he will achieve what at least three presidents before him had hoped for, and failed to do. And he will likely deprive the Republican minority in Congress from anything approaching a comeback in the 2010 midterm elections.

However, if health care reform does not pass early in Obama's term, the Democrats will likely face midterm elections amid rising unemployment figures with a record of having passed legislation characterized as "bailouts" for megabanks and large corporations -- bills whose benefits to the economy have little impact on the person who has already lost a job. So GOP leaders are focused like a laser beam on stopping health-care reform in its tracks.

As Congress cleared two major hurdles last week toward agreement on the provisions in such a bill, the Republican pique approached a new level of shrillness.

Just days after three committees in the House of Representatives passed a jointly crafted bill for a future floor vote, and an important Senate committee passed a version that is reconcilable with the House bill, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., showed the GOP hand. On a conference call with a group of right-wing operatives, according to Politco's Ben Smith, DeMint said, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." (He was talking to members of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, some of the people sponsoring those right-wing tea-bag protests.)

- snip -

Democrats still have a ways to go in getting a final bill ready for passage in both the House and Senate. But last week's committee votes, combined with the seal of approval for the House bill from the powerful American Medical Association (which long opposed any sort of public option), as well as the progressive coalition known as Health Care for America Now, apparently put the fear of God into Republicans who, for the first time, saw a possibility that Obama could win this major prize.

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[Fumesucker]

1. It depends a great deal on what the final bill looks like..

Truly meaningful and positive reform will do in the Repubs..

A bandaid, or worse a mandate for private insurance with a weak public option will put the Repubs back into power faster than most people would credit..

All IMO, of course.

[FormerDittoHead]

5. Exactly. It could end up being a clean sweep FOR Republicans...

If it's just a 'no fault' mandate REQUIRING everyone to buy PRIVATE health insurance (unless you're practically on Medicade already)...

*AND*

IF THERE ARE NO PRICE CONTROLS TO GO ALONG WITH THAT

*AND*

If the public option somehow DOESN'T QUICKLY (not 10 damn years) let regular people (not those who are on the threshold of Medicade already) join that plan, producing material competition for private insurance...

THEN IT'S ALL BULLSHIT AND I WON'T GIVE A SHIT ANY MORE BECAUSE IT WILL MEAN THAT THEY WON'T GET ANYTHING *REAL* UNTIL AFTER I'M ON MEDICARE ANYWAY.

That means no more donations, and I may skip voting an election or two because WHAT THE FUCK DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE TO *ME*?

[nightrain]

6. yes. For me, it depends on what the final bill provides and

how it actually works.

If we get some watered-down "protect the insurance extortion corporations, can't enroll in the program unless...., multi-layered complex and confusing, duplicative, unaffordable to real people, and practitioner paperwork-heavy, small risk pool" bill, then it will be because the bought-off representatives refuse to enact decent legislation. We'll know a few years down the road whether people are actually getting care, or if it's just a transfer of wealth from us to the insurance corporations.

Given the proposals I've seen offered so far, I'm not too excited--as a practitioner and a patient.

edited for clarity

[opihimoimoi]

2. Pubs 'mated...never saw the Jaws closing...Obama the chess master using the Fibonicchi Gambit

Gop queenless and rookless

[jaxx]

3. Well the Mo Joe's think that Obama should just wait and not be in a hurry.l

They're spooked. He's done too much, he's going to spend too much, he needs to call in the pub senators and ask them what they want and cave.....this is the wish of the A.M. repugs.

Go get em President Obama....they are not your friends.

[Liberal In Texas]

4. The repubs are trying to drag this out until after the summer break.

The longer they can stall the process the more they figure the people will get pissed off at Obama and the Dems.

The Dems need to say, no Health Care Bill, no summer break. Stay until it's passed!

[nightrain]

7. I'd rather see a "good" bill pass than a crappy one.

I don't see an adequate one on the table yet. Too many caveats and exclusions. None of them address the underlying problems with how we do the provision of health care. Maybe there's something to be said for the tortoise approach, not the hare.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. I agree that if it is a good plan, Democrats will win big

But just getting any plan is not going to do that. If people are facing a new bill, a premium mandated, dictated to them during such fine economic times, they will lose.
I do not know one person who is just hoping for some reform, any reform. I know lots of people who are worried as hell that they are going to be given a burden they can not handle. Most folks can not simply 'find' another few hundred a month right now. The unemployment in my area is over 12%. So around here the question becomes "how much do we have to pay, how soon, and is it cheaper to pay the fine?" That is just the fact.
Many people around here voted for Obama in the primary because of his claim that he opposed a mandated, dictated purchase. He was extremely clear that he opposed them, and also that Hillary was for them, and said if you do not want a mandate assigned to you, vote for me, not for her, with her terrible idea of mandates. And that is what it is.

[Liberal In Texas]

12. That's the repub plan, force everybody to buy health insurance.

If people can't afford it, to subsidize the insurance companies. It's nothing but corporate welfare and a windfall for the insurance industry.

The public option is supposed to be designed so even unemployed can afford it.

Personally, I'd like to see single payer, but we might have to get something before we can get that.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. Ah...but the Democratic plan uses language designed

to treat GLBT families differently than others. So while your family might be fine, it looks like mine will not be, not at all. We are not 'approved by the Faith Based Office' and one of us makes far more money than the other. We are not allowed joint returns. The government will sometimes treat us as a 'household' but never as a family. That is, if they profit from that. Most of the time, we are considered legal strangers to each other.
So unless you can show me how my family will be treated exactly the same as others, the Democratic plan seems damn Republican to me. Forced premiums dictated along theologically bigoted lines. A law designed to discriminate against your neighbors. Good stuff!

[bdamomma]

9. repigs are afraid that Obama's HC plan may work.

repigs do not give a crap about the American people.

[nightrain]

10. probably so. so let's get a good affordable comprehensive

open to all kind of plan, and have it be effective within a year.

[tekisui]

11. They will be toast for several election cycles.

As long as the public option is in the final bill, they will be screwed. It is against everything they stand for. THey will be forces to accept it forever or forced to run on a platform of taking away citizen's health care. Just as Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA health care is untouchable, so will this public option be. And, Dems can run on strengthening and expanding it.

[kentuck]

14. And Democrats may be toast if they don't...

pass any health-care reform. The majority of people want it.

[Wednesdays]

15. K&R

:kick: