single payer became a robust public option.

[branders seine]

a robust public option became a weak public option became no real public qualifies for any real option at all.

universal coverage became cover the uninsured became cover a few of the uninsured.

rein in the insurance companies became mandates with fines and jail time for those who do not do business with the insurance cabal.

Change we can (finally) believe in.

[Aramchek]

1. Single Payer was never on the table. You weren't listening to Obama.

[branders seine]

3. single payer was on the table until Obama took it off after inauguration

in one of his few acts of actual leadership since coming to power.

single payer was part of Obama's own position as late as early in the primaries

YOU weren't listening.

[Aramchek]

9. He never supported Single Payer as a Candidate.

He said it would be ideal IF we didn't have the current system that exists.
He never, not once, said he would support its passage.

Your hearing must be selective.

[branders seine]

17. He did not reject single payer (which he had vocally supported previously)

until he emerged as one of the major primary candidates and released a sketchy health care plan.

Even then, he opposed mandates, which he now champions. He insisted on insurance industry cost controls through a public option for every American, which he rejected along about the time of his then-secret meetings with Pharma.

Defending Obama's actions now as consistent with what he said during his campaign is laughable.


Besides, Obama is only part of our problem--and not the worst of our problem. He won't be around all that long, but the corporatism that now openly runs our country will be here until the revolution.

[Orsino]

25. Congress fucked over this bill, not the president.

Blame the White House for not leading with all its might, maybe, but the semifinal product we're able to criticize now has little to do with President Obama.

Until we cam, in one election, replace five hundred or more members of Congress with better ones, don't expect any miracles. This is incremental change, and rickety and corrupt as it is, it's about the best we could reasonably expect out of the Hill.

[Cherchez la Femme]

30. No, but Obama seems to have misplaced his bully pulpit

He SAID he had it, but it's never been seen.

[branders seine]

32. It worked pretty well when he needed to rally support for trillions

of dollars for the banks (and a few measly hundred millions for stimulus).

[Stinky The Clown]

23. Just because he said stuff doesn't make it right.

It just makes it his.

[bobbolink]

28. I'd really like to know what he gained.

What was the deal?

$$$$$?

Power?

Staving off a threat to his family, or his kneecaps?

What was it?

[Taverner]

2. All that matters is we lay the groundwork

Personally, this approach would have been better if they just said "Medicare for All"

But still - build on something there, rather than thin air...

[branders seine]

4. "build on" is nonsense.

If clear majorities can't get it any closer to right than this abomination, Democrats sure won't "build on" anything when they lose seats in 2010.

This program was designed to fail, and fail it will.

[Taverner]

5. Who is elected today is not who will be elected 5, 10 years from now...

[branders seine]

7. Damn right it won't be.

(Although perhaps not the way you think.)

[Taverner]

10. You would be surpsied where my sympathies lie...

[branders seine]

18. I'm a fan of yours Taverner,

but this bill can be "built on" in only the wrong way. It is no basis for a progressive health care future. It will make things substantively worse, not better.

[Taverner]

22. Yes, the Senate bill is a huge concession to the insurance industries

Basically we are paying them off

We need the Public Option though

But the insurance reform items are key

[27inCali]

27. nice defeatism there

that defeatism is also part of the reason why it's so hard to get good progressive legislation through, so many lefties are incapable of making hard decisions -hard compromises to achieve a certain goal and the first time they are asked to make a painful trade off, they throw up their hands in defeat and start pushing a defeatist meme with all their fellow Progressives. In war, you lose some battles, and some losses are incredibly painful, but if you wanna win the war, you take the loss and keep fighting.

as much as many DUers would like to paint themselves as champions of the downtrodden, it's hard to imagine such a bunch of defeatist retreat monkeys lasting long enough to be the champion of anyone or anything. If you aren't strong enough take a hit and come back, get out of the way, don't just stand there and work to discourage everyone else...

politics is deeply disappointing by nature. The people who eventually get what they want are the ones who know how to swallow that disappointment and come right back swinging.

and if you do want to paint yourself as some sort of hero or champion of goodness and righteousness and everything Progressive, you'd better understand the number one prerequisite of being a hero -LASTING.

this fight aint over yet. I don't care if it looks bad, there's too many people counting on us not to give up.

[ipaint]

33. Well then you can march down and tell the 18 million that will remain

uninsured in 2019 all about the painful sacrifices "you've" had to make.

You know those folks, they are the same folks that have landed on the 'painful tradeoff" list for the last 40 years.

[Kansas Wyatt]

12. If the votes weren't allegedly there now, what makes you think they will be later?

This 'foot in the door' BS is getting old, because the Republicans / Conservative Democrats are about to chop off that foot.

At LEAST a Strong Public Option, without any giveaways to the Insurance Industry.

White House - Check
Senate - Check
House of Reps - Check
2/3 of the American People - Check

What is the problem?
:shrug:

White House - Suspect
Senate - Suspect
House of Reps - Suspect
2/3 of the American People still want at least a Strong Public Option, without any giveaways to the Insurance Industry. - Check

Again, what is the problem with support?
:shrug:

[Taverner]

13. Because We Democrats had to make some very dubious sacrifices

Consider how many Blue Dogs are in the House and Senate




-------------------------


We need to keep the Democratic Congresscritters like Pelosi and jettison the ones like Baucus (or even Reid for that matter - he could have done some serious good, and he pissed it away)

I am just looking to the future, that's all

The day may never come, but better to have it when it is, eh?

[Xithras]

24. Do you realize how politics works?

This may indeed be a "foundation", but it will be at least a decade until this gets touched again. No reasonable politician is going to expend his or her political clout to revise a major piece of legislation that was "just passed". I'd bet hard earned money that whatever passes now will be the law of the land until AT LEAST the 2020's.

Social Security was passed in 1935 following a political fight not unlike the one we're seeing today. It was reopened for debate in 1939 because the original funding model was flawed, and the subsequent fight very nearly eliminated it right then and there. Of all the expansions that backers were hoping to get into the 1939 amendments, only one (a coverage increase for single mothers) actually made it in. After that, it was considered such a hot potato that nobody touched it again until the 1950's.

Many of the people on DU today will be long dead before this "groundwork" is ever developed into anythinng remotely similar to "Medicare For All".

[27inCali]

29. I'm under no illusion that this will be done quickly

some of us have kids and are thinking about what kind of world they will be raising their kids in.

[valerief]

6. Don't forget the anti-abortion blob that will ooze into every nook and cranny of govt-funded

programs.

[Taverner]

14. THIS is the shit we should be fighting IMO

This is the kind of shit that sets policy down the road

[Selatius]

8. I have a dollar. I can split it any way I want. So...you get 1 cent. I keep the other 99 cents.

That's what is happening in Congress between liberal politicians and everybody else. The liberals get 1 cent.

The Public Option in the House bill is very small and likely will not stir up enough competition to really bring down costs. There are other mechanisms in the bill that may serve to slow the bleeding, such as a ban on excluding people with pre-existing conditions, but to be sure, the bleeding will continue, just at a slower pace.

[Coyote_Bandit]

11. The telling thing

about this sequence of events is how little principled commitment there was to actually enacting healthcare reform.

Fuck all the sorry politicians who lacked the political skill, the intestional fortitude, the personal committment, the humanity, and the compassion to have done better. They'll likely not be getting my vote whgen they seek re-election.

[joeycola]

15. well said.

[branders seine]

16. bingo.

[BrklynLiberal]

19. Very sad...and very true. There really was no political will for healthcare reform..

[ThomCat]

20. What you said.

I totally agree.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

21. The man in your avatar

would agree with you. And I think he would have fought damn hard for it too.

R.I.P.

[27inCali]

26. you can't lay it all at Obama's feet

he's got a lot of soulless fucks to get around in the House and Senate (He's not a dictator you know).

just stop looking for easy answers like "blame that guy! ok, problem solved" -no.

so much of the reason why this country is hurting so bad is that people are fucking mentally lazy and have allowed so much garbage to go on and have turned around and blamed some ridiculous scape goat instead accepting the hard truth about how wide-spread corruption is everywhere in our government and how much we are at fault for letting ourself be distracted by stupid divisive social issues fights that don't change any laws or minds.

[branders seine]

31. I don't.

Just the parts where he has failed to lead or has led in the wrong direction are his fault.