Lawerence O'Donnell just said that Bill Clinton was for his plan or

[xultar]

back in 1993 but that the WH wanted him to preach take what you can get.

I find that fucking funny that the very progressives that hate Bill Clinton so much because he's DLC and the DLC is conservative... yet

Obama' the Progressive hero is asking Bill to throw that aside and tell the Dems on the hill to take what they can get.


That is some ironic shit.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Irony is, indeed, ironic. nt

[Barack_America]

2. I heard today that Clinton spoke in favor of the trigger?

Not sure what to make of it, whether he was serious or not.

[Sebastian Doyle]

9. If these mealy mouthed cowards want a trigger so goddamn bad, how about this....

Put your badge away Agent Mike, I'm not going "there"....

Why not a REVERSE trigger?

Go entirely single payer for 5 years, and if it hasn't cut costs and improved health care, allow the corporatists back in to compete.

Bet these chickenshits would never go for that scenario. Because they know damn well THAT trigger would never be pulled. They couldn't fabricate a big enough lie to justify it, even if they had Cheney on the payroll.

[ProleNoMore]

3. From Single Payer To The Trigger - My How Far We Have Fallen

eom

[napi21]

4. I also think the story about BC telling the Dems if they don't pass

something, what happened to him in 1994 will happen to them in 2010, and I think he's right.

As much as I'd live to see something like Medicare for all, we have to recognize we have a very diverse Party by design. When you have diversity and independent thinkers, you have a very hard time getting consensus on anything!

[John Q. Citizen]

10. Do you think Obama will shove NAFTA down the Dems throat? That's why congress flipped

in 1994

Clinton passed NAFTA. Dems controlled both houses at the time and a minority of Democrats along with the Repos passed NAFTA. The unions faught it all the way.

then in the 1994 Mid term Republicans voted in almost exactly the same numbers as voted in the 1990 midterms, but Democratic turn out was way down, especially union turn-out.

Bill Clinton never ever took responsibility for that. He instead tried to claim that congress' failure to pass his managed care bill was the reason the Dems lost both houses for the first time since Eisenhower. The problem with that claim is that it makes no sense. No one was pushing for the Clinton proposal. Grass roots groups had been entirely shut out from the process. The only group promoting it was the White House itself.

[Captain Hilts]

15. Is it Bill Clinton's fault Dems lost seats in '92?

[John Q. Citizen]

18. Redistricting changed things, but they held the house. The Senate remained unchanged.

[blue_onyx]

20. He passed NAFTA...

with the help of other Democrats such as Kennedy, Kerry and Vice President Biden. Interesting how criticism about NAFTA is usually directed at Clinton but not other Democrats.

[Captain Hilts]

23. True. And it's not noted it's CHINA not MEXICO that tanked the job market. nt

[John Q. Citizen]

24. A majority of Dems in each house voted against it. But yes, he had help.

[blue_onyx]

25. Yes, I know most Dems voted agaisnt it

Although in the Senate it was very close (28 against, 27 for). If the Dems in congress had stuck together in opposition of NAFTA, it wouldn't have passed. Congressional Democrats who did vote for NAFTA deserve to be criticized just as harshly as Clinton.

[Captain Hilts]

13. I think THAT's the reason the Prez sent him. nt

[FrenchieCat]

5. Is this the thread where we enter into a contest to compare and contrast

Clinton to Obama, or what?

As best as I can recall,
back in 1993,
my understanding is that there was no similar public option being offered....
but there was some sort of private exchange system with mandates and heavy subsidies....
but I don't recall the offering of any government administered system.

In 1993,

The core element of the proposed plan was an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees through competitive but closely-regulated health maintenance organizations.

The Clinton health plan required each US citizen and permanent resident alien to become enrolled in a qualified health plan and forbade their disenrollment until covered by another plan. It listed minimum coverages and maximum annual out-of-pocket expenses for each plan. It proposed the establishment of corporate "regional alliances" of health providers to be subject to a fee-for-service schedule. People below a certain set income level were to pay nothing. The act listed funding to be sent to the states for the administration of this plan, beginning at $13.5 billion in 1993 and reaching $38.3 billion in 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993


Am I wrong?
and if so,
can I get the information that would be correcting me please? :shrug:

[John Q. Citizen]

11. You are correct. The Clinton plan was "managed care." The Public Option was invented

by Grad Student Jacob Hacker and first published in his paper in 2001, and then updated in 2007


http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%e2%80%9cpublic-option%e2%80%9d-was-sold/

“Public option” refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, “dreamed up” by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.

[newspeak]

6. hmm-on KO tonight

I thought KO stated that Clinton basically said do whatever it takes to get it passed. I didn't hear anything about him going for a strong public option. I thought it was more about compromising :shrug:

[TheWraith]

7. That is NOT WHAT HE SAID.

He said that in 1994, Clinton was for the Clinton plan or nothing at all, whereas now he's on board with the White House strategy that 80% of what they want is worth passing a bill for.

[John Q. Citizen]

12. Rahm said passing any bill at all was his definition of "success."

That was a number of months ago.

[spanone]

14. that's how i heard it too. i think this is a total misinterpretation

[xultar]

16. I fixed it based on your comments. But what I was trying to get at is that Bill had more

in common with what Progressives want and they still bitch.

[Cha]

17. Don't confuse the OP with facts..she's on a rampage.

[xultar]

21. You have yet to ssee a fucking rampage. Unlike some I can admit when I'm wrong.

That is what makes me a better person.

But if you want me to put on a rampage....bring it.

[Cha]

22. Good, glad you admit when you're wrong.

[John Q. Citizen]

8. Even funnier is that the public option wasn't invented until 2001.

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%e2%80%9cpublic-option%e2%80%9d-was-sold/

“Public option” refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, “dreamed up” by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.

Or this, by Jacob Hacker on his idea, the Public Option

http://www.endecast.net/2009/09/some-insight-into-origins-of-public.html

[ecstatic]

19. Is it irony or an example of two democrats who have learned from the past?

What's the definition of insanity?

[Pirate Smile]

26. I took it more as Bill no longer thinking his strategy of only accepting exactly what you want was

the way to go - he knows that didn't work and we got nothing for a decade and a half. He said get what you can and you will have time to amend it and perfect it as it goes along.

It may piss people off but it's true IMO. People with pre-existing conditions can't wait another 15 years to try again. What Congress is going to be willing to do this again? The lesson will be that the crazy tea-baggers were able to kill health care reform. Just imagine the insanity next time. Nobody in Congress would go near it again for a least a coupld of decades.

I like Bill and think he's right. Why in the world follow his model? He learned from his failure because it didn't friggin work.

Rahm in today's NYT:

"Let's be honest."

"The goal isn't to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution. I'm passing it through the United States Congress with people who represent constituents."

"I'm sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute — my brother being one of them — who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal."

I know I may be a minority here but I'll take the possible over exercises in futility in favor of an ideal that is not going to pass.

People like to blame this on Rahm but I read a long time ago how one of the big things Obama learned from his community organizing days was this - he cared more about what could actually get accomplished to help the lives of people struggling and was not interested in the ideological fights followed by glorious failure that left people struggling in the same position they'd been in before. Get something actually done to help people. Screw the theories and high-minded intellectual debates that do nothing to help the lives of real people.


edit to add - I sure as hell don't see Obama being treated like a progressive hero around here. Quite the opposite.

[FrenchieCat]

27. Your op was incorrect in its original form when I responded,

Of course Obama learned from Bill's defeat, and so did Bill.
but It didn't have anything to do with being progressive vs. being something else,
it has something to do with which approach will work in bringing health care reform
to the American people, rather than giving them not a doggone thing again.

The test shows that Bill's way didn't work. That has already been proven.

The fact that Obama is willing to bargain, to compromise doesn't make him less than Clinton,
and anyone who comes to that faulty conclusion should be corrected.

Being progressive, when you are running the show, means making progress....
Choosing to stick to one's gun at the peril of actually achieving progress doesn't really count
as progress in the end if no progress happens.

Plus, Bill wasn't asked to throw anything aside....
he went to the Hill and spoke some truth that he learned the hard way, via experience.

So yes, it is ironic that the message that one gets from your op at the end,
was not the one you had intended......