Grassley Says Obama (privately told him he is) willing to drop public option

[kpete]

Run time: 03:16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IcbXw45eqA   Posted on YouTube: July 25, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: July 25, 2009 By DU Member: kpete Views on DU: 1649

 

[grantcart]

1. not what Grassley said

Grassley said "he told me that he is willing to look at alternatives"


I am willing to look at an alternative but we all know that the alternative won't meet the objectives that Obama has outlined.


Feel that your usual very high standard in reporting is not reflected in the misquoting of Grassley (who is an unlikely source to capture Obama's nuanced answer well).

[foginthemorn]

4. Grassley said that Obama told him privately that he (o.) was willing

to look to alternatives . so kpete was correct.

[grantcart]

8. looking at other options is not even close to "willing to drop"

Looking at other options is a polite way of saying that if you can solve the problem then yes I would be willing to talk to you about it (but we already know that the other options are not going to fix the problem that is stated).


Dropping public option means that you are willing to drop it without any consideration of solving the stated problem.


In any case the subject line should have quoted the Senator correctly and you could have argued that it was tantamount to dropping the public option.


At no point in the video does Grassley say that Obama is willing to drop public option.

[foginthemorn]

9. Carried to its logical conclusion,

then it is true. If and I say it is a big IF--what grassley is saying this is horrible. I hope it is not true.

[emulatorloo]

12. willing to consider “reasonable alternatives”. What if they are all "unreasonable"?

You gotta remember that Grassley has an agenda here.

I expect any alternatives from the repubs to a robust public option will be pretty lame and unreasonable.

[foginthemorn]

19. yes, you

are probably right when speaking of the Republicans.

[Salviati]

5. I'm willing to look at alternatives too... like single payer.

I think that the proper response to all of this extra "deliberation" that the republicans want is to put single payer back on the table. If we've got all of this extra time, surely we can debate all of the alternatives can't we? Even if we don't end up with it, it will put the public option back in the middle of the spectrum where it belongs.

[foginthemorn]

7. Yes, it is disgrace to the Democrats that they dismissed

the single payer option without a debate.

[LaPera]

10. What difference does it make?

Republicans (with help from the republican-democrats) are going to stall, any the bill up in committee until health care for all is pushed off the table forever into oblivion.

With the help of of the paid-off "democrats" in both house (who are really republicans only with a "D" after their name & almost always vote republican).

Because the Dems health insurance bill (the republicans don't even have a bill) will offer a public option, shit let alone mentioning single payer....

Public option is still too much for the republicans and insurance corporations to accept they don't want to lose a single nickel and will continue raising rates & premiums for even more profits.

It's all about defeating any bill that offers any government program that threatens the insurance industries profits and the republicans are there to make sure of it with lots of democratic help.

Screw the uninsured, throw off the truly sick off premiums what difference does it make? Republicans are going to which is more like over 100 million people uninsured (not the 47 million figure they ALL have been using & quoting since 2001).

The truly sick they cost the insurance companies profit, find a technicality in their premium and throw them off...This is a business just like selling washing machines.

[Botany]

2. Grassley want to keep the money flowing in

Top 5 Industries, 2005-2010, Campaign Cmte
Industry Total Indivs PACs
Health Professionals $203,906 $27,300 $176,606
Insurance $148,848 $16,950 $131,898
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $127,850 $37,050 $90,800
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $126,337 $48,537 $77,800
Lobbyists $100,446 $95,946 $4,500

that is about 1,415,000 dollars he has gotten from the current system


http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00001758

You keep it up Sen., and in 2010 when the voters of Iowa have a choice between you
and your support for "for profit health insurance" and somebody who wants to help
the people and you will get your ass kicked.


co-ops please.

[tomm2thumbs]

3. on government health care plan - 'President would look to alternatives for that'

and he added later - (Obama is) 'looking for reasonable alternatives' to the government health care plan.

In my opinion, if not calling it a 'government plan' will push it through, let's do it. (wink, wink, nod, nod)

These are probably the same right wingers who think it isn't sex if you pull out at the last second. So let them hear what they wanna hear.

[JDPriestly]

14. History instructs on why we need a government plan

Grassley's proposal to have no government alternative is a no go. Why? Because we have been there and done that, and it did not work.

My mother tells me that Blue Cross/Blue Shield were instituted as non-profits (co-operatives in nature). After resisting the idea of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield non-profit, doctors soon learned that they could count on payment from non-profits and the idea of non-profit medical insurance caught on.

I recall that when I was a child, hospitals were community-owned or run by non-profit religious organizations. Doctors were on their own.

Gradually in the 1970s and 1980s, for-profit organizations, inspired in great part by the plight faced by non-profits seeking the large amounts of capital needed to purchase the latest high-tech medical equipment, seized on the idea of exploiting the health care "market" for profit. Non-profit and religious-run hospitals struggled to keep pace, but were eventually taken over by for-profits.

In my work, I have reviewed information about a couple of the takeovers of the non-profit, previously religious or community hospitals and healthcare facilities. I am not an expert in the area and the sample of cases with which I am familiar is small. But what I saw was pretty ugly. Of course, I may have just seen worst-case scenarios.

What was so ugly? Non-profits are funded to a greater or lesser extent by tax exempt donations. The for-profits were advised by the various states that tax exempt money remaining in the non-profit coffers could not be used for for-profit purposes. So, state attorney generals, for example, made deals in some cases requiring the for-profits to set up non-profits that would receive the tax exempt money and use it for non-profit purposes. Generally, the non-profit that was to be set up was some sort of charity care.

Shall I let you guess the end? It's pretty obvious. Some of the for-profits used accounting and organizational schemes to avoid their commitments to use the tax exempt money as required. It got pretty messy in some cases.

As I see it, carefully regulated non-profit and for-profit providers will play a role under the new law, but we also have to have a public option, that is a public insurance, not necessarily a public provider option. The government probably won't get into the business of hiring and paying your doctor in the way the VA does. Hospitals will probably mostly be non-profits.

What we need is to have the choice between entrusting our healthcare insurance dollars to the government with the understanding that the government will pay the providers we select, whether non-profit or for-profit or to for-profit insurance companies. The government would charge enough to cover costs but not pay dividends of high salaries to executives.

There might be some way to have a robust alternative of non-profit or cooperative health care insurers. But I doubt it. Non-profits including cooperatives are just too vulnerable to attack and take over by greedy for-profits. It happened before. That is why just having co-ops and no public plan alternative is a no-go. We will just end up where we are today. Remember, we are talking about insurance companies, not healthcare providers.

Why hasn't the for-profit insurance system worked? The purpose of a for-profit corporation is to make money -- not to save human lives. The purpose of healthcare is to save human lives.

For-profits cannot be trusted to decide on how much or what kind of treatment a person should receive. Why? Because they have an inherent conflict of interest between their shareholders who want profits and their insureds who need coverage. That is true with any for-profit insurance company. The for-profit motive controls costs when it comes to car insurance. But when it comes to life and death questions about health care, the for-profits have failed. We wouldn't be having the national debate about this issue had they worked well.

The government is not the perfect agency for making the kinds of decisions that have to be made with regard to who gets what kind of healthcare. That is why President Obama has stated that there will be a commission of doctors charged with the task of establishing guidelines for deciding on your healthcare.

And, of course, we voters through our representatives in Congress will decide what portion of our national wealth should be devoted to healthcare.

Perfect? No. I doubt that there is a perfect solution. But the solution we have now is killing people -- really killing people. It cannot continue.

[foginthemorn]

6. WHOW--if indeed Obama did say this--I would

say this is bombshell as Obama has always spoken FOR the public option.

[emulatorloo]

11. PLEASE CORRECT YOUR THREAD TITLE before we get 1000s of "Obama is EVIL" posts

THANKS!!!

[GeorgeGist]

13. For the record ...

what Grassley says in public usually isn't true.

[Hulk]

15. Does this guy sound a little like a feeble minded dumb ass??

He probably heard thunder outside and thought God was speaking to him. This dim witted stuffed shirt needs to retire to his 10 acres out back, and let someone with some intelligence take over in Iowa...preferably a Democrat, and preferably someone that will work for the people and not the lobbyists.

[tooeyeten]

16. Yes

[Juche]

17. You can't keep medical costs down without a public option

And I'm sure Obama knows this, and since he has talked about the importance of keeping costs down, I doubt he'd ever get rid of some form of public option.

A public option, due to lower overhead, is going to be 20-30% cheaper than private plans which means private plans will be forced to become more efficient to remain competitive. W/o that impedus, there is no reason for private plans to cut costs since they will be competing with each other.

Sad part is senators like Grassley know this. They hate the public option because it does work, and work too well to the point that the public will choose it. So they want to kill it as an option.

[The Wizard]

18. Single payer

How's that for an alternative?

[stevenleser]

20. Two BIG problems with this OP. #1 - that is not what Grassley said, AND

#2 - Grassley has a well known tendency to jump the shark.