WTF!?!?!?

[Brigid]

Did I just hear Keith Olbermann right? A proposal to make purchasing private health insurance mandatory, with jail for those who don't? Where the hell are they going to put 48 million of us who can't pay for it? Just when I think the health care debate can't get any more ridiculous . . . :banghead:

[Robb]

1. On the plus side

...there's health care in the pokey. :shrug:

[ThomCat]

16. I wouldn't bet your life on that.

You only get healthcare in many cases if the guards feel like letting you get to it. Horror stories are very easy to come by.

For example, prisons deciding that people who have needed daily narcotics for years for pain who are denied anything but tylenol because the prison says that is sufficient. People in need of emergency care and surgery who wait in agony for days before guards decide to call an ambulance. You would never want to be a person with real health needs dependent on prison healthcare.

[Robb]

17. Just my usual snark. nt

[TankLV]

21. Sort of like being caught stealing cable, then having cable in prison...!!!

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. They are already doing this. In MA. RomneyCare.

The only way they can enforce mandatory purchase of over-priced for-profit insurance.

[geckosfeet]

11. Yeah but they don't jail you. They fine you if you can't provide proof that

you are covered when you file your taxes.

I don't know what they do if you don't file taxes.

[Ruby the Liberal]

12. If you don't pay your taxes (and fines), you have an opportunity

to pay with penalty. If you don't, you go to jail.

[geckosfeet]

20. Yeah. They always hold that over your head don't they.

[bbinacan]

3. I thought it was 30 million. n/t

[JBoy]

4. Poison pill. No politician will vote for this mess.

That's the GOP's plan. Help make a bill so unpalatable nobody will vote for it.

[corkhead]

13. Ding Ding Ding!!! We have a winner!

:toast:
I love Keith, but he is using the right wing teevee playbook to froth up his viewership. imho

[madokie]

5. I don't think that'll ever make it into a bill

that will be sent for Obamas sig. it's kind of like a person who has something for sale and they price it ridiculously high so as to start the price negotiations higher in hopes of getting more in the end. Thats what that is all about, imo

[glowing]

6. I think its a distraction to have everyone become so pissed that we don't get anything

at all. I don't think it would survive the entire senate body or the house. Its a distraction and probably yet another call out for the wingnuts to become even more crazy. AND what was the vote on that one. What repug and dem supported that shit? The more we see, I think the less we are all likeing.. many of them won't be around after 2010.

[ananda]

7. Obviously they're brains are stuck up the insurers butts.

No thinking is going on whatsoever.

[Canuckistanian]

8. Wasn't that from a GOP Senator?

Or Max Baucus (the GOP's bestest friend)?

I can't imagine a Dem proposing this as an amendment.

i think it's a poison pill to get the whole bill canned.

[krawhitham]

9. Olbermann runs his mouth all the time without knowing all the facts

The man does not even vote

FUCK HIM

[malaise]

10. Fineman says it was Max the owned by insurance

who thought that was a great idea.

[Autumn]

14. I read that this was the top story on Drudge

and it has been debunked.

[polpilot]

15. AS LONG AS IT'S NOT MORE THAN 10% OF ONE'S INCOME...INSURANCE CO. TITHE???

[flyarm]

18. Is The White House Drafting Secret Bill Without a Public Option?

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/10/01/is-the-white-house-drafting-secret-bill-without-a-public-option/

Is The White House Drafting Secret Bill Without a Public Option?
By: Jane Hamsher
Thursday October 1, 2009 9:38 am

I wish Roll Call were publicly available. Somehow, insiders talking to insiders behind a firewall dispense with the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that goes on for the benefit of the public. When the administration says "Obama supports a public option" while doing everything it can to pressure people into dropping their support, the pro-forma spin isn't taken seriously. Witness this article on White House plans to draft their own health care bill:

snip:

So, why would the White House then float such a story, only to deny it?

Well, consider who reads Roll Call. Aside from Kagro and Kos, I don't know too many bloggers who do. It's a subscription-based publication that lobbyists and Capitol Hill insiders pay to read. Witness the editorial on unfair "lobbyist intimidation" on June 17, when Baucus's staff told lobbyists that if they met with Republicans, it would be "viewed as a hostile act," and they would lose their seat at the negotiating table. It was Tom DeLay's K-Street project in reverse, written for an audience who thinks defending lobbyists' rights is critically important.

The Finance Committee bill transcribes the details of the deals that the White House and Baucus negotiated with all the health care industry stakeholders. So if the Baucus bill gets stalled, all those stakeholders like PhRMA, AHIP, the hospitals, the AMA, the device manufacturers, etc., etc., start to get nervous. They've plunked a bunch of good money down on advertising in exchange for their deals (just ask Tom Carper), and the last thing the White House wants is for them to start stepping out with the GOP.

Remember what happened the last time Billy Tauzin thought the White House was going back on the PhRMA deal? He yanked their chain in the pages of the New York Times and showed he was totally willing to air their dirty laundry if they tried to back out. The White House was forced to send Jim Messina into the shredder to verify it.

Shortly thereafter, John Boehner wrote a letter to Tauzin that read like something from a jilted boyfriend. Tauzin (and other stakeholders, and their money) will have many, many suitors should these deals start looking endangered. Ergo, leaking a story to a publication behind a firewall read by lobbyists assures them that if Baucus can't deliver a bill that memorializes the deals, the White House is willing to step in and do it for him.

While they may or may not be writing their own bill, they need to reassure health care industry stake holders that those deals will be honored in the final bill, even if Baucus can't get them through is committee. Because the last thing the White House needs right now is stakeholders leaking embarrassing documents because they're getting hinky at the thought that their deals might go south.

[Barb in Atl]

19. Saw Rep. Gingrey (R-GA Peach) on C-SPAN

touting this very thing today.

Automatically made me think it's a lie.

He also said there was no provision for stopping coverage for "illegal immigrants".

(Yawn) I'm at the point now where I want everyone to shut up and vote, for fricks sake.