Obama Double-Crossed Progressives on Health Care

[depakid]

Matthew Rothchild at The Progressive pretty much sums up the questions that will come to many people's minds during the next round of reforms.

Are you feeling like a chump yet?

If you're a good progressive, and you wanted single-payer health care for all, or, second best, Medicare for All Who Want It, or third best, a robust public option, or fourth best, a paltry public option, now you've got nothing, nada, zippo.

Has it ever crossed your mind that this is the way President Obama wanted it to be?

That he tossed in the public option at the beginning only to get progressives on board, knowing full well that he was going to jettison the public option by the end?

Have you considered that maybe Max Baucus wasn't the problem? And that maybe Olympia Snowe wasn't the problem? And that maybe even hideous Joe Lieberman wasn't the problem? But that Obama himself was the problem?

After all, Obama never once said he wouldn't sign a health care bill that didn't have a public option in it.After all, Obama dumped on the public option at almost every opportunity, calling it just a "sliver" of the overall package, and not the most important sliver at that. After all, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was huddling regularly with Max Baucus when the Montana Senator squashed the public option the first time. And after all, Obama didn't even ask Lieberman to back the public option.

Seems to me that Obama played us all for fools. His discussion of the public option was a cynical charade from the start, and now he expects all good progressives to rally around this "historic" health care bill?

Forget about it.

More; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/23-14

Observation from by one of the supporters of the Senate bill (Professor Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago):

President Obama, I have some other unsolicited advice for you.... You have genuine fence-mending to do with your progressive base: not with liberal incrementalist professors, but with larger progressive constituencies that look to you with such hope and that play such a key role in your 2008 victory. Dr. Dean's recent statements are only one symptom of a broader and potentially dangerous problem.

Progressives have taken their lumps this year. Single-payer was off the table. Then there was the robust public option, which steadily evaporated into a residue of its former self before being jettisoned. Then there was the Medicare buy-in. Then there were the Stupak provisions, and more.

...the frustration is building. At times, it is stoked by the comportment of your top advisers, some of whom speak a bit too even-handedly about the excesses of both right and left, and who can be casually condescending about the need for progressive constituents to appreciate the realities of hardball politics. The same frustration is stoked by your administration's visible reluctance to expend political capital to pursue the public option and other progressive goals in health reform and in other policy arenas, too....

http://www.alternet.org/politics/144730/hey%2C_dr._dean%2C_president_obama%3A_it%27s_time_to_get_real_with_progressives_?page=entire

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ShortnFiery]

2. It's CORPORATE legislation. A gift of billions of our middle class tax dollars ...

to the Insurance Cartel and Big Pharma. The Progressive Wage-Slave American gets NOTHING.

[polpilot]

18. Be thankful. We could have been triple-crossed. Double-crossed is O.K.

[bigwillq]

4. Could you consider editing?

:shrug: Your usage of the word "rape" bothers me. Thanks.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

5. And he drove on their lawn...

Curse you, Obama!!

[stevenleser]

3. Disagree (nt)

[tridim]

6. The President and ALL Democrats won today.

Sorry you don't want to participate in reality.

[depakid]

14. Your chess piece amply demonstrates that you wouldn't recognize reality

unless and until it jumped up and bit you on your ass and bankrupted you (or your parents).

Obama and the Democrats have a growng problem with their base- one that due to both the substance and the procedure illustrated by this bill- will only increase over time.

[Vinca]

7. Another thing was bothering me today. Remember over the summer

when we'd get emails asking us to hold healthcare gatherings to cheerlead for "reform." I didn't do it because I didn't see how you could promote a bill that didn't exist, but many people did and at most events the vast majority wanted either single payer or a public option. It feels like a real betrayal.

[Armstead]

8. What was that he referred to last year -- The Okee Doke?

Can't remember but it was some term he used to refer to a con game.

He was better at it than we realized.

[liberal N proud]

9. It was only a single cross

:sarcasm:











:rofl:

[donco6]

10. k&r

[treestar]

11. It's the way the Senate wants it to be

It's the best we can get out of this Senate.

[Raine]

12. Agree nt

[guruoo]

13. It will reduce my healthcare costs and for that I say...

Thank you, Mr. President.

[depakid]

15. Wait until you find out the hard way that it won't-

and that instead, you're left with high deductible, high copay junk insurance that you can't afford to use- all the while adding to the coffers of abusive health insurers- and increasing their power over responsible reforms

Don't worry, though- they're be a LOT of other people in your boat, so there'll be plenty of folks to commiserate with.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

16. i must admit, i really do wish i had your ability to see the future

how do you do it, crystal ball, tossing bones, reading animal entrails? I am fairly sure most of us here would like to know

[ima_sinnic]

17. oh, really? and you know that, how? is this one of those "trust me" things? "faith" perhaps?

link please?

[depakid]

19. It's precisely what the bill is designed to do!

That's where the economic and regulatory incentives are-

You don't have to believe me- or study economics and health policy on the graduate level- or work in the field- you can have look at what the folks here have to say:

The bill would leave hundreds of millions of Americans with inadequate insurance – an “actuarial value” as low as 60 percent of actual health costs. Predictably, as health costs continue to grow, more families will face co-payments and deductibles so high that they preclude adequate access to care. Such coverage is more akin to a hospital gown than to a warm winter coat.

Congress’ capitulation to insurers – along with concessions to the pharmaceutical industry – fatally undermines the economic viability of reform. The bill would inflate the already crushing burden of insurance-related paperwork that currently siphons $400 billion from care annually.

According to CMS’ own projections, the bill will cause U.S. health costs to increase even more rapidly than presently, and budget neutrality is to be achieved by draining funds from Medicare and an accounting trick – front-loading the new revenues while delaying most new coverage until 2014. As homeowners seduced into balloon mortgages have learned, pushing costs off to the future is neither prudent nor sustainable.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/december/pro-single-payer-physicians-call-for-defeat-of-senate-health-bill

[SpartanDem]

21. Because experts have said so

from the CBO to those in academia


Health care reform looks like it’s finally ready to pass the Senate, now that the Democrats have 60 votes in hand. But here on the left, not all of us are jumping for joy. Some think the Senate bill is just barely better than nothing. Others think it’s worse than even that.

As this argument goes, health care reform won’t do all that much to help people who need it. Insurance will still be expensive and even people who have coverage will discover they owe significant out-of-pocket expenses once they get sick. A public insurance option might have made this tolerable, since it would have provided better, cheaper coverage. Without it, many of us are arguing, reform is just a big giveaway to the insurance industry--one that produces little social progress.

It’s certainly true that, under the terms of the Senate bill, insurance would cost more and cover less than many of us would prefer. But would it really produce little social progress? Is it really worse than nothing?

One way to answer this question is by comparing how a typical family would fare with reform and without. At my request, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber produced a set of figures, based on official Congressional Budget Office estimates. (Click here for a closer look at the impact reform would have, in dollar terms, on families of different incomes.) The results tell a pretty compelling story, particularly when put in human terms.

http://www.tnr.com/article/health-care/recognizing-reform

[Avalux]

20. I am so tired of the drama. These articles are "my feelings are hurt" whinefests.

'Good progressives' (what the hell does that mean??) didn't have all their dreams come true in 11 months so what do they do? Scream and carry on like spoiled children. What sort of fantasy world do these authors live in? Get a grip on your emotions and deal with reality.