I still had hope that the medical care reform would be better than what we have now.
Now I'm not sure it is. If, in fact, the news leaking out last night turns out to be true -- that on Obama's orders conveyed by Rahm Emmanuel to Harry Reid they were to cut a deal with Joe Lieberman in order to secure his vote -- and that HolyJoe won -- then I say "kill it." It will be worse than nothing.
We wanted single payer; they gave us public option; we lost public option and got a trigger; we lost even the trigger -- but, wait. It seemed like a good compromise: we got buy-in to Medicare for those over 55 and some other possibile non-profit plans for others too. So maybe it would be ok.
Now we've lost even that -- all to placate HolyJoe, Kewpie cheeks, Lieberman for his lousy vote.
As Greg Levine at FireDogLake, a progressive blog, wrote:
I say: Kill the bill.I say this with a heavy heart. Failure to pass health care legislation, even terrible legislation, will be a great loss for the Obama administration and for Democrats in Congress. But passing a bill as bad as the Senate's eventual endpoint could be a bigger defeat for the Democratic majority we really want--one that takes progressive action on behalf of the voters.
Because, as I see it, a bill without the competitive force of a public option, or the opportunity for millions to buy into Medicare, without cheaper pharmaceuticals or meaningful controls on premiums, without bans on benefit caps or loophole-free safeguards against rescission, but with an individual mandate, will do nothing for the 30 million uninsured that advocates of the bill like to talk about helping--but it will do plenty for the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
In other words, everybody has to buy insurance, which is a huge boon for the insurance industry; but there are no controls, which is a huge boon for the insurance industry. Measures to control drug costs have been largely eliminated, but many more people will be going to the doctor, which means many more prescriptions, which is a huge boon for BigPharma.
Insurance and pharmaceutical companies are the beneficiaries of this bill, not the people.
There's still a glimmer of hope. Maybe they'll come up with some last minute thing; maybe Reid will decide to go the budget reconciliation route with a good plan and bypass the filibuster-60.
It's only a very slender thread of hope, and it's on life support, at best.
Ralph
It would be bad enough if HolyJoe really objected to the Medicare buy-in. But three months ago he was touting it as a good thing. And he's offered no explanation for a change of mind. It's just that now he thinks it's a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteIt's now very clear that he is not negotiating in good faith. What he's doing is taunting the Democrats, who need his vote; and everytime they give him something, he moves the goal posts.
My very low opinion of him just got lower. When a man who touts his religious observation so piously (making a point of having the senate hold open a crucial Saturday vote for 3 hours while he walked to the capital, since he doesn't ride in cars on his Sabbath) -- and then negotiates in such obvious duplicitous and poor faith, then I call him cynical, hypocritical, vindictive, and despicable.
I say let him kill the bill and take the consequences.
Josh Marshall says the Dems should quit negotiating with Lieberman and turn to Olympia Snowe for the #60 vote. At least she has some principles that could be met, whereas HolyJoe just seems to be mocking the process. How can they even trust that he would actually vote for the bill if they tailor it to his demands?
ReplyDeleteHoward Dean also came out and said it's worse than nothing and should be killed.
ReplyDeleteThis is what progressives have been warning about for months. We weren't a bunch of Chicken Littles - you could see the sky falling piece by piece until now, when there's nothing left to look up to.
This is why progressives need to be on top of policy, and not infatuated with Obama the man, who is brilliant, and I believe well-intentioned, but too quick to placate his enemies without getting much in return.
I would ask those of you who defended compromise after compromise on healthcare until it has reached the untenable position it is in now, to take a step back and look once more at the Afghanistan situation and ask yourself if you really, truly believe that compromised policy will make the situation there any better. Or will this just be the international correlative of healthcare?
richard
Richard, a little less gloating would be generous of you.
ReplyDeleteI've said all along: you may very well be right, but I was putting my trust in Obama to get the best deal he could in the dysfunctional system he's forced to work in. And, yes, of course, I'm very disappointed in the results.
Maybe he could have done something different -- it's certainly tempting to point out all the ways in which he compromised when you wouldn't have -- and I wouldn't have -- and maybe he didn't have to.
But are you so sure that would have worked? How do you think you could have gotten 60 votes for really progressive reform? Maybe it would all have been over long ago and we wouldn't have come this close.
I don't see much hope of getting progressive reform with this senate balance of power, and with Lieberman vindictively indulging his narcissistic rage, and with the filibuster rules.
Or, just maybe, it's not over yet. I'm going to give it another day or two and see what they may still be able to salvage from the brink.
Health reform is pure power politics. Afghanistan is an entirely different matter.
Ralph,
ReplyDeleteI posted last night, but it never showed up.
I honestly did not mean to sound gloating, and I apologize if it did. I take no solace in this. But my basic belief that progressives need to be vigilant, and not just cheerlead, remains the same.
The one sign of hope I see is that liberal opposition to the healthcare debacle has now coalesced. Virtually everyone on all the leftist blogs are now in agreement that it's a mess. Those who used to argue that a bad bill is better than none have disappeared. Maybe there's enough outrage that we can get the bill changed.
Yes, Afghanistan is different, but the process that led to the healthcare mess is similar to the process that lead to the Afghanistan decision and I am hopeful that those who accepted that process may take a second look at the reality of the situation in Afghanistan and rethink their unswerving support for process and question the nuts and bolts of what's being done.(If you can question a nut or bolt?)
Lieberman is just a scumbag. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was working for Cigna. Oh, he is.
richard