If anyone is interested in what happened to the Health Care Reform.
invite response
2011 May 25, 9:18am 3,154 views 5 comments
Comments 1 - 5 of 5 Search these comments
Â¥
2011 May 25, 10:54am
it's a good article but Dems only had the barest control of the Senate -- we had to count the Connecticut for Lieberman party to reach 60 to overcome the Republican filibuster, and that only lasted from the time Franken was seated in June until Kennedy's replacement got booted in February.
The House plan had a public option but the conservatives in the Senate were not willing to support that.
Obama got the thing through, which is a solid enough accomplishment.
There's a lot of good stuff in this wrt the mandate and premium support that will make insurance more affordable for basically everyone making under $90k or so. It theoretically puts the burden on paying this premium support on those making more than $90K, which is really why the Republicans are opposed to it.
Damn thing doesn't really get rolling until 2014, anyway. Dems may or may not be in power then.
We’re fucked. The insurance companies will keep manipulating the laws until they can reject anyone the second they get sick and refer them to a bank for health are financing and get a commission on subsequent deals.
In five years, doctors will carry sidearms and offer families the choice of being bankrupted or just euthanising the victim. The insurance companies will pay for the bullets and the ‘release from care consultation’.
Obamacare will be repealed after the tea bagger suicide bomber takes out the White House and the entire administration and President Palin establishes a theocratic administration that denounces all regulation of anything as ’satanic meddling in sacred commerce’.
God bless MERRIKA
Done!
2011 Jun 10, 4:16am
it’s a good article but Dems only had the barest control of the Senate — we had to count the Connecticut for Lieberman party to reach 60 to overcome the Republican filibuster, and that only lasted from the time Franken was seated in June until Kennedy’s replacement got booted in February.
The House plan had a public option but the conservatives in the Senate were not willing to support that.
I'm curious what does "Filibuster Proof", mean to you people?
And what does it mean when Obama says he has the authority to Veto anything he sees fit, the parts of the Dems legislation that would do the best good. If Obama believed he would have the power to Veto Republicans "NOs" then why on Earth couldn't the Dems of the 110th Congress, a Democrat majority, and Obama passed the plan as you people seem to make excuses for, instead of this roll of ass tissue?
It was the Dog, he ate my Homework, it was the Evil Nuns with the Laser beam crucifixes, it was the Baloon Boy's fault, we were Framed!
Honest, it's the Republicans, they hate black people and want to push Grandma off Niagra Falls.
Â¥
2011 Jun 12, 1:10am
I’m curious what does “Filibuster Proofâ€, mean to you people?
To this person, filibuster-proof means having 60 Senators on-board for the full reforms that came out of the House. We did not have that in the Senate, thanks to some very conservative Dems like Lieberman (actually not even a Democrat after losing his primary in 2008), and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus, who desired to put his own mark on the changes.
Like I said, the Dems could only round up 60 votes for something between July 2009 (when Franken was finally seated) and February 2010. The were out of session in August (during which Kennedy died) and his replacement was only seated in late September. The Senate is also in recess during November and much of December, and Kirk was replaced in February after the special election.
So the Dems only had 60 votes maximum to break the Republican filibuster for most of July and October.
At the end of 2009 both chambers had passed their versions, and the House version was much better than the Senate version. Since the Dems no longer had a supermajority in the Senate (and the Senate Dems weren't willing to go any further on reforms anyway) in 2010 the process was focused on getting the Senate bill through the House via "reconciliation".
In the end the final vote in the Senate was 56-43, with 3 Dems voting against PPACA -- the two clowns from Ark. and Nelson of Nebraska, who is a DINO if there ever was one.
If Obama believed he would have the power to Veto Republicans “NOs†then why on Earth couldn’t the Dems of the 110th Congress, a Democrat majority, and Obama passed the plan as you people seem to make excuses for
You seem to have a limited understanding of how the legislative process actually works.
The President can stop legislation, but he cannot create it. He is not a member of the Legislative branch.
Now, powerful Presidents like FDR and LBJ did in fact have enough friends in Congress to get their agenda through. But both had been lifelong politicians and had enjoyed massive electoral majorities coming into office.
Obambi was a total nobody 10 years ago, while the average length of service in the Senate was over 12 years in 2008.
The House version was better than the Senate version, but the Senate is a much more conservative, non-majoritarian institution, with great power vested in the various committee chairs, and any individual conservative Democrat, since the forces of reform required EVERY democrat to sign on to break Republican filibusters (since the Dems only had the barest of supermajorities).
This gave weasels like Lieberman immense leverage on the process. Quite literally nothing he didn't like would become law, Obama's veto or no.
instead of this roll of ass tissue?
PPACA is pretty good. The mandate was coming regardless, after all it is, or was, an idea that is liked by conservatives (personal responsibility) and liberals (subsidized health care).
AFAICT, it's central weakness is that it allows HMOs to game the system to increase services costs to rake off more money.
Honest, it’s the Republicans, they hate black people and want to push Grandma off Niagra Falls.
If PPACA had been proposed by a Republican president it would have sailed through the Senate. But the Republicans are playing a different game now, one of destroying the country to save it.
So yes, the Republicans are really that bad now. You trying to defend them is nauseating.
All other issues aside, how do you feel about entrusting the financing or insuring of your healthcare to an entity that is bankrupt?
I love the left, for their use of terms to water down or beautify issues. "Single Payer"? As in "someone else money". Poleez. Do people understand our $60 trillion of debt, and the burden this is placing on grandchildren.
Let's be honest. USA is broke. And, we now have a government that does not want to close off our southern border, to lose hispanic votes. This is not an ideological issue, but a financial one. Many of the "rich" that Washerman Schultz wants to tax to pay for single payer, are already migtrating.
Half of the people who contact agents about health insurance, don't really want "insurance protection" but instead "someone to pay their bills", too often because a doctor has told them they "might have something", or need further tests. Trust me, the flakes (or just poor folk) are out there. And, then they complain when their policy is cancelled or a claim is not paid due to their being a pre-existing condition, which they did not want to disclose.
"Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax the fellow behind the tree"
is a classic quote from former Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana.
I would recommend reading of an article in Harper's Magazine from February 2009:
"Sick in the head:
Why America won't get the health-care system it needs"
By Luke Mitchell
It is available on line by subscription: http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/0082380
Some quotes:
"The argument for single payer is straightforward. When everybody is in, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money deciding who to keep out. You also don’t have to worry about what to do with the people you’ve kept out when they get sick anyway. (Uninsured sick people cost insurers nothing, but since they often end up seeking expensive emergency-room treatment, they cost taxpayers a lot.) If you want to quit your job and work someplace else, you can do so without fear of losing your health insurance, which means that labor is more mobile. And employers don’t have to carry the burden of benefits, which means that capital is more mobile. If you get sick, you don’t have to worry about losing your coverage or your house. Your insurance is paid for through taxes. And your taxes don’t go up just because you have a preexisting condition; under single payer, there is no such thing as a “preexisting condition.†Moreover, your provider—the single payer—has an incentive to keep you healthy your entire life, rather than just getting you to age sixty-five and then dumping you into Medicare. And if the experience of most other countries is any indication, the whole thing would cost a lot less than our current bloated mess of a system.
The benefits of single payer were at one time if not a matter of consensus then at least a topic considered worthy of discussion, at least among Democrats. “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health-care program,†Barack Obama said in 2003. “As all of us know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, we have to take back the House.†And yet as Democrats began to take all of those things back, Obama began to reconsider. In 2007, he recast the debate in terms that were more reflective than prescriptive. “If you’re starting from scratch,†he told The New Yorker, “then a single-payer system would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off.†And now that Democrats have the White House, the Senate, and the House, it is clear that a single- payer program is not a part of their agenda."
And than at the end of the article there is a description of Democratic convention:
"The Democratic governors and congressmen, the labor leaders and community activists, all of the public figures on the very farthest outer-left fringes of the respectable health-care debate in the United States, knew this one thing: the U.S. was never going to get health-care reform until the big money decided that heath care reform was in its interest. And the good news—the amazing news—was they have decided it is in their interest."
To one who can miss the sarcastic meaning of that last statements, what can I say? Health Care is helpless in your case.
#politics