Dean urging defeat of healthcare bill

For any one thinking for a second that government-run health care can be a success, I say take a stroll to your local projects and take a look them. Yes, public housing is government-run housing.

SNAFU?  Situation normal, all fouled up?

Too bad the honest Congress people and Senators are in the minority.  And we have to depend on people like Joe Liberman, who along with his wife is tied to the Insurance Industry

Upon further reflection, Howard Dean is saying that the Dems should kill the Senate Health Care bill, start over with a bill in the House that could be amended to an appropriations measure and, therefore, subject to the rules of reconciliation which requires only 51 votes (instead of 60) in the Senate for passage.  That's the so-called "nuclear option".  If the Dems only need 51 votes in the Senate to pass the health care bill then moderate Dems up for reelection in 2010 could vote against it and get off the hook.  But it might be too late to use the nuclear option vis-a-vis fund raising.   The Senate Dems are already exposed as liberals on too many roll call votes thanks to the Obama Administration....... In 2011, the Bush tax cut automatically expires.  That will be the next nightmare that will set up the tone of the 2012 elections........

How much do we have to give up for expediency?  

Some liberal Democrats from small states feared that Medicare buy in for 55 year olds would adversly effect those who are 65+ in their states because of the availibility of care.  Because of the "panic" that set in, the provision to add on additional benefits for those states became a footnote.  There is the notion now that this bill has to be passed before Christmas.  Why?  I think this is one of the basic questions Dean is asking now that the bill has been watered down in favor of the insurance companies. 

This administration wants this finished by January, so they can move on to jobs and other issues.  I think the question is valid to ask.  How much should we be prepared to give up for expediency?   

I agree that is the question,  A.  I saw one Senator from the Carolinas (can't recall if N or S)  but he said he was upset about the public option,  upset about the buy in to Medicare for 55-64 year olds,  yet felt he must sign the bill for the rest of what was offered ( something about continuing to cover children and millions of Americans instead of cutting them)---Yet Dean has a point,  and he would answer your question with,  "This is too much to give up for expediency"---

I think he would smk.

And look at the population we are talkng about here.  55 year olds with no insurance and the middle class and working poor who need a competitive element for insurance companies to stay competitive and keep insurance premiums within the range of affordability for all. 

In essence, you have the legislature, insurance, and pharmacuitical companies deciding what is best for those who struggle to balance their every day lives with the hope they can take care of themselves and their families.  Can we trust them to care enough?  We arent talking about creating a welfare state here, as most working and retired people living on fixed incomes want to pay their way.  They aren't asking for a government handout, just some fairness and equity in the system.  Governments are suppose to ensure the scales of economic justice are not tipped to favor big business and the wealthy.  

Sure, this bill has a lot to offer, but the heart of it is being ripped out.  

I agree,  YJ,  failure is not an option. 

I agree:  We ought to have sorted this out ages ago,  and America has become,  to paraphrase Schopenhauer,  a business that just can't cover its costs.....Canada,  Europe, will view us as a big lot of dummies..... and they will be correct... : (

I hope we will not be defined by tea party reactionaries.  All the rest, rng, as a nation we have to take responsibility for even if we didnt vote for Bush or his doctrine (yes, I know started by Clinton). 

American's commitment to the values and beliefs of the common person are being tested in whether or not Health Care Reform is passed with real "reform," which means that it is people-centered and not big business-centered. Maybe this is a country that values $ more than people.  We have to accept the will of the majority, but it saddens me that the cost is so high for those who are left behind.

Communes tried separtists movements  in the sixties and in the recent past people now who refuse to pay the portion of their taxes that go for war.  Alas, these utopian concepts have a small, wistful following. : (

The best I can do is support those who strive to visualize the promise that America was suppose to represent.  I didn't vote for Ralph Nader, but now I am thinking I should have because at least I would not compromised myself with the thought that the greater good would be served by voting Democratic.  Maybe it is better to vote one's conscience.   

The issue you have to look at is very simple. What is most important, people and their health, or profit for insurance companies and their buddies in the drug industries? When the NHS was first envisaged in the UK in the 1940s, I don't think the forward vision included a top heavy management system, too many tax-payer funded company cars, post code lotteries of prescription and treatment, and all the methods used to syphon off funds to satisfy greed.
This story of Aneurin Bevan and his fight to bring equality of health care to the masses is very well summed up on wikipedia

And there is also this article on the BMJ website which gives the following summary:

• After the war Britain would probably have created a national health service without Aneurin Bevan. He made relatively few big decisions, but those he did make had a profound effect on the way the NHS developed
• His decision to nationalise the hospitals led to the government supplying virtually all health care as well as paying for it
• His biggest principle was that the NHS should be funded entirely by tax. This has led to underfunding
• Bevan also politicised the NHS in a way that has locked politicians in a perennial dread of change

Perhaps it may be time for all nations to look at the health care they provide to their citizens and ask, should the profits from that care go to the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, or back into providing health care......

Remember, the companies don't care a toss about your health, just their profits.

It all just needs to be run properly, and 2 or 3 managers for each health worker is not running it properly IMHO.

I agree stejeb health care for profit puts the buyers at risk no matter how its configured.  And the insurance companies do not even reward wellness.  They are too busy developing ways to not provide service even when someone has insurance.  The whole system is convoluted.

I don't know what we will finally end up with, but you can be sure it will benefit the insurance companies and pharmacutical companies. : (

Looks like Magnini and Schoppenhauer had their hands in this.

The NHS isn't in crisis, Roy -  why you keep repeating that I have no idea. IF the UK NHS was funded with as much GDP as the US' - I would love to see that day happen.

UK NHS covers all citizens from cradle to grave - no matter how poor or rich, and practically all prescription costs are free. Some pay for theirs - at a meagre 12 bucks per item. When that happens, feel free to criticise something you are, by the looks of it, never going to get.

Sorry I'm late to the party. First off, great story SMK.  Dr. Dean is right to call for starting over. I think the biggest reason why he is right, and no one has picked up on it here, is that under the Senate version of "reform", uninsured or uninsurable Americans will be forced to pay private corporations for health care coverage. I covered the topic yesterday.

Senator Lieberman's insistence on removal of the public option, and not allowing over 50 year old uninsured to buy in to Medicare has been cited as the main culprit. The health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist's have effectively paid for a windfall that will come back in the form of mandated premiums by government legislation. If progressive Democrats allow this bill to proceed as currently fashioned in the Senate, Americans will once again see another example of the increasing and dangerous take over of government by corporate regulatory capture. I guarantee you, you will not see one Republican speak out against this bill based on this argument. (It's not a matter of Democrat's good, Republican's bad.) If anyone is going to change this bill, it will be progressive, liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives. Reconciliation is the only way to pass legislation that will include a public option, and set up a government, not corporate, system of health care for the uninsurable.  

Thanks,  Nanute, and for your fine comments.  I am in agreement.

Dr. Dean is right. This is indeed a bad bill. But it's not just a bad bill. It is a morally outrageous, politically disgusting and economically dangerous bill. It moves the country in exactly the wrong direction--not towards the socialism that the right has been decrying, but towards an increasingly costly corporatist system that will be even harder to reform down the road.

There is only one hope, and that is that enough liberal members of House and Senate will recognize that nothing is better than something in this case, and that for the sake of their constituents they will refuse to support this legislative monstrosity.

The Health Insurance Enrichment Act of 2009 must be killed in the congressional womb before it can emerge to become the monster it has become.

The only positive thing I can see in this debacle is that perhaps if President Obama is slapped down by his own most ardent backers on what he has claimed is his number one legislative goal, he and his too-clever-by-half advisers will realize that they need to do a U-turn and rethink how they are trying to govern.

More likely, however, this defeat will be the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, which has now been revealed as devoid of principle, incapable of leadership, and in thrall to the most cynical and greedy corporate interests.

Abort the Democratic Health Care Bill

 it will be progressive, liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives. Reconciliation is the only way to pass legislation that will include a public option, and set up a government, not corporate, system of health care for the uninsurable.  

Nanute

I hope the progressives in the House will show the leadership that Senate Democrats have failed to do.