Senator signals possible health care compromise

[VaYank5150]

"If, somehow, the private market doesn't respond the way that it's supposed to, then it would trigger a public option or a government-run option," Nelson said, adding such a provision should be used "only as a fail-safe backstop to the process."

"And when I say trigger ... I don't mean a hair trigger," Nelson said. "I mean a true trigger -- one that would only apply if there isn't the kind of competition in the business that we believe there would be."

Senator signals possible health care compromise - CNN.com

OK, GOPers...anything wrong with this?

 

[veritas]

I think it sucks, they'll just wait to kill it in the small print of the next bill.

 

[Emma]

President Obama will address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to talk about health care, and his chief spokesman said Sunday the speech would spell out the president's ideas for a bill. However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs provided no details of what Obama will say.

"People will leave that speech knowing where he stands," Gibbs said on the ABC program "This Week."

Well, it's about fucking time.

 

[VaYank5150]

Well, it's about fucking time.

If you don't know by now, you are too stupid to get it from his upcoming address.

 

[veritas]

Really? What was that waffle sandwich last month with him and Sebelius then?

 

[VaYank5150]

Really? What was that waffle sandwich last month with him and Sebelius then?

You'll need to be a bit more specific than "waffle sandwich"...

 

[veritas]

When they both started mumbling about co-ops and backpedaling the public option.

 

[VaYank5150]

When they both started mumbling about co-ops and backpedaling the public option.

He doesn't seem to have enough support from his fellow Democrats for a public option. While he still prefers it, I appreciate that he understand our political system. What's your problem?

 

[Oscar Wao]

Yay for a "compromise"- which won't be good for the left, right, or even the middle politically speaking. It'll probably be a blob of bullsh*t with a few odds and ends to TRY to satisfy both sides (which won't be much in the end anyway). This will of course do NOTHING substantial in regards to our health care system.

Yay for this whole debacle!

 

[veritas]

When they both started mumbling about co-ops and backpedaling the public option.

He doesn't seem to have enough support from his fellow Democrats for a public option. While he still prefers it, I appreciate that he understand our political system. What's your problem?

allegedly he is back onto the public option, but one never knows.......

 

[VaYank5150]

allegedly he is back onto the public option, but one never knows.......

This IS, and always HAS been his preference since he began his campaign. Why is this simple concept so hard for you to grasp?

 

[veritas]

Personally I think he was for single payer, but he compromised too early and moved to the public option and has been ceding ground ever since.

 

[VaYank5150]

Personally I think he was for single payer, but he compromised too early and moved to the public option and has been ceding ground ever since.

Well, it's nice to have an OPINION, but wouldn't you prefer to stick to his stated stance on the issue?

 

[Emma]

Personally I think he was for single payer, but he compromised too early and moved to the public option and has been ceding ground ever since.

Well, it's nice to have an OPINION, but wouldn't you prefer to stick to his stated stance on the issue?

Which would be? (Noting that 'stance' is in the singular)

 

[Emma]

This is as good a thread as any to link this article.

David Michael Green: Ladies and Gentlemen, Barack Obama... Giving Us the Worst of All Worlds

... Barack Obama has given us the worst of all worlds. Passage of a healthcare reform bill – even something barely remotely worthy of the name – now seems like a dubious proposition. If it does pass, it won’t be worth squat. Meanwhile, all the ugliest and most deceitful tactics of regressive politics have floated to the surface in the cesspool of American political discourse, weakly countered at best by a White House that could make SpongeBob SquarePants look like the love child of Genghis Khan and Joseph Stalin by comparison, and is so lame that it couldn’t anticipate and inoculate against these assaults that any fool who wasn’t entirely comatose over the last three decades could plainly see were coming. Worst of all, when the smoke finally clears, this debacle will entail a massive discrediting of so-called liberalism, and a severe imperiling of the Democratic Party (not that it much matters) in the next two election cycles. Think about that for a second. How absolutely, utterly, magnificently inept does one have to be to have revived the hopes of the GOP, a mere 200 days after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left office? Not just any idiot could pull off a stunt that big, I tell ya. A job like that requires a world-class moron.

What Obama should have done is simple, and therefore all the more astonishing that they missed it. First off, he should have formulated a serious plan (perhaps in faux negotiations with certain key congressional leaders, to make them feel powerful and included, perhaps not), and stuck with it. At the very least, he should have articulated three or four non-negotiable key principles that he demanded from any healthcare legislation. These should have revolved around ideas that are simple to grasp and clearly beneficial to non-elite Americans. He should have sold that plan at big staged events, such as televised addresses to both houses of Congress – rather than these pathetic press conferences he keeps giving, where the press can ask any question they want, and where an unscripted Professor Wonk rambles out ten minute answers, chock full of pauses and clauses, guaranteed to anesthetize his audience or divert their attention entirely, to another subject altogether (can you say “Henry Lewis Gates”?).

He should have named enemies, right from the beginning. He should have warned Americans about what these people would do in the ensuing weeks and months. And he should have called them out on it, angrily and by name, when they in fact did it. When they started lying and frightening senior citizens in order to protect their legalized scams from reform, he should have slugged them so hard they were knocked on their fat corporate asses, never to rise again. He should’ve called them greedy, selfish, treasonous traitors who are willing to lie and steal to further enrich their bloated selves, while tens of thousands of Americans die every year from lack of medical care.

Above all, what Obama should have done was shown some passion. The unflappable conciliatory professor act has got to go. Here’s a newsflash (evidently) for the Obama White House: If the president has any desire to sell his policies, he’s got to sell his policies. If he wants to lead, he has to lead. And if he wants our support, he’s got to tell us why this is important. With juice. Mr. Folksy isn’t getting it – not by a long shot.

Finally, Obama should’ve jammed his plan down the throats of Congress, where – though you’d never know it – his party commands massive and filibuster-proof majorities. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t think the nineteenth century model of the presidency is particularly appropriate here in the twenty-first. We got Social Security and the rest of the New Deal programs because Franklin Roosevelt twisted arms on Capitol Hill. We got Medicare and Medicaid and civil rights because Lyndon Johnson nearly pulled those arms out of their sockets, jamming his bills through a reluctant Congress by means of big carrots, bigger sticks, and razor-sharp strategy.

What did Millard Fillmore get? James Buchanan? If you can’t remember, don’t worry – it doesn’t mean that you’re deficient as a student of American history. It just means that they didn’t get anything worth remembering. Why is it that, in our time, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush get everything they want from Congress, while Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – even after they’ve completely sold out to Wall Street, and even when they have massive majorities in Congress – wind up as if they’re the main source of entertainment for the fellas on Cell Block D? Neither FDR nor Harry Truman nor Lyndon Johnson would recognize the Democratic Party anymore. Unless they inadvertently mistook it for a squashed bug in the foyer of the GOP’s headquarters.

Having lived through the incredibly dismal Clinton era, I’m not exactly surprised to have another Democratic president whose only real constituents can be found in corporate boardrooms. I am, however, shocked to have one who seemingly learned nothing from the experience of the Clinton years, who appears to be even more conciliatory than the foolish “Please sir, may I have another?” Clinton himself was, and who apparently lacks any real instinct even for political self-preservation.

So I have to ask: Hey, Barack. How’s this working out for you? In eight months time you’ve squandered a massive and historic opportunity. You’ve resuscitated a murderously evil political party that, with a little shove in the right direction, might instead have been buried dead forever. You’ve let just about anybody say just about anything regarding you and your policies, without consequence. People are running around claiming that you’re gonna kill grannies, and millions believe them. You’re being pilloried for the bogus failures of the British healthcare system, and your mealy-mouthed-room-temperature-yesterday’s-leftover-oatmeal proposal – such that you even have one – doesn’t even bear the slightest resemblance to the NHS.

You’ve produced nothing of consequence in your Hundred Days, nor even in two hundred. Historians will not mention you in the same breath as FDR, but rather right alongside the wondrous Mr. Fillmore. You’ve responded to epic crises with half-measures that have produced quarter-results. In the short period of your presidency, your job approval ratings have fallen from the high sixties to the low fifties. In addition to those numbers beginning to look a lot like the guy with a cane walking onto your stage, they represent twice the drop an idiot named George W. Bush sustained during his first eight months in office. Maybe because he accomplished far more in that time. Far more (horrid though it was), as a matter of fact, than you are likely to do in four years, at the rate you’re going. Far more, even with a split Congress. How about that, Brother Barack? You’re getting your ass kicked by the worst president in all of American history.

So, dude, how’s this working out for you?

For me? Not so good. I was hoping for something else. Know what I mean?

I will say, however, that you seem to be a very, very nice young man. Yes, yes – very nice indeed. Definitely.

So much so that I give you my word: If I ever want someone for my president who is so nice that he even lets vicious political savages tear him to shreds while they’re wrecking the country at the same time...

I promise that you’ll have my vote.