Public Option back on table - Obama Aims to Fix Intraparty Fissure

This sounds promising.

Wait....I thought it wasn't his idea in the first place?

Well, if he's listening to what people want then that's a good thing.


J.

I guess Nancy put him in his place and told him to remember never to speak out of place again.

You know, you're really a much better poster when you don't insist on feigning stupidity. You might disagree with his position, but to pretend you don't understand it is just pitiful.

The public option was never off the table. Obama's always been entirely wishy-washy about the details of health care reform. He seems more interested in passing reform than in passing good or sustainable reform. He's willing to give up any and all cost control and regulatory measures if they facilitate passage of a bill; he's willing to accept just about any cost control and regulatory measures under similar conditions. What he's not willing to do is to lead; to issue a declaration that there are certain reforms that are overwhelmingly likely to improve the quality of health care, reduce the incidence of people lacking decent health insurance coverage, and to reduce costs of health insurance coverage, and that these reforms are integral to any bill that is to become law; to let Senate democrats know that any effort at a filibuster will be met with the withdrawal of White House support and the financing of primary opposition; to end the charade of bipartisan appeals when it's so clear that no significant number of Republicans will sign onto any reform, regardless of the concessions made.

On health care reform, Obama is purely a politician, with very little if any apparent interest in policy. That's exactly why I didn't want to see him win the Democratic nomination.

Well, back to the worst of all worlds health-care bill.

I'm not the one that blatantly tried to deny that the 'public option' was Obama's idea in the first place.

Anyone who paid attentio0n knew he was lying when we were told the public option was off the table. They have no intention of pulling he public option out.

There would be no point to anything else they are doing if the public option was not in there.

I disagree. It may have across that way at first glance -- largely because there was literally nothing of substance to begin with (and thus giving the appearance of nothing to move away from) -- but no one can deny IMO that the Administration was out there pitching something the last few weeks and that debate has absolutely been on again, off again. A friend of mine called it like watching a tennis match. Do the Dems even realize how silly they look? :embarrassment:

Also, after reading this further, I can't say for sure what this says other than "Republicans are against a public plan (and possibly the coops)" and the Dems are torn between letting the plan go and keeping it. There continues to be just so many vague, abstract statements; and the process appears still to be mired not in policy, but in politics.

I don't know about anybody else, but a simple, pro vs con, with little bias, and in easy to understand terms assessment of what exactly people want to see happen to Health Care would be much preferable.

And now George Stephanopolous is reporting that the Obama Administration is considering asking the Clintons for help on this. There have been discussions about deploying Sec of State Hillary Clinton to help with the Health Care debate.

Are you fucking kidding me?? Hillary offered to save the world last year, and yet we all know what happened. Now people are wondering if Hillary can fix Health Care?? Incredible. All these supposed big boys -- crying for their mommy now -- "Only Hillary can help, save us Hillary, save us!!" It'd be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

That's actually true. The White House was putting that "concession" out there to see how the GOP responded to it. How they did was to turn their vitriol from the public option to the co-ops, and saturating the Sunday talk shows with their disinclination to vote for any reform bill. Grassley went so far as to say that he had no intention of voting for the bill he himself has negotiated. All of which culminated with today's announcement from Rahm Emanuel (who likely engineered the whole ruse) that Republicans are basically being removed from the equation going forward. Democrats will negotiate to pass something that Blue Dogs, along with Snowe and perhaps a lame duck Republican or two, can push through. One precocious legislator responded by saying that would mean war, as if it weren't already.

Juan Williams (an occasional Obama supporter) on FoxNews said it best.

Paraphrased

If the Obama administration can't get some kind of health care reform passed, then he'll never get an important piece of legislation passed. He might as well write off rest of the four years.

He will pass "some kind of health care reform"...as much as the Blue Dogs and Olympia Snowe and maybe one or two others will sign off on.

^^ I generally regard Susan Collins of Maine as pretty much interchangeable with Ms. Snowe.

They'll pass as strong a bill as can stop a filibuster or, alternately, achieve cloture and 50 votes (in which case Biden would actually have something to do for a change).


If the Democrats threatening to vote against anything without a public option follow through with that threat, then Democrats will once again do what they do best.

They'll either strong-arm the cloture vote--threaten to pull committee assignments, pull financial support, and have Obama raise money for primary challengers and you'll see exactly how quickly Ben Nelson et al. cry uncle--or go with the reconciliation process. No Democrat will end up supporting a filibuster on health care reform. Of course the bill might suck, but it won't be filibustered, and it will pass. Obama and the Senate leadership know that the ship sinks if health care reform dies.

And, quite frankly, if they don't know that then it's time to completely give up on them.

Like Bill Maher, I agree with the op-ed that Paul Begala wrote in the Post...pass something basic like FDR did, let Americans see if and how well that works, and then enhance it further after that trial period with that public sentiment in hand.

The anti-reform consider anything other than a continuation of the status quo as a failure...why hand them the one thing they'd call success?

Might work, might poison the well. Without mandates-to-purchase the whole thing at best goes nowhere and is little more than a straightforward and mostly inadequate subsidy to purchase with weak regulations of insurance; at worst it collapses the entire insurance market. With mandates-to-purchase and poor cost control measures the public is rightly going to think that health reform was about lining insurance company pockets and is far more likely to call for repeal than to trust the same government to get it right a second time.

A reform bill needn't be perfect, but it has to be pretty damn good to be good enough to make later enhancement feasible. This effort needs to be done mostly right to begin with or it's better to do nothing at all. Nothing at all is, however, political suicide.

Well, I don't agree with Howard Dean that anything less than a public option might as well be no reform at all, and with the latest NBC/WSJ showing 91% of people wanting reform but only 43% supporting the public option, at least half of America would seem to disagree with him as well.

Even if the only thing that was tackled is the issue of pre-existing conditions, that would still count as reform. I suspect they'll get something more than that through.

People with no insurance are much more likely to support the public option with near unanimity, because they have nothing to lose. The 60%-65% of Americans that have insurance weigh the noble desire to provide insurance to everyone with the desire to retain what they have, but make it better and more reliable. They do have something to lose, potentially at least.

That's another lie.

They don't care what the Republicans wanted. They only wanted Republicans on board so when this thing blew up, and it will blow up, they could blame the Republicans. The intention has always been to "RAHM" this through no matter what.

The stumbling block Obama and team ran into was his own fellow Democrats.

Republicans are not and have not been in any position to stop the Democrats in the house or the Senate.

Well yes and no. They did have that power because Obama was bent on bipartisanship, and thus surrendered that power and bestowed that power upon them, Grassley in particular.

That would seem to now be at an end, so now what you said is essentially correct.

Another lie. The whole bipartisanship was bullshit from the start. It was all a cover to set the Repukes up for anything that went wrong.

Again the whole problem blew back in Obama's face when the townhalls started and people started going after the reps and senators. Both groups of legislators but in particular the more conservative Democrats (who won in Republican heavy districts or states McCain won) started quaking in their boots.

There was never any chance of the Republicans stopping this in Congress.

Oh and I'm not mad about the bipartisainship being bullshit. In fact I'm tired of these scumbag politicans on both sides playing that stupid game. Fuck the opposition. If they can stop they can stop you. If they can't do what you will.

Not really. Even though the Senate is 60-40, the committee writing the bill was 3-3.

Lemme guess...you're going to start with "another lie" again...

I doubt he will - you seem to be great at that.

You think that will stop a Democrat bill?

I thought Apostle was naive but I might to switch him out with you.

Okay...switch me out then.

So Grassley is a Democrat?

It is a sad, sad day when Zombie rides the once-great marathon around WF like a beaten pony.

That would be a sad day.


When do you expect it to happen?