No Public Option

Now, you know he can only sign or veto what congress sends him. He may be able to influence what they send, but go too far and congress gets huffy. Not to mention territorial.

Oh, I can't support him, either.

Do you believe that the outcome to date would have been better had he acted more forcefully with respect to (say) the health care legislation? Frankly, I doubt it. The Republican opposition in the Congress has been fairly unified and the public support for their resistence has encouraged them significantly.

The position he argued for in his campaign did not necessarily include a public option. Throughout the early stages of the current effort he constantly touted "his plan", though it was very difficult to tell which of the several versions wending their way first through the House of Representatives, and later the Senate, were truly "his". I suspect that both his supporters and his opponents are frustrated with (probably different) aspects of his penchant for lofty rhetoric and ambiguous description of details that increasingly are his trademark. I also suspect that his goal was to get some version of health care through the Congress and then claim a great political vistory with little regard for the specifics. This is arguably a defensible political strategy, and the fate of the Clinton efforts was evidently not lost on Obama.

Much is made of the radical Right; "wing nuts" and all the rest of the perjoratives so liberally used here come to mind. The fact is there is also a fairly disparite but equally radical left, itself also often divided in various single issue groups. The political prospects for a Democrat president who catered particularly to them wouldn't be very good in this country, a fact of which I suspect President Obama is keenly aware.

Despite this I believe Obama is far to the left of Hillary Clinton who I beliueve was your favored candidate. Do you believe she could have done better in the areas you particularly are concerned about?

Excuse me, I was about to say "**** both of you." but first, I thought I should ask this question:

How many phone calls and emails have you personally sent to your Senators and Congressional Representative?
How many phone calls and emails have you made or sent to Members of Congress other than the ones from your State?

By personally I mean not one of those Sign this Here Email Petition and we'll pass it along crap. I mean something that comes from you.

You want Health Care Reform? Good. Get off your dead ass and work for it. Oh, sorry. I don't know the answer to my questions. Just how much work have you put in to make it happen?

If it's nothing, then **** you and get going.

Joe(go ahead, ask me the same question.)Nation

Yes, it has been difficult to tell which programs were his, and which were someone else's. Whether any of them work out well, or poorly, he is in an excellent position to accept or decline credit. I do not believe it to be accidental.

many

Obama wants a single payer system and he will get one after the bill is passed.

It will be a terrible for day America if this bill gets signed into law, just terrible.

Okay.

Do more.

We didn't elect a king.

Joe (and call Ben Nelson's office, and Landrieu's office and Joe Lieberman's office.)Nation

As georgeob1 noted, you're anger may be misplaced.

Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi lead their respective branches of the legislature, not Obama and Pelosi can do a whole lot more with her majority than can Reid.

In any case, it is not the opposition of the Republicans or the lack of Obama guts and balls that has killed the Public Option, it is the opposition of moderate Democrats (and Joe Lieberman).

One might go as far to say that in reality, it is the opposition of the American people.

There are a lot of Democratic representatives (Pelosi, Waxman, Franks, etc) who cannot be liberal enough for their districts. The same can't be said the majority of Senators. Many representatives and senators have heard from their constituents either directly or through polling and they are not about to lose their jobs over a left-wing ideal.

I suppose Obama could have told Congress that he will veto any bill that doesn't have a strong Public Option, but then he would never have had to consider one.

You and other like minded fellows can take the position that the American people have been hoodwinked by opposition propoganda, but whether or not that's true, the majority of the American people don't want a Public Option, or these bills.

Presumably you believe Obama, Reid, and Pelois, knowing, like you, what is best for America should somehow just press ahead and ram it down our ignorant throats.

If this really infuriates you then may I suggest you join those who are dedicated to bringing down the moderate Democrats that have opposed the Public Option and federal funding of abortion. Send money to the left-wing candidates who are bound to surface to challange them in their primaries.

I have a feeling Obama will win back your vote by 2012, but in case he doesn't, who would you like to see run against him in the primary?

I did that for years, quite involved. Now I'm watching. No guilt.

I do agree that I think that real letters and emails matter more than petitions; I've known a few of my reps personally and how their offices work. But that's just one take.

I'm not Bi-Polar Bear by I do believe that, yes. Legislation is a bargaining process; Obama entered the bargaining process over healthcare with a lukewarm compromise position, and signaled from the beginning that he wasn't intending to put up much of a fight over it. So it's little wonder that at the end of the bargaining, healthcare reform will be a diluted mush that isn't worth writing home about.

In my opinion, Obama could have achieved a much better end result by doing two things: i) open the haggling with with a tougher position such as Kennedy's Medicare for All or at least Edward's campaign plan, and ii) signaling an intent to kick some asses over it.

If confronted in such a way, Congress Republicans would have opposed that no more than they currently do -- after all, they're maxing out their capacity for opposition right now. Moreover, Lieberman, Tupac, and other Democrats positioning themselves as centrists, would just as happily "compromise" on a more aggressive reform plan. Their current opposition is not driven by any policy principle I can recognize -- it's all about positioning themselves halfway between what the president suggests and the Republican opposition.

Obama could have definitely gotten a better outcome by showing a little more audacity. Instead, all that healthcare reform leaves us with is timidity of hope.

The will against public option seems punitive to me, shut up you poor and halt.

Including from the president I voted for.

With all due respect, this is indicative of your liberal bent. You can't imagine that there is principled opposition to a Public Option without disdain and disregard for the poor.

When assigning blame, I usually try to think about who would take credit if something great happened.

I don't think Obama would give all the credit to Congress if a robust public option was passed, he'd take a good chunk of credit if it was passsed, wouldn't he?

If you think the answer to that is yes, then he surely deserves some of the blame, especially given his campaign promises.

I agree with Howard Dean: Kill The Bill

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4185282

Right now it will only make the insurance companies happy.

I do get there is principled opposition, I can see agreeing with it. I think it contains within it distain for the poor.

The poor at least have medicaid. The real crisis is for uninsured working people, the underinsured middle class, and small business owners who cannot afford all the costs of private insurance backed by disability insurance.

Doesn't necessarily mean she's wrong.


Have you considered the possibility that she can imagine it, and just doesn't think that's what's going on?

There is also me. I own a tiny part of a duplex that needs fixing, which I can't afford, given my minor amount of social security. I have medicaid as someone of medicare age who qualifies. Medicaid pays my monthly fees for B and some for D, but not any kind of assumption of general care, including ops that go over medicare allowance. If I want C, the supplemental, I have to spring for it, which I am, on credit cards, though I can only keep it up for a few more months and may be facing a surgery #2. The clinic doc is rattling on about colonoscopy, and so on. I can't afford 20% of any of that, plus whatever medicare deems too expensive on any bill.

So, la la, I'm facing and avoiding bankruptcy, minute to minute, not all from present stuff, but from accumulated med bills from five years ago and eight years ago that took my savings to pay, and that was when I had insurance.

I don't need railing at for not having worked, I worked for 48 years.

Oh, on colonoscopies, as I understand it, they are poor at registering what is going on on the right side of the colon. The xray version, cheaper, captures that better. No, medicare won't pay for that.

I hear you, Osso. There are so many sad situations in this country that it is impossible to keep up. It's pathetic that as a nation we keep on this course that puts insurance companies in charge of our healthcare and keeps millions of Americans teetering on the edge bankruptcy, poverty and untreated illness.