"...to continue to chase that rabbit is, I think, a wasted effort"

The WH back-room deals have severely undermined any ability of the congress to negotiate with Pharma and the hospitals. I have been listening to the tone the public option is according to Obama now a "sliver" and some senators are opening disavowing HR 3200. There you go. Now to see the WHite flag unfurl.

I have not seen any argument that co-ops are anywhere close to a public option in terms of good policy.  Even an inadequate version of the public option can (and probably will) have its eligibility provisions expanded through future legislation, meaning that in the long run we get where we want to be whether the public option is robust or non-robust.  I haven't seen anyone argue that a co-op provision has the same potential.  In fact co-ops seem more like a Republican idea to me than anything.

Politically, it's difficult to understand how Democrats and the White House could fail to appreciate the urgency.  The difference between co-ops and a public option is unlikely to matter very much to Independents, who aren't going to wig out just because there's a new government program.  But the failure to fight for a public option would most certainly depress the Democratic activist base.

I am not sure this statement by Sebelius is much different from what we've heard in the past, it's just that instead of an anonymous rumor we now have it directly from a highly-placed source.  But it certainly throws a wet blanket over some of the strong rhetoric we've seen from the President recently.  As far as I'm concerned, the next logical step for activists is to get on the phone to the White House and make sure they understand that the public option is non-negotiable.

I won't be knocking on doors in 2010 or 2012 for Democrats like I did in 2008.

It's no longer worth my time or the effort.

After years of begging and pleading with the left wing to take the long view and wait on demographics, we now find ourselves in the reverse position all of a sudden.  The thing is, the failure of heathcare reform is a triumph of short-term thinking; every time one of these centrists opens their mouths to say anything at all it costs the Democrats a thousand votes in 2028 and ten thousand votes in 2040.  This capitulation on healthcare repeats that math a hundredfold.  The Democrats had a chance, in 2009, to prevent their inexorable decline into the rightwing party everyone loves to hate.  With this failure, I don't see how that fate can realistically be averted.  Within our lives, barring a miracle of activism, the Democratic Party, the star I've hitched my wagon to, will be reviled by everyone who agrees with my politics.

I can not really say I am surprised anymore. Too many telegraphed statements about this. Too many statements online by people saying they would be okay with co-opts, or even less than co-opts. Too many inside beltway types saying healthcare may fail.

What they don't get- is that if the bill does not include certain provision it will fail anyway.

What is left now to contain costs?

A mandate for everyone to buy health insurance without a robust public option is a gigantic gift to the private healthcare industry and will not do anything useful. Giving massive amounts of money to the opponents of real healthcare reform and getting nothing in return is an extremely poor strategy.

This is just as bad as the Clinton fiasco.  I am hoping against hope that this is just rope-a-dope.  more and more, though, I think not.

Shit.

What is healthcare legislation without a public option?
Answer: nothing!

If you are going to do something, do it right or dont do it at all. Democrats are going to be blamed for the failure of this legislation, and lets face it: it will be a failure without a system in place for the growing number of uninsured Americans and rising healthcare costs. In the real world, there is no such thing as a marketplace, there are only rising premiums, copays, deductible and more BS.

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I think this is my first post in over 6 months on any political blog. God damn Blue Dogs and weak Democrats. This is what I get for voting straight Democratic down ticket?

But the moment he appointed his cabinet I was certain he would be at best in the vein of Bill Clinton and he hasn't even shown one iota of interest in matching that. He shut the door hard and vigorously on shifting the country in a leftward direction policy-wise, after opening it with the defeat of Hillary. His rhetoric, that he's willing to be a one-term President, is in such diametric opposition to the reality of him being the embodiment of Democratic p*ssydom that the right have successfully stereotyped. All good though for me. Soon I'll be practicing medicine overseas, where 20th century battles aren't given credibility in 2009 (See: Conservative party's remarks about the NHS).

without a public option isn't really health care reform. All it does pass the buck down the line to a succeeding Administration.

The idea that the President is calling it health insurance reform, finally, is a good sign. Probably too late though.

You and I, the logical and informed, knew what health reform was.

The problem was that the uniformed, the easily beguiled, and the manipulated masses saw "Health Care" reform and thought immediately it was about what doctor they see or care they get. It made it all the easier because Fox liars fed on that ignorance.

If we had called it health insurance reform from day 1, we already would have had a great, public option bill. Who is scared of reforming insurance. We all know insurance sucks!

I have hopes that it will at least improve the status quo somewhat. And when it does, we can say yes, we are able to pass good legislation, and then it will be easier to take the next step. A step we were hoping wouldn't be "next," but better incrementally than not at all.

And hey, as watered down as this may be, you know it'll get a little stronger when it comes time to have conference negotiation with the House.

Reason for backlash is not because every one is against the reform but it is because administration and congress (those turn coats who would anything to get our support and vote) wants to add yet another medical bureaucracy in addition to 3 already government run plan - Medicaid, Medicare and Veteran.

Best way to handle this was -
- Treat Health Insurance as ant Insurance - you bet against the future risk - similar to life and accidental insurance. Basically you buy the policy to protect your family and you against any unexpected/unforseen medical emergency and/or sickness causing havoc on your finances.

 This means reform the laws to protect consumers.  Remove boundary and make the rules uniform so that  you are free to buy your Medical Insurance from where ever you want and from whom ever you want.

- Make Medicaid available to all irrespective the income - just show your Valid ID like Driver License/US Passport and you get all the treatment and medicine but with some restriction like not covering the experimental drugs.

 For this to be successful have all teaching hospitals including private who takes the money from government have community clinics within 25 mile driving distance. They should be staffed by Interns and Residence in Family Medicine, Ob/Gyn, Pediatric Medicine and Internal Medicine. These clinic should work as a gate keeper for any specialized treatment.

 All medical Residents had to have first of their residency (irrespective of their specialty) in this clinic.

 Separate Emergency Rooms from Hospital and have them at least one in every county and major metropolitan area with diving not more than 40-60 miles.

 Each Community clinic and Emergency Room should have Clinical Lab for most of the basic Lab Tests.

 Have community clinic and Emergency Clinics budget based on number of resident covered in the area they serve adjusted for cost of living and inflation.

 Have Pharmacy in the community clinic and emergency clinic.

 Eliminate all paperwork and all those complex codes. Doctor just records the patiant history and diagnosis on computer, lab enters the results in the computer, doctor sends the prescription to pharmacy by internal e-mail, and doctor makes the schedule with specialist (if needed) via computer. No other paperwork or coding.

 Have tort reform to pay only lost income and 1.5 times lost income as damage. All those expert witnesses shall be based on consensus of both side of attorney and approved by judge. This would minimize abuse of the system.

- Any one wants to skip the line on any treatment or want some special or experimental medicine can buy their own Health Insurance similar to UK.

- Medicare - Eliminate for all who are now 40 years and younger including any Medicare deduction from their paycheck.

As I predicted.....the caved. This is what happens in part when you take no initiative and no leadership position on an issue. They waited for congress to lead and never drove the ship...

I just have two things:

We should have been talking about "Health Insurance Reform" all along.  It is hard to spin this as a government takeover of healthcare.

I will be disappointed if all we get is the exchange as presented in the House bill will no public option.  But as long as it does not include a mandate it shouldn't be too much of a give away.  We do need a market with stringent rules through which people who don't get insurance through their employers can get reasonable plan.  If they don't at least accomplish that, it's a total bust.

Instead of September 2010.  This was never a realistic option.  In America, you dont get anything for free.  

I am profoundly saddened, for I know now that I, now 56, shall never see myself adequately insured, as I am among the millions not insured at all.

I admire President Obama for his brilliance and command of issues, but alas, my NETROOTS friends, many of us will never agree as to which Democratic candidate was truly the better choice of 2008.

In my lifetime, Bill Clinton was the best of United States Presidents, and I include Ike, JFK and LBJ.  Each of those men had far more flawed administrations, whether by perpetuating Cold War mythologies or by way a myopic social view.

Bill and Hillary always fought the good fight.  They believed, then and now, in universal health care, but unlike President Obama, they were neither of them ever respected by the vast majority of the American media.  The media condemned Bill Clinton when he survived the premature predictions of his political demise early in the primary campaign of 1992.  Since then, they have excoriated him for anything and everything.  

And yet without a doubt, as my own generation prepares for its time of passing, there is my personal certainty that post World War II, Bill Clinton was simply the most accomplished of any United States President.

I believe that there is no substitute for experience, and had the "twofer" Clintons regained power in 2009 they would have understood, better than any other politicians, the need to define health care reform very early on and decidedly, and on their own terms.  They would have recognized, because of the failure of their own initiative in 1993-1994, that one simply cannot leave reform to the insurance lobbies.  "Harry and Louise" ads could only succeed in 2009 if the insurance industry were seen as a central player.  

The dynamics of the politics in current play would have made the insurance lobbies irrelevant--but only if the White House, very rapidly defined the battlefield, and without any nods to the GOP, which had been throttled in the two previous general elections.

Such a view, such a comprehension, could only have come from mature veteran pols who had been at the forefront of the political divide in 2003 and 2004--indeed, only Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Ronald Reagan's minions will never be anything more than the "Greed Is Good" acolytes of Oliver Stone's 1987 "Wall Street"--the work of cinema which most closely defined the Reagan Era.  

One of the truly saddest aspects of so many in the Netroots adopting the MSM's creed eviscerating all things Clinton is the fact that so many among them can see no difference between the peace and prosperity era of Clinton and the "Greed is Good," borrow-on-the-future credo of Reagan and the Bushes.

There will now never be a way to determine if this time round another Clinton term would have achieved true health care reform, yet I know in my heart and mind that another Clinton term would have fought the battle with greater wisdom--borne of experience--and I think much more effectively.

I believe that President Barack Obama continues to fight the good fight for many Americans too long disappropriated by Washington.  He is truly gifted and brilliant.  

But having a 60-vote majority in the Senate and a commanding lead in the House of Representatives, and a presidential mandate by voters the previous year, for all of the unruly nature of congressional politics, are powerful dynamics with little precedent.  There is no doubt that President Obama has the youth, vitality, and brilliance to carry off comprehensive health care reform.  

Alas, he simply is wanting the wisdom of having gone to bat for it before--and concerning that play, only the Clintons could possibly understand the rules of play.

More sorrowful than recognizing the fact that the only way that I, and many millions more in this country, will ever have meaningful health care, is if we leave these shores for other lands, is the fact that so many of the truly progressive Netrooters have permitted themselves to be freely indoctrinated by the Reagan acolytes.  They have bought into the mythology than the Clinton years differed little from their Right Wing predecessors.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Clinton Era fought not only entrenched Right Wing forces from the outset, but without a presidential mandate, also fought a virulently hostile press.  

Because President Obama, who enjoyed a genuine presidential mandate in 2008, and who has been largely championed by that same militantly anti-Clinton press, yet maintains a respect by the MSM, his administration's capitulation on health care is one of the truly great tragedies of American politics.  Meaningful health care reform in the United States should have happened, without excuses and adulteration, in 2009.

Again, I admire President Obama for his many great gifts.  I pray that he achieve his many noble goals for all Americans and other citizens of the World.  And I yet pray for a miracle on health care reform.

But my heart and my mind know that there is no substitute for experience.  To conquer the forces of the status quo requires a prior knowledge of that status quo and how to best them on their own terms.  For me, in 2009, that meant calling on the Clintons.

The recent release of the journalists unfairly sentenced in North Korea is a case in point.  Indeed, President Obama's administration laid the groundwork, but it was Bill Clinton, and only Bill Clinton, who could have effected their exodus.  On the world stage, President Obama is truly golden, but Bill Clinton is diamond stellar.  Nobody does it better, even in 2009.

Mindful of his administration's own failure at bat in 2003-2004, health care reform in 2009, like his success on the Korean mission, requires the finesse of William Jefferson Clinton.

Man, if this goes down cold, welcome to a whole new landscape for the 2010 elections..........

Shorter Sebelius:

If you make between 200 and 300% of poverty, please vote Republican.

I guess I am an outlier, but I would settle for insurance reform to begin.  Tens of millions of new covered with no restrictions on pre-existing conditions, no cherry-picking, etc. combined with the purchasing pools for individuals and small business would be a big improvement.

Reform of cherry-picking rules, etc. will drive insurance industry profits down.

If the private insurers let us down after a few years, then start letting people into Medicare, starting with the 55-65 set.

First, permit me to clarify that in my continued admniration of the Clintons, I had meant to refer to their health care initiative of 1993-1994, not, of course, 2003-2004.

Beyond that, I stand steadfastly behind my commentary.

The Clintons were ever and always "two-fers," the slang variant of two for the price of one; ever and always a political power tandem.  Almost eveyone everywhere who knows anything about them takes that as an axiom.  Thus, to believe that in voting for Hillary last year one was not also voting for Bill is an insult not to Hillary but to one's own intelligence about the nature of this extraordinary team.

Secondly, the comment that Bill Clinton achieved nothing by way of Congress displays the ultimate of ignorance.  The boom of the mid-to-latter 1990s, indeed "the longest peacetime expansion," was borne directly out of Bill Clinton's brilliant economic package, which was lacerated by the GOP and which in fact cost many courageous Democrats their congressional seats in 1994.  

That brilliant economy was Clinton's economy.  Far be it for either the GOP or even the NETROOTS to ever give him his due.  The "Dot COM" high technology boom occurred simultaneously, but it was his precisely ordered stimulus, fully paid for by an increase in taxes for the highest wage earners which made for that golden surplus by the time of the millennium.

Those glory years of paid-for prosperity were also augmented by superb efforts on behalf of negotiated peace to long festering conflicts, concerning which Bill Clinton played a cardinal role.  The most auspicious of these was the peace pact concluding centuries of hostilities in Northern Ireland--and denizens of that region know only too well just how cardinal the Clinton role was.

Now, as to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," this was from the outset severely flawed, but it was a step in the right direction at a period in which gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights were never even referred to by previous administrations.  

Remember too, that the ever-eviscerated (at Oxford while Vietnam raged) Clinton was contending with an entrenched military that deeply distrusted him.  Strangely enough, that same military adored Bill Clinton's contemporary President George Walker Bush--who not only never served abroad during the Vietnam War, but several times did not even show up for duty stateside as part of his National Guard service.

Thus, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a terribly flawed but necessary first step.  Flogging Bill Clinton for this is rather like flogging a lone Civil Rights crusader in a town of Red Necks many of whom would yet believe in the KKK.  That lone crusader could only do so much, and whipping him for not doing more goes beyond the pale.

As regards to the Clinton health care initiative of 1993-1994; this too, was the nation's first comprehensive healthcare overhaul, going far beyond Medicare under LBJ and the earlier failed efforts of Harry Truman.  

Yes, the Clintons might have handled it with greater prescience of their entrenched insurance company opposition interests.  But remember that Bill Clinton's popular vote in 1992 was all of 43%; he did not then garner a fillibuster proof Senate majority, and the opposition to him was far more vitriolic.  

Most importantly, the MSM was ever planning his demise, inasmuch as he was the politician "who got away."  That is far cry from the reverence afforded both candidate and President Barack Obama, even though much of that reverence can be understood.

As a Clinton enthusiast, I have been much impressed by President Obama.  He is truly gifted, with an intellect superbly displayed in his town hall meetings and before Congress and Press.  He is one of our finest Chief Executives, and indeed he may one day be regarded with the likes of FDR and Lincoln as being among the best of all time.

But currently he is finding his way, and that way is not so very different from the path that Bill Clinton has trodden before him.

Yet I also believe that there is no substitute for experience, and the fact the Clintons were both battle-scarred from the last serious effort at comprehensive health care reform makes them far more capable of knowing where the political landmines are and how to avoid them.

President Obama is prescient enough to know that you don't sequester a diamond-class politician, whatever are your past differences.  Thus, President Obama permitted Bill Clinton to be the final emissary toward the release of the journalists held in North Korea.

It is my prayer that President Obama will continue to be prescient and permit diamond-class politician William Jefferson Clinton to act on behalf of the administration's best efforts on the world stage--and on behalf of comprehensive health care reform.

And it is high time the NETROOTS gave Bill Clinton his due.  While our brilliant current President finds his way, Bill Clinton will remain our finest Chief Executive of the past sixty-four years.

With this story hitting the wires today via the canadian press, you can be sure the public option is dead.

Back to Google News
Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadia npress/article/ALeqM5jbjzPEY0Y3bvRD335rG u_Z3KXoQw

However, for those who are arguing we should do nothing if their is no public option, thats just plain stupidity. There are still plenty of ways to cut costs and make insurance more affordable to americans in what will come out of the Senate. Its like the old saying, you dont throw the baby out with the bath water. Anyone who thought that an entire overhaul was going to happen were being foolish. A bill that woudl do much of what is beign proposed even with public option would be significant reform. Dont cut off your nose to spite your face. You may not get what you wanted, but take all that you can get because if it doent happen now, its dead for another 8 years....