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 The Party of ChoicePosted on Oct 28, 2009
By Joe Conason The Senate leadership’s decision to include the “public option” in its health care reform legislation seemed at first almost miraculous, especially to anyone who believed the hundreds of obituaries recited in the media over the past several months. But by acting on their convictions rather than their fears, the Democrats could ultimately find that the politics of consumer choice can be turned to their advantage for years to come. Prognostications by the Washington press corps are so often wrong that it is usually safe to bet against the pundits—but in the case of the public option, their skepticism was warranted. While polls have consistently showed strong majorities in favor of a Medicare-style insurance plan, the combined opposition of the Republican minority, the right-wing media, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries appeared easily powerful enough to kill any such proposal. Besides, too many influential Democrats in both the Senate and the House—notably Connecticut’s Joseph Lieberman, whose wife long worked for major health care and pharmaceutical interests—took their direction from lobbyists who want to kill the public option. (Lieberman, the self-styled “independent Democrat,” has threatened to join a Republican filibuster.) Meanwhile White House political operatives were sending mixed messages, with President Obama’s support for the public option subordinated to the illusion of bipartisanship. Propaganda against “government-run health care” has been dominating the debate. But prospects for the public option brightened when Democrats led by Sen. Charles Schumer fashioned a compromise that would allow states to “opt out” of the public insurance plan. By leaving that decision to the states, the Schumer amendment recapitulates the political theme of choice in health care reform. Suddenly, Republican opposition to the public option can be seen for what it really is: curtailing consumer choices and coddling insurance monopolies. The reason that Schumer’s scheme is superior to other compromises is simple. Unlike feeble alternatives proposed by some of his colleagues—all of which would delay implementation indefinitely, or diminish the public option’s scope—the opt-out plan would allow for success in the real world. As the default position, requiring specific action to reject the government plan, the public option will have a strong chance of prevailing in most states. And should most states actually permit the public option to be offered alongside private insurance, the government plan will wield enough market power to reduce costs significantly across the board, just as its proponents expect. Advertisement  Then families will learn that their friends and relatives in public option states are paying hundreds of dollars less every month for the same coverage (or better). Consumer agencies will report that the government plan, like Medicare, doesn’t abruptly cancel insurance for people who become ill or chisel their benefits as private insurers too often do. Business owners will discover that firms in public option states have lower costs—because even companies with private insurance plans benefit from the competitive effect of the government plan. In a democratic society, this experiment—again assuming its success—should result in growing pressure on politicians who insist on frustrating progress. It is hard to imagine an issue that could more sharply frame the division between consumers and labor on one side, and abusive corporate power on the other. Over time, for struggling Democrats in Republican states, that could mean becoming the party of choice in every sense. Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer. © 2009 Creators.com Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
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By ardee, November 1 at 7:19 am #
Outraged, November 1 at 2:55 am #
You are as much a worthless poster as is Martha/Thomas. You made unsupported and unverified accusations against me for what, sport?, fun? you own lack of self worth?
When I demanded that you post proof of said accusation you ran directly back under your rock. You should be so proud of yourself. What a jackass!
Report thisBy ThomasG, November 1 at 3:33 am #
ardee, October 31 at 10:41am
Amorphous equivocating Blah.
Report thisBy Outraged, November 1 at 2:55 am #
Re: ardee
Your comment: “Sad you don’t understand how much you discredit yourself.”
I think Muriel Blandings explains it better than I could ever hope to:
“Muriel Blandings: I want it to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin’s egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don’t let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green. Now, the dining room. I’d like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine-y. I tell you, Mr. PeDelford, if you’ll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can’t go wrong! Now, this is the paper we’re going to use in the hall. It’s flowered, but I don’t want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There’s some little dots in the background, and it’s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now for the powder room - in here - I want you to match this thread, and don’t lose it. It’s the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it! As you can see, it’s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan. Oh, excuse me…
Mr. PeDelford: You got that Charlie(ardee)?
Charlie(ardee), Painter: Red, green, blue, yellow, white.
Mr. PeDelford: Check.”
(quote from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House)
Report thisBy ardee, October 31 at 10:41 am #
ThomasG, October 30 at 4:34 pm #
ardee, October 30 at 6:41am
This from someone who has no hold on reality at all——yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
****************************************
You see, Thomas, many try hard to interpret facts and actions, distilling them into political theory and acting upon those learned convictions.
Then there are those like you and your imaginary playmate, Martha, who posit from a diseased mind, make crap up and build an elaborate fairyland wherein only you are the source of all fact and any opinion that , even in the slightest way, differs from your almost illegible bold, italicized, capitalized bullshit statistics mans without question a plot or a movement to discredit you.
Sad you don’t understand how much you discredit yourself. By the by, you promised, on first arrival here, to bring down this forum, as you boasted you had done to liberal forums before, for the crime of refusing to get inline with you…I await Armageddon….
Report thisBy ThomasG, October 30 at 4:34 pm #
ardee, October 30 at 6:41am
This from someone who has no hold on reality at all——yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
Report thisBy ThomasG, October 30 at 2:02 pm #
Trailing Begonia, October 30 at 8:18am,
Apparently you haven’t heard of Congressman Alan Grayson?
Report thisBy Trailing Begonia, October 30 at 8:18 am #
Democrats and convictions…two words that should never be used in the same sentence unless there is a ‘have no’ between them.
Of course, it should go without saying that I think even worse of the Repuglicans. The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a politicians with convictions, unless of course, the convictions have a dollar value attached to them.
Report thisBy ardee, October 30 at 6:41 am #
MarthaA, October 29 at 10:37 pm
Congratulations for , yet again, proving your tenuous hold on reality…
KDelphi
Do you not feel any obligation to the nation of your birth?
Report thisBy Outraged, October 30 at 3:20 am #
Re: KDelphi
Your comment: “Wait until Independents find out how badly this plan really sucks…the Dems are screwed. Then we’ll have GOP agains, ho hum, then corporate Dems again.
Staying in this country is masochism. If I could just sell this house, I would skip out on my debts and go to canada. What a bunch of cowards.”
Seems odd that you would say, “I would skip out” and yet call others “cowards”. I say you are the coward. I am an independent, and I disagree.
Additionally, I do not think, AS AN INDEPENDENT that staying in this country is “masochism” as you claim. Your comment regarding “GOP agains, ho hum” is certainly questionable. Is this how you interpret our present situation? The one that has been dished out to us? In other words, IF the CURRENT GOP were empowered, would it be in your mind, “ho hum”...?!
If so, my premise would be that you have lost your bearing. This type of mindset…. especially at this critical juncture, to be flippantly regarded as “ho hum” is undeniably dangerous. You are endorsing a fools game.
Report thisBy KDelphi, October 30 at 12:52 am #
Wait until Independents find out how badly this plan really sucks…the Dems are screwed. Then we’ll have GOP agains, ho hum, then corporate Dems again.
Staying in this country is masochism. If I could just sell this house, I would skip out on my debts and go to canada. What a bunch of cowards.
Report thisBy MarthaA, October 29 at 10:37 pm #
ardee, October 29 at 7:00pm, and ardee, October 29 at 6:49pm,
Amorphous Equivocating Blah.
Report thisBy ardee, October 29 at 7:00 pm #
I post that last, not to support the GOP, an increasingly radical group with no real understanding of the plight of the average American, but to make clear that Democrats must share the blame for what happens in this nation. They are, after all, an increasingly corporatist group with no real understanding of the plight of the average American.
Oh and Martha, before you once again get your panties in a bunch, I am equally condemning both parties thus do not merit your usual claptrap about being an undercover agent for Karl Rove….I support independent voting and third party politics as the two major parties are huge disappointments. Of course, that wont stop you…...
Report thisBy ardee, October 29 at 6:49 pm #
Its a two party system, you betcha!
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4278
The Democrats’ Support for Bush’s War
Stephen Zunes | May 31, 2007
The capitulation of the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership to the Bush administration’s request for nearly $100 billion of unconditional supplementary government spending, primarily to support the war in Iraq, has led to outrage throughout the country. In the Senate, 37 of 49 Democrats voted on May 24 to support the measure. In the House, while only 86 of the 231 Democratic House members voted for the supplemental funding, 216 of them voted in favor of an earlier procedural vote designed to move the funding bill forward even though it would make the funding bill’s passage inevitable (while giving most of them a chance to claim they voted against it).
The claim by Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democratic leaders unconditional funding was necessary to “support the troops” and to “not leave them in harm’s way” is a lie. If they really supported the troops and wanted them out of harm’s way, they would have passed legislation that would bring them home. The Democrats had other priorities, however.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/WildEyedLiberal/60
The Democrats who were responsible for the Vietnam War
Posted by WildEyedLiberal
Fri Dec 01st 2006, 03:52 PM
Many Americans took to the streets in the 1960s to protest an unnecessary war against a country that never attacked us. It’s worth remembering which craven Democrats voted for that immoral and illegal war and helped get us stuck in the hellhole of Nam for ten years.
Among those who voted for the wasteful Vietnam War by voting YEA on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution:
Eugene McCarthy
George McGovern
Oh sure, once it was obvious the war was unpopular, both of them conveeeeeniently became “anti-war.” Well guess what? Too little too late! THEY helped get us there and therefore any backtracking against the war they did after the fact is immaterial and irrelevant. They clearly are responsible for the war. The blood of 58,000 American soldiers and countless Vietnamese civilians is on their hands. Big words after the fact don’t erase the fact that they voted for the war! They gave a green light to the war and that must never be forgotten or forgiven.
Report thisIronic that that last is from a site wedded to the democratic party….Martha, you should be there.
By AlanSmithee, October 29 at 5:53 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Countless minimum wage workers will be forced to buy crappy insurance they can’t afford or face legal fines. Only a DP flack could look at this giveaway to the insurance industry and call it “miraculous.”
Have liberals have become so cowardly, so deluded that they’ll grasp at any floating pile of stinking offal and call it a miracle?
Report thisBy MarthaA, October 29 at 4:33 pm #
ChaoticGood, October 29 at 2:24pm,
“The Republicans voted against Medicare and for the Vietnam War. The Republicans will vote against Health Care Reform and will vote to pay for Iraq and Afganistan and any other military boondoggle that they can find. The Republicans do not care about poor Americans. They will once again show what they are to everyone.”
This is very true. ALL Republicans are Conservative and all Conservatives whether Democrats or Republican care nothing about the public, the people, the Common Population——Conservatives only care about protecting and adding to PRIVATE CAPITAL of their capitalist constituents.
It is amazing that the Right-Wing Conservative Movement has managed to propagandize the poor Common Population in the past 40 years to the extent that they have, the working and retired common people have been cajoled into thinking they are not the Left, Liberal, liberals, the public, the Common Population, since all that is bad for government, when that is who they ARE, while Corporations have their hand out taking TRILLIONS in welfare; welfare is cut off to the little mother with children; and the people who really need help from government think they are the Conservatives.
The Conservatives spend and have spent massive amounts of money to propagandize the public to think that Conservative is what everyone of the Common Population should be and that Government must give all to corporations conservatively and that each individual must be Conservative and insure that the Government is Conservative to get the Public to sacrifice their lives for private corporate capital investments for people who care nothing at all about the Common Population whatsoever and squander the money.
It is unbelievable. Hopefully working people and the religious of the common population will realize that they have been duped by Right-Wing Conservative EXTREMIST propaganda and sophism.
An individual being frugally conservative at home is a whole different story than a government politically conserving the wealth of a nation for only one class of people——the Big Capitalists and their toadies.
Report thisBy tropicgirl, October 29 at 4:12 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
chaoticgood—
Apparently the Democrats we have now do not care about poor Americans either.
Report thisOr about the wars.
By ChaoticGood, October 29 at 2:24 pm #
The Republicans voted against Medicare and for the Vietnam War. The Republicans will vote against Health Care Reform and will vote to pay for Iraq and Afganistan and any other military boondoggle that they can find. The Republicans do not care about poor Americans. They will once again show what they are to everyone. Perhaps if they lose even more seats in 2010 and 2012, the Republican Party will shrink into oblivion. We can only hope.
Report thisBy melpol, October 29 at 1:12 pm #
Countless minimum wage workers that were forced to limp in pain to their job will
Report thissoon get medical attention. Many could not even afford a cane. Some have burns
and cuts that need bandages. A new provision of national healthcare will bring
good health back to our forgotten workers.
By tropicgirl, October 29 at 12:53 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Kucinich on New Health Care Bill: ‘Is This the Best We Can Do?’
Congressman Kucinich 111th
Washington, Oct 29 -
Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative,
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement
about the latest House health care plan:
“Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance,
guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies?
“Is this the best we can do? Government negotiates rates which will drive up
insurance costs, but the government won’t negotiate with the pharmaceutical
companies which will drive up pharmaceutical costs.
“Is this the best we can do? Only 3% of Americans will go to a new public plan,
while currently 33% of Americans are either uninsured or underinsured?
“Is this the best we can do? Eliminating the state single payer option, while
forcing most people to buy private insurance.
“If this is the best we can do, then our best isn’t good enough and we have to
ask some hard questions about our political system: such as Health Care or
Insurance Care? Government of the people or a government of the
corporations.”
Contact: Nathan White (202)225-5871
Report thisBy KDelphi, October 29 at 12:06 pm #
I am certainly going to use this “option” to “opt out
Report thisof voting Dem in 2010. Shame Sen. Brown supports it. Kucinich is calling for, maybe , a Third party, but we all know where that would go.
By Nanou, October 29 at 11:49 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Molto interessante blog che ho bruciacchiato per il RSS tradotto tramite RssItaliano
Report thisBy Nanou, October 29 at 11:48 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Reasonable people approach problem solving with the notion that eventually some compromise must take place. Unfortunately, conservatives, by definition, never want ANYthing to change ... at least unless the proposed change of direction is BACKwards.
Report thisBy Hulk2008, October 29 at 9:51 am #
Reasonable people approach problem solving with the notion that eventually some compromise must take place. Unfortunately, conservatives, by definition, never want ANYthing to change ... at least unless the proposed change of direction is BACKwards.
We cannot reasonably fault Mr. Schumer and Mr. Reid and others for at least taking the chance that compromise might still be possible - even though it may be remote.
I highly recommend that voters spend some time watching/listening to C-Span coverage of the 1-minute speeches in the House. One will quickly see that the conservatives dedicate themselves to a relentless repetition of the same Luntz talking points and bomb-throwing rhetoric. One will see almost no opportunity for rational discourse or compromise on the right.
The electorate naively votes for representatives who are supposed to solve national problems. Unfortunately, the majority of officials avoid solving anything but their own re-elections.
Report thisBy ardee, October 29 at 6:14 am #
The phrase,“this far and no farther” is unknown to Democrats apparently.
If we get a public option it will be one so watered down and ineffective as to be acceptable to the Health Care Industry. Thus no real reform at all.
I join with those who demand that Democrats force the GOP to actually filibuster rather than invoke a rule, far too easy for them.
Report this