I would like to ask Ms. Marcus if she would have supported this bill if it had been proposed in a Bush/Republican congress?

does anyone believe for one iota of a second that 30 million are going to be *actually* covered by this bill? With no limits, caps or anti trust restrictions. Please. Who’s being naive now?

And the attacks on people like Keith Olbermann? come on, his dad is dying under the shame and bureacracy of the brutal healthcare system who profit not by providing coverage but by denying coverage. jYou really think he was gonna swallow this crap as an improvement? Just b/c Obummer is bored and wants to move onto “jobs summits” where he can just pontificate some more?

The thing that Marcus and that disgusting article posted on truthdig this week by Bill Boyarsky are really missing the point. Leftists, whatever that even means today, are committed to ideology not political parties. We’ve relived this phony populism before under Clinton. We’re not that stupid and gullible to believe that Obummer is one of “us” by his actions not his unaccountable and empty speechifying. Hopeful for change doesn’t make us too dumb to realize we’ve been exploited again for electoral gain. See you in 3 years suckers

And say what you want about Howard Dean, Markos Molitsos, Olbermann etc they are committed to new ideas and the expression of political power. Maybe they expected Obummer to actually deliver on his fake slogan of Change & Hope which has been as bankrupted as Bush’s “compassionate conservative”.

Ms. Marcus is castigating the left’s refusal to swallow this phony healthcare bill as disloyal to what? Remember before the left embraced Obummer from the very beginning when it was “Hillary and the Seven Dwarves”. He should be more loyal to Howard Dean than effing Joe Lieberman.

Who will Marcus blame when the left stays home in ‘010? Olbermann and Molitsas? The “left” whatever that means should wake up to the reality that Obummer is Center Right not even the slightest bit progressive. This weakling can’t even stand up to the generals to undo don’t ask don’t tell. Puke

Those of us on the left are being excoriated for not supporting this bill. I wish Axelrod, Obummer and Rahm were as publically vexated towards Joe Lieberman as they have been towards Dr. Howard Dean

But two things I don’t see mentioned as reasons to kill the bill. the unconscionable limits on female reproductive rights adn coverage in a Democratic written legislation (You just gonna roll over for that Ms. Pelosi?) AND that this gives the insurance industry ANTI TRUST exemption. Are you kidding me?

the latter is just too much for this lefist to look past and the former? How are women going to be inspired to vote Democratic in the upcoming elections?

And if we’re going to pump 900 billion into a for profit subsidy system I weep at what could have been a great down payment investment on a true single payer arrangement.

Isn’t Obummer worried about how this affects him for re-election? Civil war in his party over health care, failure and quite frankly lazy attempt at “Nopenhagen” and the only jobs he has added to the economy are the 50,000 troops he has committed to the civil war in Afghanistan which has a real danger of further destablizing Pakistan. WTF?

If he truly believes he deserves a grade of B+ he has the lowest of expectations which fits perfectly in how his leadership botched this healthcare bill which has exposed the democrats as just the next party in line to feed at the trough. to hell with the Hope & Change “lobby”

Once again:  No matter what happens with this particular attempt, let’s get the medical and health care professional organizations involved immediately for the next round to up the benefits.  They are the ones who see up close and personal the sad, down and out patients in pain.  They are in the “do-no-harm” profession.  They know the harm that inadequate care caused by insufficient insurance causes, and they know the rake-off of the insurance companies also.  Get them to speak out as organizations and make recommendations, run ads, petitions etc.  get them involved. Doctors, technicians, nurses, health care people, social workers—all across the health profession scene—they ought to be heard and would add strength to improvements. They certainly don’t love the insurance companies and all the unnecessary red tape.  They ought to be expected to weigh in on this problem.  Where are they so far?

peacenik1, December 21 at 1:23 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

This bill is a vast improvement over the status quo.  Consider it as “a first draft.”
A bill passed today could be improved tomorrow.

This is just a beginning.

This hopeful commentary overlooks the fact that this bill is a guarantee of profits and no guarantee of real health care reform.

This “first draft” assures a 20% margin for the middle men of health care, really nice work and worth the many millions lobbyists lavished upon our lawmakers.

That this bill, in whatever form it ultimately takes, can be amended in the future is moot. That it can be altered to increase profit rather than efficiencies seems a more logical assumption considering how our Legislature panders to the wishes of the industry rather than to the needs of the people.

White House as Helpless Victim in Health Care Debate

http://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=2345#comment-181

It will probably work about as well as Dem party credit card bill of rights and financial services reform…

“You underestimate the power and greed of the upper classes in this country and their deep desire to take away anything
they perceive as “helping” anyone.”

The people we always refer to as “upper class” are really “lower class”;  they just happen to have a lot of money.  The one
thing, if anything, that does not connote “Class”, is money.

Seeing. understand, and addressing the plight of ones fellow man is the mark of real Class. Greed is not.

“Dangerously unhinged” Oh, really?
Try this on for hinged, from the Washington Posts summary of the ‘80/20
Compromise’ by Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery; Washington Post Staff
Writer ; Saturday, December 19, 2009; 1:30 PM. Here goes:

“Reid’s package also would give patients the right of appeal to an independent
state board if an insurer denies a medical claim. And all insurance companies
would be required to spend at least 80 cents of every dollar they collect in
premiums on delivering care to their customers.” An individual’s ‘right to
appeal’ is reminiscent of the line spoken by a tobacco industry litigator in
‘Thank You for Smoking’. When asked by his son “What makes America great,
Dad?”, the corporate attorney replied “Endless appeals.” We’ve all seen this
movie.

But the next line in the Post’s summary of the ‘compromise’ reveals even more,
perhaps, a major source of ‘unhingement’: “And all insurance companies would
be required to spend at least 80 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums
on delivering care to their customers.” The 80/20 ‘Compromise’ is by far the
most blatant admission that Reid et al have crafted yet another corporate
bailout at the citizens’ expense. Now, get this: 20 cents of every dollar - that’s
20 cents of every 100 cents - by law (at least by the Senate ‘compromise’) can
be retained by private sector insurers to pay their bonuses, lard their bottom
line, expand their ?investments, etc.

The Senate bill as now written provides that everyone in ?America pay for
private sector health care, in short, wasting 20 cents of every health care
dollar, piddling it off to middlers, who deliver no health care whatsoever,
require mind numbing paper work, jerk you around with ‘co-pays’ and ?
‘contributions’, etc, but do not ever in any shape or form deliver health care
services to you. This is what the Senate has brought us.

And here’s an added ?insult brought by the White House to everyone who is not
a private sector health ?insurance corporate employee: Because both the right
and the left think citizens should not be mandated by their government to
provide corporate welfare for private sector health insurance companies with
both taxes (paid to corporations as ‘subsidies’ to cover the poor who cannot
afford to payoff the ?corporations) and premiums (20 percent of which are not
used to provide health care services), they have persuaded themselves that
independents will ?just love it!  That’s a three- bagger: They’ve insulted the
independents, the right and the left.

Now, it may be that ‘the left’ is ‘unhinged’, but, so, I suggest is ‘the right’ and
‘the middle’. If the author were more informed, I think the author would be
‘unhinged’ like the rest of us.

Since she holds herself up as fully hinged, I would suggest the author is
dangerously and fully uninformed.

I am 63 years old, too young for full retirement, too old to be re-employed, terminated “at will” as corporations can do to protect profit margins, and I would buy this insurance? Please, spare me how good this makes things for me. I’m not afraid of work, I persue it but those that know understand, those that haven’t experienced clandestine age discrimination will not until it happens to them. I will take what comes by not purchasing insurance, I will not take this insurance on principle. I have pre-existing condition, I can/will not afford to buy this insurance. I will take what comes, actually, more may come by not taking it. I can’t speak for the quality of medical care in jail, but it would match the price at least, and it serves my princple of not allowing these political people who force this coverage while the same insurance companies put additions to their house, or continue to buy their votes to manipulate me. Some day senators, I hope to meet you while incarcerated when we get ethics taken care of. I would like to show you what someone who served in the Armed Forces for your benefit while you hid thinks of your allowing this to happen. I promise to get my point across.

Olberman is right. This crappy hoax of “healthcare reform” like the bank bailouts show the utter bankruptcy of a corporatocracy that is unable to act against the narrow interests of its owners. This system has nothing left to offer but exploitation, war, and ecological megadeath.

Your logic fails to support your argument.  You assert that those of us who argue against this foul obscenity of a bill are making all kinds of “assumptions,” like a failure of the marketplace.  Ms. Marcus, please.  That’s not an assumption. That is a current fact.  There is nothing in the bill to change what is currently a non-functional, non-competitive system.  You, however, are making the monumental assumption that if this big, wet, sloppy kiss to Aetna and it’s bloodsucking, monopolistic cohorts doesn’t work for us, that Congress will just fix it.  Did you not get your meds today???  Who ARE you people that want to support this wretched bill?  And what is Robert Scheer doing letting you people write this drivel on his site?

A refreshing and more hope-filled perspective!

In the course of any debate, arguments become simplified and therefore distorted. This is true with health care. Although insurance is a rightly important, central component to the problem, it isn’t the only one.

As suzikidder writes: “The system is completely broken. The medical model is dysfunctional.”

Remember those stories about the cost of aspirin in the hospital? A friend of mine became brief partners with a guy who sold bed sheets for this (oh, duh) non-standard sized bed. It was designed to need custom sheets. He paid a girl $5 to cut and sew a sheet. He sold them for $35 each. I watched him pick that number out of the air in his living room one night as the girl sewed. A huge profit because he wanted a huge profit.

A couple of years ago, a close family member suffered a heart attack at home, and passed while in the ambulance. She was briefly revived, but died finally about two hours later. The bill was $250,000. Not one item was approved by or even known to the family until the bill arrived.

Insurance paid it all.

There’s no incentive to control any costs in the system anywhere, and every incentive not to, especially if the industry taps into taxes.

When I wrote earlier that businesses are buckling under the expense of health care, I mean under the expense of HALF the cost of health care, the matching funds. So, unemployed people are going to afford… what exactly? Oh… nothing, huh. Then employed people will pay for them… too? ... in addition to their own premiums?

It won’t work.

For-profit insurance in a capitalist society and general health care as a matter of humanity are incompatible purposes. You can’t have both.

A reform bill without a universal option is not reform, but more of the same.  Mandating all citizens to acquire health insurance from private carriers is a windfall for them.  Those that cannot afford such coverage will get federal assistance.  However, those same people probably can not afford the deductibles nor the co-pay nor the 20% not covered so they wind up on Medicaid anyway.  And what happens when someone loses their employment do the feds step and provide assistance???

Dear Ruth:  I’ve seen a lot of shallow commentary on the emerging healthcare bill in the Senate during the overall progression of “healthcare reform.” You win this week’s award.

I work in healthcare.  The system is completely broken.  The medical model is dysfunctional, oftentimes downright dangerous, and too often lethal. The financial model exemplifies criminal greed - please reread the current article detailing Aetna’s charming devotion to its profit levels at the expense of its customers.  And the care delivery model has lost all contact with either care or compassion. 

The point of the public option and/or the insurance exchanges, etc. was to introduce competition into the private insurance marketplace.  I’m really not attached to specifically how we go about structuring robust, viable, consumer choice, but if we don’t create such an opportunity for “free market competition” - and the current bill in the Senate clearly does not perform this function - then I believe that no bill is better than a truly awful bill.  The Obama Administration’s fixation on getting a bill, any bill, some bill is better than no bill at all - is not just bad politics.  It’s worse - neither good governance nor competent leadership. 

I grant you that the Senate is essentially a totally dysfunctional culture – an admission I make as a Californian whose legislature sets the bar for dysfunction at a truly awesome elevation - and so I never imagined that it would be easy to get a good bill by those who’ve taken far too much money from 3rd party payers and Big Pharma. But if Harry Reid had half of Nancy Pelosi’s “testicular fortitude,” and a fraction of her Progressive membership, we’d have a bill over which it would be worth a principled compromise. The current bill in the Senate is not such a bill. 

I’m an adult, and I’m willing to consider alternative paths to a desired outcome.  I’m more than willing to compromise if I see a bill that takes us a good ways down the road, in the direction we ought to be heading, and closer to where we want to be in the end.  The House bill does this.  But the Senate bill sends us backwards and not forwards.  It creates the wrong incentives, and rewards the wrong behavior.  And to quote that sage of athleticism, Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going – you’ll end up somewhere else.”  My undergraduate education was a double major in biology (pre-med) and clinical/behavioral psychology.  It should be obvious to anyone with a functioning cortex where the provisions in the Senate bill would drive the delivery of healthcare.

Howard Dean is right - we should kill this monstrosity.  It offers no mechanism to enforce competition, but it definitely did remember to mandate the purchase of private insurance – and to provide penalties for failing to do so.  This is an insult to both the House of Representatives and the constituents our Senators claim to represent.  Ted Kennedy is rolling in his grave.
 
Private healthcare insurance is an industry whose average levels of corruption and greed rival Wall Street’s.  We can hold out all the carrots we can dream up, but without a large stick that’s clearly visible the “suits” will find new and creative ways to screw their policy holders.  Without enforceable mechanisms to make private insurance do the right thing, i.e. both regulation and the existence of a strong competitor, it will find endless loopholes with which to avoid taking care of those who (mis)placed their trust in a private insurance system. 

But thanks - while it was basically a waste of time to read your article, it was fun to write the response.

The disappointment on the Left comes from seeing a lack of political muscle and
will on the part of the Democrats. They have bigger majorities than the
Republicans ever had with George Bush yet they can’t match a fraction of their
accomplishments. The Republicans were able to rule the world with just 50
senators and a VP.

“The Senate bill would extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured—and provides $900 billion in government subsidies to get there.”

That’s $30,000 per person! Why not just send them a check?

The answer is easy- By sending out checks, the government would have no control, and we all know, or should know, that this is all about power and control.

Is it any wonder that over 65% of the country thinks the current bill is a disaster? Including Howard Dean and Rush Limbaugh?

Here in Texas we had a succession of Republican governors and legislatures ‘reform’ insurance for homes and automobiles especially. This was all done with a huge sense of urgency.. and especially to get rid of all the uninsured drivers on our highways causing the rest of us so much pain and expense. The centerpiece of this fight against all those uninsured and irresponsible people was to mandate that every driver must have liability insurance. An extremely weak public ‘pool’ option was also included for the naysayers who saw this all as a windfall for insurance carriers.

I can tell you personally that these rules have made my insurance bills skyrocket while coverage is weakened. Also we have things like cardboard store-front insurance companies..  offering low-cost minimum insurance that does little more than allow the covered person to legally operate a vehicle.. apply for motor vehicle registration and so-on. If you get your vehicle totaled and the owner has one of these paper policies you’ll find out just how flimsy they are.

Now it seems the federal government is on the same bandwagon of mandating that everyone buy insurance.. no one can seriously think this will solve the health-care crisis (it’s about the costs, not availability per-se) or doubt that costs will skyrocket to individuals without a huge flow of tax monies to insurers and health care industries.. it’s a boondoggle. But it’s a boondoggle that Democrats and Progressives feel represents a political victory of some sort over the obstructionist Right.. Maybe it is.. can we afford it?

About Olbermann.. I like him, agree with a lot of what he says and even enjoy his show when I do not agree. He invested a lot of his on-air currency in real health-care reform. Is he disappointed that the nation will not get the single-payer public option we need? Surely.. is he also a little angered that the Senate seems to be un-swayed by his reasonable and impassioned calls for real help? probably so..

Before he gets too uppity he should look at what happened to Mr. Dobbs. Lou Dobbs started out a couple of years back with measured and reasonable calls for the enforcement of our immigration laws and he put a nightly spotlight on the problems associated with illegal immigration in our country. Soon thereafter he became more and more impassioned and then a little arrogant.. his audience came to be drawn less from the overall spectrum of Americans and a lot more about the views and voices of the extreme right.. and down he went.

Kieth Olbermann I don’t think suffers from as much hubris as Mr Dobbs was displaying in the run-up to his downfall.. perhaps he needs to look back a little and re-think what he’s about.. step down from the pulpit and consider how he’s going to keep his audience. I hope he does!

Thanks and have a great day.

If you shoot yourself in the foot, its hard to blame someone else if you can’t walk. The dems shot themselves in the foot when they compromised away every option before any bill was brought to committee. If they have no power, it is because they chose not to take it.  Just another lame (sorry for the pun) excuse.

If the Democrats don’t have the power to do the things
they promised for the people who elected them, then why
did we elect them?

Ms. Marcus? I’d really like to have your answer.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Liberals are unhinged?

Crazy, insane, or psychotic is the definition.

I believe there is truth to the aphorism that insanity is doing the same thing
repeatedly expecting different results.

The Insurance Industry promised to do better in the 60’s 70’s 90’s and in
Massachusetts in the current decade.  They have NEVER delivered on one of
those promises.  I would argue that only those who recognize the futility of
relying on a cooperative insurance industry would qualify as sane.

This would leave Ms Marcus, the supporters of this bill, and those who continue
to chase bi-partisan support of reform as the unhinged ones.

It would be easy to walk away from the health care issue, and let the country collapse under the weight of insurance inflation and its concurrent destruction of business. However, it’s also true that even a small victory is a victory.

What absolutely must be done at this time is to remove the most egregious conservative assaults from the bill.

A federally-mandated health insurance requirement for every individual establishes an authority for government that will destroy the liberal principle of America: that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. The individual would be born into a condition predestined by government. This is the conservative holy grail, which they have previously tried to establish by extending their “protection” to the fetus, undercutting the moral authority of living individuals.

A health insurance mandate isn’t anything like automobile insurance, which is required if you drive a car. To mandate health insurance if you ... uh, breath is servitude. It is fundamentally unamerican and clearly unconstitutional, if not in the letter of the document then certainly in the spirit of our founding fathers.

We have an unalienable right to liberty.

As Olbermann suggested, this is a cause worthy of civil disobedience at the very least. Our forefathers went to war over it. They died rather than not have it.

Second, monopoly protection for health insurance companies must be terminated. There is no private industry if there is monopoly.

Third, we must dedicate ourselves to establishing a single-payer system. Period. For-profit insurance has nothing to do with health care. Our focus must be on care. Not on insurance. There’s no reason for more than one payer.

Joe Liebermann will go down in history alongside Benedict Arnold and other notorious figures of America’s past. But that’s just the start.

Small businesses already can’t afford health care. Even well-funded companies are starting to struggle with it. During the financial crisis, automakers cited health costs as a significant source of their disadvantage.

The destruction of American business is happening now. Liebermann’s incipient politics will hasten it. As more businesses cover fewer people, the medical system will strain further under epidemics, social resources like ambulances, fire, rescue, and police will retreat against increasing social disorder, people will commonly die in public. The blank check for military expenditures and the blank check for medical expenditures will ultimately fracture our society.

Bases overseas will close. The military will be cut only by half, if we’re lucky. Unemployment will rocket to 30% plus, and the populace will make due with their wits.

Oh, and the guns they own.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joe Lieberman. The father of American socialism.

What I liked about Olberman’s comments was this.

He said, “It’s NOT Health, It’s NOT Care, and It’s NOT reform.

Real reform means removing the crooks, liars, and profiteers from our broken system. Private industry add no value to the product. Capitalism and greed have no place in medicine. 

Only those invested in Oligarchy can love the bill coming out of the Senate.  If that’s the best Democracy can do, WE SUCK!

Contrary to popular belief the Democrats do have a lot of spine.  But it is exercised in flipping the bird to their constituents and writing and backing legislation for their corporate backers.  Latter they rationalize their sellouts under the guise that they do not have enough political muscle and therefore are forced into these actions by the Republicans.  This also takes chutzpah and spine.  This scam has come into full display with the Democrat sellouts to the Banksters and health insurance companies.

I say drop this corporate bill and fight for better change.  Go for the best that can be had with reconcilliation and use the process to highlight the worst sellouts in the Democratic party.  If we don’t clean house in the Democratic party all we have is the new GOP.

I agree with everything said above, and I want to know where it’s written that
there will never be another opportunity?  We not only have a vicious,
inequitable system right now; we also have a crisis.  Our vicious inequitable
system is not sustainable; something will have to give.

The bigger picture is that our political system is totally broken.  It doesn’t
matter what we want or who we vote for; all three branches of government are
wholly owned by corporations.  I think it was Gore Vidal who said we have one
party with two right wings (i.e., to the right of the electorate on most issues). 
We need reform of our political process even more than health care reform.

I voted for Obama, was enthusiastic about him, supported him, and even
though I’ve been unhappy with him since then, I planned to vote for him in
2012, because of course the Republican candidate will be worse.  All my life
I’ve voted for Democrats, even if I wasn’ t enthusiastic, because the Republican
is always worse.  No more.  I’m not voting for Obama again, unless he totally
changes his spots.  I’m not voting for any individual Democrat that doesn’t
seem to deserve it.  Of course I can’t vote for Republicans, and I will vote; I
won’t not vote, even if I have to write in Dennis Kucinich.

This bill is not worth passing, and the Democratic Party is not worth keeping. 
Let them collapse and we might have a chance of eventually getting something
better.

Ruth Marcus is correct, the Dems do not have any political muscle….......... It was squandered!

When Obama took office, the majority of the country was behind him. When Health Care reform came to center stage, he should have taken the case to the American people and explained the problem and that, Medicare For All was the only real solution. Instead he went wind surfing while Palin and the rest of the NeoCON goons talked about death panels and all of the other bullshit that came from every direction!

Instead of some straight shooting we got “Public Option” and some other vague rhetoric that no one really understood.

Howard Dean is right, the bill on the table is not worth the paper it is printed on! The people responsible for this disaster are the ones voted into office - you know - who offered change we could believe in! What we got: same old bullshit, different day!

Ruth Marcus is correct, the Dems do not have any political muscle….......... It was squandered!

When Obama took office, the majority of the country was behind him. When Health Care reform came to center stage, he should have taken the case to the American people and explained the problem and that, Medicare For All was the only real solution. Instead he went wind surfing while Palin and the rest of the NeoCON goons talked about death panels and all of the other bullshit that came from every direction!

Instead of some straight shooting we got “Public Option” and some other vague rhetoric that no one really understood.

Howard Dean is right, the bill on the table is not worth the paper it is printed on! The people responsible for this disaster are the ones voted into office - you know - who offered change we could believe in! What we got: same old bullshit, different day!

Independent candidate Howard Dean, 2012….

It’s people like you, Ruth, who set the bar so low a drunk wouldn’t trip over it, who are “dangerously unhinged.”

There is no “magic ” in the public option, but, there would be magic in universal taxpayer funded care, you now, like a civilized country….magic for a poor, uninsured mother trying to take care of sick kids on SCHIP, or one who had to take care of an elderly mother but cant afford to quit the job at Wal Mart…

Pre-existing conditions? They can charge you 3 times more…older than 50? They can charge you 5 times more…and those that are “covered” have to BUY it from the murdefing industrial complex!

The Sanders Amendment shamed Obama and the Dems!

Every loophole the Industry couldve used to harm and kill infants, women, old people—he had a solution…it was a piece of workm requiring talen and heart—and if Dems werent such cowards, they wouldve at least let it finish being read..why didnt they?

Because their crap bill looks so bad in comparison, who wants USAns to know that theyre missing out on what civlized people get? Just keep telling them, “best health care in the world”.

No health, no human rights…shame

I must note that I have not read the Senate bill, nor the one from the House either. I have read that the proposed “reform” would benefit the Insurance Industry and assure them of continued great profit, an item Ms. Marcus fails to mention in her paeon to a proposed bill that far too many are heaping abuse upon. Smoke meet fire…...

Even if the figure the author posits is correct the fact is that at least twenty million of us will remain uncovered.The public option is one that many nations, poorer by far then we, seem capable of operating. The fact is that the US remains 37th in the world in the providing of health care and 13th in infant mortality. This sham of a bill ensures that we will remain far down on that list.

Ms. Marcus seems to accept a deeply flawed bill, perhaps in order to prop up a Democratic Party and a Democratic President that deserve no such from any of us. I agree with the comments of Mr. Olbermann.

Shame on you Ms. Marcus, for supporting a fraud of reform as well as using this as an opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to a party and a president that shows us nothing of the kind.