DonSchneider, January 19 at 5:29 am

Overblown and overheated sophomoric tripe notwithstanding the fact remains that you ignore the numerous lies, waffling, backpedaling, cowardly actions and inaction of the Obama administration.

It is the manner in which Obama managed the health-care ‘reform’ fiasco that makes it clear that he was selling out rather than ‘being pragmatic’, Gonewest.  If you’re not familiar with the details you can get started with http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/policy/13health.html?pagewanted=all , http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/t/r/truthseeker77/2010/03/obamas-deputy-chief-of-staff-j.php , http://thinkprogress.org/health/2010/10/05/171689/daschle-interview/ ,
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/key-reform-ally-dishes-on-weak-kneed-white-house-health-care-pushes-on-weak-kneed-reform.php , and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/etc/script.html (covering both the less clandestine deal with the pharmaceutical industry and the more clandestine deal with the hospital and insurance industries, the last reference suggesting the excuse that Obama might have been unduly influenced by his appointee Rahm Emanuel).  These back-room deals, combined with his insistence from the start (despite piously claiming that “all options are on the table”) that discussion of single-payer solutions was out of bounds and his ‘hands-off’ approach to working with Congress or using the ‘bully pulpit’ to help shape Congress’s proposal to match his very explicit campaign positions, leave little room for doubt (that smidgeon of remaining room being fully-occupied by the explanation that this instead represented abject incompetence on Obama’s part coupled with a complete willingness to abandon several of his very explicit campaign positions).

The only thing that’s a bit less clear is whether the ‘public option’ was designed from the start to be something that would get progressives on board without having any teeth in it or whether it was created as a bargaining chip that could be dealt away later.

Is there room to ‘improve’ this bill?  Why, certainly:  for example, at-cost Medicare buy-in by anyone could be added to it without changing a single existing word (a ‘public option’ with a vengeance) - even as part of a ‘reconciliation’ bill (since it would dramatically decrease projected deficits).  It’s quite possible that resulting coverage costs for the new Medicare patients would still be lower than private insurance premiums even if they tilted heavily toward the less healthy (which would tend to encourage even healthy people to go the Medicare route, further lowering its premium and overall government subsidy costs).

But since Obama, Reid, and Pelosi determinedly prevented any such provision from being inserted into the reconciliation bill that WAS used to amend the ACA (where only 50 Senate votes were required for passage and already more than that number of Democratic senators were on record as supporting a ‘public option’), I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it.

Caution out there rational posters ! Anyone calling ideologues out on their
intransigency will be severely castigated and condemned as an “Obamabot” .
Mental masturbation is more important than rational thought ! If you call into
question the alternatives (?) offered by the green pablum covered bib crowd trolls ,
you get the same nonsense.  The immature will always throw their irrational
sound bites back and forth with no idea of the consequences !  Piss off you sons
and daughters of hamsters ! I blow my nose in your direction and fart upwind of
you silly wipers of other peoples bottoms !  Go HOME, your mommies have
instructed your illegals to leave the side door open for you and cookies on the
table !

DonSchneider, January 17 at 6:19 am Link to this comment

So I see here that some ideologues on the left are still willing to throw the baby
out with the bathwater because our President isn’t the progressive they thought
they knew !  They are ready to take their football and go home ! That’s it !

So I see that some Obamabots are still willing to excuse their beloved leader for lying through his teeth on every important issue, refusing to take a stand on anything and everything, and displaying an incompetence so enormous as to make your support for him a real clue to your own political incompetence as well.

Bill, the grand mental masturbator is alive and well !  Peanut gallery is loaded yep
yep yep lock step trolling ! Paying for what you can’t have with someone else’s
dime ! Don’t you just love these Willard analwipes ! Read the article again and
again, it won’t matter billy boy, pick up your ball, wipe your mug on your bib and
wiggle on home to mama ! Perchance Willard will have you after all !

Yawn, another clueless but resolutely verbal Obamabot joins the fray.  They seem to have been kind of slow off the mark this time, though - I wonder if they’re getting tired.

So I see here that some ideologues on the left are still willing to throw the baby
out with the bathwater because our President isn’t the progressive they thought
they knew !  They are ready to take their football and go home ! That’s it !  They
can show the dems that they can’t take “ideologues” for granted.  They’ve smeared
their green pablum all over their bibs and refuse to take them off for even an
instant. They prefer to continue to “enable” the far right with their selfish
ideologically driven demands that their “progressive imprimatur” be adhered to at
all costs. Regardless of the fact that their self satisfying demands are inaccessible
in the reality of a right wing Congress, Supreme Court, and Right leaning Senate.
So what if WILLARD (mitt) the VULTURE CAPITALIST is ENABLED right into the
presidency by unyielding progressives, greens, and loopy ideologues. Perchance
“an I told you so” is what they are actually in search of.  Self actualization through
nihilism.  WILLARD is near orgasm in anticipation !

Gonewest, I don’t much care how business conservatives would react to more stringent regulation of insurer overhead (and I CERTAINLY don’t care how they may react to environmental regulation, which I consider to be a prime responsibility of government in mitigating the long-term detrimental effects of unconstrained ‘free-market’ behavior):  I was simply observing that the overhead regulation currently present in the ACA doesn’t really count for much by comparing its overhead constraints, such as they are, with both traditional overheads here and achievable overheads elsewhere.

My preferred mechanism for limiting overhead is competition (though I prefer even more the Medicare for All approach, given how effective our private insurers have been at gaming any regulation we have tried to impose upon them).  Since the health-care insurance industry is exempt from anti-trust regulation (and, as mentioned, so adept at circumventing ALL regulation), such competition must come from the public sector if it is to be effective - a robust ‘public option’, for example, which is precisely what Obama campaigned upon and then later sabotaged.

Good column Mr. Boyarsky. This law has many good features and most won’t even start until 2014. Of those that have started, they are well liked. I know it’s helped my family already.

The lowered cost of medicare is important as well as the expansion of coverage, not just of the donut hole in medicare, but the requiremnt to expand medicaid in the states. I know my corrupt ideologue of a governor has fought consistently to thwart these requirements, and is in the process of attempting to lower the bar for qualification (annual income limits) so low that only the starving will qualify.

Seniors who are dual eligibles (those that qualify for medicare and medicaid) our Rightwing governor did eliminate from a portion of the medicaid program known as Family Care in Wi. Everyone was up in arms since this portion of the program is what allowed those of little means to attain home care. The FEDERAL government stepped in and stopped him, but as they did he lied (again!)and gave press reports that said he had had a change of heart.

“Good publicity turned bad for Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday when details of a letter from the federal government cast doubt on his motivations for lifting the cap on a state safety net for elderly and disabled residents.”
http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20111230/SHE0101/112300428/Report-Letter-forced-Walker-raise-cap-program-elderly

But the link at the “Extreme Liberal Blog” says it
best:

“And then there is this breaking news, hot off the presses. There is this hidden trigger thing that may just lead to single payer health care or Medicare for all.

I hope you bookmark this post and refer people who have fallen for the misinformation being peddled by Republicans and even many on the left who are using their carefully crafted propaganda against this landmark legislation — to further their own selfish interests.”
http://extremeliberal.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/the-truth-about-obamacare/

But ideologues rarely see through their blind faith and will continue their unqualified attacks. (this is what fundamentalism looks like, both extremes.)

I am heartened by the comments following the article by this obvious democratic party shill.

The criticism of that Health Care legislation by the GOP is absurd in its shrillness, stridency,inaccuracies and partisan stupidities. But the comments here correctly point out the deficiencies of and the pandering to the Industry that are the low lights of this bill.

It is all well and good to say that Obama could not have gotten single payer care through the legislature, it is a truth in fact. Yet our phony liberal in the Oval Office could have, should have in fact, campaigned hard for it, reasoned with the electorate , educated us as to its necessity but instead sold out to Big Pharma and the HMO’s.

Of course, when history looks at this Presidency, sold out will be a rather repetitive phrase.

Great posts from bill and Memory Stick.

I would only add that its humorous to call what Obama got as a “compromise”, he never fought for anything else but this Health Care Cartel friendly pig in a poke, aided by a great deal of enthusiasm from his fellow Dems, they never, as a party, wanted anything more than what they wrote, and then broke their arms
patting themselves on the back for their subterfuge.  But then that’s the “liberal” way, massive socialism to the top, while trying to make the crumbs swept off the table into a steak dinner.

One thing that’s always missing from these posts from the DNC and Obama reelection operatives is how the “Health Care Reform” debate was used as a distraction from what the Obama Administration’s partnership with Wall Street was up too.  Better television to show Know Nothing Tea Baggers screaming about death panels than to tell you you were being sold down the river to Wall Street by the billions upon billions every day the “debate” went on.

That’s the thing that’s driving the Republicans batty this year, how do you run against someone who is the willing ideological successor to Bush 2 and does a better job of conning the population that doing the bidding of the Imperial Corporate State is in their best interest, better than they can?

The insurance companies are by and large the property
of the 1%—see AIG. If ObamaRomneyCare is so good
for them why are they opposing it? Perhaps they are
stupid?

In fact they are stupid. The lack of universal health
care in the USA is making our industries
uncompetitive in global markets because universal
health care is so much less costly as a percentage of
GNP.

If someone wanted to really reduce health care costs
they should back taxes on added salt and sugar. Salt
and sugar (high fructose corn syrup) are among the
principle drivers of obesity. Diseases caused by
obesity are responsible for about 80% of our health
care costs.

The revenue generated from taxes on added salt and
sugar in processed foods would go far toward paying
for universal health care while simultaneously
reducing cost.

A couple of facts: the RDA for sodium for seniors is
1300mg per day not the 2400 shown on most processed
food labels. And, in the state of Washington the
bastards are allowed to inject meats with up to 8% by
weight of saline without even telling you about it.
That added saline is much more dangerous than GE
foods and it also allows them to understate the true
cost of their product which purports to be
unadulterated. What is it like in your state???

are all isms [ideologies] self-sealed? i would suggest that usa ideology is self-sealed and by implication infallible
and for an eternity.
how about socialism? an ideology or an ism that appears antithetical to unlimited individual freedoms which is
mainstay of the personal supremacist ideology? is it infallible or deemed true for all times by its followers?
for me, yes. socialistic ideas are infallible and offers us a better chance for the survival of the specie and biota.
once people finally espy what is really going, i expect great majority of them would strongly repudiate the ideology
of unlimited individual freedoms.
i do not think that Dems differ from Repubs on the understanding of the ideology or acceptance of ever greater
individual freedoms.
the devil is in people and their one and only genetic pool!! they both together produce all the wealth, all the brains,
all education, knowledge, meat for wars and the system MUST ALLOW THEM to also eat/etc.
and the onepercent also knows this. romney just does not notice this fact. and this means he does not get the
presidency! thanks

in usa you get usa-care. whether it is the war-care, health-care, right to know-care, education-care, it is always an u.s-
care; ie, designed by u.s constitution.
and u.s constitution is clear about such cares. eg, a rich person has the right to pursue happiness and to defend his/her
interests as s/he sees fit.
these ‘rights’ are, according to the constitution—or, rather, the interpretation of it—inalienable.
thus, if the person in question is taxed to any degree, it would amount to violation of his/her inalienable right to keep all of
what s/he earns and to spend it as s/he sees fit.
individualism and/or individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuance of happiness over-ride or actually annul all other
rights.
how about people who are deprived of life by going to iraq, afgh’n, korea or working under dangerous conditions?
well, isn’t constitution clear on this also: it is an individual right to CHOOSE [has an inalienable right, liberty to choose] to
fight for his/her country or work in dangerous conditions.
and since there is no longer conscription, each american has the right not to join the army. and if you don’t join the army,
you ain’t gonna get killed or maimed. joining the army thus is a matter of choice [freedoms] solely.
and once again constitutional-care is fulfilled. thanks

Ah - ‘Shill’ Boyarsky, the famed Obamabot, strikes again.  Nothing new here, but it does require the usual rebuttal.

Obamacare certainly does include some constraints on previous dubious practices by the insurance industry, but just as certainly allows insurers to pass on to the consumer the full cost of the improved coverage - so that’s a wash for the industry and the consumer alike.

But beyond that it’s all gravy for the industry.  First, the hated mandatory purchase of insurance (which Obama explicitly opposed while he was campaigning, by the way) enshrines the primacy of the private insurance industry in law and gives that industry not only over 30 million new customers but the guarantee that their bills will be paid by other taxpayers if the customers can’t afford to pay them (coverage now guaranteed, albeit perhaps inadequately, through Medicare and Medicaid - which bypass private insurance and hence are significantly more efficient at providing the same quality of service but of course far less desirable from the insurers’ standpoint).

Second, the only price controls on the industry involve a cap of 15% - 20% on their overhead - which happens to be just about what their uncontrolled overhead ran in 2008, so it’s no big deal for them to comply with.  By contrast, Medicare’s overhead is about 5%, and the overhead of private insurers in Europe (which takes such controls much more seriously) is well under 10%.  Of course, even this cap won’t apply for another couple of years, so meanwhile insurers can (and do) charge whatever the traffic will bear.

Third, there are no significant COST controls, which encourages insurers to continue their existing practices of shuffling costs which rightly should be considered overhead into the ‘services’ category along with other dubious accounting practices.

Fourth, there is no competitive system (a ‘public option’, which Obama vigorously campaigned for but once in office actively sabotaged behind the scenes at multiple times and in multiple ways) to encourage private insurers to be competitive.

And fifth, Obama from the start publicly proclaimed that ‘all options are on the table’ while simultaneously making it abundantly clear that even DISCUSSING any cost-effective single-payer option like Medicare for All was absolutely out of bounds.

What will happen down the road is, of course, pure speculation, but given the bipartisan emphasis on deficit reduction it is not unreasonable to suspect that the massive cost of subsidizing this new private insurance coverage for those who cannot afford it will be a prime target for budget cuts - and, as usual, those most hurt by such cuts will be those least able to defend themselves.

So, Bill, the problem is not that the public doesn’t understand the Affordable Care Act:  the problem is that it understands it all too well, and for very good reason doesn’t like what it sees.

Love the picture ,
He looks like the lectern it on a skate board and he’s struggling with his balance, the lectern is a pulpit and this is from picture for Brother ‘Conditional’ Love’s travelling Salvation Tent Show or may be both. he looks as though he’s saying “faaark” while thinking “how dumb are these people?”
Yes I know it’s trivial to rag someone over their looks. But in my defence I do think it typifies his precarious stance on policy all that is missing is either a Lycra camouflage outfit (heaven forbid that he might be seen actually supporting a policy he’s prepared to stand or fall on.

Yes he’s anti “Obamacare” now but like all other of his Teflon coated ( for easy of discarding) policies/principles I wonder if we should get all that hot and bothered about now. Like they say a week is a long time in politics 10 months is an light year.

Not that I’m chuffed with ‘the best corporate conservative the Republicans don’t have (Obama)” either. 
Unlike a previous article I’m not that convinced that a third party would be able to do much to reign in this Corporatocracy BUT I do try.
A must read is
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=full and

http://www.counterpunch.org/ for it’s piece on War with Iran is when not if

I would ask how does the individual voter reign in the US Military, it’s manufacturing Complex, the pro Zionist lobby with their endless wealth, and Big Oil?  Until we do the excesses slimy policies of a wanna be prez won’t change.