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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Time to put it out of its misery
Posted by Jill | 4:39 AM
Today I'm going to be contacting the offices of my two Democratic Senators and telling their staffs that I favor voting against the health care reform bill in its current form and going back to the drawing board. Because what the Democrats in the Senate have done is allow a few Senators who rake in insurance company cash to bastardize health care "reform" to the point where it consists of nothing but a mandate for every American to buy "insurance" that offers no guarantee of payment of claims, and no cap on premiums. The only way this differs from the current disastrous setup is that insurance companies can't deny "coverage" to those with pre-existing conditions, but instead can take claims money from such people and then deny to pay claims on those conditions.

Even Howard Dean says it's time to abandon this botch job and start again:




So where is the President on this? He's up there kissing Joe Lieberman's ass for saying "I'm going to do what I think is right and the hell with the people I'm supposed to represent." This supposedly great orator is reduced to saying, essentially "Pass this bill or I'll kill this dog", with the inane remark that if this particular bill is not passed, premiums will go up, and that "we are on the precipice" of health care changes, seemingly unaware that "on the precipice" means a dangerous situation where the next step means falling off a cliff. Don't you mean "threshhold" there, chief? And how does this differ from what we have now, except you're going to force a whole bunch of people who can't afford it to buy worthless insurance that doesn't pay claims from these racketeers?

I realize that John Heilemann was up there on The Tweety Hour of Incoherent Babbling last Sunday saying that if Obama doesn't get health care now, his administration is in ruins. I'll tell you this: If he gets health care in the form of this bill, his administration will be in ruins. Because even those who still support him are not going to have any faith in him after his lack of leadership on this issue has led to nothing but a mandate for more of the same crap we have now.

As Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago (subscription required) in the context of Sarah Palin's claims about "death panels":

When death is on the table, to be left declaring "I am not in favor of it" is to be catastrophically outmaneuvered.


At this point, I have absolutely no faith in Barack Obama to accomplish much of anything now that he's shown his weak underbelly to the voracious Republican wolves. It seems that now we know why he was allowed by Diebold and ES&S to win. The money guys didn't trust John McCain, they knew that George W. Bush was leaving a clusterfuck, and they knew that Barack Obama was all about trying to keep everybody happy. It isn't so much that I'm disillusioned, because I really didn't have any about this guy. I'm just saddened that this intelligent man who has so much potential has decided to squander it trying to play nice with people who would just as soon see him disgraced while he's thrown the people who elected him in the trash. You can say all you want to that this isn't Barack Obama, it's Rahm Emanuel's handiwork, but Obama is the guy who made him chief of staff. The buck stops there.

More opinions from:

Jon Walker

aimai

Blue Girl, with whom I respectfully and with great affection disagree, because THIS bunch of Democrats is too far in the pockets of the insurance industry to do what she wisely proposes

Susie Madrak

DCap

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13 Comments:
Anonymous flyboy said...
Reason I agree with Blue is that this is not sweden.I think Harry Reed has done the best job he could have with what he had to work with.
12/16/09, 9:19 AM  
Anonymous Blue Girl said...
Thanks for the link, Love!

I respect all opinions on this. We have never been here before, so we are in uncharted waters with no historical reference point. Seventy years of trying, and this is all the farther we have gotten? I don't want to wait another fifteen years to get back to this. So I am looking at it like Social Security. That was a very weak program when it started, not enough to make even the top recipients feel social or secure. But it is now, and has been for some time.

Anyway, I am not picking fights with my friends over it, because at the end of the day, we all want to attend the same party, but there was no address on the fucking invitation, let alone a map.
12/16/09, 9:38 AM  
Blogger Comrade Misfit said...
Jill, I think you (and Dr. Dean) are wrong on this. If we get a bill, now, it can be improved over time. Starting over means no health care reform and probably not for a decade or more.

The Dems will probably lose seats in `10, if history is any guide. With the Rethugs unified, the only way to then get a bill through would be to eliminate the filibuster. And before contemplating that, just think of all of the things that Cheney could have done without the threat of a filibuster to at least slow him down.

It is this bill or no bill for another ten or fifteen years. Is that what you really want?
12/16/09, 10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Have you apologized for foisting this incompetent, narcissistic, arrogant, self-satisfied, self-interested person on us as president?
12/16/09, 12:23 PM  
Anonymous bandit said...
It seems that now we know why he was allowed by Diebold and ES&S to win.

That's hilarious. Is it a side effect of whatever you're taking?
12/16/09, 1:25 PM  
Blogger Ryan said...
Anonymous @ 12:23PM says:

Have you apologized for foisting this incompetent, narcissistic, arrogant, self-satisfied, self-interested person on us as president?

Why would we? When the alternative was just more of the same, if not worse. Would we even be having a discussion regarding health care if the McSame/Failin ticket would have won?

Of course not.

McSame would have allowed Bush's tax cuts for the ultra-rich to become permanent and would have continued to drive the US economy (Using the "glory" of Reaganomics) even further into the quagmire and health care reform (In ANY form) would have been a distant memory.
12/16/09, 2:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Before McCain was the only alternative to Obama, there was Hillary Clinton -- a far better candidate for the presidency than Obama ever was or will be.
12/16/09, 5:29 PM  
Blogger Jill said...
Anon: Please name one policy where Hillary Clinton, another corporatist Democrat (and member of "The Family", to boot) would have been one iota different from what we have.
12/17/09, 6:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Oh, I see, and Obama's gifts to Wall St. courtesy of the taxpayers were not pro-corporatist?

Jill, you are as full of baloney as ever.
12/17/09, 9:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
In 2008, a dog running for president as a Democrat would have been elected; the talk was that the Republican Party would be on the floor for a decade. Yet, in less than a year, Obama has so botched his job that the Democratic brand is now sinking fast and the Republicans are licking their chops. Way to ruin a party and a country, Obama.
12/17/09, 9:18 AM  
Blogger Jill said...
Anon, this country was well on the road to ruin after George W. Bush got done with it. I fault Obama less for not being able to fix eight years of incompetence in less than a year than for continuing many of the same policies with many of the same people.

But keep thinking the Bush years never happened. Who knows, once collective memory erases him, it may become the same as truth.
12/17/09, 2:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I spent eight years opposing (and bashing) George W. Bush and now it seems I'm going to be spending some more years opposing (and bashing) Obama for implementing many of the same awful policies.

But almost the worst thing Obama has done is that he has made it possible for the Republicans to regain power.
12/17/09, 7:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
If you don’t want to live in a cave and drag your knuckles on the ground when you walk, we HAVE to get out the Democratic Party voters to the polls in November 2010. It is imperative that everyone shows up. The media will say that the Republicans and Tea Partiers will take over Congress in an off-year election. This is a load of BS so that the media can satisfy their viewers. If everyone shows up, we can prove them wrong. Talk to Independents, too.
12/23/09, 5:17 PM  
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