Please click on chart to enlarge. I got it from Cannonfire.
The latest polls on BHO indicate he is losing some steam. I should hope this surprises no one. He is below 60% on job performance mostly because of the deficit and because he's at all time lows among Republicans ( again, no surprise there) and independents where he lands in the low 50s. If independent voters keep slipping - or slinking - away Obama will be okay for a bit but Dems in general better watch their backs. 2010 is much closer than 2012 and even a minor GOP rebound does the tenuous (and often mysterious) Obama agenda harm.
Believe it or not the news is bad for anyone who wants health care reform soon. Obama is drifting lower because Americans have less faith that government can solve problems now than even a few months ago. This spells trouble for the public option. The GOP will exploit the usual cavalcade of lies whenever Big Money might - just might - sustain even a minor hit for the good of the majority.
Some lies a coming:
-You won't get to chose your doctor- false AND this really only matters to upper and upper middle class folks anyway. Working stiffs want to know their doctor is competent and don't care if he/she is charming and nice. On my current plan my choices are already limited. I used it recently to see a dermatologist for flea bites I thought were something more grave. He chortled, showed me his flea bites, told me fog my place, "Advantage" Bob Barker and prescribed some lotion. I didn't need to establish a relationship with him or be his pal. I needed him to know his job. That's it. The same holds true for all doctors. Dr. Smith is just fine if Dr. Jones's services mean you lose your house. "No choice of doctors" is the strawiest of strawmen. Most people don't want to choose the doctor they see so much as they want to know they can choose to see a doctor.
- The public option will destroy private insurance. Again, false. There are public options through out the American economy and the private competition does just fine - in fact they often are forced to do better. Insurance companies should be forced to compete fiercely. This is about health not mousetraps or cars. Private insurers ought to provide a better product. As it stands now they engage in a kind of blackmail because no one has called them out and there is, in effect, no real competition.
- We can't afford it. True enough. But take away 2% of the Pentagon's budget and we've got a fine start on health care for all. The U.S. military accounts for 50% of the world's expenditure on defense. WTF? Yet 50 million have emergency rooms as there "chosen" doctor. This is not about affordability so much as priorities. We can't afford not to find the money. The system as it exists now has caused a 40% rise in medical costs in 9 years. 40%. Meanwhile the "evil" socialized medicare system has seen costs rise 3% during the same period. Insanity vs. Sanity.
- Health care will be rationed...yeah...so? Health care is ALREADY RATIONED. 30 million get the best on the planet, 120 million or so get some, and 50 million hold on tight and hope they stay healthy. Watching GOP Senators who get the best health care imaginable - on our dime - froth about rationing makes me...well...sick. Remove even part of their benefit package and I wonder how quickly real reform would pass?
We all don't need Gregory House when we break a bone or are afflicted with some disease. We need care. Care that doesn't destroy us financially. We can afford it.
The public option is a pathetic replacement for single payer - but it is the only replacement "on the table." Without it there is no reason to bother with a health care bill. What we will get sans the public option is mandated purchases of BIG INSURANCE with nominal penalties for those who don't. In other words: We will go from an unfair system that values the corporate bottom line over individual health to an unfair system YOU MUST BUY into.
Talk about a cash cow. Talk about a redistribution of wealth.
The sad thing here is that I am no guessing it is an even bet Obama will flinch on the public option. He loves being loved too much and the Mega Insurance noise machine will be ramped up big time. The last Obama promise I had some hope for might be gone by August. Polls already indicate that the Big Corporate Insurance Cabal will win the day.
Inspired by Dancing Possum: Music for Lunch Break today is dedicated to John Avarosis - who went on a Hillary Hating misogyny bender last year and sold his gay soul to a homophobe who last week compared his desire for equality to a that of a child molester who wants to screw his sister. Meanwhile, since Clinton became SoS - she has opened up State Department benefits to partners of gays - a month ago!!! - spoken forcefully for Gay rights as Human rights and designated June - Gay and Lesbian Pride month at the State Department.
Obama can find the time to call Colbert in Iraq as a joke but not the time to draft a bill overturning DOMA, no doubt because he is playing patty cake with Rick Warren...Avarosis and his viscous little band of Obama Pod Idiots owe us all an apology.
Fuck you, John Avarosis.
Who is sorry now? Not those of us who paid attention to who Obama really was all along...an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to stiff us with the bill...
The "free" market works just fine with health care. We have the best health care system in the world! Profit cures cancer! Blue Cross cares deeply about who lives and who dies! No need for any interference from the elected government that represents the people...move along!
Obama in Green Bay: Broke no new ground; said Medicare/Medicaid on course to breaking Federal budget (by jawbone at Corrente) Alas, the speech is the usual Obama points about health insurance reform: His list of reasons for change lead inexorably to single payer, but he just can't do it. Won't do it. Would be "disruptive." Obama begins by discussing socialized medicine and, after a few sentences, says that single payer is not socialized medicine. Then he repeats his lament that since we have a different system in place, it's impossible to go with single payer. Altho' he has said in his answer that Medicare is an example of single payer!
COWARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Democrats hint compromise to win Senate health care deal (McClatchy) Senate Democrats are offering to scrap a controversial government-sponsored health insurance provision in an effort to win more than a dozen moderate and conservative Republican votes to extend health care coverage to nearly 46 million uninsured Americans.
Should Health Care Reform Be Bipartisan? (by Ezra Klein, Washington Post) Are 10 Republican votes worth lowering the subsidies from 400 percent of poverty to 300 percent of poverty and leaving out, say, eight million Americans? Are five Republican votes worth leaving out eight million Americans? Two Republican votes? It would be nice if someone published a table or something.
Co-op Health Plan Emerging as a Senate Option (by Robert Pear at The Caucus, New York Times) Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee...said Thursday that the public plan could take the form of an insurance cooperative, owned and operated for the benefit of its members. "I am inclined, and I think the committee is inclined, toward a co-op," Mr. Baucus said. "It's not going to be public, we won't call it public, but it will be tough enough to keep insurance companies' feet to the fire," Mr. Baucus said of the co-op. Isn't that what Blue Cross and Blue Shield were supposed to be? Look how well that worked out.- Caro
"Strong public option" = "peace in our time" (by vastleft at Corrente) Once you accept the "public option" frame, it's "goodnight, nurse!" for real health-insurance reform. It's only happening about everywhere in the liberal blogosphere. OTOH, maybe a compromise with the Blue Dogs, Republicans, and death-by-spreadsheet crowd will work out just fine. It would be irresponsible not to equivocate.
Going Postal: Reid's New Defense of Public Health Care (The Note, ABC News, thanks to Alegre) "I'm confident both private companies and the option of public plan can live in harmony," Reid said on the Senate floor Thursday. "When you send a birthday present to a relative to-say I want to send something to one of my children in Nevada, the products that I choose can be sent by FedEx, UPS, DHL, or the United States Postal Service...The Postal Service may not be perfect, but the public option is there, and the private companies, FedEx, UPS, know they cannot rip you off or be slacking on their service," Reid said.
Health Care Overhaul Opponents Use Selective Stats (All Things Considered, NPR) It's become one of the most commonly cited statistics by opponents of the health overhaul being put together by Democrats in Congress: Creating a new government-run public health insurance plan would result in 119 million people losing their private insurance...The point of the study was to show that the number of people who would eventually join a government-sponsored public insurance plan would vary-dramatically-depending on how that plan is designed...For example, Sheils says, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York "has a plan which would require the public program to pay private payer rates- the same rates that other private insurers have to pay-and under that scenario we get only between 10 and 12 million people dropping private coverage."
Good Gravy. Grassley calls Schumer's plan "obnoxious" (by Alegre) At least Nancy Pelosi is standing up for the public option. She's taken a head-count and told HuffPo that she won't have the votes to pass a reform bill unless it includes a public option. She also said that Conrad's compromise (a system of co-ops) won't be enough. It's got to include a public option or no deal. Meanwhile Grassley continues to be the mouthpiece for the party of NO when it comes to health care reform: "No public option, no employee mandate to either provide insurance or pay a penalty, and nothing that leads to rationing of health care." If you stick to Grassley's criteria here we won't have ANY changes to our current (and messed up) system.
Well I've got news for Grassley...we've already got rationing. With nearly 50 million Americans living without access to health care services, I defy him to show us how anything they could do in Congress could make things worse than they already are.
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At long last the health care battle has arrived. Obama has entered the fray - FINALLY. Not content to let the Senate work it out, the Admin. is sending a little army up Capitol Hill to ensure that the "public option" is part of the final bill. Single Payer is still a no go - which, as much as it galls me, may be a reminder that "politics is the art of the possible." Of course, the only reason single payer is not "possible" this year is because the phrase "single payer is off the table" keeps being repeated by the chattering classes. A statement they are never asked to back up or explain by the chattering class's stenographers - also known as the mainstream media. It reminds me of those other media elite kabuki performances: the run up to the Iraq invasion (There was no opposition to be found on television though 50% of us DID oppose it - often in the streets.) and the "inevitability of Obama" meme that was amplified by the media goons every time Clinton won a big state primary - which should have logically caused the talking heads to assume that Obama was not inevitable at all. The "manufacturing of consent" is still in full flower on the boob tube.
Saying "single payer is off the table" relentlessly is the only reason it is off the table. There is not a good reason why single payer is verboten so we get "it is not on the table" spoken with finality- as if that phrase was a law of nature.
So the 4 remaining options are:
1. Do nothing. 2. Make health insurance mandatory for all. This is favored by the insurance companies. 3. Make health insurance mandatory and provide a government funded public option. This is opposed by the insurance companies but favored by the BHO admin and many Dems. 4. Give large tax breaks for purchasing health insurance. This - or something like it - will be the GOP solution.
Given those four options I have to support the Admin and go with #3. When critics complain that a public option is just a sneaky way of getting single payer done sometime soon - let me speak a truth you won't hear in the next few months from the Admin: Yes. Yes, it is.
So be it. My empathy level for the health insurance cabal hovers just slightly above dog fight ring leaders and N.A.M.B.L.A. members.
Greed is not good. People's health should not be subjected to the whims of shareholders and "the market". Nor do I trust the health insurance executives as far as I can throw an operating table when they say they will "cut costs".
It is bullshit. You know it. I know it. Aliens in other galaxies know it. They will mime "cost cutting" until another Republican is elected POTUS - which could well be in 2012.
Obama's win here (and I bet he will win) may end up being a train wreck. But remember this: The health care system in America is already a train wreck. It is time to shake it up. If Obama can put the fear of God in those greedy C.E.O.s that literally play with people's lives to ensure a profit, then we can make some real progress. Insurance companies will get it together if enough of their customers have a public option choice and can ditch the obscenity of possibly going bankrupt when a family member falls ill. It is amoral that people are punished in this country for getting sick. Amoral and medieval.
As a blogger, I have no reason to lie about this fact: the public option is a backdoor entry point for single payer in the next few years - though many, many liberals will lie about this particular fact in the next 4 months.
And you? What do you think? I know many disagree. Dandy. It is a big issue we ought to have a big conversation about it.
RBO covers the story of the idiots at Common Dreams suddenly waking up to the fact that Obama is a big, skinny, liar. I am not at all surprised that Obama is a big, skinny liar. It is still AMAZING to me that so many liberals are only now coming out of their moronic, self induced Obama stooper.
Take Oped Ed. News which says it is "progressive -tough- liberal" (HA!)and yet the post calling Obama out BHO for dismissing single payer from the conversation states this: The President's response left no doubt that he has taken single-payer healthcare off the table, but his answer lacked the logic and candor we have often come to expect of him.
Emphasis is furiously mine. What planet have these people been on for the last year? There has been no "logic" from Obama, only fancy words weoponized to distort. He is happy to tell us he has a "gift". A gift for distortion and deflection.
As for candor? WTF? !!! The man won't even release his college academic records. 90% of what we know about the man comes from his own hagiographies. Written, one presumes, on holy Chicago parchment. It is impossible to list all the man's flip flops, half ass excuses and dirty ditching of those he stepped over to become POTUS. Start with Alice Palmer - better yet - start with his mystery tour of Pakistan as an undergrad - travel through his mystical unrecorded speech about Iraq that "started it all", the errant nonsense about Wright, the deceits about Iraq, the botching of the Guantanamo closing, the feigned outrage over the AIG bonuses, the strange back flips over torture. Why has no one on the Left noticed that after weeks of bogus hot air, the Obama administration now has, in essense, the Cheney stance on torture. No one on the Left except Ms. Dowd. Surprise. Surprise.
WHEN HAS CANDOR EVER BEEN IN THE SAME ROOM AS OBAMA?
I want to take pleasure in watching the deluded Left wake up. I am that immature. However, the sinking feeling of loss holds me to the sticking point. Obama is nothing more than an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to trick us into paying for other people's malfeasance. The Left checked out last year. Took a vacation. And now they have come back to a house wrecked. Destroyed for a generation. Actually, I don't want to say "generation" - the truth is the Left is dead forever in the United States. Slaughtered expertly by George Soros, Goldman Sachs and Barack Obama.
So many people went out of their way to BECOME STUPID in 2008. I have no sympathy left for the bozos who supported Obama unquestioningly.
I am seriously. Go read Cine's post on healthcare. In the previous post I said Obi Wan's head fakes about the wars was the most duplicitous aspect of his campaign. The health care train wreck currently unfolding in D.C. is surely the most sickening Obama event post 1/20/09.
A majority of Americans want a single payer federally mandated health care system. A majority of Americans are being ignored by their "representatives". No shock there. One of Pelosi's minions even had the temerity to say "make us" put single payer on the table. What followed was a fax shitstorm in Madam Perma-Smile's office. But what is really galling are the words "make us". As if the majority of Americans are unruly teens who must act up to force mommy and daddy in Congress to interrupt their key party with the big money insurance pimps who they service with their mouths and our cash. We shouldn't have to "make them" do anything. They work for us...for God's sake.
Anyway, Cine breaks it all down with a style and skill I envy. With the added bonus of the tag she uses for Pelosi: Nasty Pancakes.
Dee Lish Us.
My God, I wish I'd come up with that slice of perfection.
I intended to post a few thoughts on Arlen Spector this morning but after sleeping on it I realize that I don't give a sh*t about Arlen Spector. In saving his ass he ruined his honor (laughable, I know) and has rewritten the first line of his biography to include not one, but two inanities: switching parties at the age of 742, and the magic bullet theory.
Onward!
The spirited debate in the comment section of yesterday's Lunch Break post was unexpected and inspiring. Along with 59% of the American people, I stand firmly with the Single Payer contingent. (Of course, all views are welcome in the comment section.)
I hope everyone contacts their "representatives" (HA!) and insists that single payer be put on the agenda. An easy way to contact Pelosi is linked in Cine's great post on the issue here. She also links the pro single payer sites and sets out the next steps. This fight has been going on since Truman was POTUS - and if you want it done beleive me when I say: this is -THE LAST CHANCE. You can take that to the bank - provided yours is still open.
