Health care reform is dead. D-E-A-D. It's not pining for the fjords. It's dead.

[cali]

What a fucking wasted opportunity by the hapless dems who had a full year to get something passed.

It's dead for the next several years. And even as things get worse, it will stay dead.

[ixion]

1. I agree it was a wasted opportunity

to actually advance legislation that would have been beneficial to society.

This bill wasn't it, though, in my opinion. So I have to say that I'm glad it's dead. It was a horrendous piece of legislation, again, in my opinion.

[Romulox]

2. With SP, PO off the table, "reform" was stillborn from the first.

There was no wasted opportunity, simply because the PTB made sure we had no opportunity to enact any real reforms.

[laughingliberal]

7. +1 nt

[bvar22]

32. +2

"Without a Public Option, there is no "reform".

[amborin]

45. +10 and a robust PO at that; not some sham

[closeupready]

40. Do you think this was all scripted ahead of time?

do you think we were played for suckers? Just sort of seems like the way this unfolded, we were like the Aztecs up against the conquistadores - outgunned and doomed before we knew what was happening.

[Romulox]

43. My primary thesis is that the Obama governing style is predicated on "good cop/bad cop" theatrics...

Notice how frequently the President is saying he would like to support progressive policies (if only some third party would let him...)?

The President requires credible bogey men to be the "bad cop" in these morality plays. In other words, if he couldn't blame conservatives for "blocking" the public option (which the President never vocally supported in the first place,) he might just be railroaded into signing a bill with a public option! And ultimately, I do not believe the President wants to do that.

[closeupready]

50. Lot of insight there. Thanks.

n/t

[QC]

62. I think you are exactly right.

It's not only the administration that does this, of course--the Dem and GOP leaders in the Congress have been running the good cop/bad copy game on us for a long time.

[pecwae]

71. Yes.nt

[NightWatcher]

3. this being an election year, nothing else will get done

plus Brown will insure a filibuster (or threat)

Obama and the Dems have wasted the only opportunity they'll get

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Clearly, all those Conservatives that called for killing the bill have much to smile about...

The Health Care Companies spending of several hundred million to kill the bill worked.

[Maru Kitteh]

8. As do the single-payer purists who wanted nothing if they couldn't get their way.

The upturned noses on both sides of the fence got their wish - and more people will suffer and die because of it.

[Romulox]

11. Well, at least all that "bi-partisan" pandering from the Triangulaters paid off!

Oh wait, it exposed a fundamental schism in the party while failing to achieve any measurable objective. I guess there are no heroes in this story. :silly: :hi:

[laughingliberal]

18. +1 nt

[Ozymanithrax]

12. 45,000 people a year die becaue they don't have health care...

We are all impoverished by this tragedy.

[laughingliberal]

16. Those people would still have died under the Senate bill. nt

[Ozymanithrax]

20. Those people would have access to preventative health care..

leading to a savings in money and their lives.

We have a system that leaves 48 million Americans uncovered. That is unconscionable. Calling to "Kill the Bill" because we don't like that bill keeps things the same and sides with the Big Health Care companies.

[laughingliberal]

22. Seeing your doctor and finding out you have cancer doesn't help much

if you can't afford the deductibles to begin treatment.

The goal was always to bail out the insurance industry who are beginning the years of mass exodus. Now, they'll privatize Medicare through the 'deficit commission.'

What is unconscionable was to ever raise the hopes of so many of us that there would be any real help for people in their bill when they knew there would not be.

[Romulox]

17. "Is there an Insurance Adjuster on board this plane? This man is very sick!"

A person lies motionless on the floor of a jumbo-jet aisle. The flight attendant shouts, "Is there an Insurance Adjuster on board the plane?" :wtf:

People die when they don't have health CARE. :hi:

[Lorien]

25. "Single payer purists"? Name someone in either house who was one of those

many demanded a public option for good reason; it's the only way to control insurance premiums.

[amborin]

47. nope; single payers were content with at least a robust PO

[laughingliberal]

15. The Corporatist Conservatives wanted the Senate bill to pass

Now, they'll get the deficit commission to save the insurance industry by privatizing Medicare without all that messiness of having to offer up some 'pretend' reform to fool the masses. Saving the insurance industry was always the only real goal of the White House and the Senate Blue Dogs. The Senate bill planted the seeds for the privatization of Medicare which would have been done gradually (should have pleased the PROUD incrementalists, huh?). Now, they'll just avoid the messy, prolonged process.

The progressive caucus in the House was always our only hope but they couldn't even get a shout out from the administration for the real reform work they were attempting.

[amborin]

49. +1000 and:

"Same As He Ever Was

These days quite a few people are frustrated with President Obama’s failure to challenge conservative ideology. The spending freeze — about which the best thing you can say in its favor is that it’s a transparently cynical PR stunt — has, for many, been the final straw: rhetorically, it’s a complete concession to Reaganism.

But why should we be surprised? Here’s one from the vault. Two years ago, I was deeply frustrated with Obama’s apparent endorsement of the Reagan myth.

There was a lot of delusion among progressives who convinced themselves, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that Obama was a strong champion of their values. He wasn’t and isn’t.

That doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between the parties, that everything would have been the same if McCain had won. But progressives are in the process of losing a big chance to change the narrative, and that’s largely because they have a leader who never had any inclination to do so."


from paul krugman blog

[laughingliberal]

5. Not to worry. The deficit commission will privatize Medicare & insurance corps will be saved

which was always the goal of the Emanuel brothers and the Senate Conservadems.

[leftstreet]

39. Yep, there's money to be made off the retiring boomers

Gazillions of people will be shifting from private insurance to Medicare.

That's what this was all about.

[Neecy]

6. yep

Guess the 'let Max Baucus write the bill' plan didn't work very well, did it?

[Fumesucker]

9. Pining for the fjords..

:rofl:

[Lance_Boyle]

38. All the more laughable given that they have socialized medicine where the fjords are. n/t

[Jefferson23]

10. Obama's big mistake. K&R

Why the heck the unrecommended, people here think the reform they wrote up as it stands today is meaningful?

[timeforpeace]

56. Was running on HCR and then handing the job to Congress. He should have had a bill in hand, at

least an outline, some suggestions, an idea or two. Hell, the first lady back in 1992 had a bill ready.

[Jefferson23]

65. Exactly, and where was he when the death panels bullshit arrived?

He knows how to fight, he did so very well during the campaign..fight the smears defense set up etc.

[sharesunited]

13. Does that include reducing the age of Medicare eligibility to zero?

That could be done in 1 or 2 pages, and the debate would only be about cost.

[niceypoo]

14. When Obama handed it to Lieberman, it was officially over

Goodbye congress, its been nice knowing ya.

[The Revolution]

19. Probably more than several years

If it really is dead now, I think it will be more than a few years before it comes up again. At this point, it seems like we might have to wait for the current system to collapse. :(

[laughingliberal]

24. It would have come back up within a couple of years but we fixed that with the deficit commission

The insurance companies are soon to collapse which would have mandated we do something. Now, they've handed Medicare to the 'deficit commission' who will come out with their plan to privatize Medicare. The insurance industry will be saved and it will be the end of ever attempting to fix health care here again.

My suggestion? Anyone who is young enough and thinks they might someday get sick needs to make plans to leave for a sane country.

[nimvg]

33. Charlie Rose Had...

...Roger Altman on his show earlier this week with Judd Gregg and Evan Bayh, and they seemed to indicate there's a general willingness to go directly after the deficit and debt problems forsaking much of everything else. We're getting to the point where no one else will loan to us and if that happens, our ability to maintain the Dollar as a reserve currency or do anything else will be in peril. We have to fix this.

There also seemed to be a general agreement that some kind of Value Added Tax will be adopted in the United States. Apparently, there's no way out of it. If that happens, I think we'll see a ramp up in the already significant migration of population away from Rust Belt states into the south and southwest. People will do whatever it takes to reduce their living costs.

No matter which party controls official Washington, big changes are coming our way. Some we will like, others we won't.

[gkhouston]

42. If the economy is indeed that precarious, then fixing the healthcare problem

becomes essential for economic reasons. The Republicans and the Conservadems have been doing their damnedest to shove it to the side for the past year and still haven't managed it. The President hasn't given up on it yet and neither have I. Doesn't seem like a fair chunk of Dems in the House have, either. I think Obama's pressing ahead on the jobs bill to knock a few Republican heads together and once he's gotten some momentum and convinced the Senate Dems that they can, will, and must stand up to the Republicans, he'll press on health care again. He's still talking about it at every opportunity. You don't do that if you're about to quietly drop something.

[nimvg]

58. Have You Seen This?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100205/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

It's dead.

[gkhouston]

60. Yes, I've seen that, and it doesn't say, "it's dead".

What it says is that it could fail (duh) and that the voters will have something to say about it in November, if it does.

[blindpig]

21. Wow, a broken clock.....

but I wouldn't call the Dems hapless, they didn't even try to deliver on single payer, there's another word for that.

[tavalon]

23. I think it's two words

Vichy Democrats

[quiet.american]

26. What prompted this outburst? What did I miss? nt

[farmout rightarm]

27. I'm afraid you're right...it's not just off the radar, it's missing at sea

right about now.

grr

[Marr]

28. This is what happens when you decide to sell insurance company handouts as "healthcare reform".

Right out of the gate, the political establishment, from Obama on down, decided that the status quo was not to be changed. They would work within the confines dictated by the big insurance companies. The issue was decided then, really.

[PinkoDonkey]

29. The insurance companies made a major mistake.

They almost had the deal of the century. A whole nation forced to purchase private insurance from under-regulated companies.
The situation will only get worse and I don't think they are going to be so lucky next time. The populist fire they fanned will turn on them sooner than they think.

[gkhouston]

30. If I had a dollar for every time I've been told health care reform is dead in the past year

I'd be able to afford health care.

[nimvg]

37. Go Here...

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10840

[farmout rightarm]

46. True enough but it actually -is- pretty much still dead...

shrug

[AlinPA]

67. It has taken a long year to die.

[pampango]

31. Got me to thinking. Has our Boomer generation (and its representatives) accomplished

any significant societal change? Earlier generations won world wars and passed civil rights and anti-poverty legislation.

People fought wars, endured rationing, high taxes, and other wartime limitations not for personal comfort or a few extra bucks, but to achieve a larger societal goal. Later LBJ knew the Democratic Party was going to lose in the South but pushed through legislation anyway because it was the right thing to do. While African Americans and poor people provided tremendous amounts of effort and sacrifice, the legislators who passed the laws were largely white as was much of the support they received from the public.

The "what's in it for me" mentality didn't seem as all-pervasive as it is today. Now it's hard to get legislation, like HCR or climate change legislation, passed because it seems that no one wants to sacrifice for the "greater good"? The republican party is pretty good at protecting the rich from "sacrifice", while our party is, at least sporadically, able to protect the middle class from "sacrifice", so there is no sacrifice - other than by the poor and uninsured who do it all the time. Why should I sacrifice any part of my own good health care plan or pay more taxes or have to do anything I don't want to do in order to provide health care or coverage for those that don't have any? Let someone else sacrifice to achieve these wonderful goals.

Maybe the next generation will prove to not be as easy to manipulate by the PTB. Whether it's Harry and Louise or Osama the boogie man or Obama the socialist, it has proven to be quite easy to distract and control a populace that is dominated by the Boomer generation.

I don't really have any reason to believe that the next generation will be more resistant to the manipulation. Maybe they are growing up more media savvy and can see through the BS better. The optimist in me says that maybe the willingness to sacrifice to accomplish great things skips a generation and the young folks will do just fine. (Along the lines of the entrepreneur that makes a fortune turns it over to his kids who squander it, then perhaps their kids produce another successful entrepreneur.) The pessimist in me says why should they do any better than my generation has done?

[AllentownJake]

35. Communities were destroyed over the past 30 years

Not the baby boomer's fault, but when people don't have much connection past their yard to the community they are living in, they tend to act like assholes.

[pampango]

53. True, communities have been destroyed, but they were destroyed in the 1930's and 1940's too,

in America (Depression), Europe (Depression and WWII) and Asia (WWII). That wasn't the fault of that American generation either.

Couldn't that generation have said, "The Depression's not my fault" or "The war is not my fault"? I'm sure some of them acted like assholes and felt that "sacrifice" was a dirty word. As a whole however that generation repaired their (and others') destroyed communities. For the most part they did not say "tax the other guy, not me", "let that guy fight the war, because I'm not", "don't ration my gas or sugar, I need them" and "don't control my wages or profits". I see much similar hard work and sacrifice from many individual Boomers but viewing Boomers as a generation, I don't think that's the lasting image that we have left.

[laughingliberal]

36. I believe it was some of the boomer generation who were working to pass civil rights & anti-poverty

legislation. I am a little on the young side of boomers (1955) but I hit the streets protesting for these issues as a teenager and those in their 20's at the time were the ones out there with me.

Those who came after us? Well, they've sat by while vital rights we won for women were chipped away in the name of 'pragamtism' and unions were defanged and are, today, thoroughly sold out to trickle down economic bullshit as they know nothing else. Then they sit and whine that we aren't retiring fast enough for them to move into our jobs. Useless, all of them, IMO.

[rockymountaindem]

41. So basically you are arguing that after 1980 you were collectively out of the game?

"Those who came after..." Who's that? The baby boomers are still here and participating in the process. Acting as if everything that's gone haywire since 1980 has only to do with "those who came after" you seems disingenuous.

[laughingliberal]

44. I was never out of the game but those who came after never joined in to preserve the rights

Was it always to be left to us? Then it would have died when we die. Those who came after took the rights we helped win for granted and bought into the corporate crap and wished to avoid the messy fights that winning or holding on to rights requires. Were we to do this alone?

[pampango]

52. Not to say that some Boomers worked for Civil Rights legislation, but most were teenagers at most.

We hardly were the most influential generation of the time.

The decades since the 1980's are those during which Boomers should have been at their most influential. I suppose we can always blame the younger generations, or the remnants of the older generation like Reagan, but that would be to admit that we haven't really left our mark on American history when we were at our most powerful.

[laughingliberal]

59. The Baby Boom is considered by the Census Bureau to have started in 1946

Others place the beginning at 1943. Sure, some of the leaders we followed were a bit older than us but it was the teenagers and young adults of the era who took to the streets. Those weren't mobs of middle aged housewives you saw out there back then. Yeah, my parents marched with King. But they were far outnumbered by college and draft aged people. The largest expansion of membership of the SDS was between the middle 60's and '69 when they disbanded. This is when the first of the boomers were in college. The Weather Underground Organization was formed as a faction of the SDS in 1969. Most of the most active groups from the middle 60's through the early 70's were comprised of college aged people. And we left a road map for those college students who came behind us.

I've seen nuttin out of the ones who came behind us.

[Fire1]

54. The boomer generation was very much a part of passing

civil rights legislation, fighting the war on poverty, and ending Viet Nam. We marched and boycotted. We were the generation protesting in D.C. screaming, "Hey, Hey LBJ! How many boys did you kill today!" I was a teen-ager during some of it and attending college for most of it.

[pampango]

57. I agree about Vietnam. We get credit for ending that war. The Civil Rights Act, though, was in 1964.

While the early Boomers were teenagers and may indeed have marched and boycotted, it would be hard to credit our generation with passing that legislation, since the oldest Boomer would have been 18 in 1964.

Maybe it's a function of us growing up during the postwar era when the US was top dog in terms of power, wealth and consumer lifestyle. Maybe it's hard to be a "great generation" unless you face a "great" challenge.

After the war Europeans took a continent on which the countries were rivals who seemed to have more animosity towards each other than any sense of shared interest and have produced a continent that is at peace and prosperous with national borders that are open to immigration and trade from each other. Quite a transformation from the end of WWII.

In Asia the Japanese and South Koreans have taken countries devastated by war and produced prosperous democratic societies. China and India have recently have begun the process of potentially becoming prosperous for the first time for a large segment of the human population. China was devastated by war also and later by decades of Mao's rule.

All these countries in Europe and Asia have had large national problems to overcome since the end of WWII which may have been the "great challenge" that was required to produce a "great generation" in each of them. We, otoh, haven't been able to pass the ERA or any kind of national health care/insurance.

[AllentownJake]

34. Yep

Of course I was an asshole saying they should have used their super majority on bank regulation and restoring new deal regulation...you know, the things that were popular and would build political capital from March 2009 to January 2010.

[Skidmore]

48. We can't die or become destitute fast enough for

the insurance companies or the ideological purists, right or left. Greed and self-righteousness, we worship at our altars.

Thanks, cali, for speaking the truth.

[Jefferson23]

51. Obama agrees with cali.

Obama admits health care overhaul may die on Hill


By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer , On Friday February 5, 2010, 1:15 pm EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After insisting for a year that failure was not an option, President Barack Obama is now acknowledging his health care overhaul may die in Congress.

His remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday night sounded contradictory at times, complicating congressional leaders' effort to revive health care legislation as Democrats hunger for guidance from the White House. Even while saying he still wanted to get the job done, Obama counseled going slow, and bowed to new political realities. Democrats no longer command a filibuster-proof Senate majority, and voters and lawmakers are far more concerned with jobs and the economy than with enacting sweeping and expensive changes to the health system.

"I think it's very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let's go ahead and make a decision," Obama said Thursday night.

"And it may be that ... if Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not," the president said. "And that's how democracy works. There will be elections coming up and they'll be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other during election time."





http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-admits-health-care-apf-3648886513.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&ccode=

[cali]

55. Cali said it was dead months ago.

the writing has been on the wall writ large for a long time.

[Jefferson23]

63. I think Obama could have saved it cali, as early as last week.

He never fought for it from the beginning..I added the Op, as it validates your thread that was receiving unrecommended at the time.

Health-care insurance reform RIP.

[Blue-Jay]

61. If the Democratic members of the legislatue had half a sack between them, it wouldn't be dead.

But they don't, so it is.

[cap]

64. it's not dead... the problem hasn't gone away...

at best it has shifted.... but the problem won't go away and people will continue badgering the politicians on this point

People are in physical pain or dying ....

[AlinPA]

66. It's over, and Democrats will lose "control" of congress. They really don't control the senate now,

the republicans do.

[shadowknows69]

70. With Lieberfuck they never lost it really

[maryf]

68. Time to push for Medicare for All...

The system is already in place, just lower the age, get rid of the for profit insurance companies!!

[mmonk]

69. Unfortunately, you may be right unless health insurers go belly up.