RW LTTE today: GW Bush tried to get health care reform through Dem Congress and couldn't!

[CTyankee]

This is a new one on me! The letter writer claims the Dems blocked Bush's attempt at health care reform (no details are given by her, tho)after they took control of the Congress in 2006.

I want to write a rebuttal but I have NO IDEA what she is talking about!

Can anybody help me out here? WTF is going on?????

[ShortnFiery]

1. Have the Right Wingers taken-up "huffing glue" as a form of self medication?

That's all I can figure because this NOTION has no basis in fact ... none that I can discern?

[Lerkfish]

2. I also have no idea what she's referring to.

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

3. Jeebus. And they printed it? W/O any proof? I'd write that letter

to the paper itself chastising them for printing something w/o any corroborating evidence. Why are they so willing to print lies?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

6. This is the samed huge problem I have with out local paper (Chicago Daily Herald)

The print any bullshit ltte that flies over the transom and leave it to the next letter writer to debate it. They should at least print a disclaimer at the top of the ltte section: "The Daily Herald does not fact check letters to the editor."

[drm604]

4. It was probably some horrible idea involving high deductible insurance and health savings accounts.

"Health Care Reform" is so broad a term that it's essentially meaningless.

I can't say for sure what he tried to pass (if he really did try to pass something), but I'm nearly certain that it wasn't anything that would have been helpful to most people.

[ejpoeta]

9. actually, didn't they try to do some health savings account thing??? i can't remember.

[CTyankee]

10. OK, I found this by googling.

http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics/ss/07SOUProposal.htm

This article correctly calls this proposal "murky."

[baldguy]

5. Bush health care reform

[zbdent]

7. Of course, it's RW revisionism ... since they can't put any details into their point,

they can claim damn near anything. And they get no media outlet investigating the claim.

[katmondoo]

8. They did give us Medicare D

Scary to think what else they would have done

[AndyA]

11. I'm sure if there was such a plan, it involved TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY

as item #1.

Because everything trickles down, you know... :eyes:

[pampango]

12. That can't be true. On the PBS Newshour yesterday I heard that Kennedy and Nixon

were in serious negotiations on national health insurance in the early 1970's. Nixon wanted to mandate employers to provide insurance or pay into a government insurance fund, while Kennedy wanted essentially a Canadian model of government run national health insurance.

"And despite his reputation as a far-left liberal, as a legislator Kennedy was always ready to look for a compromise. In the early 1970s, Kennedy secretly sent his top aides to meet with Altman in a church basement near the Capitol. Altman was working for Nixon, trying to draft a national health insurance plan. At that point, Kennedy was pushing for a fully government-run plan, while Nixon wanted to require employers to provide private coverage. But Altman says Kennedy was willing to try to find common ground.

"The problem, of course, is that Kennedy was way out in front of his more liberal compatriots, and we were way out in front of the more conservative, and ultimately the whole thing blew apart," Altman says. "But it impressed on me that at the end of the day, Sen. Kennedy wanted to make changes that helped people, and if that meant moving away from his preferred position to a compromise, he was willing to do it.""

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112242975

"--1974: Kennedy teams up with Rep. Wilbur Mills, D-Ark., the head of the House Ways and Means Committee, to propose a compulsory national health insurance plan to be paid for by payroll taxes and general revenues. Kennedy’s aides secretly meet with Nixon administration officials but Kennedy and Nixon never agreed on a compromise. The Democrats’ plan is opposed by the American Medical Association and other groups. Kennedy tries unsuccessfully to revive the effort after Nixon resigns. Years later, Kennedy tells the Boston Globe that he may have missed an opportunity by not working closer with Nixon to find a consensus. Perhaps, he says, "We should have jumped on that.""

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/August/26/Kennedy-health-care-timeline.aspx

[rurallib]

13. I am grasping at straws here but ....

didn't some republican float some kind of a medical savings account bill after 2007? IIRC it never even made it to committee.
I really don't know.

[peekaloo]

14. HSA's (health savings Accounts) were part of the Medicare bill in 2003.

I seem to remember that it did little/nothing for people with no health ins. and appealed to the wealthy (surprise!)

Is that it?

[rurallib]

16. for some reason I rememeber a bill that went nowhere

that would have put HSAs on steroids. Whatever it was it went nowhere, but I vaguely remember the GOoPers making some ruckus about trying to reform HC.

[MindPilot]

15. I believe it involved plastic sheeting & duct tape n/t