Early yesterday morning, Valerie and Rob Shirk corralled their 10 home-schooled children into their van for the 2 1/2-hour drive from their home in Connecticut to Boston, arriving just in time to hear Sarah Palin denounce government-run health care at the tea party movement rally on Boston Common.
They thought it would be a learning opportunity for their children, who range in age from 9 months to 15 years old and who held up signs criticizing the government for defying the “will of the people.’’
“The problem in this country is that too many people are looking for handouts,’’ said Valerie Shirk, 43, of Prospect, Conn. “I agree with the signs that say, ‘Share my father’s work ethic — not his paycheck.’ We have to do something about the whole welfare mentality in this country.’’
Okay — that’s fine. There’s a legitimate argument that we should cut government spending.
But wait, there’s more…
The couple, who rely on Medicaid for their health care, were also upset about the nation’s new health reforms.
When asked why her family used state-subsidized health care when she criticized people who take handouts, Valerie Shirk said she did not want to stop having children, and that her husband’s income was not enough to cover the family with private insurance.
“I know there’s a dichotomy because of what we get from the state,’’ she said. “But I just look at each of my children as a blessing.’’
Whaaa?
How is this level of hypocrisy even possible? Shirk knows “there’s a dichotomy” considering at a rally protesting health care reforms while at the same time she’s accepting government-run health care, and she explains it away by saying that her children are “a blessing.”
She talks about personal responsibility, yet she can’t stop herself from having more children even though she freely admits that she and her husband can’t afford it. She rails on those who are looking for handouts, yet she’s happily takes those handouts!
It’s been a long year since President Obama and the Democrats began the process to reform our health care system and provide relief to the million of Americans, mostly working families, who didn’t have access to affordable health insurance. Last night, victory was finally achieved.
The process was brutal. Passing legislation is rarely an easy process. It’s usually messy, and with an initiative this big and controversial, it was bound to be a difficult process. But it was made even worse by the strategic decision by the GOP to do everything possible to kill the bill. Obama tried to strike a bipartisan deal, and the GOP happily strung him along while they whipped up opposition from the angry right and the Tea Party crazies. The process became the story, hurting the popularity of Obama and the Democrats.
Despite all these challenges, the Democrats were poised to pass health care when Scott Brown won a stunning win in Massachusetts. Most assumed that Obama would fold and that his presidency was permanently wounded. Pundits on the right and the left had a field day questioning Obama’s effectiveness and his toughness.
Yet Obama doubled down, and he had a tough ally in Nancy Pelosi. The right loves to hate her, and now they have another reason, as she pushed this through the House when most assumed she’d never pull it off.
There were many ups and downs in the process, but I think that Obama’s visit to the Republican House retreat will be remembered as one of the turning points. The GOP was feeling cocky after Brown’s victory, and they were believing their own talking points. Obama eviscerated one Republican congressman after another on live national television. It was like a professor schooling a bunch of obnoxious high school kids.
I think the White House realized that it was time to fight and take on the GOP. Obama was back on his game, and the overconfident GOP wasn’t up to the fight.
This is a huge victory for Obama, the Democrats and the country. Health care is the signature issue of this presidency, and failure here was not an option.
Howard Dean no longer wants to kill the health care bill. He finally figured out what every progressive should have known (unless they were so consumed with anger and emotion over the loss of the public option) – that this bill is a good start.
It appears that most Democrats in the House feel the same way. Now, will other hysterical lefties like Keith Olbermann come along? We’ll see.
I just watched Howard Dean on Meet the Press, and while he’s not supporting the health care bill, he’s no longer arguing that we should “kill the bill.”
Dean acknowledged that a number of improvements have been made the the Senate version over the past week, and he insists more improvements need to be made in conference. Many of his points might be attainable, so we can expect more improvements as the conference gets underway.
He doesn’t support the bill, and he may not support the final compromise, but his arguments are now much more constructive in how the bill can keep improving. He didn’t mention the reconciliation process once, and he refused to repeat his suggestion that Democrats should kill the bill.
I stopped watching MSNBC in the mornings because Dylan Ratigan is incredibly annoying. He has some good points at times, but he’s only interested in repeating his own opinion . . . over and over again.
Here’s a clip of Ratigan at his worst with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even Chris Matthews rarely gets this annoying.
If he wanted a real discussion, he could have gotten an answer. Insurance stock went up after the public option was dropped for very obvious reasons – yes, the public option would have resulted in real competition. Fine. End of story. That does not mean, however, that the bill is a “giveway” to the insurance companies as he implied, because as the Congresswoman tried to explain, the bill does include robust regulation of the insurance companies.
Is this perfect? Of course not. Would a public option be better? Of course. But Ratigan just wanted to yell and scream about his simple point that the insurance companies are now better off than if the public option had stayed in the bill.
Of course, a child could probably figure that out as well, but Ratigan thought he was making a big point, so he acted like an ass.
He also explains why conservatives naturally hate it. It will, over time, lead to more government as the notion of universal coverage becomes expected by Americans.
Ezra Klein has made a name for himself during this health care debate. He’s one of the most sensible writers out there, and he’s great with the details and the big picture.
I still believe health care will look more similar than different when the day is done. A good bill will pass, if not a sufficient one. A sum of money will be appropriated, and a basic infrastructure constructed that will be, in the long-run, understood as a tremendous, even unlikely, political victory. The next steps will be easier, because $80 billion is easier to find than $900 billion, and because the argument over whether America has a universal health-care system and whether government provides some of the funding and scaffolding will be over. The money will be there. The scaffolding, too. The universal structure, built around the mandate and the exchanges and the subsidies, will be firmly in place.
At this point, an odd dynamic has developed, in which most all of the right, and some on the left, believe they’d be better served by the defeat of this bill. It is unlikely that they are both correct. But the right has had substantially more experience than the left opposing government initiatives before they can take root and grow into popular entitlements.
Look at the development of Medicare and Social Security, of Medicaid and S-CHIP, the Swedish and Canadian health-care systems, public education. Social Security was designed to exclude African Americans. Medicare didn’t cover prescription drugs. Medicaid was mainly for pregnant women and their young children. Canada’s system was limited to a single province. There was no University of California at Los Angeles.
It’s difficult to conclude that these things slip backward rather than marching forward. The $900 billion for people who need help, the regulations on insurers and the exchanges that will force them to compete, the structure that will make health care nearly universal and the trends that suggest more people — and more politically powerful people — will be entering the new system as employer-based health care erodes — it all makes this look even more like the sort of program that will take root and be made better, as opposed to the sort of common opportunity people should feel comfortable rejecting. It doesn’t feel like that now. But then, it rarely does.
Every liberal should read this. There’s a reason the Republicans are abusing every stall tactic they can muster in the Senate to delay this bill. They want to kill it all costs. It will lead to everything they despise, and everything liberals want. The details now really don’t matter. Once this is set in motion, they’ll never be able to turn back the clock.
In that context, it’s stunning to hear people like Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann play into the GOP’s hands by arguing that the bill should be scrapped. In one sense, as Kos pointed out, it’s healthy to have a real debate on the left. But Dean and Olbermann have taken it too far, risking everything.
Ezra Klein has it right – Howard Dean has become a “hostage-taker” in the process, threatening to blow everything up on one or two points. How does this make Dean any different from Joe Lieberman?
Klein also goes on to explain the prudent purchasers language in the bill and why it should be sufficient. As Dean acknowledged, this was John Kerry’s issue, and Kerry is very happy with the language.
There’s enormous disappointment among progressives about the emerging health care bill — and rightly so. That said, even as it stands it would take a big step toward greater security for Americans and greater social justice; it would also save many lives over the decade ahead. That’s why progressive health policy wonks — the people who have campaigned for health reform for years — are almost all in favor of voting for the thing.
*****
By all means denounce Obama for his failed bipartisan gestures. By all means criticize the administration. But don’t take it out on the tens of millions of Americans who will have health insurance if this bill passes, but will be out of luck — and, in some cases, dead — if it doesn’t.
The hysteria gripping the progressive movement is out of control, capped by Keith Olbermann’s melodramatic comment last night. Get a grip, keep negotiating, and pass a bill.
Here’s another example of why progressives can’t govern. If they don’t get what they want, many of them get self-righteous and go home. It’s pitiful.
I’m watching Keith Olbermann, and he’ll soon be giving a “special comment” and it looks like he agrees with Howard Dean. Dean’s notion that we can just go to reconciliation or take this up again next year or in two years is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in years. Killing the bill is a political disaster for Democrats, and for President Obama.
It’s a good bill. Get it passed.
Olbermann is arguing that reconciliation is a real option. It’s not. It’s a last resort for a reason – you can’t get much done with it. It’s messy as hell and will hold up a host of other progressive priorities. If this deal blows up, of course I support reconciliation, and if the threat of it helps move the last Senator now, then I’m all for the bluster. But the best option is to pass the bill now.
Fortunately, congressmen like Anthony Weiner are not rushing to side with Dean. That’s been left to the blowhards.
UPDATE: Markos was on Olbermann and sounded much more balanced on this issue. Surprisingly, he didn’t join the “kill the bill” chorus and expressed some hope the bill would be improved through the conference. Of course he was pessimistic as hell, but at least he’s not being as unhelpful as Howard Dean.
UPDATE 2: This is Olbermann at his worst. He’s focusing on the name-calling coming from the right. He’s lost in the politics. In his mind the bill will “cost Obama the left.” Really? He’s completely lost his mind.
“It’s nonsense. And it’s irresponsible. And coming from him as a physician, it’s stunning. And he’s wrong. Does that answer your question?” Rockefeller responded. He ticked off the good things that were still in the health care legislation. “This’ll be good for people. Am I angry that the public option appears to have been dropped? Of course I’m angry about that,” he said. “I proposed the original bill on the floor that was the tough one. … Was I for the Medicare buy-in? Of course I was. … So what do I do? Do I take my football and run home and sulk and complain?”
Mitchell cut in, but Rockefeller wasn’t done. “I’m a grownup, you’re a grownup,” he added. “We’ve been around this business for a long time. And you never get everything you want. You don’t sulk about it. You try to keep improving the bill.”
Unlike other progressives who are taking their football and going home, Nate Silver explains why progressives are batshit crazy to vote against the Senate health care bill, even after the public option has been stripped from the bill. The posts looks closely at the economics and how it will affect a typical American family, and Nate is convinced that “for any ‘progressive’ who is concerned about the inequality of wealth, income and opportunity in America, this bill would be an absolutely monumental achievement.”
It’s because his judgment stinks. His latest call to “kill the bill” is a ridiculous and irresponsible response to the latest round of negotiations in the health care bill. I understand his disappointment in the Lieberman fiasco, but the bill in it’s current form is a good bill. 31 million people will not have access to health insurance, with many of them getting generous subsidies from the government. The bill also has numerous cost controls that will change the way we pay for health care over time.
Progressives made a strong push for the public option. I understand their anger. I agree that they should encourage primary challenges to lawmakers who oppose the public option. But killing the bill is going too far.
This kind of outrageous behavior from the insurance industry must be stopped. It’s strange to hear people express their fear of the government being involved in health care when we see the abuses byt the insurance industry. Private insurance companies care about profits – that’s it.
Christina Turner was drugged and raped by two men in 2002. After taking anti-HIV drugs prescribed by her doctor as a preventative measure, Turner was denied health insurance. The HIV drugs, Turner was told, raised too many health questions for her insurer.
Follow the link and watch the video. It’s stunning that we’ve been allowing this stuff to happen in this country.
Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) told a group of local Kansas reporters on Wednesday, that opposition to the president’s health care package had been driven by knee-jerk partisanship and urged Congressional Republicans to get on board a version of reform.
* * * *
“Sometimes people fight you just to fight you,” he said, according to The Kansas City Star. “They don’t want Reagan to get it, they don’t want Obama to get it, so we’ve got to kill it…
We’ve also seen an AP poll today that shows a rebound in President Obama’s approval rating and the approval for health care reform, along with a score from the CBO that shows the Senate Finance bill would actually reduce the deficit by over $80 billion, which would give plenty of negotiating room for liberals who want to expand certain parts of the bill.
The untimely disappearance of Sally Marrari’s medical coverage goes a long way toward explaining why insurance companies are cast as the villain in the health-care reform drama.
“They said I never mentioned I had a back problem,” said Marrari, 52, whose coverage with Blue Cross was abruptly canceled in 2006 after a thyroid disorder, fluid in the heart and lupus were diagnosed. That left the Los Angeles woman with $25,000 in medical bills and the stigma of the company’s claim that she had committed fraud by not listing on a health questionnaire “preexisting conditions” Marrari said she did not know she had.
By the time she filed a lawsuit in 2008, she also got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and her debts had swelled beyond $200,000. She was able to see a specialist by trading office visits for work on the doctor’s 1969 Porsche at the garage she owns with her husband.
This outrageous behavior by insurance companies happens way too often in this country. It’s an outrage and it’s why we need reform. Insurance companies want to increase profits, so they screw over patients by canceling their policies when they need it most.
In the past 18 months, California’s five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court.
If health care reform implodes this year, the administration could ratchet up the pressure by having the Justice Department investigate these companies for fraud and potential RICO charges. There was a clear conspiracy to screw over patients, and they ought to be held accountable.
This also highlights why it’s important to pass reform with or without the public option. Insurance reform would benefit millions of Americans by protecting them from these practices.
This is a pretty useless interview conducted by Keith Olbermann with Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos. I respect that both of them strongly favor the public option. I do as well. I also understand the point raised by Olbermann that many polls show broad public support for the public option. Yet the entire discussion is cast in terms of whether Obama is abandoning his progressive base by looking for a compromise on this issue, and Olbermann never mentions the real obstacle – the fact that many moderate Democrats in the Senate will not vote for a bill with a public option.
Olbermann has addressed this before, so he’s clearly aware of the political stumbling blocks, yet he makes no attempt to engage Markos in a constructive conversation about where we might be able to go with this. The only point here seemed to be a progressive high-five session similar to the right wing backslapping that we get on lame shows like Hannity.
I’m still a fan of Olbermann, but too often he slips into an “all-or-nothing” approach to issues that justify the caricatures of Olbermann now coming from the right. Unfortunately, it takes away from the good work he often does on his show.
Any notion that sweeping health care reform that gets rid of pre-existing conditions, stops insurance companies from dropping customers, and makes health care accessible to millions of Americans who can’t get it, but doesn’t include a public option that pleases everyone, is somehow a failure by the Obama administration is just ridiculous.
Olbermann should consider this simple fact. Progressives do NOT have a majority in either the House or the Senate. Public opinion is important, but in the end that alone does not get you the votes you need to pass a bill. All those moderate Democrats might be pissing you off now, but they help provide the majority that makes this health care discussion even possible. The Republicans might talk a good game about reform, but we all know they will do nothing to achieve it. They didn’t even try when they ran the place.
That said, progressives should push as hard as they can for a public option, but killing a bill that doesn’t meet all progressive demands is a terrible option.
Fortunately, I don’t think most progressive members of Congress will turn their backs on Americans without insurance and vote against reform when they are faced with a final bill. Arms will be twisted, deals will be made, and this thing will pass if it gets that far.
Many liberals are furious over the possibility of losing the public option, and they’re pissed at President Obama for hinting that he could support a bill without it. One problem, however, has been the simple fact that the angry right has been out-organizing the left when it comes to health care.
That may be changing, as the Huffington Post reports that liberals are starting to out-number the health care opponents and screamers at the town hall events.
This can help, but they need much more. If they want to sway wavering members of Congress, then they have to do a better job of mobilizing support for health care reform and the public option.
I support the public option, but I’m not willing to kill health care reform if we have to settle for co-ops instead.
Jon Stewart calls out Beck for grossly flip-flopping on the quality of U.S. health care. Beck has either lost his mind or is a total hypocrite. You be the judge.
