It came up in the other thread, but how many people remember that the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was full of holes that had to be filled by the Civil Rights Bill of 1968? Not too fucking many, apparently, since the 1964 bill is not referred to as Johnson FAIL.

Of course the bills currently being debated are not the be-all and end-all of health care reform. We’re going to make some reforms, see how they go, and then constantly tweak it. That’s how it works, you fucking moron purity trolls who think that any kind of healthcare reform works perfectly right out of the box. Do some fucking research if you think that any of the systems in Europe sprung up fully-formed and never required any fixes.

Will the eventual bill accomplish the kind of improvements we need to fix our health care system? Not likely.

This statement is not supported by actual history.

And THAT’S what’s pissing me off.

Instead, we embarrass ourselves in front of the world by arguing over public options and buying into Medicare, and taking pride in the fact that we’ve almost started the process that may eventually—after countless unnecessary deaths and catastrophic financial ruin for millions of people—someday result in a workable system.

Thank you. That Half-a-loaf crap I see so much of here was really getting old.

...anyone whose life depends on the outcome should make funeral preparations now.

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Of course there are people on this thread that will be helped by this bill—except, of course, none of us know what the bill will actually contain. In fact, there will be people everywhere who will be helped by whatever is or isn’t passed. Since there are millions of Americans with vastly different conditions and needs, no matter what Congress ends up passing it will help someone. However, all too often in this country, the people who need the most help are the ones most likely to be ignored. The reason why insurance company executives make tens of millions of dollars a year and we have millions of uninsured citizens is because the United States Congress believes that gargantuan corporate bonuses are more important than universal health coverage.

Unless one has experienced both ends of the spectrum (poverty to affluence—i.e., real poverty, not student “poverty”) one is unlikely to identify with the plight of those who are truly deprived. (Deprivation is also relative, since few in this country suffer at the same level as the poor in other parts of the world.) That’s why it is so easy for idiots to claim that Americans can get “health care” from emergency rooms. What you get in an emergency room is emergency care, not health care. A person with good medical coverage is unlikely to end up in an emergency room except as a result of an accident, since regular check-ups and a close doctor-patient relationship are likely to identify illnesses before they become emergencies.

My point was simple—relying on the Modern Democratic Party or the Modern Republican Party is not a good bet if you have a lot at stake. Will someone benefit from the eventual bill? That’s a point too trivial to bother with. Will the eventual bill accomplish the kind of improvements we need to fix our health care system? Not likely.

This country has become so inept in so many ways that we no longer believe we should aspire to anything greater than baby steps. Actually redesign a health care system to meet the needs of the people? That’s much too complicated for us to manage even though we have numerous models from other developed countries on which to base reform. Anyone who isn’t a right wing ideologue (or a US Senator) has probably already figured out that a single-payer system is going to provide the best balance of care and affordability for the most—i.e., ALL —Americans. Instead, we embarrass ourselves in front of the world by arguing over public options and buying into Medicare, and taking pride in the fact that we’ve almost started the process that may eventually—after countless unnecessary deaths and catastrophic financial ruin for millions of people—someday result in a workable system. All while other countries already have workable systems and can direct their attention to fine-tuning so that the systems are sustainable.

What, you’re surprised that they have the gall to call it “medicare” when it isn’t really medicare? C’mon! Wake up! These are the same people who passed the “U.S.A. Patriot Act,” AKA the “destroy-the-constitution-and-abolish-your-civil-rights act.” These guys passed the “clean skies initiative,” AKA the “let the smokestacks pollute forever act.”

Just be thankful they haven’t yet passed a “Health and Long Life Act.” That would mean government troops go door to door shooting everyone in the head.

We have to keep the pressure on, but anyone whose life depends on the outcome should make funeral preparations now.

Pressure, yes. Work to improve, hell yes. But note that there are people on this thread that are quite possibly helped by this bill.

A “Medicare buy-in with no Medicare” is exactly what we should expect from these crooks—it’s just like Reid’s proposal for a “public” option that would be privately run. I’m afraid the vast majority of our national politicians are now so far divorced from reality (our reality, not theirs) that expecting anything that isn’t largely smoke and mirrors is just a prescription for disappointment.

We have to keep the pressure on, but anyone whose life depends on the outcome should make funeral preparations now.

There’s this demoralization feedback loop right now, with Hamsher and Kos and their commenters falling all over each other to say how much the (current version of the) bill sucks and how useless the Democrats are, and even when they aren’t explicitly saying stay home (or don’t donate) they’re contributing to the very thing (depressed turnout among the base) they say will happen if the bill isn’t ‘progressive’ enough.

Look at 1994. Liberals were pissed off at Clinton for his various waffling, they stayed home, and the Republicans took over Congress for the next 12 years. Gore wasn’t sufficiently pure in 2000, “Republicrats,” etc., so Democrats stayed home again and we got stuck with Bush.

But, hey, we sure showed those Democratic politicians, didn’t we? Sure, we screwed ourselves, our country, and most of the rest of the world, but we showed them.

Lather, rinse, repeat. I know it’s going to happen again in 2010 because we just can’t stop shooting ourselves in the foot no matter how many toes we lose each time.

I don’t think we need the voices urging people to stay home on Election Day, which is the kind of thing that Kos and Hamsher are starting to say.

Bingo. There’s this demoralization feedback loop right now, with Hamsher and Kos and their commenters falling all over each other to say how much the (current version of the) bill sucks and how useless the Democrats are, and even when they aren’t explicitly saying stay home (or don’t donate) they’re contributing to the very thing (depressed turnout among the base) they say will happen if the bill isn’t ‘progressive’ enough.

I’m not saying we don’t need productive voices as well. I’m saying we need all the voices. We will never speak as one because we don’t all have the same needs and points of view.

I don’t think we need the voices urging people to stay home on Election Day, which is the kind of thing that Kos and Hamsher are starting to say. That’s been the favorite tactic of the left since 1968—how’d that work out for us so far?

There is a difference between tactics and strategy. Kos and Hamsher are under the illusion that if they have enough tactics, that will equal a strategy, but that’s not how it works. What’s their strategy?

And I could react to Hamsher’s cluelessness with merely mild annoyance if it she hadn’t vowed to (try to) kill any bill that’s merely good—that would merely help millions of people who are currently screwed under the current system—if it doesn’t contain the particular mechanism she prefers (even if it achieves the same or better results in some other way). That’s why she deserves the contempt and fury reserved for the iredeemably stupid.

I still plan on keeping my regular insurance for catastrophic medical situations, but for routine medical procedures that have a much lower potential risk, it just doesn’t seem that insurance gives you much bang for your buck.

It doesn’t. In Seattle there’s a new clinic called Qliance that doesn’t accept insurance. You pay a flat fee per month for what amounts to regular doctors visits. The reason why the clinic doesn’t accept insurance is because the cost of filing insurance claims is a huge fraction of the amount of money to be made from regular office visits to a doctor. I think that this quote from Dr. Garrison Bliss, one of the founders of Qliance, in the story I linked to is probably is informative:

Qliance patients get unrestricted round-the-clock primary care access and 30-minute appointments.
“Why would a doctor not want to see sick people? That doesn’t make sense, unless you’re an insurance company,” Bliss said.
He rejected the idea that unrestricted access causes overuse, calling that “nonsense promoted by insurance companies …. There’s nobody I’ve ever met who gets their pleasure by seeing doctors.”
Bliss said dumping rigid, convoluted insurance requirements and paperwork saves large amounts of money.

Really? You don’t say.

Now, I agree they are going way overboard in the doom and gloom, but let’s be reasonable here. There was all this talk, all this excitement, all this momentum building up to the moment where we passed something historic, something game-changing, something landmark.

That isn’t going to happen. We have too many conservatives in the Senate who don’t give a shit about the country. What we will get is a decent enough bill. A modest improvement over the status quo, but not something worth stopping congress for 9-12 months over. Not something historic. Something worth passing, but not something that will go in the history books as “the beast finally conquered” as was advertised.

People are going to be disappointed about that and are going to vent and spaz out and piss themselves a little. It happens. It’s what they need to do to vent the frustration at disillusioned dreams before they can refocus themselves for the dire fight to make this good bill good enough and to put on the pressure for something else historic or at least just a bunch more good bills down the line.