Nothing else to call that but “a lie.” Not a misspeak, not another interpretation, it’s a lie.
Depressing. And weird – why say that at all?
6.
General Winfield Stuck
Though it is true he did campaign on a public option, or including one in his HC plan at least in some speeches, I am not sure it was that or nothing on his campaign website. And I have not heard him couch in “has to be a PO” since the health care debate started the past summer. In fact, that has been the complaint of the true progressives all along, since then, hasn’t it?
Maybe he was referring to that time period. Though I agree he shouldn’t have said he never promised one in the campaign.
I guess we will just have to impeach the first president to break a campaign promise and then lie or misremember later.
7.
PeakVT
But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”
If true, that was pretty dumb.
It would be helpful to actually tell the truth here, as in: “I tried to get the public option, but as long as there is a filibuster it’s not going to pass.”
8.
Comrade Mary
Not cool. Try again.
9.
Jack
If he lies (and these are overt, demonstrable lies) about the comparison between his campaign promises (and lofty, empty rhetoric) and the HC”R” outcome, perhaps it’s because he’s getting the outcome that he wants.
Warning to the “fix it later” faithful.
The President is lying, a la “Mission Accomplished.”
Volumes, that…
10.
Violet
He’s smoking something besides his cigarettes if he thinks that kind of lie is going to go unnoticed and unchecked. He’d be much better off saying it’s not a perfect bill but he’s pleased with the progress, or something of that ilk.
Lying so blatantly, especially in the days of the internet, is just stupid.
The WH has been trying to shake a new narrative for the better part of the month.
Makes one wonder why.
12.
bayville
I have no idea what the hell Obama is talking about here.
It’s Rahm’s fault.
13.
Just Some Fuckhead
I ain’t givin’ up on the weaselly rascal yet but it just goes to make the point we all gotta push for what we want. Ya can’t just daydream about unicorns and hope it works out.
14.
Max
Maybe he was under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996 when he made the remark.
15.
Notorious P.A.T.
sigh
16.
Mary G
He’s a politician. They tend to tell a lot of lies to get elected. He always says “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” He took what he could get. At least we have a toe in the door. The plan is horrible, but it’s a plan we’ve been trying to pass for 70 years.
My birthday is Christmas Eve and if they hold the final Senate vote then, it’ll be one of the best ever. I’ve had rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years and am currently on Orencia. You have to get it in an IV at the hospital and they bill $12,000+ each time. ONCE A MONTH. If I wasn’t on Medicare there’s no way I’d be taking it. I’d be crippled in bed crying when I had to creep 15 feet to go to the bathroom. Every time I go in I feel so guilty about all the people who need this drug and can’t get it.
So Merry Christmas or whatever you call this time of year to Balloon Juicers everywhere. I am happy and contented just as John was earlier.
And I have edit back! I think I’ll go try to take a picture of the rescue kitteh to email in.
…and it’s a big caveat: what the Republicans wanted to do to Social Security, the Prez, Senate Democrats and Joe Lieberman did to health care and insurance.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the outcome for which three generations have struggled.
I have no insight into their actual motives, Violet.
I can speculate, but my opinions with regard to the mercenary outlook of White House occupants is just this side of cynical.
21.
Joe Beese
It’s called “lying”, John.
Hope this helps.
22.
handy
Not Quite The Change We Can Believe In. But is what we’ve got enough?
23.
keestadoll
It never ceases to amaze me that in the age of video recording phones, street surveillance cameras, hungry independent bloggers, and bored jerk offs with YouTube accounts (to name only a few of our modern “perks”), we still manage to catch a plethora of HUGELY public figures carelessly “misspeaking” in a HUGE way. Still, there’s plenty of precedent to show that such out and out missp–oh fuck it–LYING, can be forgiven and readily excused, so I don’t think the President is too concerned over the implications of his statement, er, lie.
24.
Keith G
Red Fucking Balloons.
It’s not exactly over, but damn close. I wish the West Wing had pushed harder and ginned up support, but it didn’t. And where were the minority communities?
I am an uninsured guy battling a chronic disease and what goes down in DC is not academic to me. Yet, all this pissing and moaning is killing off the few T4 cells I have left. My med care future will be better off than it was going to be as of last year when I was *totally uninsurable*.
And I assume over time prospects will even get better as/if our political society get a bit more mature.
Remember the thing with NAFTA and Canada. Same thing going on here. Surprisingly, candidates for office will dangle a large ham in front of the public but realize that a baggie of sliced lunch meat is probably all they will be able to deliver given the system of entrenched special interests. O yeah, it’s a corporatocracy and Obama is it’s primary defender. Sure, some crumbs for the dogs, but biz as usual.
26.
Elisabeth
*sigh*
It was bound to happen sooner or later but this is the first time I really feel like I’ve been lied to by this president. I can put some kind of excuse to just about anything else but this….sorry, Barack. I ain’t buying what you’re trying to sell with this one.
27.
Jay B.
I don’t really get why he campaigned on “health care” at all, regardless of whether or not he may have misspoke about something he wanted in a reform package.
If I’ve learned anything over the past few days, I’ve learned that the President is a completely helpless figurehead when it comes to things like policy and legislation and that he has no actual role in either supporting or opposing it, except distinctly as the Executive when he can either sign the bill or veto it.
28.
Dr. I. F. Stone
It was bound to happen sooner or later but this is the first time I really feel like I’ve been lied to by this president.
And it damn sure won’t be the last lie that falls willingly and intentionally from his effing lips. His entire career is based on nothing but lies and an ability to read words from a teleprompter.
so I don’t think the President is too concerned over the implications of his statement, er, lie.
No, I suspect not. The PO pony was made into a Unicorn fantasy by the netroots, whether or not Obama said he wanted one a few times. The netroots have jumped the shark in my opinion anyway, there is no going back, and will be as demanding and judgmental as any tea bagger.
Listen, if people like jack can make connections to Obama maybe wanting no PO the whole time, whereas there is no evidence of that really. Then I will continue to say Obama should give the bronx cheer to the netroots and do what he wants. He has nothing to lose but the next election the shriekers are predicting and threatening to do their best see that happen. So what’s the point then of paying any attention what so ever to them. It’s just going to be the same ole same ole for every contentious issue. Same formula. They don’t get what they want when they want it and it’s wailing time again.
Obama lied, people died
is this that far behind?
30.
FlipYrWhig
Here’s the bit from WaPo:
Obama said the public option “has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right.” But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”
Doesn’t sound good. But note that it’s not a continuous quotation, so yet once more we’re at the mercy of the reporter.
I’m guessing that the full quote is something like “I didn’t campaign on the public option, I campaigned on a comprehensive solution to health care in this country.” Meaning, again, that the Big Point was getting something done that lived up to the goals he consistently enumerated, NOT being line-in-the-sand about the means. Because he consistently phrased it along those lines. We’ve been through this over and over and over again. Reporters either dont listen reel gud (like Jake Tapper) or enjoy the subtle ratfuck (ibid.).
31.
Mnemosyne
Well, that’s annoying. I can understand feeling defensive when you have Kos and Hamsher going around on the talk shows whipping people into a frenzy, but lying about it isn’t going to fix anything.
It would be helpful to actually tell the truth here, as in: “I tried to get the public option, but as long as there is a filibuster it’s not going to pass.”
Unfortunately, that would also be a lie. Feingold and Lieberman have both confirmed that he didn’t even try.
33.
gex
@Brent: Did you mean the sliced ham is all they CAN deliver or all they WILL deliver. There’s a difference, and I think we’ve seen that it is the latter rather than the former. These guys weren’t losing the fight against the entrenched interests, they were representing them.
@NR: Joe Lieberman didn’t confirm anything. Really, lets stop relying on serial liars.
Feingold I believe. But then again, why would Obama need to pressure Feingold on the public option anyway? You think Feingold was wavering on the public option?
36.
FlipYrWhig
And the question was probably something like, “But your critics say that you campaigned on the public option, and yet you’re saying you’re happy to sign a bill without it. How do you reconcile that?”
Also note this element from higher up in the piece:
“Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”
First, it should be “criterion,” which makes him as bad as Bush. :P But more importantly, IMHO it bespeaks a phrasing like I proposed in my previous comment: he’s saying that it meets his goals and people keep getting distracted by the question of means.
Ah, yes, the teleprompter meme. Sorry, I’m not happy with this little nugget from the president but I’m not buying what you’re selling, either.
38.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: We’ve danced this dance before, alas. It almost always boils down to this means/ends distinction, which is totally clear to me but seems to bedevil many greater minds than mine.
(ETA: And we won’t get a full quote, but we might get a clarification from Gibbs that sounds like the way I put it, which will be read as prevarication or walking it back, and we’ll be back in the same Cycle Of Stupid.)
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) insists that the White House did not pressure him to get in line behind either a public health insurance option or a Medicare buy-in compromise during the health care debate this year.
Now, he could be lying here, but no one from the White House has spoken out to contradict him, and Feingold is saying exactly the same thing, so I don’t think it’s too likely.
40.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I have no idea what the hell Obama is talking about here.
You mean where he says that he didn’t campaign on a public option? In common parlance that’s what’s known as a “lie.”
Well, that wasn’t the whole quote, was it NR. It is bad enough having the press and wingnuts do half ass reporting out of context garbage. But seeing it here from regulars is just stunning to me.
“I’d have to think about this, but I didn’t really have direct input from the White House on this.”
weasel joe, in his full glory. Not all that sure is he.
42.
harlana peppper
Surprised? Really?? Sincerely not trying to be an asshole here but I’m really surprised you are surprised. Makes me wonder what I have overlooked in watching this process unfold.
43.
Demo Woman
President Obama always said that he thought a public option should be included but during the campaign he was quite clear that he did not think that a health program that was single payer would pass. Now if you want to quibble, he did say that he did not think that mandates would pass.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) insists that the White House did not pressure him to get in line
That’s probably true, because they figured that attempting to pressure him would drive him into outright opposition. I think he was kind of itching to blow it all up. They couldn’t afford to give him a reason to pull the trigger and kill the hostage.
45.
Malron
Parsing words. “I didn’t campaign on a public option” meaning “I didn’t make it the centerpiece of health reform.” At least that’s the intent of wording it this way.
But you know what? by catching him this way, all progressives did was make themselves look like liars as well, because while Obama was making these very statements progressives were telling us week in and week out that Obama wasn’t in favor of the public option. Now, they flip the script in order to score a few political points with shit like this
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), one of the most ardent backers of public insurance, blamed the demise of the public option on a “lack of support from the administration.”
It was stupid for Obama to claim he never “campaigned” on the public option. It would have been honest if he said “I wanted the public option, tried to stress it as often as I could but in the end there just weren’t enough votes for it in the senate. But as we’ve seen from the progressives there’s been plenty of stupid to go around.
46.
Comrade Mary
Look, if the full quote (not an excerpt) from Obama is “I didn’t campaign on the public option”, he deserves to get yelled at.
@NR: But even if what Lieberman says is absolutely true — and he did leave weasel room — so what? Feingold also said that he assumed the White House would have pressured, but he didn’t say that Lieberman wasn’t pressured, or that the White House lied to Feingold about pressuring Lieberman. So what Feingold is saying now is a reaction to reports of what Lieberman said, not backing him up.
47.
Brent
Without the full quote, we can’t know for sure, but he sure is hedging. He did, however, campaign against the individual mandate, that is for sure. That is in the bill. I will not buy overpriced inadequate insurance from a corrupt private provider with massive co-pays and deductibles. All this bill does is dump taxpayer subsidies into the broken overpriced corrupt private system. But at about the same rate as the Iraq war, which was pointless, useless and unneccessary and caused untold harm. At least some people who were ineligible for Medicaid will now have their overpriced private insurance subsidized at our expense. Better than the Bombs for Babies program under Bush.
48.
General Winfield Stuck
So what if Obama didn’t directly cudgel joe on the po. Hasn’t it been established that activists don’t like his style of giving the senate room to do it’s business,. Wasn’t it Harry Reid that assured the WH he had the 60 for a opt out PO, and then for a Medicare buy in. When he didn’t. What would be the point of Obama lobbying joe when Reid claimed he had his vote.
This shit is making me ill. Just get another candidate already for 2012. Maybe Hillary will run. Nit picking a quote out of context, and you fuckers are ready to lay the lie word, and draw the conclusion he never wanted a PO in the first place.
Hell, I can go to any wingnut blog and read the same shit.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) insists that the White House did not pressure him to get in line behind either a public health insurance option or a Medicare buy-in compromise during the health care debate this year.
Since Holy Joe was saying just three months ago that he thought a Medicare buy-in was the best idea since sliced bread and was (IIRC) claiming credit for the idea, why would he have to be pressured to get in line behind it?
In common parlance that’s what’s known as a “lie.”
In common journalistic parlance it could be what’s known as a “selective quotation.” If you said, “I think FlipYrWhig is a douchebag for defending Obama on this,” you could be quoted accurately (strictly speaking) as saying, “I think FlipYrWhig is a douchebag,” but the part that got left out is an important piece of the puzzle, and you would probably say, “Wait a minute, I didn’t just say ‘FlipYrWhig is a douchebag,’ I was making a narrower point than that.” But if someone either didn’t care or wanted to make us mad at each other, they could report it that way.
huh? Reserve judgment until we know the full quote? Good heavens sir, what PLANET are you on?
This is indisputable evidence that Obama has lied about everything from his Kenyan birth certificate on out. Lord help us, the teabaggers and Hamsher were right. He’s gonna establish a Muslim communist fascist dictatorship right NOW……run for your lives……!
52.
Max
@General Winfield Stuck: I think it’s important to impeach him before 12.31.09, so we don’t have to pay him his re-up of personal / sick time.
Parsing words. “I didn’t campaign on a public option” meaning “I didn’t make it the centerpiece of health reform.” At least that’s the intent of wording it this way.
Right, and more efficiently put than I did it above — that’s why the ThinkProgress piece misses the point slightly by documenting the number of times Obama mentioned the public option. He’s mentioning that it’s a good idea, but he’s not “campaigning on it.” Similarly, he said positive things about “clean coal” and about keeping your tires properly inflated, but did he “campaign on” either of those? I think the answer is no, but I agree that as stated it’s weaselly at best.
But my guess is still that there’s a second half to the line, which the reporter didn’t quote, because that has happened many, many times this year, and it’s the reason why critics of Obama on health care from the left always say that he flip-flopped on the public option.
55.
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: I’m listening to the audio now on the WP. We seem to have lots of visitors all of a sudden.
But you know what? by catching him this way, all progressives did was make themselves look like liars as well, because while Obama was making these very statements progressives were telling us week in and week out that Obama wasn’t in favor of the public option.
What?
There are a few things that come to mind here:
1. If what you say is true and “progressives” said he wasn’t in favor of the public option then you are admitting that “progressives” are, in fact, correct — because Obama agrees with that assessment.
2. Being a stranger to language and meaning as it exists in context, you may be confused with the idea that “progressives” could say, without contradiction, that Obama wasn’t in favor of the public option because he hedged his bets for most of the year on whether the Administration supported the public option — and now Obama merely confirms this assumption.
3. It’s also possible that “progressives” didn’t believe him last year and judged him on his actions as the bill took shape in order to claim he didn’t support the public option. This is not a lie. And is, in fact, factually supported by the Administration.
57.
Da Bomb
@FlipYrWhig: It happens all of the time, words are parsed. I will wait until I hear the full quote.
@eemom: You forgot about the Obama pillow used to strangle grandmas. You know once they get assigned their death date from the death panel. That’s located on the Senate bill on page 2.
Also note this element from higher up in the piece:
“Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”
First, it should be “criterion,” which makes him as bad as Bush. :P
I’m with you: my teeth begin to curl when I see or hear “criteria” used as a singular noun (I’m slightly less fussy, but only slightly, about “data” and “media”). But here again, I’d like to hear the actual interview tape, as this could quite easily be an error by the journalist or transcriber. I can’t recall where or when, or I’d provide a link, but I’m positive I’ve heard Obama use “criterion” and “criteria” correctly in unscripted conversation.
59.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
In common journalistic parlance it could be what’s known as a “selective quotation.”
I’m sure he’s perfectly welcome to give another interview and say that he was quoted out of context. In fact, on behalf of John Cole, I invite the President to do a guest post on Balloon Juice and clarify his statement.
60.
Dreggas
Funny, when he was campaigning I recall him saying he wanted comprehensive health reform and a public option should be a part of that, but it wasn’t the only thing he wanted in the reforms.
Asked about a Dem senator’s accusation that the White House pressured the FDA to send a letter that helped kill a drug importation measure, Robert Gibbs did not directly address the charge, but maintained that the FDA has had safety concerns for years.
Here is what Gibbs said:
TPMDC’s Christina Bellantoni asked Gibbs during the press briefing today how the White House responded to Dorgan’s charge.
“I would simply say, concerns by the Food and Drug Administration about reimportation are not something that came to the fore in the Obama administration. … Drug reimportation, which the president supports, if one can do it safely, were the concern in the previous administration’s Food and Drug Administration,” Gibbs said. “So this is about a ten-year concern by the Food and Drug Administration in terms of safety.”
I’m starting to see a part of duplicity here. It’s giving me a bad feeling. Did they sell us out to the drug industry? It looks more and more like they may have. Rat bastards.
63.
Demo Woman
@Dreggas: That’s what he said.. He always used should, could etc. Unfortunately, he did not have to say I did not campaign on a Public Option during the interview. By saying that it over shadowed all the other points that he made. It was a 17 minute interview and it was pretty good. The WP has the entire interview on line.
64.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: IMHO, “being in favor of” or “supporting” and “campaigning on” are not the same thing.
I would say that I have never doubted Obama’s _support of_ a public option, but like you I have perceived him refusing to make the public option the linchpin of the reform debate. I think it’s because they never thought they had the votes, and sticking his neck out for it without the votes might have gratified a lot of people but would (1) not lead to its passage, and (2) produce a lot of negative mainstream press about his Crushing Defeat or the Frustrating End To Dem Health Care Plan.
I think he also supports single-payer (which really needs a better name; I’d guess at least 85% of people who hear it don’t know that it means the government is the single payer). In fact I think he supports same-sex marriage–because, honestly, WTF– but feels like he can’t risk undertaking a high-profile campaign that’s likely to go down to defeat, because in US politics defeat begets defeat.
65.
AnotherBruce
Ok, if you really want to parse this, maybe he didn’t campaign on the public option.
But he didn’t not campaign on the public option either, and it’s a damn weasily and unnecessary thing to say. Whether he lied or not is only a matter of degree. The point is, a lot of people that supported him are feeling pissed on right about now, just when things were starting to heal a bit.
My suspicions didn’t exactly pan out, but I think I was close. Here’s the section in question:
So, every single criteria for reform that I put forward is in this bill. It is true that that the Senate version does not have a public option and that has become a source of ideological contention between the left and the right, but I didn’t campaign on a public option. I think it is a good idea but as I said on that speech on September 9, it just one small element of a broader reform effort.
Is that the same as saying “I didn’t campaign on a public option,” full stop? I would say no. And I think I got pretty close on the phrasing.
Considering he succeeded in passing the bill and the only problem Obama has to fix at this point is a grassroots which basically doesn’t trust him, that is a startlingly stupid thing to say.
Obama could have made a point that he campaigned on a broad health care reform plan, almost all of which is now implemented, and that the public option simply wasn’t the entirety of the health care plan he was pushing at the time.
The thing he said instead is just plain false. Not going to build trust here.
68.
AkaDad
It’s going to be an extremely tough choice in 2012 between Obama and a Republican who lies on a daily basis.
69.
FlipYrWhig
Bah, caught in moderation, probably too many links…
Obama could have made a point that he campaigned on a broad health care reform plan, almost all of which is now implemented, and that the public option simply wasn’t the entirety of the health care plan he was pushing at the time.
Read the transcript or listen to the audio. That’s almost exactly what he says. _Immediately_ after the reporter snipped for the article.
You can make that case. You can also question whether or not you’d have an audience who would want to listen to it.
I mean, really, when you are asking for votes and saying you “support the public option” but you are really meaning that you are not “campaigning on it” requires a level of semantic parsing that I’m not really interested in dissecting.
I don’t think he supports single-payer either, but that’s moot.
There’s always Option C: sitting it out. Of course that plan always works so well for liberals.
73.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: I take your point, but I don’t think this requires very much complicated parsing. From the interview transcript:
So, every single criteria for reform that I put forward is in this bill. It is true that that the Senate version does not have a public option and that has become a source of ideological contention between the left and the right, but I didn’t campaign on a public option. I think it is a good idea but as I said on that speech on September 9, it just one small element of a broader reform effort.
Read the transcript or listen to the audio. That’s almost exactly what he says. Immediately after the reporter snipped for the article.
Wait, hold on a second here perfesser – you’re telling me that the liberal Washington Post selectively edited a quote from Obama to make him seem worse than he is?
– While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09]
Must. Not may, not should, not I’d-prefer-it. Must.
So, ok. If Obama wanted to go back on his earlier position, fine. We all change our minds.
But to say that he did not, in fact, push a public option, when he repeatedly insisted upon precisely that? It’s a lie. Don’t sugarcoat this. It’s a lie.
Shocker. My President, the man I voted for, is a liar.
76.
Jack
Digby excerpts the campaign PDF @ length (emphasis hers):
“…The Obama plan both builds upon and improves our current insurance system, upon which most Americans continue to rely, and leaves Medicare intact for older and disabled Americans. The Obama plan also addresses the large gaps in coverage that leave 45 million Americans uninsured. Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers, as well as to small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees; (2) make available the National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses that want to purchase private health insurance directly; (3) require all employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees; (4) mandate all children have health care coverage; (5) expand Medicaid and SCHIP to cover more of the least well-off among us; and (6) allow state flexibility for state health reform plans…”
Link to PDF @ her site.
77.
mr. whipple
It would have been honest if he said “I wanted the public option, tried to stress it as often as I could but in the end there just weren’t enough votes for it in the senate. But as we’ve seen from the progressives there’s been plenty of stupid to go around.
He did mention in one speech that people had become focused on it to the exclusion of other things, and whever he didn’t mention it in his hcr speeches people went apeshit. (including me).
I don’t remember this from the general election, however.
But the bottom line is that if this is an accurate quote, it’s simply bullshit on his part.
@BFR: That was sarcasm. I thought including the word ‘Shocker’, which no one I’ve ever met actually uses in ordinary conversation, was an adequate clue.
So, if you like, consider the previous post to have a /snark after it.
Also, I figured out that he was a flip-flopper during the telco immunity mess. This isn’t news to me by a long shot. It’s surprising that he’s getting this sloppy though.
I don’t think he supports single-payer either, but that’s moot.
Moot indeed, but I think most politicians support a lot of things they don’t integrate into their praxis because US politics defines “acceptable opinion” so narrowly. Of course seeing in a politician more than he actually says or does is precisely what leads to disillusionment.
83.
JasonF
@John Sears: Do you see those elipses in the quote that ThinkProgress used? That’s your clue that somebody is trying to pull somehting fishy. Let’s check out the full sentence:
That’s why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.
Now, you can argue that you should read the “must include” as refering to the public option, which is subsumed within the insurance exchange, but it is nowhere near as unequivocal as ThinkProgress’s selective quote makes it appear.
84.
FlipYrWhig
Can everyone who wants to call him a liar please read the fuller quotation? I even cut and pasted it for you.
Obama’s answer to a Newsday questionnaire (via Salon):
“I have pledged to sign a universal health bill into law by the end of my first term in office. My plan will ensure that all Americans have health care coverage through their employers, private health plans, the federal government or the states. For those without health insurance I will establish a new public insurance program.”
Ack, I’m still stuck in moderation above. Hopefully some of my cuts and pastes from the WaPo interview transcript have worked. The transcript is interesting reading and I think answers many of the objections people have lodged.
89.
Mary
@Demo Woman: I notice the visitors too. But I think the paid blogging money will run out when health care is passed. But I think if John’s blog is going to be polluted, he should at least get paid for it so that he can become rich and famous like the others.
90.
Ruemara
I got to wonder about this. The man said he supports a robust public option, not that he wants a public option. I think that means if it has all the stuff he thinks is integral with health care insurance reform, he’ll take it. All these people whining about shit sandwiches would happily eat it if it was labeled “public option” even it was ass-weak and utterly worthless. Now people are selectively editing things to discredit him? Man, if he says 4 years of being every sides whipping boy is enough and moves to France after 2012, i will send him relocation money. I think I owe President Obama an apology for handing him the job of taking care of a population that’s 30% strident idiot.
@John Sears: I’m confused. How does a Presidental radio address include “campaigning [for President]” on a public option?”
I mean, the meme is that Obama never pushed for it once elected, right? Never said he really wanted it. But you quote, via this article, prima facie evidence that he stuck his neck out to promote for it in the public after the election.
None of the quotes from the campaign period are him saying we “must” have it; a Plan — anyone’s plan — cannot survive contact with Congress, which is going to shift and change it. It’s Their Job, and I know we’d have some role issues with our governance, but really, it’s Not Obama’s Job to present legislation, and we got into enough trouble with both Clinton — on this very topic! — and Bush pulling such stunts. That’s one of my issues with the way we run Presidential races anyway, but that’s a story for another time.
Saying that he lied about it just to get elected don’t wash with the very quote you provide.
Didn’t John write a post a while back saying how he hadn’t really heard of the public option as Big Thing of healthcare reform until this summer? Not to throw his words back at him or ought, but I had the exact same feeling when he said it, to the extent that save for parsing every bit of his language online, I didn’t ever remember it coming up in the campaign. Mandates, for example, did and that’s fair enough, but at no point during a debate in either the Primaries or the General do I remember him campaigning on the public option as difference between him and his opponent. Nor do I recall any pundits or analysts favouring Obama on the basis of his views on the public option. If your best source is a questionnaire from WaPo, then you’re really missing the idea of a campaign.
Here’s how it goes (at least for me):
Major policy announcement by press conference, speech, or debate answer = campaigning on it
Text on website, transcript of by-rote interview, policy questionnaire = not necessarily campaigning on it
The Think Progress article is a tad disingenuous, insofar as it quotes Obama saying he didn’t campaign on it, and then gives one instance on the website text, and three instances during the heat of his first year push for HCR (where the public option became the chosen battleground for whatever bloody reason). In any event, I don’t really remember the political pressure coming from the White House on the public option.
Obama will probably break on many a campaign pledge, but screw me if the public option hasn’t been the biggest red herring of 2009.
98.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Just read the full transcript. His weasel words are that the public option was a “small element” of his plan. In fact, as noted above, the public plan was NUMERO UNO on his to-do list. #2 was national exchanges, as you’ll also notice.
99.
mr. whipple
“Can everyone who wants to call him a liar please read the fuller quotation? I even cut and pasted it for you.”
Sorry, I’m a bot and I don’t think this passes muster for honesty. Like I said, I don’t remember him pushing the PO in the general, but I count traveling all over the country giving a shitload of HCR townhalls as ‘campaigning’. There were only a couple times when he didn’t mention it, and every time it lead to a boatload of LW outrage and questions about whether he was giving up on it.
I also remember the speech about ‘it being one part’ speech and the uproar over that, I think that was within days of Sebelius downplaying the PO on a Sunday talk show. (Again causing a hell of an uproar.)
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: Here’s another one. I’m copying it from his campaign white paper on health care myself, typing each and every word myself, so there’s no possibility I’m being misled by the eeeeeeevil washington post.
The Obama-Biden plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals purchase insurance if they are uninsured or want new health insurance. Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding tax credits will provided for single people and families who need it.
So yes, Virginia, he did in fact campaign on a public option, one open to ALL AMERICANS, not just the poor, not just the uninsured, but EVERY LAST ONE OF US.
I don’t see any reason to parse his exact quote.
__
Why carry water for a lie?
Um, I have this funky idea that when we argue about politics it’s mildly important not to be misleading and demagogic. All the quotations everyone is finding square with how he said he does, in fact, _support_ it. So he’s making THE VERY SAME POINT he’s been making for months, which is that he supports the public option but thinks of it as part of a larger framework. Sure, he could have not said “I didn’t campaign on a public option” and just said the second part and saved himself a lot of mudslinging. But I think it’s pretty evident that his theme is that thinking only in terms of public option in-or-out is missing the larger point. Which is why I feel like this is at worst badly phrased–but rather clear in context–and not “a lie.” A lie would be to say, “I don’t know why everyone is so upset about not having the public option, because I never said I wanted that.”
103.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne: I just listened to the audio, and to my great sorrow it seems he did say “criteria” when he should have said “criterion.” This will not stand! I’m handing in my O-bot membership card and joining up with Jane Hamsher and the Teabaggers.
Who were the 60 votes in the Senate for the public option?
Who are the 50 votes for the public option with reconciliation?
And I’ll keep asking until someone tells me. They barely got to 60 with this current bill. I would love to hear the strategery that gets us to 60 with a robust public option. And you aren’t allowed to say “Obama could have fought harder,” because that is masturbatory nonsense.
All these people whining about shit sandwiches would happily eat it if it was labeled “public option” even it was ass-weak and utterly worthless.
Much of our politics and the lion’s share of internet politics, is just taking the general American propensity to perform social signaling by choice of consumer goods and applying it specifically to politics.
At this point “Public Option” is as much a brand as “9 West”, and has about as much actual content.
I read that once, then twice – and it seems to be that your point is that he supported the public option, so therefore he didn’t lie then when he claimed to support it.
Okay, but that’s whistling right past the graveyard.
Because the lie was today, not in 2007 or 2008.
He’s trying to rewrite history today. Right now. He’s trying to rework the narrative of the past to support his current position. It doesn’t matter if he supported it then. It matters that he’s lying about it now.
If that isn’t suspicious to you, I have a “GW Bush Best President Ever” Republican talking point to sell you…
@John Cole: I’m not about to ‘pass out from rage’.
I’m pondering getting the tequila out though, reading so many people who claim that this is anything but a lie. A sloppy one too.
If you want to say it was impossible, fine. That doesn’t change the fact that he did in fact campaign on it, and now doesn’t have the guts to admit it, or the technical understanding that his campaign paper is still up on his own website.
Read the transcript or listen to the audio. That’s almost exactly what he says. Immediately after the reporter snipped for the article.
And thanks for the link, I’d had trouble finding the transcript. But I did read the transcript before I made that last post.
I could imagine he legitimately did mean that and this was just the vagaries of spoken interviews getting in the way– the transcript doesn’t really seem to me to make it clear either way what he was trying to express. But totally regardless of what he meant it was still a stupid thing to say. This is such a sore subject, and people are hunting so hard for anything to latch on to and scream betrayal over, and surely the white house must be aware of that. He should have been aware that anything uncarefully said was going to cause a firestorm. You just know that even if the white house issues a clarification later saying the washington post quote was out of context and explaining what he meant, lefty blog people are totally going to be citing this comment constantly in a mocking manner eight months from now.
Or, you could give your opponents the benefit of their own perspectives.
*
I don’t for a moment assume that a person who has faith in Obama and Senate Democrats is some idiot rube who’s been branded by a commodity fetish.
I think the faith is misplaced, but I don’t think there’s anything merely fetishized about believing that the current leadership might deliver real reform.
112.
mr. whipple
All these people whining about shit sandwiches would happily eat it if it was labeled “public option” even it was ass-weak and utterly worthless.
Um, a lot of people commenting on blogs did say it was shit when the House plan details came out because it allowed so few people to enroll. Only later did it become the most necessary thing ever.
Sorry, I’m a bot and I don’t think this passes muster for honesty. Like I said, I don’t remember him pushing the PO in the general, but I count traveling all over the country giving a shitload of HCR townhalls as ‘campaigning’.
OK, but taken in combination with many other statements, which I reviewed during the whole Sebelius episode over the summer, IMHO he’s not saying he didn’t campaign, or that he didn’t talk about the public option during that campaign, but that he has never insisted that the public option was the be-all and end-all of health care reform.
I think he could have said “I didn’t campaign _only_ on a public option” and avoided the whole mess. But that’s implicitly what he means, and I think reading the whole health care section of the interview makes that clear. But I’ve gotten floggings before on the blogs for my (excessive?) willingness to give people the benefit of the doubt, so this feels like another one of those cases. And if the reporter quoted the whole damn sentence I still contend that we wouldn’t be primed to read it as a falsehood.
@John Sears: I think ThinkProgress is not presenting the full quote, which sounds a great deal different from simply ‘I did not campaign on the public optiojn.”
But you are refusing to answer. I’ve read you for days railing against this bill in support of the public option, but you simply refuse to answer how it would get done. You know, I did the magical thinking thing once, and ended up supporting the Bush administration in any number of ridiculous adventures.
So tell me. Who were the 60 votes for this ROBUST public option?
Who were the 50 for reconciliation?
115.
Max
@Davis X. Machina: It reminds me of a video clip I saw. It was taken on Black Friday and a crowd of shoppers @ Walmart rush in to scoop up a “Zhu Zhu Hamster”, which is apparently this holiday season’s hottest toy. The crowd is battling it out and you see two ladies fighting it out in the middle of the frenzy. After the items are gone, one of the ladies is interviewed by the local reporter on the scene and she says “I don’t know what it is, but I want it”.
And you aren’t allowed to say “Obama could have fought harder,” because that is masturbatory nonsense.
This shit is like reading the local sports team blog comments.
There’s the same huge assumptions that the folks running the other side are morons – no, the Cardinals aren’t going to trade you Albert Pujols for a bag of baseballs and no Ben Nelson isn’t going to help you out if he knows you’re trying to marginalize him.
There’s also the same absurd belief that opinions can be moved/players can be improved if the manager (Reid & Obama) “just get tougher with these guys” rather than accepting that there are limits and we can’t always get what we want.
Respectfully, what does it matter what the political situation is, with regard to health insurance reform?
Whether or not he has the requisite votes to deliver on his promises doesn’t change the fact that he lied about those promises, instead of accurately discussing the political reality?
I think a campaign policy position ought to qualify. See above.
I meant “didn’t”. Sorry.
119.
General Winfield Stuck
Answer me this PUMA’s. Where are you leading? What do you want? If you are going to take things from a campaign health care plan and indict Obama as a liar that can’t be trusted, over a quote carved out of an interview, without the entire transcript of that interview available for scrutiny –what do you want? And don’t tell me the rhetoric on the blog has been all about just constructive criticism, because that is an insult to the intelligence of even a dweeb like me.
I mean if you going to cite Joe Lieberman as part of your case, whatever that is, then I think you have already reached a conclusion and are now just scrapping for anything to justify that conclusion. If you are going to ignore all of the other evidence the past 5 months that Obama never had the votes for a PO, and label him a weak failure and liar, what is your conclusion?
And if you just fell off the turnip truck, let me clue you in. PRESIDENTS LIE. They always have and always will. No exceptions. Will that be your next pony? A honest Abe president, who by the way also lied, as does every human that has ever been born. Except maybe one.
Are you going to join Jane on Fox News for the coming impeachment?
I will give my impression of what has happened to this blog, as well as most others in the netroots, has made a decision that this president has to go. And every day every thing Obama says does will be combed thru by those that have made that decision. Won’t matter how trivial, how incomplete, or dubious. It will be jumped on and held up as evidence. The hyperflamed rhetoric here the past few days is clear to me that a part of this blog has made that decision, that Obama has to go. Prove me wrong.
And all of resulting from one provision, a Public Option, in one bill
OK, but taken in combination with many other statements, which I reviewed during the whole Sebelius episode over the summer, IMHO he’s not saying he didn’t campaign, or that he didn’t talk about the public option during that campaign, but that he has never insisted that the public option was the be-all and end-all of health care reform.
On that we can agree. I think it was smart politics to never draw a line in the sand, because we all know how stupid it looks when that line gets blown away and also because it gives your opponents a focal point to concentrate on.
But I do think they knew from the get-go they didn’t have the votes and probably would never be able to get them, and if he had said that I think a lot of energy would have been sapped from people like me hoping it was included.
The assumption that people opposed to clumsy obfuscation, bad negotiation, failure to deliver – and yes, the Senate version of health insurance reform – are necessarily HRC PUMAs is very much teh funnehs.
Perhaps it explains why you so often fail to even begin to comprehend the arguments against which you lower your broken lance of callow insipidity.
123.
Gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: All I can say is that I can see where Jack and Mr. Sears get their interpretation. But that was not my interpretation over the past year, in real time. I suppose my differing interpretation means I was drnking the koolaid before I was supposed to know about the koolaid.
All the same: His house. He merits the respect of it.
125.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
One more time before Sears passes out from rage:
Who were the 60 votes in the Senate for the public option?
One more time: 59 were on record as either for it or not opposed to it as recently as 6-8 months ago. Lieberman didn’t make his explicit threat to filibuster until a few weeks ago. The time for bribing and cajoling was 6-8 months ago, not 6-8 days ago.
It was a corporate failure. It was a failure by Reid to lead his caucus. It was a failure by Obama in his capacity as leader of the party. It was a failure by the likes of Dodd and Schumer and others to use their collegiality to move this in the right direction. And it was a failure of left health care reform advocates who took these votes for granted.
Who are the 50 votes for the public option with reconciliation?
Again, the time to explore this idea was 6-8 months ago. 6-8 days ago was far too late.
it seems to be that your point is that he supported the public option, so therefore he didn’t lie then when he claimed to support it.
My point is that he has always “supported” the public option–which he continues to say IN THIS INTERVIEW–but has likewise always insisted that health care reform is not reducible to the public option. So what I hear is an implicit “only.” Because _he’s been saying versions of that_ for months, including in the speech to which he’s alluding in the interview.
I’m just curious why Obama’s taking credit for “delivering” on health care in the first place — as our host points out, it’s not like he really had any role to play while the Legislative branch debated what was going to be in the bill.
I’ve been told repeatedly regarding robust reform, the President was powerless. He’d be as bad as Bush or Nixon had he dipped his toe into the debate — the Imperial Presidency, you see. Obama, I was told and am forced to believe, had to respect the sacred process of turning good ideas into shit, because he believed strongly in the Separation of Powers.
And yet, the President says “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”
First off, clearly we’re working off different def. of “campaigned on”. Yes, he said he wanted a public option. Yes, he offered it in speeches.
Yet — the fact the you have to dig through 5 pages to get to the PO section underlines his point, that it was, indeed, a small section of his plans. Here’s the two summaries from pages 1 and 5(pdf):
Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan strengthens employer–based coverage, makes insurance companies
accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference. Under the plan, if
you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500
per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance
options.
and
the Obama-Biden plan provides new
affordable health insurance options by: (1) guaranteeing eligibility for all health insurance plans; (2) creating a
National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses purchase private health insurance; (3)
providing new tax credits to families who can’t afford health insurance and to small businesses with a new
Small Business Health Tax Credit; (4) requiring all large employers to contribute towards health coverage for
their employees or towards the cost of the public plan; (5) requiring all children have health care coverage; (5)
expanding eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs; and (6) allowing flexibility for state health reform
plans.
There’s 6 points in the 2nd one, and it’s the 2nd of the top sections. What’s first? Lowering Health Care Costs, with it’s own set of points. Even in the overall summary, the PO-like wording — which encompasses some things the Senate Bill does provide — comes last.
In what universe does that amount to the PO being a cornerstone of his plan, much less a point he pressed in interviews and in speeches?
The point we’re trying to make isn’t that he didn’t offer it in the plan — I read the plan when it came out, and I know it well — but that it’s never been a Key Element of what he wanted, which would be a point of Campaigning on it. Which is, I thought, the point of the TP article.
It’s not that he never said he wanted it, but that he tried to push for it in a Congressional (not public) environment that was hostile, and that tempered his ability to motivate for it, public support or no.
Wow! One misquote and you clowns are ready to burn down the white house. Jesus it’s Christmas ! Get over it! President Obama is bringing you healthcare after 100 years of trying and you clowns are crying about a possible misstatement. Even it wasn’t a misstatement , even if he lied through his teeth, there were never any votes for a public option much less single payer. Bernie Sanders was on tweety today and basically said there weren’t any votes. Go get drunk, go get laid but get off my presidents back. Bitchez!
@John Cole: I presented you with the full quote from his campaign paper. I have it open in a tab one over from this page in Opera right now. It’s on page five, you can read it for yourself if you don’t believe me.
When he made these promises he wasn’t President yet. I’m not blaming him for not having the votes. I’m blaming him for thinking he can say he did not in fact campaign on something when the campaign website is still active and the pdf where he does, in fact, state that there will be a PO in his plan and it will be open to all Americans, is still up and readable.
Things change. I would have had far more respect for him if he had simply stated that the situation on the Senate forced him to abandon a plank of his platform.
So, every single criteria for reform that I put forward is in this bill. It is true that that the Senate version does not have a public option and that has become a source of ideological contention between the left and the right, but I didn’t campaign on a public option. I think it is a good idea but as I said on that speech on September 9, it just one small element of a broader reform effort.
Not so much. Besides the PO being dropped, the Senate plan also drops drug reimportation and Medicare drug price negotiation. Both of which are described in detail in that PDF.
So it’s not just the PO, or a slip of the tongue. He’s trying to rewrite the history of the campaign.
But I do think they knew from the get-go they didn’t have the votes and probably would never be able to get them, and if he had said that I think a lot of energy would have been sapped from people like me hoping it was included.
I don’t really see how someone who has been paying attention could claim the Obama administration hasn’t been trying to manage expectations on the public option. In fact, I seem to remember that’s how people got angry at Obama in the first place. Because occasional statements made as if the public option were one desirable provision in a larger bill and not an absolute will-be-in necessity were interpreted as “not supporting” or “not showing backbone” on the public option.
And as far as trying to keep people from energy getting up about the public option– isn’t that the kind of outcome you want to avoid? Didn’t we want there to have been energy about the public option? We wanted the public option to pass! In retrospect it seems pretty clear the public option couldn’t pass, that didn’t mean that until that became certain it wasn’t still worth fighting for.
All I can say is that I can see where Jack and Me Sears get their interpretation.
I can see it too, but I think that’s a kind of reading that sets out to find incriminating evidence, rather than a kind of reading that sets out to find evidence and _then_ weighs whether it’s incriminating or not. And I have a huge issue with that, both on blogs and professionally.
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: If cost is the primary concern, then the fact that the CMS says the Senate bill raises national health expenditures slightly would also seem to be a fundamental difference from what he campaigned on.
Perhaps it explains why you so often fail to even begin to comprehend the arguments against which you lower your broken lance of callow insipidity.
And this is your brilliant rebuttal, just all the other specious shit you have spewed here the last week, most all of it prompty shoved back down your prissy pie hole by people who actually know something.
Now I don’t know if your a PUMA, a dead ender, or a ratfucking republican, but you have brought nothing but conjecture, bullshit, and the dazzling discovery that presidents lie. My lance is square up your ass dude. Let’s rumble. eh.
@John Sears: You’re arguing with the wrong people. I’m just asking you to count to list the 60 voted for the PO.
144.
Laura W
I have no dog, cat, ferret, guinea pig, hamster nor pony in this brawl, but this was just hot writing:
Perhaps it explains why you so often fail to even begin to comprehend the arguments against which you lower your broken lance of callow insipidity.
Pass the Benson & Hedges menthol, please.
(Edit: Stuck @142: I would’ve thought it hot even if it had not been leveled at you. Er, especially if it had not been leveled at you. Er…where’s Fuckhead? I’m in over my dino head now.)
Is it weaselly? Maybe. There are a couple of problems with the whole poutrage here, though. The first is that “campaign on” isn’t a phrase with a really clear definition. Does that mean something on the website? Does that mean talking about it in stump speeches?
I’d also really like to know when the phrase “public option” got defined. Is what you people mean by that the same thing that Obama meant by “public plan”? I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t, either. The .pdf Jack links to never really makes it clear what “public plan” means. Does that mean a plan provided by the government, or does it mean a plan available to the public?
Linking to something that Obama said in July of *2009* really has nothing to do with what he campaigned on, unless you want the definition of that phrase to be very precise when it helps make your argument, and then just about meaningless when precision demolishes your argument.
Jesus, if liberals are going to be this fucking pedantic about everything, I hope they can find themselves some nice caves to go hide in when they realize that it isn’t just Obama that they can’t trust, and isn’t just every politician that they can’t trust. They are going to have to become hermits once they realize that they can’t trust any human being who has ever talked at different times about the same thing and isn’t always consistent.
Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
148.
Tsulagi
WTF?
Seriously? I know you post pics of cats, but you’re surprised like a newborn kitten? We’ve seen way more than once already the transcendy talk doesn’t always steer the rubber on the ground. Like this little example…
__
Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices.
__
Barack Obama and Joe Biden will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings, which could be as high as $30 billion,33 to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality.
Before Harry and Nancy even got started, that transcendy talk got steered into a sweetheart deal with PhRMA. No price negotiation and no drug re-importation in exchange for a capped figure of $80B over 10years. During that same 10-year period, candidate Obama would have believed $300B in savings on the 65+ crowd alone could have been achieved with something like the Dorgan amendment the WH pushed to kill.
It’s 11D chess.
149.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: And he said that to Stuck. It’s like insulting me in Chinese.
@John Cole: I wasn’t aware I was on the Obama campaign team last year, or was recently made Majority Whip in the Senate.
Whether or not what he stated was his plan last year is now possible is irrelevant to the fact that he did in fact outline that plan and has now tried to disavow it.
If cost is the primary concern, then the fact that the CMS says the Senate bill raises national health expenditures slightly would also seem to be a fundamental difference from what he campaigned on.
Raises national health expenditures relative to what? Current spending? Baseline predictions of what we would be spending without any changes? Baseline predictions of what we would be spending given that there will be an additional 30 million people with health insurance?
If I remember correctly, the CMS study said the second, but the only really useful measure is the third.
@Jay B.: Because that’s the stupid game we play, here. It has crap-all to do with reality
Obama’s role was to be the President who would encourage and support Congress in doing this. That’s within the Separation of Powers (sort of). I disagreed with the drawing up of “his own bill”, ’cause that’s not in his role, Congressional allies or no.
Look, the key here was not just Obama’s natural disinclination. Dachle et. al. went through the fires of Clinton trying to force a bill in the same ways people seem to want Obama to do so, and getting stiff-armed in Congress for his efforts. Team Obama didn’t want any of that, and begin headed by two Senators, and with a CoS who came from the House, felt they were best served by encouraging from something of a distance, and letting the Legislature legislate.
But. Because our system from running for President insists that candidates must make up these complex plans, and then pledge they’ll do them (no matter what), and then get judged based upon those plans and their implementation, we get the situation where Presidents are seen as instigators of law, and are judged on how effectively they get the laws through — and not on their Constitutional roles as enforces thereof.
And thus, Obama plays the game of “my law, right or wrong”. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, and I don’t; it’s as much the product of a handful of Senators as it is of Obama’s original plan, and that’s how the system, broken as it is, works.
I don’t know how, kindly, this justifies the lie.
__
Was it okay for George Bush to lie because he always supported “regime change in Iraq”?
All right, now I don’t even know what “the lie” is supposed to be.
For your example to be analogous, someone would be asking Bush if he was satisfied with the Iraq War authorization of the use of force, and he would say, “I didn’t campaign on war with Iraq. I still think it’s a good idea, but it’s just one small element of a broader War on Terror.” And during the 1999 campaign he did, in fact, say that if he found that Saddam Hussein was developing WMDs, he’d “take ’em out,” or “take him out,” it’s not clear from the transcript. So would he be “lying” by saying that he didn’t campaign on war with Iraq? Well, he did _mention_ it, but he definitely didn’t “campaign on” it. And his reasons would still suck shit through a straw, and we could tear them up something fierce. But I think it wouldn’t be a “lie.”
157.
Demo Woman
How many of the ranters listened to the 17 minute interview.
Unfortunately, the public option section took 2 seconds and is overshadowing the other 17 minutes.
I’m not sure what the meaning of is, either but at this point, I don’t really care.
@J. Michael Neal: So we’re actually going back to debating the meaning of commonly understood terms. Wow. That’s great for the Democratic image.
While ‘public plan’ is not specifically defined, it is paired with, and contrasted with, ‘private’ plans. So whatever it was supposed to be, it could not be a privately administered healthcare plan.
Medicare, Medicaid, any government administered plan you could choose within the exchange would qualify. This current Senate package has no plan of any kind that is not from a private insurer. No matter how much weaseling is done, that much is clear.
@John Sears: Yeah. Ok. Thanks for playing. You have no idea how to get to 60 to get the bill you want, but instead are going to sit here and bemoan what could have been in fantasyland.
While you were sleeping, I guess. This is an epic troll war for the soul of Mordor, (or Balloon Juice since it’s teh internet) to determine who controls the realm. PUMA v Obot.
Whether or not what he stated was his plan last year is now possible is irrelevant to the fact that he did in fact outline that plan and has now tried to disavow it.
/bonk, bonk, bonk goes my head
Where’s the “disavowal”? In the interview he STILL SAYS he thinks it’s, and I quote, “a good idea.” Just read the interview or listen to the audio without priming yourself to catch what you think is a lie, and see if you still object to it. IMHO it’s pretty clear in context that he’s doing the part-whole maneuver he’s been doing since the summer, _not_ trying to say he never argued for the public option–because if he wanted to do that, why mention that he still thinks it’s a good idea?–but emphasizing that the important thing was the larger framework and the public option as a small cog within that machine.
@J. Michael Neal: .7% over the baseline, over what we would have paid without it.
So yes, you get 30 million people ‘covered’. The subsidy levels are determined based on the Silver plans, which have 70% actuarial value, which is ludicrously inefficient. (Medicare is 97% actuarial value).
The CMS also says that 17 million people will lose their current employer health insurance and that 19% of all health insurance plans will be subject to the excise tax in 2019. This is due to the lousy employer mandate being weak enough that it’s cheaper for many employers to dump their employees on the Exchange.
So when people like Ezra Klein go on about the coverage expansion, remember the 17 million people who are expected to lose what they have now.
@John Sears: Err, I got my sentences out of order. The 17 million people lose their insurance due to the mandate; the excise tax part is unrelated and was meant to be the next paragraph.
@L. Ron Obama: It is tedious, isn’t it. Getting a bill Democrats would have thought impossible the last two decades, and Obama is the worst Preznit ever.
The difference between the two parties is amazing. Republicans spin losses into wins, Democrats spin wins into losses.
@John Cole: One thing worth noting is that increasingly none of this is about outcomes, anymore. It’s about purely personal politics. What matters isn’t the bill, it’s whether Mr. Barack Hussein Obama II is a good person or not. What matters isn’t whether the left or the right won the battle, what matters is whether Joe Lieberman or Markos Moulitsas came out on top of the other. The blogosphere discussions all year have been turning more and more away from the question of how politics effects America or us-as-individuals and more and more toward weighing Barack Obama’s soul.
@FlipYrWhig: People do what they want to do. It’s not a lie to me and can never be a lie to me because I took a different interpretation and have always taken that different interpretation.
@John Sears: I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE OBAMA QUOTE.
I’m talking about your comments last four days insisting there was a route to pony in the Senate.
174.
joshers
Don’t get your panties in a bunch people. Couple of quick points.
First, all but one of the ThinkProgress quotes are post-inauguration, so they’re irrelevant to whether Obama “campaigned” on the public option.
Second, the quote from the 2008 campaign plan is misleading because ThinkProgress omits the end of the sentence. The plan actually reads, “any American will have the opportunity to
enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan . . . .” As I understand it, the bill does set up an exchange, which provides the opportunity for any American to enroll in an “approved private plan.” The quote does not prove Obama lied.
@John Cole: I’ve never insisted there’s a route to pony in the Senate. I’ve maintained that with the current plan we’re fucked.
Likewise, there’s no route to a climate agreement in America, but the ice caps are still melting and the Southwest is projected to be in a permanent drought for decades.
Likewise, there’s no money to fix our failing infrastructure and we’re not going to get the several trillion dollars we need to keep the roads and bridges from falling down.
That doesn’t mean these problems aren’t real, or that they’ll go away on their own. It just means that we as a country aren’t prepared to face up to them yet, that we are institutionally incapable of saving ourselves at this stage in our history.
Jesus, if liberals are going to be this fucking pedantic about everything, I hope they can find themselves some nice caves to go hide in when they realize that it isn’t just Obama that they can’t trust, and isn’t just every politician that they can’t trust. They are going to have to become hermits once they realize that they can’t trust any human being who has ever talked at different times about the same thing and isn’t always consistent.
The plot to date:
In the beginning, liberals said “we need the public option to control costs and make the mandate worthwhile.” Many liberals said this for months and months and months. Every once in a while, someone would flot a trial balloon — Opt-in! Triggers! Medicare for all! Co-Ops! Weak P.O.! — and, depending on the trial balloon, people freak out or decide they could live with it. This started before Baucus went on his walkabout when he was the shit in the pudding. The entire time, the consistent argument was, whatever ‘it’ was, it had to work like a public option to lower costs and balance out the mandate. For much of this time, many liberals looked toward the White House for something, anything that would signal that they shared the same basic goals as many liberals did. In absence of leadership, many liberals heard assurances through the Administration, that they too supported the public option — although, admittedly, their support seemed tepid. Subsequently, many liberals were told, as Reid let things get away, that there was a famous call with bloggers where Obama stated that “it” — this public thingy — would be added in conference! Many liberals were skeptical and were called many things. Many derogatory things.
And now, here we are at the end game and many liberals are being told that they remember the debate incorrectly. And that their consistent support and screaming about the public option was a fantasy all along. And many liberals are pretty sore about it. And many liberals are now called pedantic children because the Administration has not only reneged on promises they made (that’s OK, many liberals are used to disappointment!) but that, we were wrong to believe them in the first place.
He says it’s a good idea, but that he didn’t campaign on it.
__
At the same time it’s still up on his campaign website.
I don’t think you can be convinced, which is fine, but I don’t think “didn’t campaign on it” means “didn’t mention it” or “didn’t support it.” And the thought doesn’t _end_ with “didn’t campaign on it.” That point is immediately followed by “I think it is a good idea but as I said on that speech on September 9, it[‘s] just one small element of a broader reform effort.” The inclusion of the public option idea on the campaign website doesn’t refute that second point, which is second chronologically but IMHO first in terms of importance, when you square it with his many other statements on the place of the public option in health care reform. I really don’t think he’s trying to pretend that he didn’t want a public option. Because he still says, even in this interview, that it’s a good idea, and that many good ideas aren’t in the bill, but it meets 95% of what he wanted in terms of _objectives_.
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yep, both parties are the same, and no good is coming from this Senate bill. It is just total shit.
181.
Comrade Jake
It’s a pretty simple choice of emphasis: Obama is claiming he campaigned on health care reform and not a public option. In essence, although the PO was a component of what he wanted to do, it wasn’t the central pillar.
I think he could have phrased it differently, but really don’t see the big deal.
But hey, God forbid we let this get in the way of a huge fight over semantics.
@John Cole: There is quite a bit of good in it. It’s just overwhelmed by the bad. Plus, 17 million people losing their current health insurance is electoral suicide.
What do you think the cable news is going to look like, if this plan passes, circa 2014? Fox News will barely have to show up to work, just put up wall to wall coverage of people crying about losing their benefits.
@Comrade Jake: OBOT. CLEARLY THIS SHOWS THAT OBAMA IS A LIAR AND WE SHOULD KILL THIS BILL.
184.
Davis X. Machina
Because he still says, even in this interview, that it’s a good idea, and that many good ideas aren’t in the bill, but it meets 95% of what he wanted in terms of objectives.
I had an old Jesuit for moral theology who used to say that 90% of human unhappiness comes from failing to distinguish means from ends, and wants from needs.
While ‘public plan’ is not specifically defined, it is paired with, and contrasted with, ‘private’ plans. So whatever it was supposed to be, it could not be a privately administered healthcare plan.
What about the OPM plan that’s in the Senate bill? That’s administered by the government since you have the OPM overseeing private insurance companies for individuals the same way they do for federal employees. What’s the functional difference between that and a “public plan”?
Actually, I agree with your timeline and most of your framing. Especially this:
The entire time, the consistent argument was, whatever ‘it’ was, it had to work like a public option to lower costs and balance out the mandate.
And I think you’re right, what’s coming out of the bill isn’t as good as a public option would have been in these respects. And I also think that Obama is saying a version the same thing: that the test of whether this is a good bill or not is in whether it meets those goals, as opposed to whether it includes that particular mechanism called the public option. He has a different view than you do, but of course he has to put a positive spin on whatever comes out of the process. So I think he’d say, you know, Jay B., you’re right, but having the OPM-managed choice of plans rather than the public option is still pretty good.
@John Sears: Christ. I’m not sure we have a country in 2014 if we don’t fix the financial sector. We won’t have a country in 2011 if we do not get people back to work.
Yep, both parties are the same, and no good is coming from this Senate bill. It is just total shit.
Someone smarter than me said it’s what we’d have gotten if Republicans had passed it. I don’t know if I agree with that 100% but it does sorta make the case the parties are more alike than different, at least as far as fealty to the corporate state goes. To me, that doesn’t seem like a controversial thing to say.
But, what’s done is done. How we gonna pull off finance reform and climate change? I got an idea on finance reform. We could require everyone to buy Goldman stock.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Obama team has decided that him sounding like a liar is better than him sounding like someone who got his ass handed to him by a lowly senator from Connecticut. If that’s the case, I would agree with their assessment.
190.
harlana peppper
@Tsulagi: Hey, cut that out with the facts and stuff, you screaming, irrational hippie you! You hate Obama/live in Fantasy Land, eleventy-billionz!
If you look back at the commitments I made during the campaign and the guidelines that I set forward for what I wanted to see in the health care bill, when I made my speech to the Joint Session on September 9, we got 95 percent of what we called for.
@Comrade Jake: In addition to campaigning *for* the public option, drug reimportation and medicare drug price negotiation, he also campaigned *against* an individual mandate.
Obama replied that his plan was universal (a claim we rated Barely True ) and explained why he was against a mandate: “A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. … But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can’t afford it. And that’s why my plan emphasizes lowering costs.”
Politifact calls that one a ‘Full Flop’.
And how many times did he say you’d be able to keep the coverage you have now?
It is plainly obvious that the Senate bill is radically different from his campaign plan, and it is equally clear that neither he nor many of his supporters on this one want to admit that.
Someone smarter than me said it’s what we’d have gotten if Republicans had passed it.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
195.
And Another Thing...
Oh for #$%@&& sake. The country is on the cusp of the most significant social legislation since the 60’s and some people are obsessing about parsing whether “campaigning on” is a lie – a statement that is embedded in what a 17 minute interview? What world do you live in? Have you ever been deposed, testified or interviewed when you mispoke, or mischaracterized anything? Do you really think that Obama memorized every effing nuance of the position papers on the website? Shit, those things are written by staff.
And NO this is not being an Obamabot. It’s called the real world, full of people…human people. You should cut human beings the benefit of the doubt. There’s no evidence that this is an orchestrated lie – you know the ala Bush. Bush mis-spoke, he colored stories in his favor…so what. So do you and I. There’s a difference between normal human frailty and planning lies and deception ala “British intelligence reports that Hussein is trying to acquire uranium.”
Go to Sully’s site and find the PDF he’s linked to that lists the changes that go into effect almost immediately. I know people who’s lives will be changed…and made less painful.
And you shrinking violet virgins need to grow the fuck up.
And I don’t think I am being hyperbolic- we are having bubbles and financial meltdowns at increasing speed and much larger in scope. Mid 80’s, S&L, then the tech bubble 12-3 years later, then 7-8 years later, the crisis we just endured. I would not be surprised if we have another meltdown in 4-5 years- and if I had to wager, it would be based on pension funds.
If we do, I’d like people to have access to decent health care, which I honestly don’t believe this plan provides in any way, shape or form.
We haven’t hit bottom yet. That’s the reality. I was reading an article just this morning about the shadow inventory in the housing market and how it’s about to hit and start a new wave of foreclosures, at the same time as that tool Bernanke cruises to reappointment.
But I don’t know that the other looming apocalypses are any reason to punt on this one.@Mnemosyne:
Not correct. The OPM’s role in overseeing the plans is unclear, but they would be administered by private insurers. The OPM would probably set some regulations, things like basic coverage packages or premiums. You’d still face claims adjusters and endless red tape and struggling to find a doctor who’d take your plan when you get ill, and all the other peculiar joys of our private system. Or do you believe that the private insurers won’t still find a way to screw you?
I’d have to vehemently disagree, on multiple levels.
If you disagree with me, it means you hate President Obama and want 30 million Americans to die a hideous drawn-out pain-wracked death. Is that really what you want?
It is plainly obvious that the Senate bill is radically different from his campaign plan
Wait, _that’s_ the big problem? I didn’t know that’s what I was supposed to be defending. I don’t really care about the difference between the campaign plan and the Senate bill. That’s kind of like saying, Aha, you didn’t say on the campaign trail that you wanted to give special favors to Nebraska and Louisiana! The Senate fucks with things. What I’m specifically responding to is what I think is a miscomprehension of what he’s saying in the interview, which I think implicitly means that he campaigned on comprehensive health reform, not _only_ on a public option. Now, the problem with my interpretation is that he doesn’t _literally_ say “only,” but he keeps making his characteristic “just a part” rhetorical move, so I feel that my assumed “only” is justified.
@John Sears: Though I should add, most of the successful ones probably are.
Also, some politicians are honest with you all the way and you’ll still want to oppose them; I think that half the crazies in the Republican caucus are telling the truth when they rave about climate change or how they’re afraid government will kill grandma. They believe it.
It is plainly obvious that the Senate bill is radically different from his campaign plan, and it is equally clear that neither he nor many of his supporters on this one want to admit that.
Considering that’s been a key point of my last two comments — that the plan changed radically in Congress, esp. the Senate, because that’s the process — I call bullshit. Here, so you don’t have to strain to find a quote from me:
Obama plays the game of “my law, right or wrong”. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, and I don’t; it’s as much the product of a handful of Senators as it is of Obama’s original plan, and that’s how the system, broken as it is, works.
I will defend anyone’s right to hold Obama to a higher standard. He told us to. I think we should.
No shit. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do that. I’m just suggesting that focusing so much attention on one sentence in a WashPo piece might be a bit disproportionate.
Honestly I stand by my first post: this was simply a change of emphasis. A single follow-up from our brain-dead mediots “well your campaign web site mentions a public option?” would’ve cleared this up. But you go to war with the media you have, yadda yadda yadda.
@FlipYrWhig: And you believe this is comprehensive reform?
Really?
Up to 20% of your annual income, no guarantees on quality of provider networks, no drug price controls, no price controls on procedures, no workable generic pathway for biologics, aka every wonder drug of the next 25 years, weak employer mandate, millions losing their coverage and forced onto inferior plans or the Exchange, 70% actuarial value?
That’s comprehensive reform, for you?
209.
Laura W
@Comrade Jake: Hey! Eagle vs. Shark sucked. I had to stop it half way through. She bugged the shit out of me.
I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, but I think you lied to me!
(I’m kidding. Just trying to get in the groove of this thread/blog. I thought Julie & Julia sucked, so you know…I’m probably not the best person to listen to right now. About anything.)
210.
gbear
It being pointless to jump into this argument about the point of this argument, I suggest that this comment thread could use a good rapture.
211.
Just Some Fuckhead
Dear Hillary,
I hope you are taping your meetings with President Obama..
212.
PeakVT
@NR: Obama talked about the PO publicly for several months. Perhaps it was kabuki, perhaps it was genuine – neither of us knows. But it certainly appears to meet a minimal standard for “trying”.
Feingold lays the blame squarely at Obama’s feet. I tend to trust my Senator on that one.
More to the point, in that interview he himself says this is mostly what he wanted. “Every single criteria.” Fine and dandy; he approves, he owns this now. By his choice.
But it’s not what he campaigned on, no matter how many times he says otherwise.
@Comrade Jake: Lieberman, for the final bill? I don’t know.
But for it not making it to the end?
I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.
That’s his take.
Now, is there a path to pony with Senator Bayh (D-Wellpoint) and Lieberman and Nelson? Who knows.
The OPM’s role in overseeing the plans is unclear, but they would be administered by private insurers.
The plan seemed to be that they would essentially fold the people who chose them through the exchange in with the thousands of federal employees they already administer. Do you have any evidence that this is not the idea?
The OPM would probably set some regulations, things like basic coverage packages or premiums. You’d still face claims adjusters and endless red tape and struggling to find a doctor who’d take your plan when you get ill, and all the other peculiar joys of our private system. Or do you believe that the private insurers won’t still find a way to screw you?
I’m assuming you don’t have your health insurance through a large employer. I do. I work for a giant evil corporation that has about 50,000 employees domestically. And you know what? Cigna doesn’t fuck with us, because they don’t want to lose the contract. They know that our company can walk away and suddenly they’re out at least $25,000,000. They’ll do little nickel-and-dime stuff, but they know that if enough people complain to HR, HR doesn’t sign a new contract with them and they’re screwed.
Once you get a big group of people together, you have buying power. That’s, you know, kind of the point of grouping a bunch of people under OPM — that way, OPM can negotiate on their behalf as a group. I’m really not getting why you think that people who have OPM to negotiate for them will continue being treated as individual policyholders.
222.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Jake: I’ll answer ya Jake since John is having browser problems.
No one asked Lieberman to vote for a public option that he was on record as supporting in the past. No one asked Lieberman to vote for a medicare buy-in he was on record as supporting three weeks earlier.
What we were asking was someone to apply some pressure to him to not filibuster with Republicans. As I keep reminding you retards, legislation only requires 50 votes to pass.
Or threaten to blow up the Senate filibuster to the point where a couple moderate Republicans peeled off and agreed not to filibuster. Now you can say I’m all pie-in-the-sky but when Republicans threatened to blow up the filibuster, they got a compromise worked out pretty fucking quicklike.
So Snowe and Collins may have flipped to vote for cloture for the simple reason to preserve the filibuster and their future power as two of the handful of folks that control 99% of legislation with the filibuster.
But again, we didn’t try any of that shit because half a loaf of shit is better than a full loaf of shit.
BTW, I think we may have two different definitions of “administered” here. My company administers our plan. That doesn’t mean that they hire doctors and run their own clinics. That means that they choose insurance companies that we can choose from and negotiate contracts with them. I’m not sure what definition of “administered” you’re using, but the OPM plan sounds like what every employer does: hire insurance companies on behalf of their employees.
224.
Jay B.
As for the Ol’ Pony talk — where do we get 60? My evidently pie-in-the-fucking-sky dream of being able to actually reform health care, starting by reigning in costs with a robust public option?
For a few days now, I felt like I’ve been hallucinating. And not in a good way, but in that inexpressible way you sometimes feel if you are theoretically in what some hypothetical heads call a “bad trip”. I was like, yeah Fucking Ponyfuckface, when the fuck did you ever believe you’d have 60 votes?
So I tried to remember. All the way back to Dec. 2008. Paul Waldman seemed to lay out a pretty, at the time, logical case for the public option.
But that’s not it. I’m a dreamy, pony searcher! Then I looked back again and saw an article from all the way to March 26 of this year. This is a neat passage from the otherwise obscure current events journal “Time Magazine”:
What didn’t make the print edition story was a part of the interview in which I asked [name withheld for drama] about one of the most controversial elements of both his plan and President Obama’s–the so-called “public plan,” a option in which people would have a chance to enroll in a Medicare-like publicly financed health system
.
Who is this fellow pony fucker douche fuck? Max Baucus!
How in the fucking world could I have thought that there were 60 votes in the Senate? The flaming fucking liberal Max Baucus was in favor of it, of course it had no fucking chance.
Such silly dreaming!
And it certainly took a child-like naivety to have been encouraged by an article from way, way back in late October (the 23rd, in fact) entitled “Reid Is Only One Or Two Votes Shy On Opt-Out Public Option”, although that article, by Sam Stein includes this nugget:
The Nevada Democrat, according to Hill sources, is furiously working the phones today to ensure that 60 Senators (including him) will back the provision. The work will continue through the weekend and comes despite the president’s indication in a meeting Thursday evening at the White House that he prefers a public option that would be triggered in by certain conditions over the “opt-out” alternative.
Wait, that must be a typo. Obama wasn’t involved! Unpossible! I wonder what some fellow pony dreamer fucknoses told Stein. Oh, wait, here:
Advocates of the public option consider the trigger an industry attempt to kill the public option because it likely would never be triggered. Obama’s support of the insurance industry position saps momentum from the public-option drive.
Just let me get this straight. If these “advocates” are right — and it certainly hasn’t played out the way they called it all (stifled laugh) — the drive to 60 votes was pretty fucking close and Reid, of all people, was leading with his chin to get them, only to get undercut by “Obama’s support of the insurance industry position”, which signaled the end of the public option.
Ed Hanway, CEO of Cigna, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, will step down at the end of this year, in just over a week. When he does, he’ll get $73,200,000 as compensation for a job well done.
…
What makes Hanway worth $73.2 million? Well, for one example, he’s presided as Cigna denied a liver transplant to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, causing her death
@Comrade Jake: I’m going to bridge the gap and call it “weasel words”, which means it seems like a lie but, technically, could be considered an accurate statement. But I do think there’s a motive to lie, which is why people are jumping on the statement.
Also, there’s been a lot leaked to the media about how the WH never pressured Lieberman on the PO, didn’t really fight for it at the end of the day, yadda yadda. It’s probably better to look like you didn’t try hard rather than to look like you tried and failed. The equivalent of an “I got a B, but I didn’t really study for it” statement.
Personally, I just wish we’d all be a little more willing to say we f*d up once in a while. We’d rid ourselves of a lot of unhappy pretenses.
Um, why is that a smoking gun? They _did_ get close to 60, and Reid kept trying to get over the hump, but they didn’t get 60. Mostly because Joe Lieberman is a douchenozzle, but I think Lieberman was the point person for a cohort of less-than-overt douchenozzles like Bayh, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Carper, among others.
No one asked Lieberman to vote for a public option that he was on record as supporting in the past. No one asked Lieberman to vote for a medicare buy-in he was on record as supporting three weeks earlier.
You guys are delusional if you think Obama should have asked Joe for either. Don’t you get it? The only thing Obama was trying to ascertain was whether or not Joe Lieberman was going to continue his impersonation of Lucy, except with HCR instead of a football, because it was clear a long time ago that Joe WASN’T GOING TO VOTE ON PRINCIPLE.
I mean, when did you folks join the ranks of the galactically stupid?
But I do think there’s a motive to lie, which is why people are jumping on the statement.
But I think there’s also a motive for people to play lie-spotter, because it’s been happening throughout the process, especially as pertains to the public option and whether said he wanted it but didn’t _really_ wanted it, or said he really wanted it but didn’t _really-really_ want it, etc. People are pissed off and want to continue to be pissed off.
233.
Ailuridae
The Senate bill effectively does create a new public insurance option but its only for people who really can’t afford it. You know, the 40B dollar expansion of Medicaid that would provide insurance to about 1/3 of the currently uninsured via a public plan.
sigh. I’m praying for his death. It’s the current rage.
235.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Jake: Did you not read the rest of what I wrote, douchebag?? We didn’t try ANY of that shit. Nothing. No hardball tactics. No mobilize the people. I think Obama had one Saturday morning radio address where he meekly asked for an upperdown vote.
We just rolled over for Republicans like Democrats always do.
And something has to give or we ain’t gonna reform finance, we ain’t gonna get climate change legislation. And one of these is actually gonna matter eventually.
236.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gbear: I’m with ya g. I just put it on my Faceborg page as a reminder of what we’re up against.
They did get close to 60, and Reid kept trying to get over the hump, but they didn’t get 60.
Exactly.
The point isn’t that we didn’t have a chance. Indeed, in some circles, the theory was that the White House wanted Reid to keep the PO out so it could, indeed, be resolved and reintroduced in conference with the House. There were a lot of barriers to that, and some — like Lieberman — didn’t become clear until late in the game.
You, Reid, and a lot of folks counted chickens before they hatched, man. And instead of realizing you got egg on your face, you’re bitching because reporters, well, did what reporters do these days — write without much call to understanding the many steps in this process. TIME’s not a horrific mag, but there’s a shallowness to much of their political reporting and blogging — I mean, they host THE PAGE, fer fuck’s sake! — that’s unhelpful to understanding all the pitfalls, here.
238.
keestadoll
@Just Some Fuckhead: “I think it all depends on the meaning of the word “campaigned”.”
As for the Ol’ Pony talk—where do we get 60? My evidently pie-in-the-fucking-sky dream of being able to actually reform health care, starting by reigning in costs with a robust public option?
Actually, I understand ponies can be attained with only 50 votes. Sixty-plus gets you unicorns. That’s according to my reading of The Supercilious Hippie field guide under the chapter “Self-Righteous Vote Counting and You: how to act like your hippie friends are imbeciles and make yourself seem Very Serious all at one time!”
This idiotic shitstorm may be over already, but I am putting a link here anyway. It is directed at all the parsimonious sissies here who are so damnably sure that “Obama Lied!!1!”
Despite the fact that it comes from GOS, it is a good refutation of the bullshit that has transpired in this posting.
Have people really forgotten where Rahm and the WH were pushing for the Snowe-PO-trigger compromise? I assume that since that wasn’t a robust PO, it doesn’t count? Well how does it compare to what we actually got with Reid counting on Lieberman’s vote instead of Snowe’s?
243.
scudbucket
I was gonna write a comment that the current HCR bill was bad policy (really, really bad) but that passing it was good for Democrats, and we individually have to pick our poison … but I can’t. I don’t believe it myownself. The bill is really bad policy and it is bad for Dems: they’re gonna get a shitball handed to them next November. If Pelosi Reid and the Obamanauts don’t come up with something by then – PO thru reconciliation, anti-trust legislation for insurcos., re-importation, free bandaids – the GOP will make them wish they never heard the word ‘mandate’.
Um, why is that a smoking gun? They did get close to 60, and Reid kept trying to get over the hump, but they didn’t get 60.
Maybe it’s not. But let me run it by you again — I’m going to cop to being pissed at the wrong target. Here’s part one:
The Nevada Democrat, according to Hill sources, is furiously working the phones today to ensure that 60 Senators (including him) will back the provision. The work will continue through the weekend and comes despite the president’s indication in a meeting Thursday evening at the White House that he prefers a public option that would be triggered in by certain conditions over the “opt-out” alternative.
What this is telling me is that Reid was looking for the price for one or two whores and he was doing it in spite of the Administration’s actual preference. I’ve always thought Reid was horribly inept, but he can’t be so fucking clueless to press for the public option if he thought it was unattainable — that is, he thought he could get it, until the President stepped in (something I’ve been told for the past 4 days wasn’t his style). Which is why Part 2 makes everything click for me:
Advocates of the public option consider the trigger an industry attempt to kill the public option because it likely would never be triggered. Obama’s support of the insurance industry position saps momentum from the public-option drive.
The whores who were holding out on Reid (who, after all, knows what they are, they were just haggling over the price) shut it down after the signal came down from the Administration that Obama didn’t support the actual public option, but rather the INSURANCE INDUSTRY’S version. Why would the whores still bother with crossing the insurance industry if they didn’t need to?
Doesn’t this make infinitely more sense than the endless, ad hoc posturing of Nelson and Lieberman being the deciding factor? They were still holding out of course, but now, instead of having to suck it up for their insurance masters, they could now get additional concessions from Reid, after he was undercut by the Administration. It fits in with what Lieberman and Feingold said. It destroys the assertion that there was never a way to get to 60, unless you think ritual public humiliation is part of Harry Reid’s kink (again, why would he bother? He’d look like a complete loser if he did this and DIDN’T get 60.) and it might be, but it’s also out of character for him to be the one posturing for the nutroot ponyfuckers to soothe our fragile dreams.
There was substantial support for the public option for the past 13 months. As late as the end of October, the Senate Majority Leader thought he could “work the phones” to get the vote. And, reportedly, the Administration bailed on the public option altogether in order to back the insurance industry while now saying it met the criteria it wanted and promised.
Here’s the question to Senator Feingold and anyone else defending his narrative. If there were possibly 60 votes for the public option as part of a larger health care effort there certainly would be 50 votes to pass a stronger public option (which again, is by design better than deficit neutral) anytime they want via reconciliation. I expect Senator Feingold will introduce such a measure the day after the main bill passes, AMIRITE? So, given how easy it would have been to get those 60 votes we now get a stronger PO with Senator Feingold taking the lead, right? OK, we are all waiting.
We didn’t try ANY of that shit. Nothing. No hardball tactics. No mobilize the people. I think Obama had one Saturday morning radio address where he meekly asked for an upperdown vote.
No no, I get it. Obama has no spine. He’s a feckless leader who’ll never amount to anything. The bill is shit, yadda yadda yadda, douchebag. Good times.
What I don’t understand is why Feingold didn’t stand up to this on principle and say he’d join the GOP filibuster. It must be that Obama bought him off too, because we all know Russ has balls of steele.
I think it all depends on the meaning of the word “campaigned”.
I was going to argue that it depends on what the meaning of the word “on” is. Just for fun. But your way is probably better.
252.
donovong
@General Winfield Stuck: No shit. I leave to fix dinner and come back to find that somebody left the door open and the liberal teabaggers found their way in.
253.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Jake: Well, there’s the theory that Obama got exactly what he wanted. (According to Feingold, for instance.) It’s entirely possible that the P.O. was gone from the moment he made the deals with Pharma and Big Insurance before the process even started.
If so, I could make the case that Obama was pretty fucking canny. Imagine the look on a bunch of insurance company executive’s faces when the public option died at the very last minute after being told it wouldn’t be there, and watching anxiously as it kept gaining momentum over the months. If it happened that way, I bet ya they thought Obama was amazing. And you’d have to say he was in that case.
254.
Just Some Fuckhead
@slag: I was gonna use “on” too but I changed it to “campaigned” when I saw one of the Muppets actually parsing the word “campaign”. Then I thought it would work as a joke AND a dig.
Edit: And that is what makes me the Mac Daddy around here. That, and the cocaine.
255.
cat48
It appears to me he is talking about the campaign in 2008 which is believable to me because I don’t recall hearing anything about a “public option” until this Spring. I was not working during the campaign & I normally watched him when he was on TV. I remember the argument about mandates vividly, but I know I did not hear “p.o.” on a regular basis until this yr. The reason it is familiar to me is that is all that anyone has talked about this yr. If he gave a speech, interview, or made a stmt this yr & did not mention a public option, it was always in huge red letters at HuffPost and everyone went nuclear like now.
Maybe I do not recall hearing about it until this yr because I have health care. I am actually more concerned about the 20% of blacks and 30% of Hispanics that do not have health care. If there is a p.o., that is fine. If not, as long as they get insurance if they want it and it is affordable to them, I’m fine if it is a corporation. I did not support health ins. to punish the insurance companies. I did it to help people without it. A lot of people saying it should be killed have insurance now. I really don’t know how you do that to the uninsured.
You do realize don’t you, even if you get a public option, it will be administered by a health insurance company. Medicare is administered by for-profit health insurance companies. My first job was with Blue Shield processing Medicare claims. It paid really well, too. A public option does not mean govt employees or volunteers are going to run the “public plan”. That is why I feel like the ins. companies will profit regardless. It is not worth killing reform over regardless how you feel about Obama. It is not about him. It is about the uninsured who need help and some of it will start as soon as the bill is signed. You have 3 more yrs to argue with him.
You know how Russ could test that theory? Pass a robust public option that he introduced through reconciliation and see if the President signs it. I’ll also concede the point if Hellraiser Joe could be the +1 vote and decides to not cast the vote. Ok, have Russ get back to us on that.
257.
Jay B.
You do realize don’t you, even if you get a public option, it will be administered by a health insurance company. Medicare is administered by for-profit health insurance companies.
I’m exactly sure that’s completely wrong. It’s administered by CMS.
The House bill with the holy grail public option repealed S-CHIP.
Ending S-CHIP that currently operates and covers 7 million children.
I think I’m going to have to start figuring in S-CHIP when I argue about this. It’s a big ‘ol public option, and the House bill repealed it, shunting those children at over 150% of poverty to the exchange to purchase insurance. Hmmm.
Public option advocates were trying to slide that little detail by me.
259.
Paula
Whether or not Obama explicitly “campaigned” on the PO or merely, as he contends, thought it would be peachy but not vital is pretty irrelevant now. What is clear is that the PO became a big deal to a lot of people along the way, and, as Jay B. notes, a lot of key people most certainly did discuss it, promote it, etc. And Obama did discuss it in the few speeches he gave before/after all the August teaparty crap. And, after every speech, all kinds of discussion followed about how he had praised the PO but refused to say it was a dealbreaker to him and what did that mean?
And that cuts both ways. He chose to address the PO precisely because there was so much discussion about it, the public was polled repeatedly for months about it and always favored it, and it was in the House’s final bill. He talked about it because people liked the idea of it. He came right up to promising he’d fight for it, but he never did. If he were a girl I’d call him a cock-tease.
I don’t know what his motives were but there is zero question that it was a very significant issue and, while he never committed to it, he certainly NEVER said “sorry everyone, I think it’s a great idea but it ain’t gonna happen.” He said, “it’s a great idea” and left it hanging there.
It’s possible this was just a classic example of his desire to please – he knew it was popular and didn’t want to say No, but, knew that it was not gonna fly for whatever reason and just couldn’t break the news to us.
OR, he used it as a bargaining chip, deliberately. He made the calculation that people would get over it, and/or that he could sell the rest of the bill despite the loss of the PO.
Now what remains is the cleanup. Whether because of miscalculation, deliberate deception, politics as usual horsetrading or any combination thereof, he now has to contend with a group of unhappy people. With respect to the quote that inspired this posting, we should be wary of media outlets deliberately stirring up trouble. But regardless, attempts to mitigate his loss of support by trying to be “technical” will likely succeed about as well as Bill Clinton’s famous “I didn’t inhale”.
Although seriously, these arguments really are leading us nowhere. It’d be nice if we could just drop the talk about “ponies” and about “liars” and move on to a new “where do we go from here” argument. I’m sure those subjects will come up again there. But at least the context would be different.
I’ll start: It was wrong of me to call the Obama political team and entire Democratic Party leadership “a bunch of Dogberrys”. I was angry; I only kind of meant it at the time; and even if it were true, saying so doesn’t help matters any. I apologize.
Now that I think of it, John should have a whole thread dedicated solely to everyone apologizing to each other. That’d be very Brady Bunch.
Damn. You found us out. We wanted those parasitic bastards off the public tit. Crippled children suck, of course. But Poor crippled children are completely intolerable.
Edit: Does the guilt trip/bad faith argument really work? Just wondering.
262.
gwangung
don’t know what his motives were but there is zero question that it was a very significant issue and, while he never committed to it, he certainly NEVER said “sorry everyone, I think it’s a great idea but it ain’t gonna happen.” He said, “it’s a great idea” and left it hanging there. It’s possible this was just a classic example of his desire to please – he knew it was popular and didn’t want to say No, but, knew that it was not gonna fly for whatever reason but just couldn’t break the news to us. OR, he used it as a bargaining chip, deliberately. He made the calculation that people would get over it, and/or that he could sell the rest of the bill despite the loss of the PO.
As a matter of curiousity, I wonder if there’s a way to game out all of these options and not get too optimistic or pessimistic (hm…probably not). Could easily see options where nothing got passed because of decisions made.
263.
Just Some Fuckhead
@slag: I keep asking where do we go from here. If the Senate is effectively a 60 member body with a unanimous cloture requirement, we’ve already lost everything else on the agenda.
r. johnson had the idea that a handful of Democrats should start filibustering with Republicans so the Senate comes to a 100% halt. At that point, leadership has no choice but to blow up the filibuster and re-form it like they did in 1975.. and 1959.. and 1917.
But I don’t agree with you that these debates lead nowhere.
Edit: And I ain’t apologizing to anyone. If my handle doesn’t say enough, we’re dealing with morans.
264.
And Another Thing...
@Jay B.: That depends on the meaning of “administer.” And we’ll get the WaPo to edit it so somebody looks bad.
Really? I am pretty sure the increased Medicaid subsidies overlapped 100% of the S-Chip losses (ie. raising the threshold re: “poverty” line) so there wouldn’t be less children covered but they would be on Medicaid rather then S-Chip (the latter seems superior right now)
If there were almost 60 votes according to you and others why are you not advocating to pass a stand alone public option or Medicare buy-in through reconciliation? Again, both are better then deficit neutral so let’s get it done if the votes are there.
This gets my vote for today’s most vacuous post on BJ. I mean “cock tease”, gee willickers Paula, we will have to replace sausage making with presidential burlesque.
Tell you what, go back up thread and tackle Cole’s question to Sears, or where was he getting the 60 votes, and tell me he could have got Joementum to put out and go all the way.
You know, the Joe Lieberman, THE GUY WHO CAMPAIGNED FOR THE OTHER GUY, I think it was John Mccain. The HolyJoe who gave a stirring speech AT THE GOP CONVENTION.
We are entering the Twilight Zone, hope everyone has a flashlight to find their way thru the PUMA ruble.
I was kidding. It’s a big bill. I know you weren’t hiding it.
I was looking for it, because it affects the subsidy issue. The Senate bill, if I understand it, takes funding for S-CHIP from 70% to 90%. The House bill repealed it, for families over 150% of poverty level.
@Just Some Fuckhead: I agree that we are kind of back at square one. We got a bill (better than nothing), but we’re still at 60 in the Senate with midterms coming up and no hope-and-changey goodness in sight.
Our only two routes–blowing up the filibuster or invoking some serious political jujitsu–seem to be totally off the map at this point. And the terrain for the rest of the agenda is rocky as hell. Maybe people are so pissed off because it feels better than fully appreciating how unbelievably screwed we kind of are. Maybe, at this point, anger is a form of optimism.
We lost on the public option. It’s not going into this bill. Any effort spent trying to change that right this instant will be counterproductive or distract from something more important.
Since the public option is being taken out of the plan, and this is a huge thing for House progressives to trade away, the House will have a lot of leverage to demand some other sort of concessions (though this leverage will be hurt by the fact the house itself is split on abortion in a way the Senate is not). Better subsidy rules, stronger “employer mandate” provisions and (I’m not sure about this, but it would be important to a lot of people) making the subsidy provisions of the bill start sooner than far-away 2014 would be important things to target (TPM ran a story today implying the House is currently leaning toward making that last thing– start sooner– as its big demand.) Re-instating antitrust rules for insurance providers would be nice and candylike but I’m not sure whether it would make a difference in practice. At a minimum, very soon we will need to get out in front of demanding there is no backsliding on abortion rules from the far-superior Senate language.
We shouldn’t drop the public insurance idea. There’s no need to. Just because we didn’t get it into this one particular bill doesn’t make it any less useful, and now that the bill is passing there’s this beautiful exchange system with this perfect pluggable slot for a public insurance option. We need to figure out the best way to do this. We also need to decide when is the most plausible time to do it. In theory, we could try to pass public option or a version of the medicare buy-in plan more or less immediately, as soon as the budget process starts next year, through reconciliation. Reconciliation was inappropriate for the health care bill itself but a standalone public option bill would fit Reconciliation’s weird rules much better. I’m not sure we want to do this immediately, however. This would get in the way of a lot of other progressive priorities (next year will be busy) and might be difficult just because the public and probably also the congress sort of has health care fatigue. We might want to try to just talk about it a lot the next year and try to get the Congress to attack it after the 2010 election. One advantage of taking our time on this is it would allow us to demand the “robust”, medicare linked public option we really wanted. If we’re no longer having to put up with the constraints of fitting things in with the huge, complex, 60-votes-required heath care bill there’s no reason to settle for second class. Of course, a robust public option– I think it’s been clearly demonstrated– can’t pass either house of Congress right now, even with a 50% threshold.
One thing that might make sense, and I think could be done right now, is to give up on the idea of the public option as a new federal bureaucracy and instead go back to some form of the medicare buy-in. I think “buy a medicare policy” is closer to what we wanted than the public option ever was. Meanwhile it’s demonstrated 59 of the Senate dems are willing to accept a medicare buy-in, and some of them might support the idea just to say screw you to Joe Lieberman (I have this theory that senators are petty people) after he messed up their precious collegiality this month by pulling out of a deal. We could probably pass this through reconciliation, soon. But of course that’s mostly a long-term bet, since in an immediate sense it would only help people over 55. I’m not sure if this or a second chance at passing a public option is more worth our time.
What’s interesting is that it’s a Republican argument: Liberals hate poor/brown people. If you dirty lefties actually cared about them, you’d [insert outcome least likely to result in improvement of conditions for said parties which also resembles outcome most beneficial to very rich rat fuck bastards].
273.
Davis X. Machina
Medicare is administered by for-profit health insurance companies.
You can break the fillibuster with legislation that is a lot more popular than health care. Namely financial regulatory reform. The public is much more aggressive than a Senate body that is made up of nearly half kleptocrats.
@And Another Thing…: CMS, which used to be called HCFA, administers Medicare by contracting with non-governmental entities to administer Medicare by processing the claims. Most of the entities are probably for profit as most of the Blues, non-profits, and mutuals which were non-profits 20 years ago have changed their corporate status.
278.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: I envision a few different tracks, all of which presume understanding on all sides that single-payer wasn’t getting to 60, but public option would be tantalizingly close but all the more difficult for how close it could get.
Going back to the Baucus fiasco, remember how he kept meeting as a “group of 6”? There I think the idea was that if Baucus could find a way to reach a compromise that could hold 3 Republicans, it flings open all kinds of negotiations. You can tell Joe Lieberman to piss up a rope, for example, and still have a couple of wild cards in case someone pitches a fit (like a pro-lifer, maybe). I think that’s why that lasted so long.
When that fell apart, it was out of Baucus’s hands, and it seems like there were two tracks for Reid. One was to try Snowe again, or Collins. Maybe the other was through Nelson or Lieberman or both.
I get the sense that the WH was like, bring the Maine Republicans around, because they’ll negotiate in a discernible way (like on the stimulus), and we’ll get bonus points for making it “bipartisan.” But Reid thought, no, I’m the darn Majority Leader of the Democrats, and I ought to be able to get my Dems in line, even if they talk out of both sides of their mouths.
I shouldn’t be able to imagine internecine Senate politicking. What a waste of imagination…
So, family of four, House bill, 300% S-CHIP coverage in your state, you’re losing two kids but picking up two parents.
Christ. My head hurts.
Right now I say jettison the parents! Overboard! Sink or swim!
I’ll have to look at it again.
280.
General Winfield Stuck
Maybe people are so pissed off because it feels better than fully appreciating how unbelievably screwed we kind of are.
Maybe? no maybe about it. It is at the heart of this entire PUMA hissyfit. It is reality. You know, like how things are for sane people. We have wasted days of spittle on this shit, and mindless wanking on how Obama is this or that, shoulda woulda coulda, And all of it is horseshit, when the entire fucking thing boils down to simple math, and counting to 60.
And if there are plans to pass the PO by reconciliation later, has it dawned on all the principled political wizards we have here bashing Obama, that if there was any inkling publicly, that it is planned, that Joe, Ben, and the rest of the Cinderella Band of drama queens would go along with passing the other reforms. You know, the ones that were good, but became evil once the PO pony went bellyup.
Maybe people are so pissed off because it feels better than fully appreciating how unbelievably screwed we kind of are. Maybe, at this point, anger is a form of optimism.
making the subsidy provisions of the bill start sooner than far-away 2014 would be important things to target
I’ve wondered about this. Wouldn’t doing so violate Obama’s commitment to PAYGO?
And I like to think that healthcare will be revisited after 2010, but I’m inclined to doubt it. Especially when our majority has dwindled or likely disappeared at that point.
283.
Sanka
I have no idea what the hell Obama is talking about here.
Therein lies the depressing backdrop to the election of Barack Obama as president. A man who stood for substantiative “change” and for nothing at all, both at the same time.
In his days of “organizing” “communities”, and his early political career, Obama “stood for” the public option. It has been documented that Obama “supports” the single-payer model, while acknowledging that it can’t be done in one legislative swoop.
Once his national ambitions were made known, he “campaigned” on “reform”—purposely nebulous in it’s simplicity. Thus, as president, he is able to say “I did not support the public option” while his political donors are actively soliciting it. Meanwhile, the brain-dead Democratic party is so desperate to pass whatever piece of shite theycan cobble together and slap the label “healthcare reform” on it, so that the sheeple will vote for them applaud them for generations to come, they are willing to risk their majorities and quite possibly, the White House.
All because the narcisstic amateur in the White House wants a legacy.
Well, there’s the theory that Obama got exactly what he wanted. (According to Feingold, for instance.) It’s entirely possible that the P.O. was gone from the moment he made the deals with Pharma and Big Insurance before the process even started.
Yes, I just believe this to be a theory from wingnutville. I’m sure it’s just me though.
You can break the fillibuster with legislation that is a lot more popular than health care. Namely financial regulatory reform. The public is much more aggressive than a Senate body that is made up of nearly half kleptocrats.
I like the sound of that! But the public was in favor of the public option too. So, what was missing was the “aggressive” part, which the Obamaphiles failed to supply in spite of our best efforts. And that was back in during our hopenchange period. Now, people are talking about joining forces with the teabaggers just to get something done. That can’t end well.
I envision a few different tracks, all of which presume understanding on all sides that single-payer wasn’t getting to 60, but public option would be tantalizingly close but all the more difficult for how close it could get.
__
Going back to the Baucus fiasco, remember how he kept meeting as a “group of 6”? There I think the idea was that if Baucus could find a way to reach a compromise that could hold 3 Republicans, it flings open all kinds of negotiations. You can tell Joe Lieberman to piss up a rope, for example, and still have a couple of wild cards in case someone pitches a fit (like a pro-lifer, maybe). I think that’s why that lasted so long.
__
When that fell apart, it was out of Baucus’s hands, and it seems like there were two tracks for Reid. One was to try Snowe again, or Collins. Maybe the other was through Nelson or Lieberman or both.
__
I get the sense that the WH was like, bring the Maine Republicans around, because they’ll negotiate in a discernible way (like on the stimulus), and we’ll get bonus points for making it “bipartisan.” But Reid thought, no, I’m the darn Majority Leader of the Democrats, and I ought to be able to get my Dems in line, even if they talk out of both sides of their mouths.
__
I shouldn’t be able to imagine internecine Senate politicking. What a waste of imagination…
And yet, you do it so well. That seems quite similar to my own take on the matter.
287.
And Another Thing...
@mcc: Medicare buy in is a good idea. People understand it. It’s relatively easy to administer as most of what is needed bureaucratically already exists. The largest number of people who need it most are 50+ for whom there is almost no private insurance market etc. And the last polling I saw showed it as being popular, by abt a 30 point spread I recall. 50+ year olds have assets to lose and are the most likely to have serious illnesses. 25 year olds don’t have much assets and are more likely to be injured in vehicle accidents which are likely to be covered by insurance. And as the ultimate bellweather – even my right wing & hard right wing relatives understand it and think it’s a good idea, cause Medicare is not soshalism dontchaknow.
We shouldn’t drop the public insurance idea. There’s no need to. Just because we didn’t get it into this one particular bill doesn’t make it any less useful, and now that the bill is passing there’s this beautiful exchange system with this perfect pluggable slot for a public insurance option. We need to figure out the best way to do this.
Or strongly regulate health insurance companies, in addition to, or separate from, the idea of a public option.
There is an April Atlantic Monthly article which suggests that the Swiss health care system, might be an option which even a Republican could love:
The Republicans could instead offer a consumer-controlled universal coverage system, like that in Switzerland, in which the people, not the government, control how much they spend on health. There are no government health insurance programs. Instead, the Swiss choose from about 85 private heath insurers. Rather than being stuffed into the degrading Medicaid program, the Swiss poor shop for health insurance like everyone else, using funds transferred to them by the government. The sick are not discriminated against either — they pay the same prices as everyone else in their demographic category. Like the US, Switzerland is a confederation of states that, as in the US, oversee the insurance system. Enforcement by the tax authorities has produced 99 percent enrollment.
The probable passage of health care reform permits innovative thinking for the next phase, which is going to be necessary to fight off the inevitable GOP attempts to halt or roll back anything that becomes law.
290.
General Winfield Stuck
Gotta leave this thread before the stupid kills me.
So, what was missing was the “aggressive” part, which the Obamaphiles failed to supply in spite of our best efforts. And that was back in during our hopenchange period. Now, people are talking about joining forces with the teabaggers just to get something done. That can’t end well.
I’m not responding to John’s contention that there were never 60 votes. That’s not what I wrote about. What I wrote about was the back and forth that went on about the PO, and the fact that Obama most definitely participated in that back and forth. And one of the things he said more than once was that the PO was a good idea because it would keep the insurance companies honest, and also because it would introduce real competition. He said he was open to other ideas that accomplished the same things – and thus we went down the path of the Medicare Buy-in. Triggers were always out there and were never taken seriously because no one believed the would actually be triggered.
Since Obama stated more than once that he felt some kind of external pressure was needed, and since the PO was the only mechanism that fulfilled that need, it didn’t seem unreasonable to think that he would exert some effort to get it done.
Finally, my ultimate point was that there are bad feelings out there now and Obama appears to be trying to assuage those feelings. But neither he, nor you, is going to succeed by trying to paint him as guilt-free in this situation. Anything that smacks of revisionism will be reviled, and rightly so.
I would think someone as brilliant and gifted as Obama would be able to figure that out and would try something else.
Oh, bullshit, Sanka. Democrats have been trying to pass a national plan on health care for decades.
The intense personalization of Obama’s presidency makes me queasy. Slightly ill. All this gaming of motives and peering into his soul. It’s how peasants view a king. “Why did he DO what he DID?”
I am so sick of this obsession with the personality traits of elected leaders. It reached the point of mental illness with George W Bush, but Obama has (incredibly) surpassed even that crazy.
Just look at the goddamn bill and take it or leave it. Spare me the character analysis.
293.
Mary G
@matt: They bill $12,000 for one dose for the same reason they bill $20 for a box of Kleenex, in the hope that someone may actually pay them that. Medicare pays around $1,000 and my supplement pays $300 or so. The hospital writes off the rest because the law says they have to. If I lost my insurance I couldn’t get it for that.
Before I applied for disability and got on Medicare, I paid $678 a month for insurance with a $1,500 deductible and a 30% co-pay. I was on Remicade at the time, so it cost me $525 a month for the co-pay. Even with insurance, I still went through a substantial chunk of my savings before the Medicare came through.
That’s why the bill sucks, because it gives people the right to buy insurance like that, which in essence is useless to the great majority of people. I am lucky because I was able to move in with my mom, whose house is paid off. If I had to come up with rent or mortgage money I couldn’t afford the $385 a month for the supplement I am so grateful to have.
Of course, moving in with your mom at 45 when you’ve been out of the house and independent since 17 is a whole ‘nother thing.
“…But here’s what I don’t get: why didn’t Obama, starting the day after he won the election, relentlessly brand the economy as Bush’s? Why didn’t he tell every Democrat that whenever they’re appear on TV, they have to meet a quota of three mentions of “The Bush Economy”? That’s just politics 101, and god knows the Republicans would have done it if the situation were reversed. Obama had every incentive to do this, and none not to—he could still have had the same policies to pay off Wall Street, while shielding himself from some of the heat.
It’s weird. While the Democrats do behave like the Washington Generals, consistently playing to lose, I don’t generally think it’s conscious. They’re just responding to incentives. But here the incentives are all in one direction (as far as I can tell), and they haven’t acted.
The only explanation I can see is staggering incompetence. I guess you can never rule that out.”
I’m not responding to John’s contention that there were never 60 votes.
With all due respect, if you are not going to respond to this contention, then everything else you write is nothing more than complaints about Obama’s style and posturing to please people who are likely so pig ignorant nothing would please them but getting what they want, when they want it.
The math is simple and it was never there, just wasn’t. You folks can continue to make electoral threats and wave the bloody rag of blame, but nothing Obama can do will persuade people who do not want to be persuaded, or are unable to grasp the simple math that goes with passing laws out of congress.
There is no mystery in it, no changing it with grand gestures or public flogging that could have changed Joe Lieberman’s mind. He is not a democrat, and did not vote for OBama, and does not think he should be president. And that doesn’t even consider the fact he is a vindictive little bitch that wants to shiv democrats for fun.
Do you really believe otherwise?
And haven’t you read the GOS dismantling on this matter that Obama campaigned on the PO.@donovong:
@General Winfield Stuck: See. Here I am trying to be all apologetic and nice and here you have to go and be an ass. I hope the stupid does kill you, then.
Well, where we don’t go is having these Democrats bring up health care again any year soon. By the time the Republicans would get through with them, it would then be Bible based. Dems would mandate the buying of leeches. Leeches would be bought at retail as the WH would be against price negotiation or re-importation. Dem “centrists” would chastise any non-supporters as non-realists: “It’s the best they let us have and we can build on it later.”
Because Mr. Cole’s case, IS THE ONLY ONE. That is if you want to be honest about what is to blame here. Or, if you want to continue to bash Obama just for fun over style and posturing for naught, and chewing on conspiracy theories, then have at it. It’s allowed here. Just don’t blow smoke up my ass with it is all I ask.
Balloon Juice now has a PUMA wing. How cool is that?
I have a black and white view of the world? from you?
You make conclusory, definitive statements as to motive and intent with the vaguest, gauzy spun out of thin air crap I have ever read.
You roundly pronounce on negotiating tactics and the outcome of events that have not occurred and will not occur with a certitude that borders on ludicrous.
I’d keep you off a jury, my friend. Your moral opining and sanctimony and unfounded conviction that you never make an error when you’re guessing here (like all the rest of us) would scare the shit out of me. Rightly.
A person who believes that there is and can only be one case/position/argument is the very sort of person who can also be persuaded to take up that case against his or her own interests, committing moral seppuku in the service of an unrequited loyalty.
Mr. Cole’s question about 60 votes is not relevant to whether or not President Obama dissembled or played with “weasel words.”
Whether or not the President could find 60 votes some year or so after he first spelled out his plan has nothing to do with the details of the plan upon which he campaigned.
@slag: Stuck gets jacked up pretty easy and then it takes him a long time to come back down. Don’t take it personally, just hit him between the eyes with a 2×4. He gets blunt force.
Jack: “At some point, people are going to accept that President Obama is not a policy driver.”
I think that’s correct. We can all speculate to death about why, but until the tell all books start to come out, we’re not going to know what is/isn’t driving his actions. All we can see for ourselves is what he does and doesn’t do (with the caveat that, as in the case of the deal with Pharma, there will be things we won’t know about). And in terms of what he has/hasn’t done to date, I’ve concluded that he will ultimately be seen as a caretaker president. He will have stabilized the economy, though he may not get it to thrive. He will have halted some of the egregious abuses of the bush people. He will sign some good legislation along the way, especially legislation that isn’t too hard to pass. He will appoint competent people to a lot of positions (as well as an equal quantity of questionable insiders).
He will NOT be transformative. He will not be bold. He will not be particularly creative. He will not break outside the box – he is very comfortable with conventional wisdom.
What we don’t know now is whether that will matter in the larger scheme. There’s no question that he will disappoint people like me who are looking for leaders who have the desire to tackle bigger questions – how do we handle a world and an economy when we have too much productivity? Collectively, we can provide everything anyone needs all over the world, right now. We don’t, but we could. How do you employ a population sufficiently when you simply don’t need everyone to work 8-10 hours a day in order to provide for society’s needs? How do we reverse wage stagnation that’s been slowly killing the middle class? What do you do about the stranglehold corporations have on our government? What do you do about media consolidation which has led us to a point where the airwaves are filled with uncontested lies every hour, every day?
Etc.
I just don’t see Obama going near the bigger questions.
Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe his role, historically, will be to calm things down and set the stage for new leaders we haven’t heard from yet.
Only time will tell.
313.
And Another Thing...
Ya know…one of the basic problems with this whole debate is that it feels like there’s a pretty good chance that most of the critics here & elsewhere have actually never, you know, played any significant role in getting an actual piece of significant legislation passed. There is nothing like it in the private sector. It is a bitch. There’s a whole lot to like or not like, and valid reasons to oppose or support it in toto. But there’s a helluva lot of nit-picking and premature condemnations of a bill that hasn’t even passed the Senate yet much less been to a Conference Committee. This is a long way from done. Just wait until we get to Kremlin watch who’s appointed to the Conference Committee. OTOH this is a massive lesson in civics, ain’t it.
Your words. A series of pronouncements. On an event that has about 6,000 interpretations.
And I have a black and white view of the world? You have a one -dimensional view of the world. You’re always right, and you’re always sure you’re right. Except when you’re not.
I never said he didn’t want a PO, as part of an overall reform bill to help reduce costs. He has said that many time, including during the campaign. But he has couched it during the actual debate for HCR as president as thinking it’s the best way to lower costs, but not the only way.
If you are going to be reduced to searching for inconsistencies between campaign rhetoric and out of context quotes to create a meme that Obama is a liar, then we are in for some fun times. And by all means, I think it will help your cause to join forces with the wingnuts to get the message out.
But they wouldn’t be breaking the plan to pass the public option but to pass overall health care reform. And overall health care reform is a filthy mess with a lot of counterintuitive stuff (you can make Medicare better while spending less etc) but financial regulatory reform isn’t. It makes sense to people.
Now an interesting test case would be to see if a stand along Medicare buy-in could break the fillibuster. I think it could but its a bet I would rather not not take or make.
319.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Teehee, calling everyone pumas is so.. Appalachian Clever. Where do you come up with this stuff??
…But here’s what I don’t get: why didn’t Obama, starting the day after he won the election, relentlessly brand the economy as Bush’s? Why didn’t he tell every Democrat that whenever they’re appear on TV, they have to meet a quota of three mentions of “The Bush Economy”?
Because when he became president, the economy became the Obama economy.
Nobody knows where Dubya is now, or much cares. And even though Bush and the Republicans caused this mess, the only thing the average American cares about is when are things going to get better and what is the president going to do to fix it.
If the president and the Democrats in Congress had their stuff together, they could easily capitalize on the plain fact that the Republicans don’t have any ideas besides tax cuts and deregulation. But the Democrats are spending more time fighting their own than in dealing with the GOP, and this is not a good thing.
Well, I know when I’m in enemy territory and surrounded, so this thread is for you PUMA’s and your wanking.
I didn’t say you couldn’t make arguments of how it could have been done better by Obama, I’ve said during all this that they made mistakes in messaging and timing, and whatnot.
What I am saying, is none of that would have changed the end result, with Lieberman, And when you make that claim I will call you on it. But not tonight. We will take up the Lance tomorrow and again ride the FSM to the coming Palin Presidency. Chow.
@General Winfield Stuck: Did you ever think you’re so angry because you don’t want to admit to yourself how unbelievably screwed we are? Oh wait, you did admit to that. So, maybe now that you’ve made a breakthrough, perhaps you can stop calling people names and start proposing solutions to the aforementioned “screwed” problem.
Jack is hoping you can “expand your view” so it aligns perfectly with his, so he can browbeat you into an admission.
He’ll do or say anything. Has he told you you’re going to health insurance prison yet?
Stuck, who sees about fifty shades of grey in any picture, and has been following health care for months.
kay, ya know I love ya and yer my favorite commenter after me (a really distant second, but still #2!).. but c’mon, pretending Stuck is anything other than a dipshit diminishes all the good arguments and research ya bring to the conversation.
Obamaphiles. That is an insult of the highest order. The correct term should be O-bot. Please get it right.
329.
Corner Stone
@Jay B.: Hey ponyfuckface, Cole didn’t ask you to show him where Leader Reid thought there were 60 votes for the PO, he told you to list off the 60! So there!
Because even though Reid somehow thought there would be 60 votes for it, Cole knows better! Reid and his staff can’t count obviously. You know how Cole knows there was never 60 votes for the PO? Because the final bill passed with 60 votes and it did not have a PO! Cogito ergo sum vici ante quid quo.
Don’t you get it?
Delicate flower we have become Slag. The solution is to elect more democrats. I’m sure round the clock bashing Obama for things not in his control will bring the majorities we need to get past the filibuster. Unless there is a Unicorn filibuster nuke on the horizon. We can spend eleventy hundred threads exploring this fantasy.
If you are going to be reduced to searching for inconsistencies between campaign rhetoric and out of context quotes to create a meme that Obama is a liar, then we are in for some fun times.
I
Did you bother to read the linked diary?
And by all means, I think it will help your cause to join forces with the wingnuts to get the message out.
I will defer to your great perspicacity: tell me the nature of my “cause” and how it comports with the wingnuts agenda.
And overall health care reform is a filthy mess with a lot of counterintuitive stuff (you can make Medicare better while spending less etc) but financial regulatory reform isn’t. It makes sense to people.
Does it really though? I mean, “No more too big to fail” makes sense in the abstract, but what does it really mean? Or, more accurately, what does it mean after our venerated financial institutions get done telling people what it means?
I like the stand-alone experiment idea. But what would such a thing look like for financial reform? Financial reform seems inherently big. Almost too big. Almost too big…to fail…or not.
336.
Paula
BTW, if some of you think I’m an unhappy Hillary supporter, you are wrong. I thought – oh boy – that she would be too “corporate” and “too DLC”. I also thought she was unelectable – not because of anything she had done, but because the right wing had so relentlessly smeared her and because the media was just itching to get back on the “destroy the Clinton’s” horse. I was thrilled when Obama chose her to be Secy. of State because I thought she’d be good at that and I felt she had worked her ass off to be a Senator and to try to be president.
If I have any beefs with Obama, they are over what he has/hasn’t done. Not only did I vote for the man, I went to the Inauguration (from Ohio) to celebrate that historic day. I froze my ass off, but thought it was worth it. I kept my metro ticket coz I thought I’d want to have it when I was old, to be able to say I was there.
Jumping up and down and hurling insults at people who have substantive concerns and heartfelt disagreements with you over his performance is just weak argumentation. If you have such a deep, deep need to defend him at all costs, can’t you try to get better at it?
I might support your campaign if you all weren’t such assholes, but you are, so I won’t. Come on. You’re buying this hype? You are not.
John Sears: “MILLIONS will LOSE health insurance!” How many times has he written that now? 50? You really believe the liberal Democrats in Congress drafted a plan that would cause MILLIONS to lose health insurance? They went to a goddamn lot of trouble for such a stupid self-defeating goal.
I wouldn’t be in a “public option” with you public option people, at this point.
You’d be horrible authoritarians at public option “stakeholder” meetings, I can see it now, screaming and insisting I filibuster, or you’d just disband the governing body if you didn’t like the result !
I’d rather go to Obama’s health insurance prisons.
I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be accusing the rest of us of unicorn-hunting. Just sayin.
Look. We have 59 (ish) Democrats in the Senate, a bunch in the House, and the Presidency. It’s not getting any better than that any time soon. Probably not in my lifetime, and I’m not that old. And really, with mid-terms coming up and the momentum pretty much gone, we need to do something. Other than call people stupid pumas.
342.
And Another Thing...
@Corner Stone: I’m not convinced Reid and/or his staff can count. How many times has he stood before a mike and looked into the camera and said some version of “we have a deal” and surprise, he didn’t. If I could figure out how to google for that and wouldn’t rather catch Jon Stewart, I’d find cites. But you could look it up.
we need to do something. Other than call people stupid pumas.
I know, why don’t we kill the senate filibuster with a big progressive nuke.
Name calling on Balloon Juice. OH noes, Break out the rubber mallets Gracie, the end is nigh.
Just teasin you slag, cause I like you:) gotta go
345.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay: Cmon kay, most of the assholishness (at least that which I’m not providing) is coming from your side. Stuck, for example, just keeps screaming at everyone and calling names.
Jack, in particular, had been quite polite at offering his opinion but he just kept getting insulted until he began responding in kind. Look at what happened to slag in this very thread when he was offering an olive branch.
But yer on the side of the angels here kay so your cause is just and you are noble.
Thanks for the lecture. I didn’t attack Jack, though. I didn’t even respond to Jack. I responded to Sanka.
Jack then gave me a series of directives on how I have a “black and white” view of the world, and some rote, conventional wisdom political commentary on Clinton, delivered with CERTAINTY and his usual authoritarian zeal. I am properly chastened. You-all are wise in the ways of the world.
Yeah, except I didn’t respond to Jack at all. I was speaking to Sanka.
John Sears runs away when I question his outlandish assertions, so that’s fun.
I tried to make an informed comment to the public option people, on S-CHIP, which covers 7 million children, and on which I personally busted ass, and no one knows the answer. I think you have to know that answer if you’re supporting the House bill. It’s 7 million children. Am I trading that for a public option?
They don’t even understand the implications of having a national insurance plan, as far as regulation and state law. The Senate plan retains the state law oversight function. Pelosi’s public option does not. That’s a huge issue, if we’re worried about regulation.
All you-all want to talk about is Barack Obama’s heart, and his duplicity. I’m shallow. I’m not all that interested in his heart.
All you-all want to talk about is Barack Obama’s heart, and his duplicity.
Don’t know what to tell ya other than that’s the thread topic.
353.
And Another Thing...
@Corner Stone: I’m not sure what you mean by your comment. By “can” I mean capable of counting, accurately. He should count, that is his job. My brother & I have joked about this repeatedly, Reid says he “has a deal” – enough votes, doesn’t have them and has to delay or cancel votes because he was “premature.” And one of these days, he’s going to again interrupt Nancy Pelosi, or put his hand on her and she’s either going to stab him or vaporize him with laser eyes.
I should note, that I’m home during the day, have been a political junkie for too long, and I watch Cspan and cable news waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much, so I’m operating off of an abnormal data set.
I agree, he obviously wanted to look ineffectual so he could tell Obama, who certainly appeared to undercut him in his quest to get 60, that he tried his best but he was just “one or two short” because he wanted Obama to look better for unilaterally giving away any public option in order to secure the insurance industry’s choice which he could then give away for even less. This is how deep the game is.
I’ve wondered about this [moving up the bill’s start date from 2014]. Wouldn’t doing so violate Obama’s commitment to PAYGO?
As I understand it would be really hard. I don’t know how the House plans to structure it, assuming this actually is something they’re looking at at all. However I believe the bill the House passed started in 2013, so apparently they had some ideas as to how to pay for that.
And I like to think that healthcare will be revisited after 2010, but I’m inclined to doubt it. Especially when our majority has dwindled or likely disappeared at that point.
It depends on what the healthcare revisiting is and how it would be done. One thing I’ll note is in order for the ability to use reconciliation to go away we would have to lose by enormous margins, difficult-to-believe margins. We’d have to lose the house, which is more popular than the Senate right now last I checked, and in the Senate we’d have to lose 9 or 10 seats on a year which (due to the weird every-6-years schedule) is structurally advantageous for the Democrats.
And paradoxically the Democrats’ amenability to using reconciliation could actually go up as their majority dwindles.
Or strongly regulate health insurance companies, in addition to, or separate from, the idea of a public option.
We just passed some really significant regulations of health insurance companies. I’m not sure I know how we sell further regulations to the public without at least giving the new ones some time to see if they work.
One thing I think the debate we are (as a nation) wrapping up right now shows quite neatly how it’s a LOT easier to get the public to understand a simple, singular program (“MEDICARE BUY-IN”) than a complex regulatory or oversight package.
But if a plan for a second pass of regulation comes up, then yeah, sure, cool.
@And Another Thing…: I believe with basically everything “And Another Thing” said here.
It’s a great question. How many times has Harry Reid announced he “had the votes”? Ten? Twenty?
Look, I tried to figure this out. Sherrod Brown, my Senator, passed a letter in October to get liberals to commit to the PO. He got 30. Add the Senators who passed some sort of PO out of committee and you have 44.
Is it unimaginable that the liberal Senators like Feingold, would perceive his defeat, and his failure to garner 59 fellow Senators, as Obama’s doing? I don’t think it is. I don’t know that it is.
I don’t know what happened, or whose fault it is, but they don’t have 60, and I can’t find any record of them ever having 50.
I would think that if they felt passionately about the PO they would sign Sherrod’s letter. They didn’t. Thirty did. And that was in October. That’s when I gave up on the PO. When I saw that number.
How many times has he stood before a mike and looked into the camera and said some version of “we have a deal” and surprise, he didn’t.
I don’t know. How many times?
358.
And Another Thing...
@kay: I love Sherrod Brown. How about I swap you Hatch & Bennett, cash, a future draft pick and some 3.2 beer…. Yeah, I thought not. I did get to vote once for Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That’s probably a thrill that lasts a lifetime. I stood on line, on crutches, on a lousy weather day forever. It was worth every minute it took.
Jesus Christ, Reid was telling Jay Rockefeller that he was “one or two short” in late October for an opt-in option. This just as Obama abandoned the entire public option to court Snowe and taking the insurance industry’s solution make this “bi-partisan” by supporting triggers instead. Didn’t have 50?
And again, why would Reid say he has the votes unless he thought he did? What does he possibly gain by that? I’ve always considered him inept, but I didn’t think he was innumerate.
I think it happened just as Stein reported. The Democrats went to a meeting at the White House — “The work will continue through the weekend and comes despite the president’s indication in a meeting Thursday evening at the White House that he prefers a public option that would be triggered in by certain conditions over the “opt-out” alternative.” — Reid was still close, made his calls, and then Obama’s preference for the trigger undercut whatever Reid was going to offer the recalcitrant Senators.
It’s not even a conspiracy or Joe Lieberman. It’s the simple fact of the matter — as even Obama said today — that he didn’t really care about the public option. So why would “centrist” Senators stick their neck out when it would be easier for them to get a better deal without alienating the insurance companies?
Jesus Christ, Reid was telling Jay Rockefeller that he was “one or two short” in late October for an opt-in option. This just as Obama abandoned the entire public option to court Snowe and taking the insurance industry’s solution make this “bi-partisan” by supporting triggers instead.
But, I mean, like… you saw what happened after that, right? I mean, in the end, Reid turned up one or two votes short for the opt-in option. Remember? He went to the end of the process with the opt-in public option and it didn’t work. The opt-in didn’t really buy us any fence-sitters, and then the public option had to get removed completely to pass the bill at all because Lieberman decided he wouldn’t support any form of public option at all, be it the real public option, a trigger, or any kind of substitute.
In retrospect, although it’s nice Reid at least tried and we got to see exactly where the support level in the Senate for the public option stood, if we’d gone the White House’s route and not cut off negotiations with Snowe she probably would have gone along in the end, we could have got to 60 votes without Lieberman, and we’d at least have a public option bill passed with a trigger, which would have been a big help when we try again in a few years to pass something like the public option for real. I mean, it really seems like abandoning the White House’s preferred compromise on the public option is what killed it for good.
But I guess your theory is that Obama trying to support a trigger compromise on the public option lead to Joe Lieberman rejecting the trigger compromise on the public option…? Or maybe your theory is that Joe Lieberman “doesn’t matter”, and Obama “caring” would have got us from 59 votes to 60? Who would have been the 60th vote? Olympia Snowe?
Jack, in particular, had been quite polite at offering his opinion but he just kept getting insulted until he began responding in kind.
Considering that Jack’s very first comment continued the BS argument that people arguing in favor of the bill are morally the same as Iraq supporters, it’s kind of stretch to claim that he was “quite polite” from the beginning. Either that, or there’s a completely different meaning to “Mission Accomplished” outside of Bush/Iraq that he’s using that is incomprehensible to the rest of us.
Unfortunately, your premise falls apart for the same reason all the other premises that various people put forward fell apart: Because in this reality, you can’t prove an alternate reality no matter how hard you try.
Would Reid have gotten 60 with full support from the White House? Don’t know. What we DO know is that the White House didn’t fully support Reid. Does that change votes? Maybe. In Lieberman’s case, one can make an argument that, as Obama’s mentor in the Senate, he might have been willing to listen to Obama more than Reid.
What we DO know is that he supported the idea while he was collecting votes, then he did a deal with Big Pharma before the legislation was written, and then we have people involved in the process saying he wasn’t pushing the public option. Oh, yeah, and now we have a quote from him that the bill as written has everything he wanted in it.
“Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”
That sounds suspiciously like something that needs a definition of what the word ‘is’ is.
Further, one could argue that, if Reid had a solid 58 for the public option, that Obama (if he were a progressive) would have seized the momentum and gone for those last two. Obviously, having 58 Democrats means the public option wasn’t THAT controversial.
363.
jim
Yikes.
Last time I saw this much unmitigated butthurt was the Dem primaries. So much Raw Teenage Angst over a politician saying something different from what he said previously? Try saving it for what they DO, kids. Talk is cheap.
Obama may well want reform – but he also wants to cut BigPharma/Health-Insurance Lobby support away from the Goopers, because he knows their well is a tad dry right now (Chicago Politics 101: you don’t kick a man when he’s down – you drop a fucking safe on his face). If this bill is allowing him to have that cake & eat it too (& given how scary-smart he is, I don’t think that’s out of the question), that might be the REAL reason the Republicans have been fighting tooth & nail to kill it … after reacting to two disastrous elections with more of the same stupid shit that lost those elections in the first place, with a few Purity Purges for good measure, & watching their party’s polling numbers stay locked down somewhere near the base of the Marianas Trench, they’re now literally fighting for their political lives.
If a bunch of whackaloons register “Teh People’s Glorious Revolutionary Corporate-Soviet More-American-Than-Thou TEA PARTY” in 2010 or 2012, the Republicans’ goose is well & duly cooked: think Ross Perot, but permanent.
The oh-so-trendy comparison between the supporters of the bill & supporters of “Operation Desert Clusterfuck” is one of the most gratuitous rhetorical footbullets I’ve seen for some time … seems like Dems really DO have a fetish for mutual backbiting that just won’t quit – how lovely for the GOP that so many nice obliging folks on the other side are doing so much of their dirty work for them.
Sure seem to be a lot of folks who’re awfully quick to write Obama off … perhaps you should ask Hillary Clinton how well that approach worked out for her.
What Reid gains by saying he has the votes is political cover for the liberal Senators. “we fought the good fight, and went down swinging”.
I don’t think insurance companies killed Medicare expansion. I think providers did. I think insurance companies would love to lop off the 55+ portion of the population (who use all the services) and collect premiums from everyone younger.
Both things could be true, Jay.
Obama could have been indifferent or hostile to the public option and there wasn’t support in the Senate.
I can’t discuss this with people who refuse to look at providers. Insurance is only half the story.
If we start paying providers measurably less, there’s a huge hole in the economy. No one wants to acknowledge that.
I have to say (and you’ll hate this) I think the Senate bill is better on the whole than the Baucus bill + a weak public option.
If you want to talk about what was on the table (and not some best case) then we can do that.
We can compare the House bill to the Baucus bill to the eventual Senate bill. I don’t know that we can compare the Senate bill plus Medicare buy-in because that was too fuzzy, and the details would have mattered.
I may have started at a different place on this than you. I didn’t have any fixed ideas on what I wanted or what would work. Medicare is a huge public program, and without cost controls, it’s unsustainable. I don’t really accept Medicare as the gold standard. I don’t want to spend 40% of every available dollar on health care. I don’t think that will work.
366.
harlana peppper
Why does everybody have to fall in line? Why?? What’s wrong with opposition in your own party when you are sincerely trying to achieve something good for the little people? Portions of these threads amaze me.
367.
harlana peppper
I see this thread is not completely dead yet so I’m going to plead complete ignorance here, look incredibly stupid to more astute BJ’ers and ask about the whole 60-vote thing and how the Senate never had it. I’m not trying to be an ass here, but I sincerely what to know what I’ve missed. Like, is there a list of every Dem senator’s position before the vote, like including their relationships to the insurance industry and Pharma. How do we know where they stood? Feel free to bash me as another ignorant, idealistic hippie if you wish, I’m just mystified as to why this mystification pisses some people here off so very much and I really want to know what I’m missing here. I have never bashed Obama, nor had illusions about him and I’m not the least surprised at his behavior here. I voted for him, of course, but I kinda knew what I was probably getting. The sad part about all this is that incrementalism is not going to help this nation very much, things are pretty damned desperate. I always hold out hope, but it doesn’t look good, so I’m sorry we could not have done more here.
No. You’re right. I don’t know where they stood, harlana. I made my best guess. These are guesses. I looked at what the senators did and said and came up with 44. Jay B looked at the same thing and came up with 58.
As far as not having a vote on a bill including the public option, Reid knew he didn’t have 60, because he determines that before a vote, because you only get one shot. If that’s what you meant by “missing something”.
I have no problem with your opposition to the bill as it is. What I reject is mischaracterizing the bill, or not looking at all the factors, or not looking at what was actually on the table, and comparing what we have to what was never on the table. But I have no problem with opposition to the bill, even on broad ideological grounds, ie: it’s better with a public option because it’s public. I see that. I’m just not sure the public option was as powerful a mechanism as it’s been portrayed, but I see the point of it being important in a perception-changing way.
369.
harlana peppper
One of the reasons I appear so ignorant here is that I no longer follow the minutae of such things and it has proved detrimental to my mental health. I do have a pony in this fight also, my premiums are killing me but I can’t be w/o health insurance b/c of the cost of my meds. I am having to do a mid-life career change (w/ help from the gubmint, for which I am most grateful) so I can hopefully one day have employer-based coverage again and get my life back.
370.
harlana peppper
@kay: Thanks for your response. I don’t necessarily oppose anything that will do good, so I am not opposed to the bill in that way. I am disappointed for sure b/c I think we need to establish some form of competition with the insurance company and I think the general assumption about the PO was that it would establish that, whatever the final product would be, I’m pretty sure that’s how it was sold to all of us. My expectations have been whittled away so I’m not enraged by anything, hell I was upset that they were talking about making the PO only for people without employer-based insurance, which can be pretty damned cost-prohibitive for people with children, those people would have benefited. I was also upset about the opt-out thingie. It was all pretty weak from the start, actually. But,this current hodge-podge of stuff, I cannot get my mind around it. It all appears pretty sneaky to me.Anyway, thanks for a civil response. The only thing I’ve really learned from this is that you just do not fuck with the insurance industry, you just don’t :)
As far as tactics of opponents, I don’t think it’s helpful to start telling people they’re going to jail if they don’t buy health insurance, or that “millions” are going to lose their employer plans, or that every attempt to control costs is rationing. I don’t think it’s helpful for liberals to go on FOX opinion shows, at all. I think that just feeds the big lie beast.
But I’m not stopping anyone from doing that, nor do I want to.
States are players in this. The opt-out was a mechanism to allow states that don’t want to play to allow this to go forward.
Insurance is absolutely part of that. But it’s bigger than that. Insurance has traditionally been state law. Every state has a regulatory scheme. They were loathe to give that up, and there are good-faith reasons for that. States got stuck with the mortgage mess when federal regulators failed to act. They got stuck with the actual foreclosed property. They’re still stuck with it.
There were 39 state attorneys general who had claims against ONE subprime lender, in 2006. The lender settled.
But you have to ask, with that many states suing, where the hell were the feds? They didn’t notice that? So, states have reason to want to maintain control.
373.
harlana peppper
@kay: Still, I cannot imagine even my own red state (Sanford is my guv, leave your sympathy cards at the door) opting out as it would have been as politically unpopular as Sanford turning down the unemployment extension (which the republican legislature over rid (road?)) — unlike the fatally narcissistic Sanford, those guys at least have sense enough to know how to not lose an election. All a moot point, of course.
Do you think so? In a red state, why wouldn’t portraying the public option as a federal government take-over work when it went to the states?
It worked, generally, there. I think it would have gone to the states and red states would have opted out, particularly if it went to the legislature. It would just die quietly in assembly.
It’s hard to be a state’s rights liberal, because conservatives are such idiot assholes.
It’s the only thing I like about their ideology, the idea that state law can be really important and useful and should be given some leeway, I think liberals miss the point, but conservatives ruin even that single good idea by infecting it with racism and hatred and hypocrisy.
Just saw this on Politico; Ben Smith quoting MSNBC’s First Read, and then HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
As we’ve written before, the words “public option” didn’t appear in any Obama campaign speech we can remember; they didn’t come up during the debates; and they didn’t surface in TV ads. Remember when Obama and Hillary Clinton dominated the MSNBC debate with Brian Williams and Tim Russert with 16 minutes of health-care discussion, the words “public option” were never uttered.
__
It is true that a public plan was part of Obama’s health-care plan, and it’s also true that the public option was an idea being debated in policy-wonk circles during the campaign.
__
But, from our vantage point as reporters who covered the presidential campaign, Obama’s quote to the Washington Post appears to be correct.
__
And here’s Huffington Post’s Sam Stein’s take: “An examination of approximately 200 newspaper articles from the campaign, as well as debate transcripts and public speeches shows that Obama spoke remarkably infrequently about creating a government-run insurance program. Indeed, when he initially outlined his health care proposals during a speech before the University of Iowa on March 29, 2007, he described setting up a system that resembles the current Senate compromise – in which private insurers would operate in a non-profit entity that was regulated heavily by a government entity.”
Not to split hairs or get all “parsy”, especially since I’m way late to this discussion, but it’s a fair point.
376.
Rich_Sellers
I’m not disappointed in Obama at all, because I never expected anything from him. It is the wealthy and the connected who will influence Obama’s policies, not the likes of me or mine. We, in fact, are not, have not and will not be represented by the likes of this president any more than we were by the last one.
I read a lot of liberal/lefty websites during the Bush years, consoling myself with the idea that there were at least other folks out there who saw beyond the veil of bullshit. I’ve dropped many of those websites today, because (surprize!) as it turns out they were okay with the policies, yet simply bothered by the fact that it wasn’t their own party carrying said policies out.
This nation is rotten to its very core, along with all of its institutions. The political process is set up in such a way that it rids itself of any influence that might lead to positive change. You took the first step in giving up on the Republican party, but you’ve got a ways to go, still.
Good luck.
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Rhoda
That’s just effed up.
The White House has clearly circled the wagons and are shooting at every little thing right now.
Wow.
So stupid.
Just Some Fuckhead
lolz
Daveboy
I can’t help but think that this is a misquote or something, because it’s so blatantly false.
dr. bloor
As Atrios asks, who the hell is that comment directed to, anyway?
We already had eight years of pointlessly stupid falsehoods, Mr. President. Please try again.
LT
Nothing else to call that but “a lie.” Not a misspeak, not another interpretation, it’s a lie.
Depressing. And weird – why say that at all?
General Winfield Stuck
Though it is true he did campaign on a public option, or including one in his HC plan at least in some speeches, I am not sure it was that or nothing on his campaign website. And I have not heard him couch in “has to be a PO” since the health care debate started the past summer. In fact, that has been the complaint of the true progressives all along, since then, hasn’t it?
Maybe he was referring to that time period. Though I agree he shouldn’t have said he never promised one in the campaign.
I guess we will just have to impeach the first president to break a campaign promise and then lie or misremember later.
PeakVT
But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”
If true, that was pretty dumb.
It would be helpful to actually tell the truth here, as in: “I tried to get the public option, but as long as there is a filibuster it’s not going to pass.”
Comrade Mary
Not cool. Try again.
Jack
If he lies (and these are overt, demonstrable lies) about the comparison between his campaign promises (and lofty, empty rhetoric) and the HC”R” outcome, perhaps it’s because he’s getting the outcome that he wants.
Warning to the “fix it later” faithful.
The President is lying, a la “Mission Accomplished.”
Volumes, that…
Violet
He’s smoking something besides his cigarettes if he thinks that kind of lie is going to go unnoticed and unchecked. He’d be much better off saying it’s not a perfect bill but he’s pleased with the progress, or something of that ilk.
Lying so blatantly, especially in the days of the internet, is just stupid.
Jack
@Violet:
The WH has been trying to shake a new narrative for the better part of the month.
Makes one wonder why.
bayville
I have no idea what the hell Obama is talking about here.
It’s Rahm’s fault.
Just Some Fuckhead
I ain’t givin’ up on the weaselly rascal yet but it just goes to make the point we all gotta push for what we want. Ya can’t just daydream about unicorns and hope it works out.
Max
Maybe he was under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996 when he made the remark.
Notorious P.A.T.
sigh
Mary G
He’s a politician. They tend to tell a lot of lies to get elected. He always says “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” He took what he could get. At least we have a toe in the door. The plan is horrible, but it’s a plan we’ve been trying to pass for 70 years.
My birthday is Christmas Eve and if they hold the final Senate vote then, it’ll be one of the best ever. I’ve had rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years and am currently on Orencia. You have to get it in an IV at the hospital and they bill $12,000+ each time. ONCE A MONTH. If I wasn’t on Medicare there’s no way I’d be taking it. I’d be crippled in bed crying when I had to creep 15 feet to go to the bathroom. Every time I go in I feel so guilty about all the people who need this drug and can’t get it.
So Merry Christmas or whatever you call this time of year to Balloon Juicers everywhere. I am happy and contented just as John was earlier.
And I have edit back! I think I’ll go try to take a picture of the rescue kitteh to email in.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Still haven’t learned to count, I see.
Violet
@Jack:
Indeed. They’ve accomplished quite a bit in a short time. Why do they need or want to change the narrative?
Is the actual audio or video available of this interview? Or is this the WaPo mixing things up a little bit just because they can?
Jack
@Mary G:
I feel for your suffering.
Best to you.
But…
…and it’s a big caveat: what the Republicans wanted to do to Social Security, the Prez, Senate Democrats and Joe Lieberman did to health care and insurance.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the outcome for which three generations have struggled.
Jack
@Violet:
I have no insight into their actual motives, Violet.
I can speculate, but my opinions with regard to the mercenary outlook of White House occupants is just this side of cynical.
Joe Beese
It’s called “lying”, John.
Hope this helps.
handy
Not Quite The Change We Can Believe In. But is what we’ve got enough?
keestadoll
It never ceases to amaze me that in the age of video recording phones, street surveillance cameras, hungry independent bloggers, and bored jerk offs with YouTube accounts (to name only a few of our modern “perks”), we still manage to catch a plethora of HUGELY public figures carelessly “misspeaking” in a HUGE way. Still, there’s plenty of precedent to show that such out and out missp–oh fuck it–LYING, can be forgiven and readily excused, so I don’t think the President is too concerned over the implications of his statement, er, lie.
Keith G
Red Fucking Balloons.
It’s not exactly over, but damn close. I wish the West Wing had pushed harder and ginned up support, but it didn’t. And where were the minority communities?
I am an uninsured guy battling a chronic disease and what goes down in DC is not academic to me. Yet, all this pissing and moaning is killing off the few T4 cells I have left. My med care future will be better off than it was going to be as of last year when I was *totally uninsurable*.
And I assume over time prospects will even get better as/if our political society get a bit more mature.
Until then some holiday cheer from POTUS
http://vimeo.com/8324965
Brent
Remember the thing with NAFTA and Canada. Same thing going on here. Surprisingly, candidates for office will dangle a large ham in front of the public but realize that a baggie of sliced lunch meat is probably all they will be able to deliver given the system of entrenched special interests. O yeah, it’s a corporatocracy and Obama is it’s primary defender. Sure, some crumbs for the dogs, but biz as usual.
Elisabeth
*sigh*
It was bound to happen sooner or later but this is the first time I really feel like I’ve been lied to by this president. I can put some kind of excuse to just about anything else but this….sorry, Barack. I ain’t buying what you’re trying to sell with this one.
Jay B.
I don’t really get why he campaigned on “health care” at all, regardless of whether or not he may have misspoke about something he wanted in a reform package.
If I’ve learned anything over the past few days, I’ve learned that the President is a completely helpless figurehead when it comes to things like policy and legislation and that he has no actual role in either supporting or opposing it, except distinctly as the Executive when he can either sign the bill or veto it.
Dr. I. F. Stone
And it damn sure won’t be the last lie that falls willingly and intentionally from his effing lips. His entire career is based on nothing but lies and an ability to read words from a teleprompter.
General Winfield Stuck
@keestadoll:
No, I suspect not. The PO pony was made into a Unicorn fantasy by the netroots, whether or not Obama said he wanted one a few times. The netroots have jumped the shark in my opinion anyway, there is no going back, and will be as demanding and judgmental as any tea bagger.
Listen, if people like jack can make connections to Obama maybe wanting no PO the whole time, whereas there is no evidence of that really. Then I will continue to say Obama should give the bronx cheer to the netroots and do what he wants. He has nothing to lose but the next election the shriekers are predicting and threatening to do their best see that happen. So what’s the point then of paying any attention what so ever to them. It’s just going to be the same ole same ole for every contentious issue. Same formula. They don’t get what they want when they want it and it’s wailing time again.
Obama lied, people died
is this that far behind?
FlipYrWhig
Here’s the bit from WaPo:
Doesn’t sound good. But note that it’s not a continuous quotation, so yet once more we’re at the mercy of the reporter.
I’m guessing that the full quote is something like “I didn’t campaign on the public option, I campaigned on a comprehensive solution to health care in this country.” Meaning, again, that the Big Point was getting something done that lived up to the goals he consistently enumerated, NOT being line-in-the-sand about the means. Because he consistently phrased it along those lines. We’ve been through this over and over and over again. Reporters either dont listen reel gud (like Jake Tapper) or enjoy the subtle ratfuck (ibid.).
Mnemosyne
Well, that’s annoying. I can understand feeling defensive when you have Kos and Hamsher going around on the talk shows whipping people into a frenzy, but lying about it isn’t going to fix anything.
NR
@PeakVT:
Unfortunately, that would also be a lie. Feingold and Lieberman have both confirmed that he didn’t even try.
gex
@Brent: Did you mean the sliced ham is all they CAN deliver or all they WILL deliver. There’s a difference, and I think we’ve seen that it is the latter rather than the former. These guys weren’t losing the fight against the entrenched interests, they were representing them.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I will reserve my freakout until we have a full quote.
John Cole
@NR: Joe Lieberman didn’t confirm anything. Really, lets stop relying on serial liars.
Feingold I believe. But then again, why would Obama need to pressure Feingold on the public option anyway? You think Feingold was wavering on the public option?
FlipYrWhig
And the question was probably something like, “But your critics say that you campaigned on the public option, and yet you’re saying you’re happy to sign a bill without it. How do you reconcile that?”
Also note this element from higher up in the piece:
First, it should be “criterion,” which makes him as bad as Bush. :P But more importantly, IMHO it bespeaks a phrasing like I proposed in my previous comment: he’s saying that it meets his goals and people keep getting distracted by the question of means.
Elisabeth
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
Ah, yes, the teleprompter meme. Sorry, I’m not happy with this little nugget from the president but I’m not buying what you’re selling, either.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: We’ve danced this dance before, alas. It almost always boils down to this means/ends distinction, which is totally clear to me but seems to bedevil many greater minds than mine.
(ETA: And we won’t get a full quote, but we might get a clarification from Gibbs that sounds like the way I put it, which will be read as prevarication or walking it back, and we’ll be back in the same Cycle Of Stupid.)
NR
@John Cole: I’m referring to this.
Now, he could be lying here, but no one from the White House has spoken out to contradict him, and Feingold is saying exactly the same thing, so I don’t think it’s too likely.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
You mean where he says that he didn’t campaign on a public option? In common parlance that’s what’s known as a “lie.”
General Winfield Stuck
@NR:
Well, that wasn’t the whole quote, was it NR. It is bad enough having the press and wingnuts do half ass reporting out of context garbage. But seeing it here from regulars is just stunning to me.
weasel joe, in his full glory. Not all that sure is he.
harlana peppper
Surprised? Really?? Sincerely not trying to be an asshole here but I’m really surprised you are surprised. Makes me wonder what I have overlooked in watching this process unfold.
Demo Woman
President Obama always said that he thought a public option should be included but during the campaign he was quite clear that he did not think that a health program that was single payer would pass. Now if you want to quibble, he did say that he did not think that mandates would pass.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
That’s probably true, because they figured that attempting to pressure him would drive him into outright opposition. I think he was kind of itching to blow it all up. They couldn’t afford to give him a reason to pull the trigger and kill the hostage.
Malron
Parsing words. “I didn’t campaign on a public option” meaning “I didn’t make it the centerpiece of health reform.” At least that’s the intent of wording it this way.
But you know what? by catching him this way, all progressives did was make themselves look like liars as well, because while Obama was making these very statements progressives were telling us week in and week out that Obama wasn’t in favor of the public option. Now, they flip the script in order to score a few political points with shit like this
It was stupid for Obama to claim he never “campaigned” on the public option. It would have been honest if he said “I wanted the public option, tried to stress it as often as I could but in the end there just weren’t enough votes for it in the senate. But as we’ve seen from the progressives there’s been plenty of stupid to go around.
Comrade Mary
Look, if the full quote (not an excerpt) from Obama is “I didn’t campaign on the public option”, he deserves to get yelled at.
@NR: But even if what Lieberman says is absolutely true — and he did leave weasel room — so what? Feingold also said that he assumed the White House would have pressured, but he didn’t say that Lieberman wasn’t pressured, or that the White House lied to Feingold about pressuring Lieberman. So what Feingold is saying now is a reaction to reports of what Lieberman said, not backing him up.
Brent
Without the full quote, we can’t know for sure, but he sure is hedging. He did, however, campaign against the individual mandate, that is for sure. That is in the bill. I will not buy overpriced inadequate insurance from a corrupt private provider with massive co-pays and deductibles. All this bill does is dump taxpayer subsidies into the broken overpriced corrupt private system. But at about the same rate as the Iraq war, which was pointless, useless and unneccessary and caused untold harm. At least some people who were ineligible for Medicaid will now have their overpriced private insurance subsidized at our expense. Better than the Bombs for Babies program under Bush.
General Winfield Stuck
So what if Obama didn’t directly cudgel joe on the po. Hasn’t it been established that activists don’t like his style of giving the senate room to do it’s business,. Wasn’t it Harry Reid that assured the WH he had the 60 for a opt out PO, and then for a Medicare buy in. When he didn’t. What would be the point of Obama lobbying joe when Reid claimed he had his vote.
This shit is making me ill. Just get another candidate already for 2012. Maybe Hillary will run. Nit picking a quote out of context, and you fuckers are ready to lay the lie word, and draw the conclusion he never wanted a PO in the first place.
Hell, I can go to any wingnut blog and read the same shit.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Since Holy Joe was saying just three months ago that he thought a Medicare buy-in was the best idea since sliced bread and was (IIRC) claiming credit for the idea, why would he have to be pressured to get in line behind it?
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
In common journalistic parlance it could be what’s known as a “selective quotation.” If you said, “I think FlipYrWhig is a douchebag for defending Obama on this,” you could be quoted accurately (strictly speaking) as saying, “I think FlipYrWhig is a douchebag,” but the part that got left out is an important piece of the puzzle, and you would probably say, “Wait a minute, I didn’t just say ‘FlipYrWhig is a douchebag,’ I was making a narrower point than that.” But if someone either didn’t care or wanted to make us mad at each other, they could report it that way.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
huh? Reserve judgment until we know the full quote? Good heavens sir, what PLANET are you on?
This is indisputable evidence that Obama has lied about everything from his Kenyan birth certificate on out. Lord help us, the teabaggers and Hamsher were right. He’s gonna establish a Muslim communist fascist dictatorship right NOW……run for your lives……!
Max
@General Winfield Stuck: I think it’s important to impeach him before 12.31.09, so we don’t have to pay him his re-up of personal / sick time.
Keith G
@General Winfield Stuck:
But…but….I swear I saw a guy in a dark suit and sunglasses on the grassy knoll!!
We are doomed.
FlipYrWhig
@Malron:
Right, and more efficiently put than I did it above — that’s why the ThinkProgress piece misses the point slightly by documenting the number of times Obama mentioned the public option. He’s mentioning that it’s a good idea, but he’s not “campaigning on it.” Similarly, he said positive things about “clean coal” and about keeping your tires properly inflated, but did he “campaign on” either of those? I think the answer is no, but I agree that as stated it’s weaselly at best.
But my guess is still that there’s a second half to the line, which the reporter didn’t quote, because that has happened many, many times this year, and it’s the reason why critics of Obama on health care from the left always say that he flip-flopped on the public option.
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: I’m listening to the audio now on the WP. We seem to have lots of visitors all of a sudden.
Jay B.
@Malron:
What?
There are a few things that come to mind here:
1. If what you say is true and “progressives” said he wasn’t in favor of the public option then you are admitting that “progressives” are, in fact, correct — because Obama agrees with that assessment.
2. Being a stranger to language and meaning as it exists in context, you may be confused with the idea that “progressives” could say, without contradiction, that Obama wasn’t in favor of the public option because he hedged his bets for most of the year on whether the Administration supported the public option — and now Obama merely confirms this assumption.
3. It’s also possible that “progressives” didn’t believe him last year and judged him on his actions as the bill took shape in order to claim he didn’t support the public option. This is not a lie. And is, in fact, factually supported by the Administration.
Da Bomb
@FlipYrWhig: It happens all of the time, words are parsed. I will wait until I hear the full quote.
@eemom: You forgot about the Obama pillow used to strangle grandmas. You know once they get assigned their death date from the death panel. That’s located on the Senate bill on page 2.
SiubhanDuinne
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m with you: my teeth begin to curl when I see or hear “criteria” used as a singular noun (I’m slightly less fussy, but only slightly, about “data” and “media”). But here again, I’d like to hear the actual interview tape, as this could quite easily be an error by the journalist or transcriber. I can’t recall where or when, or I’d provide a link, but I’m positive I’ve heard Obama use “criterion” and “criteria” correctly in unscripted conversation.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’m sure he’s perfectly welcome to give another interview and say that he was quoted out of context. In fact, on behalf of John Cole, I invite the President to do a guest post on Balloon Juice and clarify his statement.
Dreggas
Funny, when he was campaigning I recall him saying he wanted comprehensive health reform and a public option should be a part of that, but it wasn’t the only thing he wanted in the reforms.
Jay B.
@Dreggas:
True. He also wanted cost controls. And no mandate.
The Grand Panjandrum
As troubling as this quote is what I find more troubling is this:
Here is what Gibbs said:
I’m starting to see a part of duplicity here. It’s giving me a bad feeling. Did they sell us out to the drug industry? It looks more and more like they may have. Rat bastards.
Demo Woman
@Dreggas: That’s what he said.. He always used should, could etc. Unfortunately, he did not have to say I did not campaign on a Public Option during the interview. By saying that it over shadowed all the other points that he made. It was a 17 minute interview and it was pretty good. The WP has the entire interview on line.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: IMHO, “being in favor of” or “supporting” and “campaigning on” are not the same thing.
I would say that I have never doubted Obama’s _support of_ a public option, but like you I have perceived him refusing to make the public option the linchpin of the reform debate. I think it’s because they never thought they had the votes, and sticking his neck out for it without the votes might have gratified a lot of people but would (1) not lead to its passage, and (2) produce a lot of negative mainstream press about his Crushing Defeat or the Frustrating End To Dem Health Care Plan.
I think he also supports single-payer (which really needs a better name; I’d guess at least 85% of people who hear it don’t know that it means the government is the single payer). In fact I think he supports same-sex marriage–because, honestly, WTF– but feels like he can’t risk undertaking a high-profile campaign that’s likely to go down to defeat, because in US politics defeat begets defeat.
AnotherBruce
Ok, if you really want to parse this, maybe he didn’t campaign on the public option.
But he didn’t not campaign on the public option either, and it’s a damn weasily and unnecessary thing to say. Whether he lied or not is only a matter of degree. The point is, a lot of people that supported him are feeling pissed on right about now, just when things were starting to heal a bit.
He needs to be better than this.
FlipYrWhig
Demo Woman,
Thanks for mentioning the audio and transcript.
My suspicions didn’t exactly pan out, but I think I was close. Here’s the section in question:
Is that the same as saying “I didn’t campaign on a public option,” full stop? I would say no. And I think I got pretty close on the phrasing.
mcc
Considering he succeeded in passing the bill and the only problem Obama has to fix at this point is a grassroots which basically doesn’t trust him, that is a startlingly stupid thing to say.
Obama could have made a point that he campaigned on a broad health care reform plan, almost all of which is now implemented, and that the public option simply wasn’t the entirety of the health care plan he was pushing at the time.
The thing he said instead is just plain false. Not going to build trust here.
AkaDad
It’s going to be an extremely tough choice in 2012 between Obama and a Republican who lies on a daily basis.
FlipYrWhig
Bah, caught in moderation, probably too many links…
Here’s the transcript of the interview. My interpretation will appear when I’m out of the penalty box.
FlipYrWhig
@mcc:
Read the transcript or listen to the audio. That’s almost exactly what he says. _Immediately_ after the reporter snipped for the article.
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
You can make that case. You can also question whether or not you’d have an audience who would want to listen to it.
I mean, really, when you are asking for votes and saying you “support the public option” but you are really meaning that you are not “campaigning on it” requires a level of semantic parsing that I’m not really interested in dissecting.
I don’t think he supports single-payer either, but that’s moot.
handy
@AkaDad:
There’s always Option C: sitting it out. Of course that plan always works so well for liberals.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: I take your point, but I don’t think this requires very much complicated parsing. From the interview transcript:
(ETA: “It just”? :P)
BFR
@FlipYrWhig:
Wait, hold on a second here perfesser – you’re telling me that the liberal Washington Post selectively edited a quote from Obama to make him seem worse than he is?
Wonders never cease.
John Sears
Must. Not may, not should, not I’d-prefer-it. Must.
So, ok. If Obama wanted to go back on his earlier position, fine. We all change our minds.
But to say that he did not, in fact, push a public option, when he repeatedly insisted upon precisely that? It’s a lie. Don’t sugarcoat this. It’s a lie.
Shocker. My President, the man I voted for, is a liar.
Jack
Digby excerpts the campaign PDF @ length (emphasis hers):
“…The Obama plan both builds upon and improves our current insurance system, upon which most Americans continue to rely, and leaves Medicare intact for older and disabled Americans. The Obama plan also addresses the large gaps in coverage that leave 45 million Americans uninsured. Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers, as well as to small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees; (2) make available the National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses that want to purchase private health insurance directly; (3) require all employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees; (4) mandate all children have health care coverage; (5) expand Medicaid and SCHIP to cover more of the least well-off among us; and (6) allow state flexibility for state health reform plans…”
Link to PDF @ her site.
mr. whipple
He did mention in one speech that people had become focused on it to the exclusion of other things, and whever he didn’t mention it in his hcr speeches people went apeshit. (including me).
I don’t remember this from the general election, however.
But the bottom line is that if this is an accurate quote, it’s simply bullshit on his part.
BFR
@John Sears:
News flash – politician lies to get elected. Details at 11.
I mean c’mon – were you born yesterday?
Check that – it’s not even that he lied, it’s that he failed to get everything he wanted in the bill and had to back down from his requirements.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think it all depends on the meaning of the word “campaigned”.
John Sears
@BFR: That was sarcasm. I thought including the word ‘Shocker’, which no one I’ve ever met actually uses in ordinary conversation, was an adequate clue.
So, if you like, consider the previous post to have a /snark after it.
Also, I figured out that he was a flip-flopper during the telco immunity mess. This isn’t news to me by a long shot. It’s surprising that he’s getting this sloppy though.
Jack
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I think a campaign policy position ought to qualify. See above.
*
Here’s a question I ask my children –
When you lie to me, what are you trying to accomplish?
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.:
Moot indeed, but I think most politicians support a lot of things they don’t integrate into their praxis because US politics defines “acceptable opinion” so narrowly. Of course seeing in a politician more than he actually says or does is precisely what leads to disillusionment.
JasonF
@John Sears: Do you see those elipses in the quote that ThinkProgress used? That’s your clue that somebody is trying to pull somehting fishy. Let’s check out the full sentence:
Now, you can argue that you should read the “must include” as refering to the public option, which is subsumed within the insurance exchange, but it is nowhere near as unequivocal as ThinkProgress’s selective quote makes it appear.
FlipYrWhig
Can everyone who wants to call him a liar please read the fuller quotation? I even cut and pasted it for you.
John Sears
@JasonF: The expanded quote is no better. The public option is contained within an exchange. So? It still has to be there. He said it had to be
a: an exchange that b: contains a public option.
What’s the mystery here? Did anyone ever propose a public option outside the exchange?
Jack
@JasonF:
Obama’s answer to a Newsday questionnaire (via Salon):
“I have pledged to sign a universal health bill into law by the end of my first term in office. My plan will ensure that all Americans have health care coverage through their employers, private health plans, the federal government or the states. For those without health insurance I will establish a new public insurance program.”
(emphasis mine)
gex
@The Grand Panjandrum: Show me the dead Canadians!
FlipYrWhig
Ack, I’m still stuck in moderation above. Hopefully some of my cuts and pastes from the WaPo interview transcript have worked. The transcript is interesting reading and I think answers many of the objections people have lodged.
Mary
@Demo Woman: I notice the visitors too. But I think the paid blogging money will run out when health care is passed. But I think if John’s blog is going to be polluted, he should at least get paid for it so that he can become rich and famous like the others.
Ruemara
I got to wonder about this. The man said he supports a robust public option, not that he wants a public option. I think that means if it has all the stuff he thinks is integral with health
careinsurance reform, he’ll take it. All these people whining about shit sandwiches would happily eat it if it was labeled “public option” even it was ass-weak and utterly worthless. Now people are selectively editing things to discredit him? Man, if he says 4 years of being every sides whipping boy is enough and moves to France after 2012, i will send him relocation money. I think I owe President Obama an apology for handing him the job of taking care of a population that’s 30% strident idiot.Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@John Sears: I’m confused. How does a Presidental radio address include “campaigning [for President]” on a public option?”
I mean, the meme is that Obama never pushed for it once elected, right? Never said he really wanted it. But you quote, via this article, prima facie evidence that he stuck his neck out to promote for it in the public after the election.
None of the quotes from the campaign period are him saying we “must” have it; a Plan — anyone’s plan — cannot survive contact with Congress, which is going to shift and change it. It’s Their Job, and I know we’d have some role issues with our governance, but really, it’s Not Obama’s Job to present legislation, and we got into enough trouble with both Clinton — on this very topic! — and Bush pulling such stunts. That’s one of my issues with the way we run Presidential races anyway, but that’s a story for another time.
Saying that he lied about it just to get elected don’t wash with the very quote you provide.
Jack
@FlipYrWhig:
I’ve just read the whole article.
I don’t see any reason to parse his exact quote.
Why carry water for a lie?
gex
@handy: Sometimes to switch it up, they go with the protest vote. Perhaps they can persuade Nader to run again.
FlipYrWhig
@Ruemara:
Sir, I fear you gravely underestimate. Unless along with 30% strident idiots there’s another tier of idiots, like 15% deranged idiots.
Jack
@Ruemara:
“All those people,” eh?
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@FlipYrWhig: We might have to retool John Rogers’ Crazification Factor, at that.
Pete Start
Didn’t John write a post a while back saying how he hadn’t really heard of the public option as Big Thing of healthcare reform until this summer? Not to throw his words back at him or ought, but I had the exact same feeling when he said it, to the extent that save for parsing every bit of his language online, I didn’t ever remember it coming up in the campaign. Mandates, for example, did and that’s fair enough, but at no point during a debate in either the Primaries or the General do I remember him campaigning on the public option as difference between him and his opponent. Nor do I recall any pundits or analysts favouring Obama on the basis of his views on the public option. If your best source is a questionnaire from WaPo, then you’re really missing the idea of a campaign.
Here’s how it goes (at least for me):
Major policy announcement by press conference, speech, or debate answer = campaigning on it
Text on website, transcript of by-rote interview, policy questionnaire = not necessarily campaigning on it
The Think Progress article is a tad disingenuous, insofar as it quotes Obama saying he didn’t campaign on it, and then gives one instance on the website text, and three instances during the heat of his first year push for HCR (where the public option became the chosen battleground for whatever bloody reason). In any event, I don’t really remember the political pressure coming from the White House on the public option.
Obama will probably break on many a campaign pledge, but screw me if the public option hasn’t been the biggest red herring of 2009.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Just read the full transcript. His weasel words are that the public option was a “small element” of his plan. In fact, as noted above, the public plan was NUMERO UNO on his to-do list. #2 was national exchanges, as you’ll also notice.
mr. whipple
“Can everyone who wants to call him a liar please read the fuller quotation? I even cut and pasted it for you.”
Sorry, I’m a bot and I don’t think this passes muster for honesty. Like I said, I don’t remember him pushing the PO in the general, but I count traveling all over the country giving a shitload of HCR townhalls as ‘campaigning’. There were only a couple times when he didn’t mention it, and every time it lead to a boatload of LW outrage and questions about whether he was giving up on it.
I also remember the speech about ‘it being one part’ speech and the uproar over that, I think that was within days of Sebelius downplaying the PO on a Sunday talk show. (Again causing a hell of an uproar.)
Jack
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill:
A campaign policy position plan is a campaign position. You cannot parse that without turning English into jibberish.
John Sears
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: Here’s another one. I’m copying it from his campaign white paper on health care myself, typing each and every word myself, so there’s no possibility I’m being misled by the eeeeeeevil washington post.
Found here. Page Five at the bottom.
So yes, Virginia, he did in fact campaign on a public option, one open to ALL AMERICANS, not just the poor, not just the uninsured, but EVERY LAST ONE OF US.
FlipYrWhig
@Jack:
Um, I have this funky idea that when we argue about politics it’s mildly important not to be misleading and demagogic. All the quotations everyone is finding square with how he said he does, in fact, _support_ it. So he’s making THE VERY SAME POINT he’s been making for months, which is that he supports the public option but thinks of it as part of a larger framework. Sure, he could have not said “I didn’t campaign on a public option” and just said the second part and saved himself a lot of mudslinging. But I think it’s pretty evident that his theme is that thinking only in terms of public option in-or-out is missing the larger point. Which is why I feel like this is at worst badly phrased–but rather clear in context–and not “a lie.” A lie would be to say, “I don’t know why everyone is so upset about not having the public option, because I never said I wanted that.”
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne: I just listened to the audio, and to my great sorrow it seems he did say “criteria” when he should have said “criterion.” This will not stand! I’m handing in my O-bot membership card and joining up with Jane Hamsher and the Teabaggers.
Jack
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
It reminds me (sadly, terribly) of conservatarian efforts to justify “Mission Accomplished.”
John Cole
One more time before Sears passes out from rage:
Who were the 60 votes in the Senate for the public option?
Who are the 50 votes for the public option with reconciliation?
And I’ll keep asking until someone tells me. They barely got to 60 with this current bill. I would love to hear the strategery that gets us to 60 with a robust public option. And you aren’t allowed to say “Obama could have fought harder,” because that is masturbatory nonsense.
Davis X. Machina
@ ruemara
Much of our politics and the lion’s share of internet politics, is just taking the general American propensity to perform social signaling by choice of consumer goods and applying it specifically to politics.
At this point “Public Option” is as much a brand as “9 West”, and has about as much actual content.
Max
@Jack: Sure, its EXACTLY the same.
Jack
@FlipYrWhig:
I read that once, then twice – and it seems to be that your point is that he supported the public option, so therefore he didn’t lie then when he claimed to support it.
Okay, but that’s whistling right past the graveyard.
Because the lie was today, not in 2007 or 2008.
He’s trying to rewrite history today. Right now. He’s trying to rework the narrative of the past to support his current position. It doesn’t matter if he supported it then. It matters that he’s lying about it now.
If that isn’t suspicious to you, I have a “GW Bush Best President Ever” Republican talking point to sell you…
John Sears
@John Cole: I’m not about to ‘pass out from rage’.
I’m pondering getting the tequila out though, reading so many people who claim that this is anything but a lie. A sloppy one too.
If you want to say it was impossible, fine. That doesn’t change the fact that he did in fact campaign on it, and now doesn’t have the guts to admit it, or the technical understanding that his campaign paper is still up on his own website.
mcc
@FlipYrWhig:
And thanks for the link, I’d had trouble finding the transcript. But I did read the transcript before I made that last post.
I could imagine he legitimately did mean that and this was just the vagaries of spoken interviews getting in the way– the transcript doesn’t really seem to me to make it clear either way what he was trying to express. But totally regardless of what he meant it was still a stupid thing to say. This is such a sore subject, and people are hunting so hard for anything to latch on to and scream betrayal over, and surely the white house must be aware of that. He should have been aware that anything uncarefully said was going to cause a firestorm. You just know that even if the white house issues a clarification later saying the washington post quote was out of context and explaining what he meant, lefty blog people are totally going to be citing this comment constantly in a mocking manner eight months from now.
Jack
@Davis X. Machina:
Or, you could give your opponents the benefit of their own perspectives.
*
I don’t for a moment assume that a person who has faith in Obama and Senate Democrats is some idiot rube who’s been branded by a commodity fetish.
I think the faith is misplaced, but I don’t think there’s anything merely fetishized about believing that the current leadership might deliver real reform.
mr. whipple
Um, a lot of people commenting on blogs did say it was shit when the House plan details came out because it allowed so few people to enroll. Only later did it become the most necessary thing ever.
FlipYrWhig
@mr. whipple:
OK, but taken in combination with many other statements, which I reviewed during the whole Sebelius episode over the summer, IMHO he’s not saying he didn’t campaign, or that he didn’t talk about the public option during that campaign, but that he has never insisted that the public option was the be-all and end-all of health care reform.
I think he could have said “I didn’t campaign _only_ on a public option” and avoided the whole mess. But that’s implicitly what he means, and I think reading the whole health care section of the interview makes that clear. But I’ve gotten floggings before on the blogs for my (excessive?) willingness to give people the benefit of the doubt, so this feels like another one of those cases. And if the reporter quoted the whole damn sentence I still contend that we wouldn’t be primed to read it as a falsehood.
John Cole
@John Sears: I think ThinkProgress is not presenting the full quote, which sounds a great deal different from simply ‘I did not campaign on the public optiojn.”
But you are refusing to answer. I’ve read you for days railing against this bill in support of the public option, but you simply refuse to answer how it would get done. You know, I did the magical thinking thing once, and ended up supporting the Bush administration in any number of ridiculous adventures.
So tell me. Who were the 60 votes for this ROBUST public option?
Who were the 50 for reconciliation?
Max
@Davis X. Machina: It reminds me of a video clip I saw. It was taken on Black Friday and a crowd of shoppers @ Walmart rush in to scoop up a “Zhu Zhu Hamster”, which is apparently this holiday season’s hottest toy. The crowd is battling it out and you see two ladies fighting it out in the middle of the frenzy. After the items are gone, one of the ladies is interviewed by the local reporter on the scene and she says “I don’t know what it is, but I want it”.
BFR
@John Cole:
This shit is like reading the local sports team blog comments.
There’s the same huge assumptions that the folks running the other side are morons – no, the Cardinals aren’t going to trade you Albert Pujols for a bag of baseballs and no Ben Nelson isn’t going to help you out if he knows you’re trying to marginalize him.
There’s also the same absurd belief that opinions can be moved/players can be improved if the manager (Reid & Obama) “just get tougher with these guys” rather than accepting that there are limits and we can’t always get what we want.
Jack
@John Cole:
Mr. Cole,
Respectfully, what does it matter what the political situation is, with regard to health insurance reform?
Whether or not he has the requisite votes to deliver on his promises doesn’t change the fact that he lied about those promises, instead of accurately discussing the political reality?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jack:
I meant “didn’t”. Sorry.
General Winfield Stuck
Answer me this PUMA’s. Where are you leading? What do you want? If you are going to take things from a campaign health care plan and indict Obama as a liar that can’t be trusted, over a quote carved out of an interview, without the entire transcript of that interview available for scrutiny –what do you want? And don’t tell me the rhetoric on the blog has been all about just constructive criticism, because that is an insult to the intelligence of even a dweeb like me.
I mean if you going to cite Joe Lieberman as part of your case, whatever that is, then I think you have already reached a conclusion and are now just scrapping for anything to justify that conclusion. If you are going to ignore all of the other evidence the past 5 months that Obama never had the votes for a PO, and label him a weak failure and liar, what is your conclusion?
And if you just fell off the turnip truck, let me clue you in. PRESIDENTS LIE. They always have and always will. No exceptions. Will that be your next pony? A honest Abe president, who by the way also lied, as does every human that has ever been born. Except maybe one.
Are you going to join Jane on Fox News for the coming impeachment?
I will give my impression of what has happened to this blog, as well as most others in the netroots, has made a decision that this president has to go. And every day every thing Obama says does will be combed thru by those that have made that decision. Won’t matter how trivial, how incomplete, or dubious. It will be jumped on and held up as evidence. The hyperflamed rhetoric here the past few days is clear to me that a part of this blog has made that decision, that Obama has to go. Prove me wrong.
And all of resulting from one provision, a Public Option, in one bill
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jack:
Teehee.
Careful, his dad reads the blog too.
mr. whipple
On that we can agree. I think it was smart politics to never draw a line in the sand, because we all know how stupid it looks when that line gets blown away and also because it gives your opponents a focal point to concentrate on.
But I do think they knew from the get-go they didn’t have the votes and probably would never be able to get them, and if he had said that I think a lot of energy would have been sapped from people like me hoping it was included.
Jack
@General Winfield Stuck:
The assumption that people opposed to clumsy obfuscation, bad negotiation, failure to deliver – and yes, the Senate version of health insurance reform – are necessarily HRC PUMAs is very much teh funnehs.
Perhaps it explains why you so often fail to even begin to comprehend the arguments against which you lower your broken lance of callow insipidity.
Gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: All I can say is that I can see where Jack and Mr. Sears get their interpretation. But that was not my interpretation over the past year, in real time. I suppose my differing interpretation means I was drnking the koolaid before I was supposed to know about the koolaid.
Jack
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ahah.
All the same: His house. He merits the respect of it.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
One more time: 59 were on record as either for it or not opposed to it as recently as 6-8 months ago. Lieberman didn’t make his explicit threat to filibuster until a few weeks ago. The time for bribing and cajoling was 6-8 months ago, not 6-8 days ago.
It was a corporate failure. It was a failure by Reid to lead his caucus. It was a failure by Obama in his capacity as leader of the party. It was a failure by the likes of Dodd and Schumer and others to use their collegiality to move this in the right direction. And it was a failure of left health care reform advocates who took these votes for granted.
Again, the time to explore this idea was 6-8 months ago. 6-8 days ago was far too late.
FlipYrWhig
@Jack:
My point is that he has always “supported” the public option–which he continues to say IN THIS INTERVIEW–but has likewise always insisted that health care reform is not reducible to the public option. So what I hear is an implicit “only.” Because _he’s been saying versions of that_ for months, including in the speech to which he’s alluding in the interview.
Jay B.
@John Sears:
I’m just curious why Obama’s taking credit for “delivering” on health care in the first place — as our host points out, it’s not like he really had any role to play while the Legislative branch debated what was going to be in the bill.
I’ve been told repeatedly regarding robust reform, the President was powerless. He’d be as bad as Bush or Nixon had he dipped his toe into the debate — the Imperial Presidency, you see. Obama, I was told and am forced to believe, had to respect the sacred process of turning good ideas into shit, because he believed strongly in the Separation of Powers.
And yet, the President says “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”
How does this happen?
Jack
@Gwangung:
I cannot type for John Sears, but I don’t think that people who disagree with me are moonbat sailors of the sea of stupidity.
I just think they have different temperaments, perspectives and lists of acceptable means-towards-ends.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@John Sears: OK, let’s back up here.
First off, clearly we’re working off different def. of “campaigned on”. Yes, he said he wanted a public option. Yes, he offered it in speeches.
Yet — the fact the you have to dig through 5 pages to get to the PO section underlines his point, that it was, indeed, a small section of his plans. Here’s the two summaries from pages 1 and 5(pdf):
and
There’s 6 points in the 2nd one, and it’s the 2nd of the top sections. What’s first? Lowering Health Care Costs, with it’s own set of points. Even in the overall summary, the PO-like wording — which encompasses some things the Senate Bill does provide — comes last.
In what universe does that amount to the PO being a cornerstone of his plan, much less a point he pressed in interviews and in speeches?
The point we’re trying to make isn’t that he didn’t offer it in the plan — I read the plan when it came out, and I know it well — but that it’s never been a Key Element of what he wanted, which would be a point of Campaigning on it. Which is, I thought, the point of the TP article.
It’s not that he never said he wanted it, but that he tried to push for it in a Congressional (not public) environment that was hostile, and that tempered his ability to motivate for it, public support or no.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: No he doesn’t. He disowned me politically when I became a Democrat.
He’s to the right of DeMint.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jack:
Yer losin’ me here.
matt
@Mary G According to this, Orencia costs about $500 per dose. Why does it cost $12,000 per hospital visit for you? (This is a rhetorical question.)
Jack
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t know how, kindly, this justifies the lie.
Was it okay for George Bush to lie because he always supported “regime change in Iraq”?
Jack
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I was just explaining why I used “Mr.” is all.
Dannie22
Wow! One misquote and you clowns are ready to burn down the white house. Jesus it’s Christmas ! Get over it! President Obama is bringing you healthcare after 100 years of trying and you clowns are crying about a possible misstatement. Even it wasn’t a misstatement , even if he lied through his teeth, there were never any votes for a public option much less single payer. Bernie Sanders was on tweety today and basically said there weren’t any votes. Go get drunk, go get laid but get off my presidents back. Bitchez!
John Sears
@John Cole: I presented you with the full quote from his campaign paper. I have it open in a tab one over from this page in Opera right now. It’s on page five, you can read it for yourself if you don’t believe me.
When he made these promises he wasn’t President yet. I’m not blaming him for not having the votes. I’m blaming him for thinking he can say he did not in fact campaign on something when the campaign website is still active and the pdf where he does, in fact, state that there will be a PO in his plan and it will be open to all Americans, is still up and readable.
Things change. I would have had far more respect for him if he had simply stated that the situation on the Senate forced him to abandon a plank of his platform.
Not so much. Besides the PO being dropped, the Senate plan also drops drug reimportation and Medicare drug price negotiation. Both of which are described in detail in that PDF.
So it’s not just the PO, or a slip of the tongue. He’s trying to rewrite the history of the campaign.
mcc
I don’t really see how someone who has been paying attention could claim the Obama administration hasn’t been trying to manage expectations on the public option. In fact, I seem to remember that’s how people got angry at Obama in the first place. Because occasional statements made as if the public option were one desirable provision in a larger bill and not an absolute will-be-in necessity were interpreted as “not supporting” or “not showing backbone” on the public option.
And as far as trying to keep people from energy getting up about the public option– isn’t that the kind of outcome you want to avoid? Didn’t we want there to have been energy about the public option? We wanted the public option to pass! In retrospect it seems pretty clear the public option couldn’t pass, that didn’t mean that until that became certain it wasn’t still worth fighting for.
FlipYrWhig
@Gwangung:
I can see it too, but I think that’s a kind of reading that sets out to find incriminating evidence, rather than a kind of reading that sets out to find evidence and _then_ weighs whether it’s incriminating or not. And I have a huge issue with that, both on blogs and professionally.
Jack
@John Sears:
This.
Just Some Fuckhead
Gonna cut it short tonight to work on my apology letter to Hillary.
John Sears
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: If cost is the primary concern, then the fact that the CMS says the Senate bill raises national health expenditures slightly would also seem to be a fundamental difference from what he campaigned on.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jack:
And this is your brilliant rebuttal, just all the other specious shit you have spewed here the last week, most all of it prompty shoved back down your prissy pie hole by people who actually know something.
Now I don’t know if your a PUMA, a dead ender, or a ratfucking republican, but you have brought nothing but conjecture, bullshit, and the dazzling discovery that presidents lie. My lance is square up your ass dude. Let’s rumble. eh.
John Cole
@John Sears: You’re arguing with the wrong people. I’m just asking you to count to list the 60 voted for the PO.
Laura W
I have no dog, cat, ferret, guinea pig, hamster nor pony in this brawl, but this was just hot writing:
Pass the Benson & Hedges menthol, please.
(Edit: Stuck @142: I would’ve thought it hot even if it had not been leveled at you. Er, especially if it had not been leveled at you. Er…where’s Fuckhead? I’m in over my dino head now.)
handy
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Now that’s not necessary, is it?
L. Ron Obama
When the fuck did the comment section turn into Daily Kos?
J. Michael Neal
Is it weaselly? Maybe. There are a couple of problems with the whole poutrage here, though. The first is that “campaign on” isn’t a phrase with a really clear definition. Does that mean something on the website? Does that mean talking about it in stump speeches?
I’d also really like to know when the phrase “public option” got defined. Is what you people mean by that the same thing that Obama meant by “public plan”? I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure that you don’t, either. The .pdf Jack links to never really makes it clear what “public plan” means. Does that mean a plan provided by the government, or does it mean a plan available to the public?
Linking to something that Obama said in July of *2009* really has nothing to do with what he campaigned on, unless you want the definition of that phrase to be very precise when it helps make your argument, and then just about meaningless when precision demolishes your argument.
Jesus, if liberals are going to be this fucking pedantic about everything, I hope they can find themselves some nice caves to go hide in when they realize that it isn’t just Obama that they can’t trust, and isn’t just every politician that they can’t trust. They are going to have to become hermits once they realize that they can’t trust any human being who has ever talked at different times about the same thing and isn’t always consistent.
Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
Tsulagi
Seriously? I know you post pics of cats, but you’re surprised like a newborn kitten? We’ve seen way more than once already the transcendy talk doesn’t always steer the rubber on the ground. Like this little example…
__
Before Harry and Nancy even got started, that transcendy talk got steered into a sweetheart deal with PhRMA. No price negotiation and no drug re-importation in exchange for a capped figure of $80B over 10years. During that same 10-year period, candidate Obama would have believed $300B in savings on the 65+ crowd alone could have been achieved with something like the Dorgan amendment the WH pushed to kill.
It’s 11D chess.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: And he said that to Stuck. It’s like insulting me in Chinese.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I will send my Dinosaur over to bite off yer empty head.
John Sears
@John Cole: I wasn’t aware I was on the Obama campaign team last year, or was recently made Majority Whip in the Senate.
Whether or not what he stated was his plan last year is now possible is irrelevant to the fact that he did in fact outline that plan and has now tried to disavow it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@handy:
Nah, I’ll just make it from all of us so we only have to do one.
General Winfield Stuck
@Laura W:
sounds a little homoerotic. Maybe that’s not a lance in Jack’s pocket, but he’s just glad to see me.
J. Michael Neal
@John Sears:
Raises national health expenditures relative to what? Current spending? Baseline predictions of what we would be spending without any changes? Baseline predictions of what we would be spending given that there will be an additional 30 million people with health insurance?
If I remember correctly, the CMS study said the second, but the only really useful measure is the third.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Jay B.: Because that’s the stupid game we play, here. It has crap-all to do with reality
Obama’s role was to be the President who would encourage and support Congress in doing this. That’s within the Separation of Powers (sort of). I disagreed with the drawing up of “his own bill”, ’cause that’s not in his role, Congressional allies or no.
Look, the key here was not just Obama’s natural disinclination. Dachle et. al. went through the fires of Clinton trying to force a bill in the same ways people seem to want Obama to do so, and getting stiff-armed in Congress for his efforts. Team Obama didn’t want any of that, and begin headed by two Senators, and with a CoS who came from the House, felt they were best served by encouraging from something of a distance, and letting the Legislature legislate.
But. Because our system from running for President insists that candidates must make up these complex plans, and then pledge they’ll do them (no matter what), and then get judged based upon those plans and their implementation, we get the situation where Presidents are seen as instigators of law, and are judged on how effectively they get the laws through — and not on their Constitutional roles as enforces thereof.
And thus, Obama plays the game of “my law, right or wrong”. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, and I don’t; it’s as much the product of a handful of Senators as it is of Obama’s original plan, and that’s how the system, broken as it is, works.
Does that make sense?
FlipYrWhig
@Jack:
All right, now I don’t even know what “the lie” is supposed to be.
For your example to be analogous, someone would be asking Bush if he was satisfied with the Iraq War authorization of the use of force, and he would say, “I didn’t campaign on war with Iraq. I still think it’s a good idea, but it’s just one small element of a broader War on Terror.” And during the 1999 campaign he did, in fact, say that if he found that Saddam Hussein was developing WMDs, he’d “take ’em out,” or “take him out,” it’s not clear from the transcript. So would he be “lying” by saying that he didn’t campaign on war with Iraq? Well, he did _mention_ it, but he definitely didn’t “campaign on” it. And his reasons would still suck shit through a straw, and we could tear them up something fierce. But I think it wouldn’t be a “lie.”
Demo Woman
How many of the ranters listened to the 17 minute interview.
Unfortunately, the public option section took 2 seconds and is overshadowing the other 17 minutes.
I’m not sure what the meaning of is, either but at this point, I don’t really care.
John Sears
@J. Michael Neal: So we’re actually going back to debating the meaning of commonly understood terms. Wow. That’s great for the Democratic image.
While ‘public plan’ is not specifically defined, it is paired with, and contrasted with, ‘private’ plans. So whatever it was supposed to be, it could not be a privately administered healthcare plan.
Medicare, Medicaid, any government administered plan you could choose within the exchange would qualify. This current Senate package has no plan of any kind that is not from a private insurer. No matter how much weaseling is done, that much is clear.
John Cole
@John Sears: Yeah. Ok. Thanks for playing. You have no idea how to get to 60 to get the bill you want, but instead are going to sit here and bemoan what could have been in fantasyland.
Laura W
@General Winfield Stuck:
Well, that right there ‘splains why it made me hot.
GraceLauraGeneral Winfield Stuck
@L. Ron Obama:
While you were sleeping, I guess. This is an epic troll war for the soul of Mordor, (or Balloon Juice since it’s teh internet) to determine who controls the realm. PUMA v Obot.
roll cameras please
FlipYrWhig
@John Sears:
/bonk, bonk, bonk goes my head
Where’s the “disavowal”? In the interview he STILL SAYS he thinks it’s, and I quote, “a good idea.” Just read the interview or listen to the audio without priming yourself to catch what you think is a lie, and see if you still object to it. IMHO it’s pretty clear in context that he’s doing the part-whole maneuver he’s been doing since the summer, _not_ trying to say he never argued for the public option–because if he wanted to do that, why mention that he still thinks it’s a good idea?–but emphasizing that the important thing was the larger framework and the public option as a small cog within that machine.
John Sears
@J. Michael Neal: .7% over the baseline, over what we would have paid without it.
So yes, you get 30 million people ‘covered’. The subsidy levels are determined based on the Silver plans, which have 70% actuarial value, which is ludicrously inefficient. (Medicare is 97% actuarial value).
The CMS also says that 17 million people will lose their current employer health insurance and that 19% of all health insurance plans will be subject to the excise tax in 2019. This is due to the lousy employer mandate being weak enough that it’s cheaper for many employers to dump their employees on the Exchange.
So when people like Ezra Klein go on about the coverage expansion, remember the 17 million people who are expected to lose what they have now.
John Sears
@FlipYrWhig: He says it’s a good idea, but that he didn’t campaign on it.
At the same time it’s still up on his campaign website.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
The 64 dollar question that answers all this nonsense.
No answer because there isn’t one.
John Sears
@John Cole: If I can’t fix the health care crisis I’m not entitled to point out when a politician lies?
What if his lie had been on a totally unrelated subject?
John Sears
@John Sears: Err, I got my sentences out of order. The 17 million people lose their insurance due to the mandate; the excise tax part is unrelated and was meant to be the next paragraph.
General Winfield Stuck
@Laura W:
LOL
John Cole
@L. Ron Obama: It is tedious, isn’t it. Getting a bill Democrats would have thought impossible the last two decades, and Obama is the worst Preznit ever.
The difference between the two parties is amazing. Republicans spin losses into wins, Democrats spin wins into losses.
mcc
@John Cole: One thing worth noting is that increasingly none of this is about outcomes, anymore. It’s about purely personal politics. What matters isn’t the bill, it’s whether Mr. Barack Hussein Obama II is a good person or not. What matters isn’t whether the left or the right won the battle, what matters is whether Joe Lieberman or Markos Moulitsas came out on top of the other. The blogosphere discussions all year have been turning more and more away from the question of how politics effects America or us-as-individuals and more and more toward weighing Barack Obama’s soul.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
I think this is sufficiently distilled and lynch pin like to an important argument, that it should be made another Cole’s Law in the lexicon.
Where’s the sixty?
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: People do what they want to do. It’s not a lie to me and can never be a lie to me because I took a different interpretation and have always taken that different interpretation.
John Cole
@John Sears: I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE OBAMA QUOTE.
I’m talking about your comments last four days insisting there was a route to pony in the Senate.
joshers
Don’t get your panties in a bunch people. Couple of quick points.
First, all but one of the ThinkProgress quotes are post-inauguration, so they’re irrelevant to whether Obama “campaigned” on the public option.
Second, the quote from the 2008 campaign plan is misleading because ThinkProgress omits the end of the sentence. The plan actually reads, “any American will have the opportunity to
enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan . . . .” As I understand it, the bill does set up an exchange, which provides the opportunity for any American to enroll in an “approved private plan.” The quote does not prove Obama lied.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
Republicans polish turds.
Democrats throw ’em on a bun and call it reform.
Sounds about the same.
John Sears
@John Cole: I’ve never insisted there’s a route to pony in the Senate. I’ve maintained that with the current plan we’re fucked.
Likewise, there’s no route to a climate agreement in America, but the ice caps are still melting and the Southwest is projected to be in a permanent drought for decades.
Likewise, there’s no money to fix our failing infrastructure and we’re not going to get the several trillion dollars we need to keep the roads and bridges from falling down.
That doesn’t mean these problems aren’t real, or that they’ll go away on their own. It just means that we as a country aren’t prepared to face up to them yet, that we are institutionally incapable of saving ourselves at this stage in our history.
Jay B.
@J. Michael Neal:
The plot to date:
In the beginning, liberals said “we need the public option to control costs and make the mandate worthwhile.” Many liberals said this for months and months and months. Every once in a while, someone would flot a trial balloon — Opt-in! Triggers! Medicare for all! Co-Ops! Weak P.O.! — and, depending on the trial balloon, people freak out or decide they could live with it. This started before Baucus went on his walkabout when he was the shit in the pudding. The entire time, the consistent argument was, whatever ‘it’ was, it had to work like a public option to lower costs and balance out the mandate. For much of this time, many liberals looked toward the White House for something, anything that would signal that they shared the same basic goals as many liberals did. In absence of leadership, many liberals heard assurances through the Administration, that they too supported the public option — although, admittedly, their support seemed tepid. Subsequently, many liberals were told, as Reid let things get away, that there was a famous call with bloggers where Obama stated that “it” — this public thingy — would be added in conference! Many liberals were skeptical and were called many things. Many derogatory things.
And now, here we are at the end game and many liberals are being told that they remember the debate incorrectly. And that their consistent support and screaming about the public option was a fantasy all along. And many liberals are pretty sore about it. And many liberals are now called pedantic children because the Administration has not only reneged on promises they made (that’s OK, many liberals are used to disappointment!) but that, we were wrong to believe them in the first place.
FlipYrWhig
@John Sears:
I don’t think you can be convinced, which is fine, but I don’t think “didn’t campaign on it” means “didn’t mention it” or “didn’t support it.” And the thought doesn’t _end_ with “didn’t campaign on it.” That point is immediately followed by “I think it is a good idea but as I said on that speech on September 9, it[‘s] just one small element of a broader reform effort.” The inclusion of the public option idea on the campaign website doesn’t refute that second point, which is second chronologically but IMHO first in terms of importance, when you square it with his many other statements on the place of the public option in health care reform. I really don’t think he’s trying to pretend that he didn’t want a public option. Because he still says, even in this interview, that it’s a good idea, and that many good ideas aren’t in the bill, but it meets 95% of what he wanted in terms of _objectives_.
John Sears
@FlipYrWhig: Where are you getting the 95% from? When did we assign numerical scores to the value of individual parts of the plan?
So what, is Drug Reimporation 1%, the Public Option 3%, and Medicare drug price negotiation 1%, or what?
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yep, both parties are the same, and no good is coming from this Senate bill. It is just total shit.
Comrade Jake
It’s a pretty simple choice of emphasis: Obama is claiming he campaigned on health care reform and not a public option. In essence, although the PO was a component of what he wanted to do, it wasn’t the central pillar.
I think he could have phrased it differently, but really don’t see the big deal.
But hey, God forbid we let this get in the way of a huge fight over semantics.
John Sears
@John Cole: There is quite a bit of good in it. It’s just overwhelmed by the bad. Plus, 17 million people losing their current health insurance is electoral suicide.
What do you think the cable news is going to look like, if this plan passes, circa 2014? Fox News will barely have to show up to work, just put up wall to wall coverage of people crying about losing their benefits.
John Cole
@Comrade Jake: OBOT. CLEARLY THIS SHOWS THAT OBAMA IS A LIAR AND WE SHOULD KILL THIS BILL.
Davis X. Machina
I had an old Jesuit for moral theology who used to say that 90% of human unhappiness comes from failing to distinguish means from ends, and wants from needs.
Mnemosyne
@John Sears:
What about the OPM plan that’s in the Senate bill? That’s administered by the government since you have the OPM overseeing private insurance companies for individuals the same way they do for federal employees. What’s the functional difference between that and a “public plan”?
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.:
Actually, I agree with your timeline and most of your framing. Especially this:
And I think you’re right, what’s coming out of the bill isn’t as good as a public option would have been in these respects. And I also think that Obama is saying a version the same thing: that the test of whether this is a good bill or not is in whether it meets those goals, as opposed to whether it includes that particular mechanism called the public option. He has a different view than you do, but of course he has to put a positive spin on whatever comes out of the process. So I think he’d say, you know, Jay B., you’re right, but having the OPM-managed choice of plans rather than the public option is still pretty good.
John Cole
@John Sears: Christ. I’m not sure we have a country in 2014 if we don’t fix the financial sector. We won’t have a country in 2011 if we do not get people back to work.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
Someone smarter than me said it’s what we’d have gotten if Republicans had passed it. I don’t know if I agree with that 100% but it does sorta make the case the parties are more alike than different, at least as far as fealty to the corporate state goes. To me, that doesn’t seem like a controversial thing to say.
But, what’s done is done. How we gonna pull off finance reform and climate change? I got an idea on finance reform. We could require everyone to buy Goldman stock.
slag
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Obama team has decided that him sounding like a liar is better than him sounding like someone who got his ass handed to him by a lowly senator from Connecticut. If that’s the case, I would agree with their assessment.
harlana peppper
@Tsulagi: Hey, cut that out with the facts and stuff, you screaming, irrational hippie you! You hate Obama/live in Fantasy Land, eleventy-billionz!
FlipYrWhig
@John Sears: “95%” comes from Obama himself in the interview transcript, which you may have missed:
John Sears
@Comrade Jake: In addition to campaigning *for* the public option, drug reimportation and medicare drug price negotiation, he also campaigned *against* an individual mandate.
Remember this?
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade Jake:
I like huge fights over semantics, because I’ve trained my whole life for those.
Comrade Jake
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
And Another Thing...
Oh for #$%@&& sake. The country is on the cusp of the most significant social legislation since the 60’s and some people are obsessing about parsing whether “campaigning on” is a lie – a statement that is embedded in what a 17 minute interview? What world do you live in? Have you ever been deposed, testified or interviewed when you mispoke, or mischaracterized anything? Do you really think that Obama memorized every effing nuance of the position papers on the website? Shit, those things are written by staff.
And NO this is not being an Obamabot. It’s called the real world, full of people…human people. You should cut human beings the benefit of the doubt. There’s no evidence that this is an orchestrated lie – you know the ala Bush. Bush mis-spoke, he colored stories in his favor…so what. So do you and I. There’s a difference between normal human frailty and planning lies and deception ala “British intelligence reports that Hussein is trying to acquire uranium.”
Go to Sully’s site and find the PDF he’s linked to that lists the changes that go into effect almost immediately. I know people who’s lives will be changed…and made less painful.
And you shrinking violet virgins need to grow the fuck up.
Comrade Jake
@John Sears:
Yes, I remember it. I also remember that OMG BARACK OBAMA IS A POLITICIAN!
DID YOU FORGET, ASSHOLE?
John Cole
And I don’t think I am being hyperbolic- we are having bubbles and financial meltdowns at increasing speed and much larger in scope. Mid 80’s, S&L, then the tech bubble 12-3 years later, then 7-8 years later, the crisis we just endured. I would not be surprised if we have another meltdown in 4-5 years- and if I had to wager, it would be based on pension funds.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’m going to wager that this smart person didn’t actually read the various GOP plans floating about from this process.
I’d have to vehemently disagree, on multiple levels.
John Sears
@John Cole: I’m not sure either.
If we do, I’d like people to have access to decent health care, which I honestly don’t believe this plan provides in any way, shape or form.
We haven’t hit bottom yet. That’s the reality. I was reading an article just this morning about the shadow inventory in the housing market and how it’s about to hit and start a new wave of foreclosures, at the same time as that tool Bernanke cruises to reappointment.
But I don’t know that the other looming apocalypses are any reason to punt on this one.@Mnemosyne:
Not correct. The OPM’s role in overseeing the plans is unclear, but they would be administered by private insurers. The OPM would probably set some regulations, things like basic coverage packages or premiums. You’d still face claims adjusters and endless red tape and struggling to find a doctor who’d take your plan when you get ill, and all the other peculiar joys of our private system. Or do you believe that the private insurers won’t still find a way to screw you?
John Sears
@Comrade Jake: I don’t assume all politicians are liars, actually.
slag
@Comrade Jake: I will defend anyone’s right to hold Obama to a higher standard. He told us to. I think we should.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill:
If you disagree with me, it means you hate President Obama and want 30 million Americans to die a hideous drawn-out pain-wracked death. Is that really what you want?
FlipYrWhig
@John Sears:
Wait, _that’s_ the big problem? I didn’t know that’s what I was supposed to be defending. I don’t really care about the difference between the campaign plan and the Senate bill. That’s kind of like saying, Aha, you didn’t say on the campaign trail that you wanted to give special favors to Nebraska and Louisiana! The Senate fucks with things. What I’m specifically responding to is what I think is a miscomprehension of what he’s saying in the interview, which I think implicitly means that he campaigned on comprehensive health reform, not _only_ on a public option. Now, the problem with my interpretation is that he doesn’t _literally_ say “only,” but he keeps making his characteristic “just a part” rhetorical move, so I feel that my assumed “only” is justified.
John Sears
@John Sears: Though I should add, most of the successful ones probably are.
Also, some politicians are honest with you all the way and you’ll still want to oppose them; I think that half the crazies in the Republican caucus are telling the truth when they rave about climate change or how they’re afraid government will kill grandma. They believe it.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@John Sears:
Considering that’s been a key point of my last two comments — that the plan changed radically in Congress, esp. the Senate, because that’s the process — I call bullshit. Here, so you don’t have to strain to find a quote from me:
So take your “Obamabot” crap someplace else.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Just Some Fuckhead: Man, I just want my Public Option Pony.
Comrade Jake
@slag:
No shit. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do that. I’m just suggesting that focusing so much attention on one sentence in a WashPo piece might be a bit disproportionate.
Honestly I stand by my first post: this was simply a change of emphasis. A single follow-up from our brain-dead mediots “well your campaign web site mentions a public option?” would’ve cleared this up. But you go to war with the media you have, yadda yadda yadda.
John Sears
@FlipYrWhig: And you believe this is comprehensive reform?
Really?
Up to 20% of your annual income, no guarantees on quality of provider networks, no drug price controls, no price controls on procedures, no workable generic pathway for biologics, aka every wonder drug of the next 25 years, weak employer mandate, millions losing their coverage and forced onto inferior plans or the Exchange, 70% actuarial value?
That’s comprehensive reform, for you?
Laura W
@Comrade Jake: Hey! Eagle vs. Shark sucked. I had to stop it half way through. She bugged the shit out of me.
I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, but I think you lied to me!
(I’m kidding. Just trying to get in the groove of this thread/blog. I thought Julie & Julia sucked, so you know…I’m probably not the best person to listen to right now. About anything.)
gbear
It being pointless to jump into this argument about the point of this argument, I suggest that this comment thread could use a good rapture.
Just Some Fuckhead
Dear Hillary,
I hope you are taping your meetings with President Obama..
PeakVT
@NR: Obama talked about the PO publicly for several months. Perhaps it was kabuki, perhaps it was genuine – neither of us knows. But it certainly appears to meet a minimal standard for “trying”.
John Sears
@205:
Feingold lays the blame squarely at Obama’s feet. I tend to trust my Senator on that one.
More to the point, in that interview he himself says this is mostly what he wanted. “Every single criteria.” Fine and dandy; he approves, he owns this now. By his choice.
But it’s not what he campaigned on, no matter how many times he says otherwise.
Comrade Jake
@Laura W:
You are easily one of my favorite people here.
scudbucket
@General Winfield Stuck: Priceless.
Comrade Jake
@John Sears:
Oh Jesus fucking Christ. In what fucking universe does Joe Lieberman vote for a PO? I mean, come on people.
John Sears
My browser is crashing here and it’s pretty obvious that my input is not needed any further, so I’m going to duck out. Later
John Sears
@Comrade Jake: Lieberman, for the final bill? I don’t know.
But for it not making it to the end?
That’s his take.
Now, is there a path to pony with Senator Bayh (D-Wellpoint) and Lieberman and Nelson? Who knows.
gbear
(never mind)
bystander
From barackobama.com:
Mnemosyne
@John Sears:
The plan seemed to be that they would essentially fold the people who chose them through the exchange in with the thousands of federal employees they already administer. Do you have any evidence that this is not the idea?
I’m assuming you don’t have your health insurance through a large employer. I do. I work for a giant evil corporation that has about 50,000 employees domestically. And you know what? Cigna doesn’t fuck with us, because they don’t want to lose the contract. They know that our company can walk away and suddenly they’re out at least $25,000,000. They’ll do little nickel-and-dime stuff, but they know that if enough people complain to HR, HR doesn’t sign a new contract with them and they’re screwed.
Once you get a big group of people together, you have buying power. That’s, you know, kind of the point of grouping a bunch of people under OPM — that way, OPM can negotiate on their behalf as a group. I’m really not getting why you think that people who have OPM to negotiate for them will continue being treated as individual policyholders.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Jake: I’ll answer ya Jake since John is having browser problems.
No one asked Lieberman to vote for a public option that he was on record as supporting in the past. No one asked Lieberman to vote for a medicare buy-in he was on record as supporting three weeks earlier.
What we were asking was someone to apply some pressure to him to not filibuster with Republicans. As I keep reminding you retards, legislation only requires 50 votes to pass.
Or threaten to blow up the Senate filibuster to the point where a couple moderate Republicans peeled off and agreed not to filibuster. Now you can say I’m all pie-in-the-sky but when Republicans threatened to blow up the filibuster, they got a compromise worked out pretty fucking quicklike.
So Snowe and Collins may have flipped to vote for cloture for the simple reason to preserve the filibuster and their future power as two of the handful of folks that control 99% of legislation with the filibuster.
But again, we didn’t try any of that shit because half a loaf of shit is better than a full loaf of shit.
Mnemosyne
@John Sears:
BTW, I think we may have two different definitions of “administered” here. My company administers our plan. That doesn’t mean that they hire doctors and run their own clinics. That means that they choose insurance companies that we can choose from and negotiate contracts with them. I’m not sure what definition of “administered” you’re using, but the OPM plan sounds like what every employer does: hire insurance companies on behalf of their employees.
Jay B.
As for the Ol’ Pony talk — where do we get 60? My evidently pie-in-the-fucking-sky dream of being able to actually reform health care, starting by reigning in costs with a robust public option?
For a few days now, I felt like I’ve been hallucinating. And not in a good way, but in that inexpressible way you sometimes feel if you are theoretically in what some hypothetical heads call a “bad trip”. I was like, yeah Fucking Ponyfuckface, when the fuck did you ever believe you’d have 60 votes?
So I tried to remember. All the way back to Dec. 2008. Paul Waldman seemed to lay out a pretty, at the time, logical case for the public option.
But that’s not it. I’m a dreamy, pony searcher! Then I looked back again and saw an article from all the way to March 26 of this year. This is a neat passage from the otherwise obscure current events journal “Time Magazine”:
.
Who is this fellow pony fucker douche fuck? Max Baucus!
How in the fucking world could I have thought that there were 60 votes in the Senate? The flaming fucking liberal Max Baucus was in favor of it, of course it had no fucking chance.
Such silly dreaming!
And it certainly took a child-like naivety to have been encouraged by an article from way, way back in late October (the 23rd, in fact) entitled “Reid Is Only One Or Two Votes Shy On Opt-Out Public Option”, although that article, by Sam Stein includes this nugget:
Wait, that must be a typo. Obama wasn’t involved! Unpossible! I wonder what some fellow pony dreamer fucknoses told Stein. Oh, wait, here:
Just let me get this straight. If these “advocates” are right — and it certainly hasn’t played out the way they called it all (stifled laugh) — the drive to 60 votes was pretty fucking close and Reid, of all people, was leading with his chin to get them, only to get undercut by “Obama’s support of the insurance industry position”, which signaled the end of the public option.
Where were the fucking 60?!
I’m such a dreamer.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
Well fuck!!
And Another Thing...
@John Cole: Word. I’m memorizing that one…and using it. And I don’t plagiarise. I give credit for gems like that one.
gbear
OT but just to shift the perspective a bit:
This is obviously Obama’s doing.
edit: h/t to Steve Benen @ Washington Monthly
slag
@Comrade Jake: I’m going to bridge the gap and call it “weasel words”, which means it seems like a lie but, technically, could be considered an accurate statement. But I do think there’s a motive to lie, which is why people are jumping on the statement.
Also, there’s been a lot leaked to the media about how the WH never pressured Lieberman on the PO, didn’t really fight for it at the end of the day, yadda yadda. It’s probably better to look like you didn’t try hard rather than to look like you tried and failed. The equivalent of an “I got a B, but I didn’t really study for it” statement.
Personally, I just wish we’d all be a little more willing to say we f*d up once in a while. We’d rid ourselves of a lot of unhappy pretenses.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.:
Um, why is that a smoking gun? They _did_ get close to 60, and Reid kept trying to get over the hump, but they didn’t get 60. Mostly because Joe Lieberman is a douchenozzle, but I think Lieberman was the point person for a cohort of less-than-overt douchenozzles like Bayh, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Carper, among others.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gbear:
Well thank god that’s all behind us now.
Comrade Jake
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You guys are delusional if you think Obama should have asked Joe for either. Don’t you get it? The only thing Obama was trying to ascertain was whether or not Joe Lieberman was going to continue his impersonation of Lucy, except with HCR instead of a football, because it was clear a long time ago that Joe WASN’T GOING TO VOTE ON PRINCIPLE.
I mean, when did you folks join the ranks of the galactically stupid?
FlipYrWhig
@slag:
But I think there’s also a motive for people to play lie-spotter, because it’s been happening throughout the process, especially as pertains to the public option and whether said he wanted it but didn’t _really_ wanted it, or said he really wanted it but didn’t _really-really_ want it, etc. People are pissed off and want to continue to be pissed off.
Ailuridae
The Senate bill effectively does create a new public insurance option but its only for people who really can’t afford it. You know, the 40B dollar expansion of Medicaid that would provide insurance to about 1/3 of the currently uninsured via a public plan.
gbear
@Just Some Fuckhead:
sigh. I’m praying for his death. It’s the current rage.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Jake: Did you not read the rest of what I wrote, douchebag?? We didn’t try ANY of that shit. Nothing. No hardball tactics. No mobilize the people. I think Obama had one Saturday morning radio address where he meekly asked for an upperdown vote.
We just rolled over for Republicans like Democrats always do.
And something has to give or we ain’t gonna reform finance, we ain’t gonna get climate change legislation. And one of these is actually gonna matter eventually.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gbear: I’m with ya g. I just put it on my Faceborg page as a reminder of what we’re up against.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@FlipYrWhig:
Exactly.
The point isn’t that we didn’t have a chance. Indeed, in some circles, the theory was that the White House wanted Reid to keep the PO out so it could, indeed, be resolved and reintroduced in conference with the House. There were a lot of barriers to that, and some — like Lieberman — didn’t become clear until late in the game.
You, Reid, and a lot of folks counted chickens before they hatched, man. And instead of realizing you got egg on your face, you’re bitching because reporters, well, did what reporters do these days — write without much call to understanding the many steps in this process. TIME’s not a horrific mag, but there’s a shallowness to much of their political reporting and blogging — I mean, they host THE PAGE, fer fuck’s sake! — that’s unhelpful to understanding all the pitfalls, here.
keestadoll
@Just Some Fuckhead: “I think it all depends on the meaning of the word “campaigned”.”
LOL–thanks, I needed that!
slag
@Jay B.:
Actually, I understand ponies can be attained with only 50 votes. Sixty-plus gets you unicorns. That’s according to my reading of The Supercilious Hippie field guide under the chapter “Self-Righteous Vote Counting and You: how to act like your hippie friends are imbeciles and make yourself seem Very Serious all at one time!”
Just Some Fuckhead
@keestadoll: Keep reading, I’m killing tonight.
donovong
This idiotic shitstorm may be over already, but I am putting a link here anyway. It is directed at all the parsimonious sissies here who are so damnably sure that “Obama Lied!!1!”
Despite the fact that it comes from GOS, it is a good refutation of the bullshit that has transpired in this posting.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/22/818132/-Fact-Check:-Obama-DIDNT-Campaign-on-the-Public-Option
Comrade Jake
Have people really forgotten where Rahm and the WH were pushing for the Snowe-PO-trigger compromise? I assume that since that wasn’t a robust PO, it doesn’t count? Well how does it compare to what we actually got with Reid counting on Lieberman’s vote instead of Snowe’s?
scudbucket
I was gonna write a comment that the current HCR bill was bad policy (really, really bad) but that passing it was good for Democrats, and we individually have to pick our poison … but I can’t. I don’t believe it myownself. The bill is really bad policy and it is bad for Dems: they’re gonna get a shitball handed to them next November. If Pelosi Reid and the Obamanauts don’t come up with something by then – PO thru reconciliation, anti-trust legislation for insurcos., re-importation, free bandaids – the GOP will make them wish they never heard the word ‘mandate’.
Comrade Jake
@donovong:
OH SNAP.
harlana peppper
@Jay B.: Stop making so much sense, you pony-dreaming, fuck-nosed, screaming, irrational hippie douche-nozzle! :)
General Winfield Stuck
@donovong:
That Chicken Little fucker gets his 15 minutes, all over again.
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
Maybe it’s not. But let me run it by you again — I’m going to cop to being pissed at the wrong target. Here’s part one:
What this is telling me is that Reid was looking for the price for one or two whores and he was doing it in spite of the Administration’s actual preference. I’ve always thought Reid was horribly inept, but he can’t be so fucking clueless to press for the public option if he thought it was unattainable — that is, he thought he could get it, until the President stepped in (something I’ve been told for the past 4 days wasn’t his style). Which is why Part 2 makes everything click for me:
The whores who were holding out on Reid (who, after all, knows what they are, they were just haggling over the price) shut it down after the signal came down from the Administration that Obama didn’t support the actual public option, but rather the INSURANCE INDUSTRY’S version. Why would the whores still bother with crossing the insurance industry if they didn’t need to?
Doesn’t this make infinitely more sense than the endless, ad hoc posturing of Nelson and Lieberman being the deciding factor? They were still holding out of course, but now, instead of having to suck it up for their insurance masters, they could now get additional concessions from Reid, after he was undercut by the Administration. It fits in with what Lieberman and Feingold said. It destroys the assertion that there was never a way to get to 60, unless you think ritual public humiliation is part of Harry Reid’s kink (again, why would he bother? He’d look like a complete loser if he did this and DIDN’T get 60.) and it might be, but it’s also out of character for him to be the one posturing for the nutroot ponyfuckers to soothe our fragile dreams.
There was substantial support for the public option for the past 13 months. As late as the end of October, the Senate Majority Leader thought he could “work the phones” to get the vote. And, reportedly, the Administration bailed on the public option altogether in order to back the insurance industry while now saying it met the criteria it wanted and promised.
I smell flint.
Ailuridae
@John Sears:
Here’s the question to Senator Feingold and anyone else defending his narrative. If there were possibly 60 votes for the public option as part of a larger health care effort there certainly would be 50 votes to pass a stronger public option (which again, is by design better than deficit neutral) anytime they want via reconciliation. I expect Senator Feingold will introduce such a measure the day after the main bill passes, AMIRITE? So, given how easy it would have been to get those 60 votes we now get a stronger PO with Senator Feingold taking the lead, right? OK, we are all waiting.
Comrade Jake
@Just Some Fuckhead:
No no, I get it. Obama has no spine. He’s a feckless leader who’ll never amount to anything. The bill is shit, yadda yadda yadda, douchebag. Good times.
What I don’t understand is why Feingold didn’t stand up to this on principle and say he’d join the GOP filibuster. It must be that Obama bought him off too, because we all know Russ has balls of steele.
slag
@FlipYrWhig:
Could be. I’m not pissed off anymore. But I can see why people would see it as a lie. Or at least as a weasel, which is pretty close to a lie.
slag
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I was going to argue that it depends on what the meaning of the word “on” is. Just for fun. But your way is probably better.
donovong
@General Winfield Stuck: No shit. I leave to fix dinner and come back to find that somebody left the door open and the liberal teabaggers found their way in.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Jake: Well, there’s the theory that Obama got exactly what he wanted. (According to Feingold, for instance.) It’s entirely possible that the P.O. was gone from the moment he made the deals with Pharma and Big Insurance before the process even started.
If so, I could make the case that Obama was pretty fucking canny. Imagine the look on a bunch of insurance company executive’s faces when the public option died at the very last minute after being told it wouldn’t be there, and watching anxiously as it kept gaining momentum over the months. If it happened that way, I bet ya they thought Obama was amazing. And you’d have to say he was in that case.
Just Some Fuckhead
@slag: I was gonna use “on” too but I changed it to “campaigned” when I saw one of the Muppets actually parsing the word “campaign”. Then I thought it would work as a joke AND a dig.
Edit: And that is what makes me the Mac Daddy around here. That, and the cocaine.
cat48
It appears to me he is talking about the campaign in 2008 which is believable to me because I don’t recall hearing anything about a “public option” until this Spring. I was not working during the campaign & I normally watched him when he was on TV. I remember the argument about mandates vividly, but I know I did not hear “p.o.” on a regular basis until this yr. The reason it is familiar to me is that is all that anyone has talked about this yr. If he gave a speech, interview, or made a stmt this yr & did not mention a public option, it was always in huge red letters at HuffPost and everyone went nuclear like now.
Maybe I do not recall hearing about it until this yr because I have health care. I am actually more concerned about the 20% of blacks and 30% of Hispanics that do not have health care. If there is a p.o., that is fine. If not, as long as they get insurance if they want it and it is affordable to them, I’m fine if it is a corporation. I did not support health ins. to punish the insurance companies. I did it to help people without it. A lot of people saying it should be killed have insurance now. I really don’t know how you do that to the uninsured.
You do realize don’t you, even if you get a public option, it will be administered by a health insurance company. Medicare is administered by for-profit health insurance companies. My first job was with Blue Shield processing Medicare claims. It paid really well, too. A public option does not mean govt employees or volunteers are going to run the “public plan”. That is why I feel like the ins. companies will profit regardless. It is not worth killing reform over regardless how you feel about Obama. It is not about him. It is about the uninsured who need help and some of it will start as soon as the bill is signed. You have 3 more yrs to argue with him.
Ailuridae
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You know how Russ could test that theory? Pass a robust public option that he introduced through reconciliation and see if the President signs it. I’ll also concede the point if Hellraiser Joe could be the +1 vote and decides to not cast the vote. Ok, have Russ get back to us on that.
Jay B.
I’m exactly sure that’s completely wrong. It’s administered by CMS.
kay
@Ailuridae:
The House bill with the holy grail public option repealed S-CHIP.
Ending S-CHIP that currently operates and covers 7 million children.
I think I’m going to have to start figuring in S-CHIP when I argue about this. It’s a big ‘ol public option, and the House bill repealed it, shunting those children at over 150% of poverty to the exchange to purchase insurance. Hmmm.
Public option advocates were trying to slide that little detail by me.
Paula
Whether or not Obama explicitly “campaigned” on the PO or merely, as he contends, thought it would be peachy but not vital is pretty irrelevant now. What is clear is that the PO became a big deal to a lot of people along the way, and, as Jay B. notes, a lot of key people most certainly did discuss it, promote it, etc. And Obama did discuss it in the few speeches he gave before/after all the August teaparty crap. And, after every speech, all kinds of discussion followed about how he had praised the PO but refused to say it was a dealbreaker to him and what did that mean?
And that cuts both ways. He chose to address the PO precisely because there was so much discussion about it, the public was polled repeatedly for months about it and always favored it, and it was in the House’s final bill. He talked about it because people liked the idea of it. He came right up to promising he’d fight for it, but he never did. If he were a girl I’d call him a cock-tease.
I don’t know what his motives were but there is zero question that it was a very significant issue and, while he never committed to it, he certainly NEVER said “sorry everyone, I think it’s a great idea but it ain’t gonna happen.” He said, “it’s a great idea” and left it hanging there.
It’s possible this was just a classic example of his desire to please – he knew it was popular and didn’t want to say No, but, knew that it was not gonna fly for whatever reason and just couldn’t break the news to us.
OR, he used it as a bargaining chip, deliberately. He made the calculation that people would get over it, and/or that he could sell the rest of the bill despite the loss of the PO.
Now what remains is the cleanup. Whether because of miscalculation, deliberate deception, politics as usual horsetrading or any combination thereof, he now has to contend with a group of unhappy people. With respect to the quote that inspired this posting, we should be wary of media outlets deliberately stirring up trouble. But regardless, attempts to mitigate his loss of support by trying to be “technical” will likely succeed about as well as Bill Clinton’s famous “I didn’t inhale”.
slag
@Just Some Fuckhead: Good choice.
Although seriously, these arguments really are leading us nowhere. It’d be nice if we could just drop the talk about “ponies” and about “liars” and move on to a new “where do we go from here” argument. I’m sure those subjects will come up again there. But at least the context would be different.
I’ll start: It was wrong of me to call the Obama political team and entire Democratic Party leadership “a bunch of Dogberrys”. I was angry; I only kind of meant it at the time; and even if it were true, saying so doesn’t help matters any. I apologize.
Now that I think of it, John should have a whole thread dedicated solely to everyone apologizing to each other. That’d be very Brady Bunch.
Jay B.
@kay:
Damn. You found us out. We wanted those parasitic bastards off the public tit. Crippled children suck, of course. But Poor crippled children are completely intolerable.
Edit: Does the guilt trip/bad faith argument really work? Just wondering.
gwangung
As a matter of curiousity, I wonder if there’s a way to game out all of these options and not get too optimistic or pessimistic (hm…probably not). Could easily see options where nothing got passed because of decisions made.
Just Some Fuckhead
@slag: I keep asking where do we go from here. If the Senate is effectively a 60 member body with a unanimous cloture requirement, we’ve already lost everything else on the agenda.
r. johnson had the idea that a handful of Democrats should start filibustering with Republicans so the Senate comes to a 100% halt. At that point, leadership has no choice but to blow up the filibuster and re-form it like they did in 1975.. and 1959.. and 1917.
But I don’t agree with you that these debates lead nowhere.
Edit: And I ain’t apologizing to anyone. If my handle doesn’t say enough, we’re dealing with morans.
And Another Thing...
@Jay B.: That depends on the meaning of “administer.” And we’ll get the WaPo to edit it so somebody looks bad.
Ailuridae
@kay:
Really? I am pretty sure the increased Medicaid subsidies overlapped 100% of the S-Chip losses (ie. raising the threshold re: “poverty” line) so there wouldn’t be less children covered but they would be on Medicaid rather then S-Chip (the latter seems superior right now)
Ailuridae
@Just Some Fuckhead:
If there were almost 60 votes according to you and others why are you not advocating to pass a stand alone public option or Medicare buy-in through reconciliation? Again, both are better then deficit neutral so let’s get it done if the votes are there.
General Winfield Stuck
@Paula: LOL
This gets my vote for today’s most vacuous post on BJ. I mean “cock tease”, gee willickers Paula, we will have to replace sausage making with presidential burlesque.
Tell you what, go back up thread and tackle Cole’s question to Sears, or where was he getting the 60 votes, and tell me he could have got Joementum to put out and go all the way.
You know, the Joe Lieberman, THE GUY WHO CAMPAIGNED FOR THE OTHER GUY, I think it was John Mccain. The HolyJoe who gave a stirring speech AT THE GOP CONVENTION.
We are entering the Twilight Zone, hope everyone has a flashlight to find their way thru the PUMA ruble.
kay
@Jay B.:
I was kidding. It’s a big bill. I know you weren’t hiding it.
I was looking for it, because it affects the subsidy issue. The Senate bill, if I understand it, takes funding for S-CHIP from 70% to 90%. The House bill repealed it, for families over 150% of poverty level.
I’ll look into it more thoroughly.
Jack
@Jay B.:
You are correct. It’s no wonder that the faith faction has such room to believe. A number of them have those beliefs in place of fact.
CMS is a part of HHS, as well.
slag
@Just Some Fuckhead: I agree that we are kind of back at square one. We got a bill (better than nothing), but we’re still at 60 in the Senate with midterms coming up and no hope-and-changey goodness in sight.
Our only two routes–blowing up the filibuster or invoking some serious political jujitsu–seem to be totally off the map at this point. And the terrain for the rest of the agenda is rocky as hell. Maybe people are so pissed off because it feels better than fully appreciating how unbelievably screwed we kind of are. Maybe, at this point, anger is a form of optimism.
mcc
@slag:
My “where we go from here” post would be:
We lost on the public option. It’s not going into this bill. Any effort spent trying to change that right this instant will be counterproductive or distract from something more important.
Since the public option is being taken out of the plan, and this is a huge thing for House progressives to trade away, the House will have a lot of leverage to demand some other sort of concessions (though this leverage will be hurt by the fact the house itself is split on abortion in a way the Senate is not). Better subsidy rules, stronger “employer mandate” provisions and (I’m not sure about this, but it would be important to a lot of people) making the subsidy provisions of the bill start sooner than far-away 2014 would be important things to target (TPM ran a story today implying the House is currently leaning toward making that last thing– start sooner– as its big demand.) Re-instating antitrust rules for insurance providers would be nice and candylike but I’m not sure whether it would make a difference in practice. At a minimum, very soon we will need to get out in front of demanding there is no backsliding on abortion rules from the far-superior Senate language.
We shouldn’t drop the public insurance idea. There’s no need to. Just because we didn’t get it into this one particular bill doesn’t make it any less useful, and now that the bill is passing there’s this beautiful exchange system with this perfect pluggable slot for a public insurance option. We need to figure out the best way to do this. We also need to decide when is the most plausible time to do it. In theory, we could try to pass public option or a version of the medicare buy-in plan more or less immediately, as soon as the budget process starts next year, through reconciliation. Reconciliation was inappropriate for the health care bill itself but a standalone public option bill would fit Reconciliation’s weird rules much better. I’m not sure we want to do this immediately, however. This would get in the way of a lot of other progressive priorities (next year will be busy) and might be difficult just because the public and probably also the congress sort of has health care fatigue. We might want to try to just talk about it a lot the next year and try to get the Congress to attack it after the 2010 election. One advantage of taking our time on this is it would allow us to demand the “robust”, medicare linked public option we really wanted. If we’re no longer having to put up with the constraints of fitting things in with the huge, complex, 60-votes-required heath care bill there’s no reason to settle for second class. Of course, a robust public option– I think it’s been clearly demonstrated– can’t pass either house of Congress right now, even with a 50% threshold.
One thing that might make sense, and I think could be done right now, is to give up on the idea of the public option as a new federal bureaucracy and instead go back to some form of the medicare buy-in. I think “buy a medicare policy” is closer to what we wanted than the public option ever was. Meanwhile it’s demonstrated 59 of the Senate dems are willing to accept a medicare buy-in, and some of them might support the idea just to say screw you to Joe Lieberman (I have this theory that senators are petty people) after he messed up their precious collegiality this month by pulling out of a deal. We could probably pass this through reconciliation, soon. But of course that’s mostly a long-term bet, since in an immediate sense it would only help people over 55. I’m not sure if this or a second chance at passing a public option is more worth our time.
Jack
@Jay B.:
What’s interesting is that it’s a Republican argument: Liberals hate poor/brown people. If you dirty lefties actually cared about them, you’d [insert outcome least likely to result in improvement of conditions for said parties which also resembles outcome most beneficial to very rich rat fuck bastards].
Davis X. Machina
It would seem to be the case, at least in some states.
kay
@Ailuridae:
Well, it’s 150% of poverty level, right there in the House bill, unless I’m missing something. I went to the NY Times graphic version-comparison.
Most states do better than that, I believe only two are that low, so it looks like a net loss on children’s current coverage in the House bill.
Too, the Senate bill actually increases funding on S-CHIP by 26 points, so it’s a net gain on children’s current coverage.
Ailuridae
@slag:
You can break the fillibuster with legislation that is a lot more popular than health care. Namely financial regulatory reform. The public is much more aggressive than a Senate body that is made up of nearly half kleptocrats.
Jack
@Davis X. Machina:
“Unknown column ‘10277l’ in ‘where clause'”
And Another Thing...
@And Another Thing…: CMS, which used to be called HCFA, administers Medicare by contracting with non-governmental entities to administer Medicare by processing the claims. Most of the entities are probably for profit as most of the Blues, non-profits, and mutuals which were non-profits 20 years ago have changed their corporate status.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: I envision a few different tracks, all of which presume understanding on all sides that single-payer wasn’t getting to 60, but public option would be tantalizingly close but all the more difficult for how close it could get.
Going back to the Baucus fiasco, remember how he kept meeting as a “group of 6”? There I think the idea was that if Baucus could find a way to reach a compromise that could hold 3 Republicans, it flings open all kinds of negotiations. You can tell Joe Lieberman to piss up a rope, for example, and still have a couple of wild cards in case someone pitches a fit (like a pro-lifer, maybe). I think that’s why that lasted so long.
When that fell apart, it was out of Baucus’s hands, and it seems like there were two tracks for Reid. One was to try Snowe again, or Collins. Maybe the other was through Nelson or Lieberman or both.
I get the sense that the WH was like, bring the Maine Republicans around, because they’ll negotiate in a discernible way (like on the stimulus), and we’ll get bonus points for making it “bipartisan.” But Reid thought, no, I’m the darn Majority Leader of the Democrats, and I ought to be able to get my Dems in line, even if they talk out of both sides of their mouths.
I shouldn’t be able to imagine internecine Senate politicking. What a waste of imagination…
kay
@Ailuridae:
So, family of four, House bill, 300% S-CHIP coverage in your state, you’re losing two kids but picking up two parents.
Christ. My head hurts.
Right now I say jettison the parents! Overboard! Sink or swim!
I’ll have to look at it again.
General Winfield Stuck
Maybe? no maybe about it. It is at the heart of this entire PUMA hissyfit. It is reality. You know, like how things are for sane people. We have wasted days of spittle on this shit, and mindless wanking on how Obama is this or that, shoulda woulda coulda, And all of it is horseshit, when the entire fucking thing boils down to simple math, and counting to 60.
And if there are plans to pass the PO by reconciliation later, has it dawned on all the principled political wizards we have here bashing Obama, that if there was any inkling publicly, that it is planned, that Joe, Ben, and the rest of the Cinderella Band of drama queens would go along with passing the other reforms. You know, the ones that were good, but became evil once the PO pony went bellyup.
FlipYrWhig
@slag:
I think that’s very apt.
slag
@mcc:
I’ve wondered about this. Wouldn’t doing so violate Obama’s commitment to PAYGO?
And I like to think that healthcare will be revisited after 2010, but I’m inclined to doubt it. Especially when our majority has dwindled or likely disappeared at that point.
Sanka
Therein lies the depressing backdrop to the election of Barack Obama as president. A man who stood for substantiative “change” and for nothing at all, both at the same time.
In his days of “organizing” “communities”, and his early political career, Obama “stood for” the public option. It has been documented that Obama “supports” the single-payer model, while acknowledging that it can’t be done in one legislative swoop.
Once his national ambitions were made known, he “campaigned” on “reform”—purposely nebulous in it’s simplicity. Thus, as president, he is able to say “I did not support the public option” while his political donors are actively soliciting it. Meanwhile, the brain-dead Democratic party is so desperate to pass whatever piece of shite theycan cobble together and slap the label “healthcare reform” on it, so that the sheeple will
vote for themapplaud them for generations to come, they are willing to risk their majorities and quite possibly, the White House.All because the narcisstic amateur in the White House wants a legacy.
Great job, hopeandchangers…
Comrade Jake
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes, I just believe this to be a theory from wingnutville. I’m sure it’s just me though.
slag
@Ailuridae:
I like the sound of that! But the public was in favor of the public option too. So, what was missing was the “aggressive” part, which the Obamaphiles failed to supply in spite of our best efforts. And that was back in during our hopenchange period. Now, people are talking about joining forces with the teabaggers just to get something done. That can’t end well.
Midnight Marauder
@FlipYrWhig:
And yet, you do it so well. That seems quite similar to my own take on the matter.
And Another Thing...
@mcc: Medicare buy in is a good idea. People understand it. It’s relatively easy to administer as most of what is needed bureaucratically already exists. The largest number of people who need it most are 50+ for whom there is almost no private insurance market etc. And the last polling I saw showed it as being popular, by abt a 30 point spread I recall. 50+ year olds have assets to lose and are the most likely to have serious illnesses. 25 year olds don’t have much assets and are more likely to be injured in vehicle accidents which are likely to be covered by insurance. And as the ultimate bellweather – even my right wing & hard right wing relatives understand it and think it’s a good idea, cause Medicare is not soshalism dontchaknow.
Shevek57
@Paula:
Excellent.
Brachiator
@mcc:
Or strongly regulate health insurance companies, in addition to, or separate from, the idea of a public option.
There is an April Atlantic Monthly article which suggests that the Swiss health care system, might be an option which even a Republican could love:
The probable passage of health care reform permits innovative thinking for the next phase, which is going to be necessary to fight off the inevitable GOP attempts to halt or roll back anything that becomes law.
General Winfield Stuck
Gotta leave this thread before the stupid kills me.
Paula
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’m not responding to John’s contention that there were never 60 votes. That’s not what I wrote about. What I wrote about was the back and forth that went on about the PO, and the fact that Obama most definitely participated in that back and forth. And one of the things he said more than once was that the PO was a good idea because it would keep the insurance companies honest, and also because it would introduce real competition. He said he was open to other ideas that accomplished the same things – and thus we went down the path of the Medicare Buy-in. Triggers were always out there and were never taken seriously because no one believed the would actually be triggered.
Since Obama stated more than once that he felt some kind of external pressure was needed, and since the PO was the only mechanism that fulfilled that need, it didn’t seem unreasonable to think that he would exert some effort to get it done.
Finally, my ultimate point was that there are bad feelings out there now and Obama appears to be trying to assuage those feelings. But neither he, nor you, is going to succeed by trying to paint him as guilt-free in this situation. Anything that smacks of revisionism will be reviled, and rightly so.
I would think someone as brilliant and gifted as Obama would be able to figure that out and would try something else.
kay
@Sanka:
Oh, bullshit, Sanka. Democrats have been trying to pass a national plan on health care for decades.
The intense personalization of Obama’s presidency makes me queasy. Slightly ill. All this gaming of motives and peering into his soul. It’s how peasants view a king. “Why did he DO what he DID?”
I am so sick of this obsession with the personality traits of elected leaders. It reached the point of mental illness with George W Bush, but Obama has (incredibly) surpassed even that crazy.
Just look at the goddamn bill and take it or leave it. Spare me the character analysis.
Mary G
@matt: They bill $12,000 for one dose for the same reason they bill $20 for a box of Kleenex, in the hope that someone may actually pay them that. Medicare pays around $1,000 and my supplement pays $300 or so. The hospital writes off the rest because the law says they have to. If I lost my insurance I couldn’t get it for that.
Before I applied for disability and got on Medicare, I paid $678 a month for insurance with a $1,500 deductible and a 30% co-pay. I was on Remicade at the time, so it cost me $525 a month for the co-pay. Even with insurance, I still went through a substantial chunk of my savings before the Medicare came through.
That’s why the bill sucks, because it gives people the right to buy insurance like that, which in essence is useless to the great majority of people. I am lucky because I was able to move in with my mom, whose house is paid off. If I had to come up with rent or mortgage money I couldn’t afford the $385 a month for the supplement I am so grateful to have.
Of course, moving in with your mom at 45 when you’ve been out of the house and independent since 17 is a whole ‘nother thing.
Jack
@Paula:
“…But here’s what I don’t get: why didn’t Obama, starting the day after he won the election, relentlessly brand the economy as Bush’s? Why didn’t he tell every Democrat that whenever they’re appear on TV, they have to meet a quota of three mentions of “The Bush Economy”? That’s just politics 101, and god knows the Republicans would have done it if the situation were reversed. Obama had every incentive to do this, and none not to—he could still have had the same policies to pay off Wall Street, while shielding himself from some of the heat.
It’s weird. While the Democrats do behave like the Washington Generals, consistently playing to lose, I don’t generally think it’s conscious. They’re just responding to incentives. But here the incentives are all in one direction (as far as I can tell), and they haven’t acted.
The only explanation I can see is staggering incompetence. I guess you can never rule that out.”
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003182.html
Not the exact subject at hand, but a good read of his failure to define the political moment.
At some point, people are going to accept that President Obama is not a policy driver.
Davis X. Machina
CMS and private contractors. (link looked good on edit)
kay
@Sanka:
I mean, to what do you attribute Bill Clinton not being able to pass a bill? His lack of character? His inherent slippery nature? Really?
Was it that or was it a full-bore assault by well-funded groups who were protecting a profit center?
If he had just had the force of will and moral certitude he would have succeeded?
Isn’t that the same “leadership” blather I heard about Bush that was supposed to transform Iraq into a cakewalk?
There are about hundreds of factors in play here, and we reduce it all to the Will Of One Man. That’s a movie. It’s not real life.
Jack
@kay:
You have a very black and white (and therefore erroneous) view of human events, and especially Presidential character and politics.
It wasn’t either Clinton was slippery, or he was besieged by venal interests.
It was Clinton was slippery and venal, was besieged by venal interests, managed to do some real damage and still managed to do some real good.
rikyrah
there’s a word for this:
YOUTUBE.
I was so disgusted when I read this today.
General Winfield Stuck
@Paula:
With all due respect, if you are not going to respond to this contention, then everything else you write is nothing more than complaints about Obama’s style and posturing to please people who are likely so pig ignorant nothing would please them but getting what they want, when they want it.
The math is simple and it was never there, just wasn’t. You folks can continue to make electoral threats and wave the bloody rag of blame, but nothing Obama can do will persuade people who do not want to be persuaded, or are unable to grasp the simple math that goes with passing laws out of congress.
There is no mystery in it, no changing it with grand gestures or public flogging that could have changed Joe Lieberman’s mind. He is not a democrat, and did not vote for OBama, and does not think he should be president. And that doesn’t even consider the fact he is a vindictive little bitch that wants to shiv democrats for fun.
Do you really believe otherwise?
And haven’t you read the GOS dismantling on this matter that Obama campaigned on the PO.@donovong:
Jack
@General Winfield Stuck:
Mr. Cole’s contention was an argument past hers, not to it. Why should she drop her case to take up Mr. Cole’s?
slag
@General Winfield Stuck: See. Here I am trying to be all apologetic and nice and here you have to go and be an ass. I hope the stupid does kill you, then.
Tsulagi
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Well, where we don’t go is having these Democrats bring up health care again any year soon. By the time the Republicans would get through with them, it would then be Bible based. Dems would mandate the buying of leeches. Leeches would be bought at retail as the WH would be against price negotiation or re-importation. Dem “centrists” would chastise any non-supporters as non-realists: “It’s the best they let us have and we can build on it later.”
So STFU, Dem 11D chess could be even worse.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jack:
Because Mr. Cole’s case, IS THE ONLY ONE. That is if you want to be honest about what is to blame here. Or, if you want to continue to bash Obama just for fun over style and posturing for naught, and chewing on conspiracy theories, then have at it. It’s allowed here. Just don’t blow smoke up my ass with it is all I ask.
Balloon Juice now has a PUMA wing. How cool is that?
General Winfield Stuck
@slag:
This is untrue
This is true
kay
@Jack:
I have a black and white view of the world? from you?
You make conclusory, definitive statements as to motive and intent with the vaguest, gauzy spun out of thin air crap I have ever read.
You roundly pronounce on negotiating tactics and the outcome of events that have not occurred and will not occur with a certitude that borders on ludicrous.
I’d keep you off a jury, my friend. Your moral opining and sanctimony and unfounded conviction that you never make an error when you’re guessing here (like all the rest of us) would scare the shit out of me. Rightly.
Comrade Jake
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’m not sure it’s a PUMA wing so much as a WLB (whiny little bitch) wing. Not that it matters.
If recent history is any indication, it too shall pass. Cole’s just not the type to sustain the nonsense.
Shevek57
@General Winfield Stuck:
Make sure you read all the recommended diaries at the GOS:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/22/818186/-UPDATED:-Candidate-Obama-DID-Campaign-On-The-Public-Option!
slag
@General Winfield Stuck: Show me where what I said was untrue, please.
Jack
@General Winfield Stuck:
A person who believes that there is and can only be one case/position/argument is the very sort of person who can also be persuaded to take up that case against his or her own interests, committing moral seppuku in the service of an unrequited loyalty.
Mr. Cole’s question about 60 votes is not relevant to whether or not President Obama dissembled or played with “weasel words.”
Whether or not the President could find 60 votes some year or so after he first spelled out his plan has nothing to do with the details of the plan upon which he campaigned.
Jack
@kay:
Huh?
You make stuff up too much.
Just Some Fuckhead
@slag: Stuck gets jacked up pretty easy and then it takes him a long time to come back down. Don’t take it personally, just hit him between the eyes with a 2×4. He gets blunt force.
Paula
@Jack:
Jack: “At some point, people are going to accept that President Obama is not a policy driver.”
I think that’s correct. We can all speculate to death about why, but until the tell all books start to come out, we’re not going to know what is/isn’t driving his actions. All we can see for ourselves is what he does and doesn’t do (with the caveat that, as in the case of the deal with Pharma, there will be things we won’t know about). And in terms of what he has/hasn’t done to date, I’ve concluded that he will ultimately be seen as a caretaker president. He will have stabilized the economy, though he may not get it to thrive. He will have halted some of the egregious abuses of the bush people. He will sign some good legislation along the way, especially legislation that isn’t too hard to pass. He will appoint competent people to a lot of positions (as well as an equal quantity of questionable insiders).
He will NOT be transformative. He will not be bold. He will not be particularly creative. He will not break outside the box – he is very comfortable with conventional wisdom.
What we don’t know now is whether that will matter in the larger scheme. There’s no question that he will disappoint people like me who are looking for leaders who have the desire to tackle bigger questions – how do we handle a world and an economy when we have too much productivity? Collectively, we can provide everything anyone needs all over the world, right now. We don’t, but we could. How do you employ a population sufficiently when you simply don’t need everyone to work 8-10 hours a day in order to provide for society’s needs? How do we reverse wage stagnation that’s been slowly killing the middle class? What do you do about the stranglehold corporations have on our government? What do you do about media consolidation which has led us to a point where the airwaves are filled with uncontested lies every hour, every day?
Etc.
I just don’t see Obama going near the bigger questions.
Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe his role, historically, will be to calm things down and set the stage for new leaders we haven’t heard from yet.
Only time will tell.
And Another Thing...
Ya know…one of the basic problems with this whole debate is that it feels like there’s a pretty good chance that most of the critics here & elsewhere have actually never, you know, played any significant role in getting an actual piece of significant legislation passed. There is nothing like it in the private sector. It is a bitch. There’s a whole lot to like or not like, and valid reasons to oppose or support it in toto. But there’s a helluva lot of nit-picking and premature condemnations of a bill that hasn’t even passed the Senate yet much less been to a Conference Committee. This is a long way from done. Just wait until we get to Kremlin watch who’s appointed to the Conference Committee. OTOH this is a massive lesson in civics, ain’t it.
Paula
@Jack:
Exactly, Jack. Thanks!
kay
@Jack:
“You have…”
“It was…”
“It was…”
Your words. A series of pronouncements. On an event that has about 6,000 interpretations.
And I have a black and white view of the world? You have a one -dimensional view of the world. You’re always right, and you’re always sure you’re right. Except when you’re not.
General Winfield Stuck
@Shevek57:
I never said he didn’t want a PO, as part of an overall reform bill to help reduce costs. He has said that many time, including during the campaign. But he has couched it during the actual debate for HCR as president as thinking it’s the best way to lower costs, but not the only way.
If you are going to be reduced to searching for inconsistencies between campaign rhetoric and out of context quotes to create a meme that Obama is a liar, then we are in for some fun times. And by all means, I think it will help your cause to join forces with the wingnuts to get the message out.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
PUMA Fuckhead, I like the sound of that. Has a nice ring to it. Isn’t it time for your beauty sleep. Fighter LOL
Ailuridae
@slag:
But they wouldn’t be breaking the plan to pass the public option but to pass overall health care reform. And overall health care reform is a filthy mess with a lot of counterintuitive stuff (you can make Medicare better while spending less etc) but financial regulatory reform isn’t. It makes sense to people.
Now an interesting test case would be to see if a stand along Medicare buy-in could break the fillibuster. I think it could but its a bet I would rather not not take or make.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Teehee, calling everyone pumas is so.. Appalachian Clever. Where do you come up with this stuff??
kay
@Jack:
And to top it off, a finger-wagging patronizing lecture, to Stuck.
Stuck, who sees about fifty shades of grey in any picture, and has been following health care for months.
Corner Stone
@Comrade Jake:
How many years did he vote R again?
Corner Stone
@kay: You’re done if you’re seriously calling on Stuck to save you.
Brachiator
@Jack:
Because when he became president, the economy became the Obama economy.
Nobody knows where Dubya is now, or much cares. And even though Bush and the Republicans caused this mess, the only thing the average American cares about is when are things going to get better and what is the president going to do to fix it.
If the president and the Democrats in Congress had their stuff together, they could easily capitalize on the plain fact that the Republicans don’t have any ideas besides tax cuts and deregulation. But the Democrats are spending more time fighting their own than in dealing with the GOP, and this is not a good thing.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jack:
Well, I know when I’m in enemy territory and surrounded, so this thread is for you PUMA’s and your wanking.
I didn’t say you couldn’t make arguments of how it could have been done better by Obama, I’ve said during all this that they made mistakes in messaging and timing, and whatnot.
What I am saying, is none of that would have changed the end result, with Lieberman, And when you make that claim I will call you on it. But not tonight. We will take up the Lance tomorrow and again ride the FSM to the coming Palin Presidency. Chow.
Nite PUMA Fuckhead!!
slag
@General Winfield Stuck: Did you ever think you’re so angry because you don’t want to admit to yourself how unbelievably screwed we are? Oh wait, you did admit to that. So, maybe now that you’ve made a breakthrough, perhaps you can stop calling people names and start proposing solutions to the aforementioned “screwed” problem.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Jack is hoping you can “expand your view” so it aligns perfectly with his, so he can browbeat you into an admission.
He’ll do or say anything. Has he told you you’re going to health insurance prison yet?
You are! The “liberals” said so.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay:
kay, ya know I love ya and yer my favorite commenter after me (a really distant second, but still #2!).. but c’mon, pretending Stuck is anything other than a dipshit diminishes all the good arguments and research ya bring to the conversation.
General Winfield Stuck
@slag:
Obamaphiles. That is an insult of the highest order. The correct term should be O-bot. Please get it right.
Corner Stone
@Jay B.: Hey ponyfuckface, Cole didn’t ask you to show him where Leader Reid thought there were 60 votes for the PO, he told you to list off the 60! So there!
Because even though Reid somehow thought there would be 60 votes for it, Cole knows better! Reid and his staff can’t count obviously. You know how Cole knows there was never 60 votes for the PO? Because the final bill passed with 60 votes and it did not have a PO! Cogito ergo sum vici ante quid quo.
Don’t you get it?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: lolz
General Winfield Stuck
@slag:
Delicate flower we have become Slag. The solution is to elect more democrats. I’m sure round the clock bashing Obama for things not in his control will bring the majorities we need to get past the filibuster. Unless there is a Unicorn filibuster nuke on the horizon. We can spend eleventy hundred threads exploring this fantasy.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck:
Raaaaaaoooooooorrrrrwwwwrrr.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Thanks Kay. But apparently I am fuckhead’s honeysuckle with jack as his whine.
Besides. Fuckhead and his posse of PUMA wizards are gonna straighten all the shit out. Just wait, you will see.
Shevek57
@General Winfield Stuck: @General Winfield Stuck:
I
Did you bother to read the linked diary?
I will defer to your great perspicacity: tell me the nature of my “cause” and how it comports with the wingnuts agenda.
slag
@Ailuridae:
Does it really though? I mean, “No more too big to fail” makes sense in the abstract, but what does it really mean? Or, more accurately, what does it mean after our venerated financial institutions get done telling people what it means?
I like the stand-alone experiment idea. But what would such a thing look like for financial reform? Financial reform seems inherently big. Almost too big. Almost too big…to fail…or not.
Paula
BTW, if some of you think I’m an unhappy Hillary supporter, you are wrong. I thought – oh boy – that she would be too “corporate” and “too DLC”. I also thought she was unelectable – not because of anything she had done, but because the right wing had so relentlessly smeared her and because the media was just itching to get back on the “destroy the Clinton’s” horse. I was thrilled when Obama chose her to be Secy. of State because I thought she’d be good at that and I felt she had worked her ass off to be a Senator and to try to be president.
If I have any beefs with Obama, they are over what he has/hasn’t done. Not only did I vote for the man, I went to the Inauguration (from Ohio) to celebrate that historic day. I froze my ass off, but thought it was worth it. I kept my metro ticket coz I thought I’d want to have it when I was old, to be able to say I was there.
Jumping up and down and hurling insults at people who have substantive concerns and heartfelt disagreements with you over his performance is just weak argumentation. If you have such a deep, deep need to defend him at all costs, can’t you try to get better at it?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Paula:
We’re trying. Unfortunately, some of us are stuck.
General Winfield Stuck
@Paula:
Yea, I know. Obama is a “cock tease” and your concerned.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I like Stuck. We chat about issues occasionally.
I might support your campaign if you all weren’t such assholes, but you are, so I won’t. Come on. You’re buying this hype? You are not.
John Sears: “MILLIONS will LOSE health insurance!” How many times has he written that now? 50? You really believe the liberal Democrats in Congress drafted a plan that would cause MILLIONS to lose health insurance? They went to a goddamn lot of trouble for such a stupid self-defeating goal.
I wouldn’t be in a “public option” with you public option people, at this point.
You’d be horrible authoritarians at public option “stakeholder” meetings, I can see it now, screaming and insisting I filibuster, or you’d just disband the governing body if you didn’t like the result !
I’d rather go to Obama’s health insurance prisons.
Paula
@Just Some Fuckhead:
LOL!
slag
@General Winfield Stuck: Well, since I was including myself in that group, I didn’t think of it as an insult at all.
@General Winfield Stuck:
I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be accusing the rest of us of unicorn-hunting. Just sayin.
Look. We have 59 (ish) Democrats in the Senate, a bunch in the House, and the Presidency. It’s not getting any better than that any time soon. Probably not in my lifetime, and I’m not that old. And really, with mid-terms coming up and the momentum pretty much gone, we need to do something. Other than call people stupid pumas.
And Another Thing...
@Corner Stone: I’m not convinced Reid and/or his staff can count. How many times has he stood before a mike and looked into the camera and said some version of “we have a deal” and surprise, he didn’t. If I could figure out how to google for that and wouldn’t rather catch Jon Stewart, I’d find cites. But you could look it up.
Corner Stone
@kay:
No. I do not.
But “liberal Democrats” did not write this legislation.
General Winfield Stuck
@slag:
I know, why don’t we kill the senate filibuster with a big progressive nuke.
Name calling on Balloon Juice. OH noes, Break out the rubber mallets Gracie, the end is nigh.
Just teasin you slag, cause I like you:) gotta go
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay: Cmon kay, most of the assholishness (at least that which I’m not providing) is coming from your side. Stuck, for example, just keeps screaming at everyone and calling names.
Jack, in particular, had been quite polite at offering his opinion but he just kept getting insulted until he began responding in kind. Look at what happened to slag in this very thread when he was offering an olive branch.
But yer on the side of the angels here kay so your cause is just and you are noble.
Corner Stone
@slag:
He’s got nothing else. Obviously.
kay
@Paula:
Thanks for the lecture. I didn’t attack Jack, though. I didn’t even respond to Jack. I responded to Sanka.
Jack then gave me a series of directives on how I have a “black and white” view of the world, and some rote, conventional wisdom political commentary on Clinton, delivered with CERTAINTY and his usual authoritarian zeal. I am properly chastened. You-all are wise in the ways of the world.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Don;t listen to fuckhead, he’s been sellin’ snake oil all week. Nothin more than sarsaparilla and a little PUMA pixie dust.
Corner Stone
@And Another Thing…: That’s kind of his job.
General Winfield Stuck
this has been kinda fun
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yeah, except I didn’t respond to Jack at all. I was speaking to Sanka.
John Sears runs away when I question his outlandish assertions, so that’s fun.
I tried to make an informed comment to the public option people, on S-CHIP, which covers 7 million children, and on which I personally busted ass, and no one knows the answer. I think you have to know that answer if you’re supporting the House bill. It’s 7 million children. Am I trading that for a public option?
They don’t even understand the implications of having a national insurance plan, as far as regulation and state law. The Senate plan retains the state law oversight function. Pelosi’s public option does not. That’s a huge issue, if we’re worried about regulation.
All you-all want to talk about is Barack Obama’s heart, and his duplicity. I’m shallow. I’m not all that interested in his heart.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay:
Don’t know what to tell ya other than that’s the thread topic.
And Another Thing...
@Corner Stone: I’m not sure what you mean by your comment. By “can” I mean capable of counting, accurately. He should count, that is his job. My brother & I have joked about this repeatedly, Reid says he “has a deal” – enough votes, doesn’t have them and has to delay or cancel votes because he was “premature.” And one of these days, he’s going to again interrupt Nancy Pelosi, or put his hand on her and she’s either going to stab him or vaporize him with laser eyes.
I should note, that I’m home during the day, have been a political junkie for too long, and I watch Cspan and cable news waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much, so I’m operating off of an abnormal data set.
Jay B.
@Corner Stone:
I agree, he obviously wanted to look ineffectual so he could tell Obama, who certainly appeared to undercut him in his quest to get 60, that he tried his best but he was just “one or two short” because he wanted Obama to look better for unilaterally giving away any public option in order to secure the insurance industry’s choice which he could then give away for even less. This is how deep the game is.
mcc
Responses to responses to this post.
As I understand it would be really hard. I don’t know how the House plans to structure it, assuming this actually is something they’re looking at at all. However I believe the bill the House passed started in 2013, so apparently they had some ideas as to how to pay for that.
It depends on what the healthcare revisiting is and how it would be done. One thing I’ll note is in order for the ability to use reconciliation to go away we would have to lose by enormous margins, difficult-to-believe margins. We’d have to lose the house, which is more popular than the Senate right now last I checked, and in the Senate we’d have to lose 9 or 10 seats on a year which (due to the weird every-6-years schedule) is structurally advantageous for the Democrats.
And paradoxically the Democrats’ amenability to using reconciliation could actually go up as their majority dwindles.
We just passed some really significant regulations of health insurance companies. I’m not sure I know how we sell further regulations to the public without at least giving the new ones some time to see if they work.
One thing I think the debate we are (as a nation) wrapping up right now shows quite neatly how it’s a LOT easier to get the public to understand a simple, singular program (“MEDICARE BUY-IN”) than a complex regulatory or oversight package.
But if a plan for a second pass of regulation comes up, then yeah, sure, cool.
@And Another Thing…: I believe with basically everything “And Another Thing” said here.
kay
@And Another Thing…:
It’s a great question. How many times has Harry Reid announced he “had the votes”? Ten? Twenty?
Look, I tried to figure this out. Sherrod Brown, my Senator, passed a letter in October to get liberals to commit to the PO. He got 30. Add the Senators who passed some sort of PO out of committee and you have 44.
Is it unimaginable that the liberal Senators like Feingold, would perceive his defeat, and his failure to garner 59 fellow Senators, as Obama’s doing? I don’t think it is. I don’t know that it is.
I don’t know what happened, or whose fault it is, but they don’t have 60, and I can’t find any record of them ever having 50.
I would think that if they felt passionately about the PO they would sign Sherrod’s letter. They didn’t. Thirty did. And that was in October. That’s when I gave up on the PO. When I saw that number.
Corner Stone
@And Another Thing…:
I don’t know. How many times?
And Another Thing...
@kay: I love Sherrod Brown. How about I swap you Hatch & Bennett, cash, a future draft pick and some 3.2 beer…. Yeah, I thought not. I did get to vote once for Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That’s probably a thrill that lasts a lifetime. I stood on line, on crutches, on a lousy weather day forever. It was worth every minute it took.
Jay B.
@kay:
Jesus Christ, Reid was telling Jay Rockefeller that he was “one or two short” in late October for an opt-in option. This just as Obama abandoned the entire public option to court Snowe and taking the insurance industry’s solution make this “bi-partisan” by supporting triggers instead. Didn’t have 50?
And again, why would Reid say he has the votes unless he thought he did? What does he possibly gain by that? I’ve always considered him inept, but I didn’t think he was innumerate.
I think it happened just as Stein reported. The Democrats went to a meeting at the White House — “The work will continue through the weekend and comes despite the president’s indication in a meeting Thursday evening at the White House that he prefers a public option that would be triggered in by certain conditions over the “opt-out” alternative.” — Reid was still close, made his calls, and then Obama’s preference for the trigger undercut whatever Reid was going to offer the recalcitrant Senators.
It’s not even a conspiracy or Joe Lieberman. It’s the simple fact of the matter — as even Obama said today — that he didn’t really care about the public option. So why would “centrist” Senators stick their neck out when it would be easier for them to get a better deal without alienating the insurance companies?
mcc
But, I mean, like… you saw what happened after that, right? I mean, in the end, Reid turned up one or two votes short for the opt-in option. Remember? He went to the end of the process with the opt-in public option and it didn’t work. The opt-in didn’t really buy us any fence-sitters, and then the public option had to get removed completely to pass the bill at all because Lieberman decided he wouldn’t support any form of public option at all, be it the real public option, a trigger, or any kind of substitute.
In retrospect, although it’s nice Reid at least tried and we got to see exactly where the support level in the Senate for the public option stood, if we’d gone the White House’s route and not cut off negotiations with Snowe she probably would have gone along in the end, we could have got to 60 votes without Lieberman, and we’d at least have a public option bill passed with a trigger, which would have been a big help when we try again in a few years to pass something like the public option for real. I mean, it really seems like abandoning the White House’s preferred compromise on the public option is what killed it for good.
But I guess your theory is that Obama trying to support a trigger compromise on the public option lead to Joe Lieberman rejecting the trigger compromise on the public option…? Or maybe your theory is that Joe Lieberman “doesn’t matter”, and Obama “caring” would have got us from 59 votes to 60? Who would have been the 60th vote? Olympia Snowe?
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Considering that Jack’s very first comment continued the BS argument that people arguing in favor of the bill are morally the same as Iraq supporters, it’s kind of stretch to claim that he was “quite polite” from the beginning. Either that, or there’s a completely different meaning to “Mission Accomplished” outside of Bush/Iraq that he’s using that is incomprehensible to the rest of us.
NobodySpecial
@mcc:
Unfortunately, your premise falls apart for the same reason all the other premises that various people put forward fell apart: Because in this reality, you can’t prove an alternate reality no matter how hard you try.
Would Reid have gotten 60 with full support from the White House? Don’t know. What we DO know is that the White House didn’t fully support Reid. Does that change votes? Maybe. In Lieberman’s case, one can make an argument that, as Obama’s mentor in the Senate, he might have been willing to listen to Obama more than Reid.
What we DO know is that he supported the idea while he was collecting votes, then he did a deal with Big Pharma before the legislation was written, and then we have people involved in the process saying he wasn’t pushing the public option. Oh, yeah, and now we have a quote from him that the bill as written has everything he wanted in it.
That sounds suspiciously like something that needs a definition of what the word ‘is’ is.
Further, one could argue that, if Reid had a solid 58 for the public option, that Obama (if he were a progressive) would have seized the momentum and gone for those last two. Obviously, having 58 Democrats means the public option wasn’t THAT controversial.
jim
Yikes.
Last time I saw this much unmitigated butthurt was the Dem primaries. So much Raw Teenage Angst over a politician saying something different from what he said previously? Try saving it for what they DO, kids. Talk is cheap.
Obama may well want reform – but he also wants to cut BigPharma/Health-Insurance Lobby support away from the Goopers, because he knows their well is a tad dry right now (Chicago Politics 101: you don’t kick a man when he’s down – you drop a fucking safe on his face). If this bill is allowing him to have that cake & eat it too (& given how scary-smart he is, I don’t think that’s out of the question), that might be the REAL reason the Republicans have been fighting tooth & nail to kill it … after reacting to two disastrous elections with more of the same stupid shit that lost those elections in the first place, with a few Purity Purges for good measure, & watching their party’s polling numbers stay locked down somewhere near the base of the Marianas Trench, they’re now literally fighting for their political lives.
If a bunch of whackaloons register “Teh People’s Glorious Revolutionary Corporate-Soviet More-American-Than-Thou TEA PARTY” in 2010 or 2012, the Republicans’ goose is well & duly cooked: think Ross Perot, but permanent.
The oh-so-trendy comparison between the supporters of the bill & supporters of “Operation Desert Clusterfuck” is one of the most gratuitous rhetorical footbullets I’ve seen for some time … seems like Dems really DO have a fetish for mutual backbiting that just won’t quit – how lovely for the GOP that so many nice obliging folks on the other side are doing so much of their dirty work for them.
Sure seem to be a lot of folks who’re awfully quick to write Obama off … perhaps you should ask Hillary Clinton how well that approach worked out for her.
kay
@Jay B.:
What Reid gains by saying he has the votes is political cover for the liberal Senators. “we fought the good fight, and went down swinging”.
I don’t think insurance companies killed Medicare expansion. I think providers did. I think insurance companies would love to lop off the 55+ portion of the population (who use all the services) and collect premiums from everyone younger.
Both things could be true, Jay.
Obama could have been indifferent or hostile to the public option and there wasn’t support in the Senate.
I can’t discuss this with people who refuse to look at providers. Insurance is only half the story.
If we start paying providers measurably less, there’s a huge hole in the economy. No one wants to acknowledge that.
kay
@Jay B.:
I have to say (and you’ll hate this) I think the Senate bill is better on the whole than the Baucus bill + a weak public option.
If you want to talk about what was on the table (and not some best case) then we can do that.
We can compare the House bill to the Baucus bill to the eventual Senate bill. I don’t know that we can compare the Senate bill plus Medicare buy-in because that was too fuzzy, and the details would have mattered.
I may have started at a different place on this than you. I didn’t have any fixed ideas on what I wanted or what would work. Medicare is a huge public program, and without cost controls, it’s unsustainable. I don’t really accept Medicare as the gold standard. I don’t want to spend 40% of every available dollar on health care. I don’t think that will work.
harlana peppper
Why does everybody have to fall in line? Why?? What’s wrong with opposition in your own party when you are sincerely trying to achieve something good for the little people? Portions of these threads amaze me.
harlana peppper
I see this thread is not completely dead yet so I’m going to plead complete ignorance here, look incredibly stupid to more astute BJ’ers and ask about the whole 60-vote thing and how the Senate never had it. I’m not trying to be an ass here, but I sincerely what to know what I’ve missed. Like, is there a list of every Dem senator’s position before the vote, like including their relationships to the insurance industry and Pharma. How do we know where they stood? Feel free to bash me as another ignorant, idealistic hippie if you wish, I’m just mystified as to why this mystification pisses some people here off so very much and I really want to know what I’m missing here. I have never bashed Obama, nor had illusions about him and I’m not the least surprised at his behavior here. I voted for him, of course, but I kinda knew what I was probably getting. The sad part about all this is that incrementalism is not going to help this nation very much, things are pretty damned desperate. I always hold out hope, but it doesn’t look good, so I’m sorry we could not have done more here.
kay
@harlana peppper:
No. You’re right. I don’t know where they stood, harlana. I made my best guess. These are guesses. I looked at what the senators did and said and came up with 44. Jay B looked at the same thing and came up with 58.
As far as not having a vote on a bill including the public option, Reid knew he didn’t have 60, because he determines that before a vote, because you only get one shot. If that’s what you meant by “missing something”.
I have no problem with your opposition to the bill as it is. What I reject is mischaracterizing the bill, or not looking at all the factors, or not looking at what was actually on the table, and comparing what we have to what was never on the table. But I have no problem with opposition to the bill, even on broad ideological grounds, ie: it’s better with a public option because it’s public. I see that. I’m just not sure the public option was as powerful a mechanism as it’s been portrayed, but I see the point of it being important in a perception-changing way.
harlana peppper
One of the reasons I appear so ignorant here is that I no longer follow the minutae of such things and it has proved detrimental to my mental health. I do have a pony in this fight also, my premiums are killing me but I can’t be w/o health insurance b/c of the cost of my meds. I am having to do a mid-life career change (w/ help from the gubmint, for which I am most grateful) so I can hopefully one day have employer-based coverage again and get my life back.
harlana peppper
@kay: Thanks for your response. I don’t necessarily oppose anything that will do good, so I am not opposed to the bill in that way. I am disappointed for sure b/c I think we need to establish some form of competition with the insurance company and I think the general assumption about the PO was that it would establish that, whatever the final product would be, I’m pretty sure that’s how it was sold to all of us. My expectations have been whittled away so I’m not enraged by anything, hell I was upset that they were talking about making the PO only for people without employer-based insurance, which can be pretty damned cost-prohibitive for people with children, those people would have benefited. I was also upset about the opt-out thingie. It was all pretty weak from the start, actually. But,this current hodge-podge of stuff, I cannot get my mind around it. It all appears pretty sneaky to me.Anyway, thanks for a civil response. The only thing I’ve really learned from this is that you just do not fuck with the insurance industry, you just don’t :)
kay
@harlana peppper:
As far as tactics of opponents, I don’t think it’s helpful to start telling people they’re going to jail if they don’t buy health insurance, or that “millions” are going to lose their employer plans, or that every attempt to control costs is rationing. I don’t think it’s helpful for liberals to go on FOX opinion shows, at all. I think that just feeds the big lie beast.
But I’m not stopping anyone from doing that, nor do I want to.
kay
@harlana peppper:
States are players in this. The opt-out was a mechanism to allow states that don’t want to play to allow this to go forward.
Insurance is absolutely part of that. But it’s bigger than that. Insurance has traditionally been state law. Every state has a regulatory scheme. They were loathe to give that up, and there are good-faith reasons for that. States got stuck with the mortgage mess when federal regulators failed to act. They got stuck with the actual foreclosed property. They’re still stuck with it.
There were 39 state attorneys general who had claims against ONE subprime lender, in 2006. The lender settled.
But you have to ask, with that many states suing, where the hell were the feds? They didn’t notice that? So, states have reason to want to maintain control.
harlana peppper
@kay: Still, I cannot imagine even my own red state (Sanford is my guv, leave your sympathy cards at the door) opting out as it would have been as politically unpopular as Sanford turning down the unemployment extension (which the republican legislature over rid (road?)) — unlike the fatally narcissistic Sanford, those guys at least have sense enough to know how to not lose an election. All a moot point, of course.
kay
@harlana peppper:
Do you think so? In a red state, why wouldn’t portraying the public option as a federal government take-over work when it went to the states?
It worked, generally, there. I think it would have gone to the states and red states would have opted out, particularly if it went to the legislature. It would just die quietly in assembly.
It’s hard to be a state’s rights liberal, because conservatives are such idiot assholes.
It’s the only thing I like about their ideology, the idea that state law can be really important and useful and should be given some leeway, I think liberals miss the point, but conservatives ruin even that single good idea by infecting it with racism and hatred and hypocrisy.
JenJen
Just saw this on Politico; Ben Smith quoting MSNBC’s First Read, and then HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
Not to split hairs or get all “parsy”, especially since I’m way late to this discussion, but it’s a fair point.
Rich_Sellers
I’m not disappointed in Obama at all, because I never expected anything from him. It is the wealthy and the connected who will influence Obama’s policies, not the likes of me or mine. We, in fact, are not, have not and will not be represented by the likes of this president any more than we were by the last one.
I read a lot of liberal/lefty websites during the Bush years, consoling myself with the idea that there were at least other folks out there who saw beyond the veil of bullshit. I’ve dropped many of those websites today, because (surprize!) as it turns out they were okay with the policies, yet simply bothered by the fact that it wasn’t their own party carrying said policies out.
This nation is rotten to its very core, along with all of its institutions. The political process is set up in such a way that it rids itself of any influence that might lead to positive change. You took the first step in giving up on the Republican party, but you’ve got a ways to go, still.
Good luck.