Huffpo: Ben Nelson Plans to Tell Obama to Slow Down on Health Care

[flpoljunkie]

(Yes, slow it down and kill it. Just what the health care industry ordered. Ben Nelson is the #1 insurance industry recipient from 2003-2008; he received a total of $803,209. http://acandidworld.net/tag/ben-nelson/)

Nelson Plans To Tell Obama To Slow Down On Health Care Reform
Jeff Muskus

Sen. Ben Nelson hopes to offer President Obama some friendly health care advice when he and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) meet at the White House today: Slow down.

"Let's not set an arbitrary deadline and say, 'We've got to have something done by the August recess,' (even) if it can't be done, so we don't end up with a self-fulfilling failure," said Nelson on Thursday after speaking on the Senate floor and before heading over to the White House.

Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska, said that it would be better to say that just getting something "...out of the Finance Committee onto the floor is progress. So let's identify progress and keep moving in the right direction."

Nelson wasn't certain, however, that he'd be asked for his opinion.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/nelson-plans-to-tell-obam_n_235579.html

[sasquatch]

1. Fuck off Nelson, get your head out of you ass or else you're out

[progressoid]

18. Actually, I think his head is up insurance companies' asses. n/t

[olkaz]

19. Out of what?

[sasquatch]

21. The senate

[Dawgs]

2. I have a feeling Nelson is going to be surprised by Obama's reaction.

[BlooInBloo]

3. Fuck you, Nelson.

[busymom]

4. Actually, I agree with Nelson...

I have that feeling in the pit of my stomach that we are moving fast and that some of the details that we won't like won't be discovered until too late. I say this after reading the bill that has come out as well as the discussions about it here.

I don't like the fact that Congress will be opting out of the public plan and that unions can opt out as well? ...It sounds like it might be more expensive than we all thought and because there will be no Torte reform that there will still be the same level of high costs associated with cover-your-ass testing out off fear of litigation. Actually it sounds like there will be $5000 out-of-pocket expenses (which is more expensive than some of the private plans available) and that Obama is skirting around a discussion of rationing care for the elderly, etc.

I admit it though...I tend to distrust our government...even the officials that I have worked hard to get elected. It seems like everything our elected officials get their hands on turns into a complicated mess of meeting the needs of private interest groups instead of the people who elect them.

My fear is that we will push this through in the next month and then spend the next few decades dealing with a mess instead of being happy with the results.

Fire away...

[theoldman]

7. The present plan is not perfect, it is just the first shot at reform.

The proposed plan will be modified every four years until we get it right. My guess is that it will be 15 to 20 years to fix the present health care mess.

[avaistheone1]

17. Torte reform is a bogus right wing issue. Our government has the know how to establish

and push the button on a public option now. We already have several models in Medicare and the VA Hospitals.

[uponit7771]

5. How do we start a something to fund a MORE PROGRESSIVE candidate to run against him?

[joeglow3]

8. This is where people need to learn their place in the war

As a Nebraskan, this is the best we will get. We will NOT get a more progressive Senator than Nelson. While I would fight and work like crazy to do just that, I see my job as ensuring we at least elect a D. While he will fight our agenda alot(as will anyone else who gets elected here), at least he counts towards said agenda being set by us.

Try to run someone more progressive and I would bet just about anything the idiots here will vote in a Republican. That leaves us with someone more conservative and gives the R's +1 in the Senate.

[BeyondGeography]

6. Thinking about this crap while watching a heath care speech by Teddy in the HBO bio from 1978

which could be given today, word-for-word. Slow down?

[Stargazer09]

9. "Conservative Democrat"

What the hell is a conservative Democrat???

Thank goodness I am not going to be here much longer! As soon as hubby retires from the military, we are out of the (not so great) state of Nebraska.

(Apologies to any Nebraskans here, but from what I've seen, there probably aren't many progressives here.)

[HowHasItComeToThis]

12. NEB IS INSURANCE COMPANY HEAVEN

[progressoid]

16. What the hell is a conservative Democrat???

Well, in most of the country he'd be a Republican.

If you are based where I think you're based, then you are in the heart of it. Come across the river to Western IA and it's a similar story (actually even worse up in north west IA). I feel like a stranger in my own home state.

[babylonsister]

10. I'd love to hear that conversation. Ben does seem to have

visions of grandeur, doesn't he. Seems to think his word carries some kind of weight, when in fact he's a thorn in a lot of people's side.

[masuki bance]

11. Reporting from after the meeting-

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a key member of the Senate Finance Committee, emerged from a meeting with President Obama Thursday afternoon sticking to her guns that health care reform legislation should not be voted upon before Senators break for recess on August 7, despite a strong push from the president that the bill be completed by then.

“We shouldn’t be restrained by an artificially compressed timeline,” said the Maine moderate, pointing out that with estimated costs of $2.4 trillion, health care comprises 17% of the US gross domestic product, so reforming health care is a “Herculean challenge.”

“It’s important to us to take time to work through these issues,” Snowe said.

President Obama needs Snowe’s support in order to be able to claim that the legislation is bipartisan and also, possibly, in order to even proceed to a vote on the floor of the senate given the illnesses of Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-WV.

“We’d like to get a bipartisan package,” Snowe said, to make the legislation more likely to pass but also to “engender confidence with the American people.”

Snowe said she showed the president a draft outline of the bill the Senate Finance Committee members and staffers have been working on for weeks, including weekends, to assure the president that “we’re working diligently.”

But she suggested a slower timeline than the “overly ambitious” one the president has urged, Snowe said.

In her view, the bill could be voted on in the Senate Finance Committee before August 7, she said. During the August recess, the Senate Finance Committee bill could be “fused” with the one from the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, giving senators and the American people time to review them both. In September, the legislative process can continue when the Senate reconvenes, she said.

President Obama, Snowe reported after their roughly 45-minute-long meeting, disagrees.

“Understandably the president would like to complete this process…before the August recess,” she said. “He’s concerned about returning in Fall and getting this done.” The president told her, she said, that “’this is our window of opportunity.’ I don’t disagree,” she said, but she wants to “make sure we have the best initiative and the best product going forward.”

After all, she said, “this is a costly endeavor” never before undertaken by Congress.

“It’s important to get it right,” she said, noting that the Finance Committee has yet to hear from the Congressional Budget Office regarding cost estimates.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/07/snowe-dampens-president-obamas-timeline-on-health-care-reform.html

[scheming daemons]

13. Slowing down means death to reform: Gives GOP more time to attack and drive polls

In 1994, the GOP used the time to kill health care.

If we delay now, we'll kill it. Because after the recess, Obama and the Dems' capital would be diminished from a couple months of being hammered by the RW media.

[PretzelWarrior]

14. Nelson, you look like and are a big turd

Go fuck yourself.

[backscatter712]

15. Time for Obama to use the Darth Vader School of Motivational Management...

Apology accepted, Senator Nelson.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

20. After all, she said, “this is a costly endeavor” never before undertaken by Congress.

A more costly endeavor than, oh, say, invading and occupying Iraq????? Hey, and this will actually HELP people, not kill more people.

Lots of money for wars of choice and illegal occupations, a pittance for everything and everybody else. :puke:
I wish that I could say here what I really think of members of Congress like Snowe, Nelson, et. al whom are trying to delay and/or kill health care reform (and progress for our country and its citizens in general).
:mad:
:wtf:
:nuke: