In the aftermath of President Obama's Speech, I'd like to offer an olive branch to the disappointed.

[SidneyCarton]

We have not seen eye-to-eye on this issue, and have clashed (sometimes vehemently) over the President's policies. That said, I sympathize with your disappointment last night. The President made it brutally clear on Wednesday that Single-Payer was not even under consideration, and that the Public Option will fall short of what many here hoped for. While I see what is being proposed as worthy and good, I realize that many of you do not see what is being offered as being of any real assistance to you in your current state. You may be right, I will be honest enought to admit that I don't know.

If you want to vent, or have a sympathetic ear, I offer you this thread, I will not attack you for your feelings on this admittedly sensitive issue.

As President Lincoln once said: "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

[DJ13]

1. Reform was supposed to mean covering the uninsured 100%

Thats where Obama has failed.

He's now more worried about stifling corporate profits than making sure the uninsured can be covered.

When he estimates that only 5% of Americans will get covered under any government plan thats a failure.

[DrDan]

6. do you think that the worry over profits you mentioned

applies also to the beltway defense contractor "bandits" - and that is why we continue to fight the "war" in Afghanistan?

[DollyM]

25. I fear this will go the way of the Clinton's health care reform attempts . . .

I am afraid this will get wittled down until it is nothing, again! Now we are at a critical point but the people who don't want health care reform (those who profit from it) are working even harder to play on the fears of uneducated people and scaring them into thinking the world will end if we provide health care coverage to all Americans. Or that we will become Godless socialists "like" Canada or England. (Sorry, Canada and England, I know better, I am just repeating what I hear on the red neck front.)

[Orsino]

26. That's where America has failed.

President Obama may get a larger current share of the blame than any other individual on the planet, but he willingly signed up for that. His is still a tiny share of the overall blame, which more properly rests on every goddamned one of us who has failed to lobby 24/7 for the best (or even half-assed) reform.

If Congress' eventual bill can cover another 5% of Americans, I'd call that a huge win. We are digging out of a fail hole centuries deep, and were never going to leap to universal single-payer all at once. Despite our great need for just that, our government isn't designed to work that way. The onus is still on us for decades more work.

[Warpy]

2. We're all disappointed, some of us bitterly so

but this country has a nasty habit of doing all the wrong things first and only then trying to do what it should have done in the first place.

Leaving insurance companies as the sole option for people under 65 is simply not going to work. We all know that and we know why.

It won't dawn on Congress, though, until it fails spectacularly. Sadly, it will.

[demwing]

3. Actually, I almost fit into that category

But heard pretty much what I expected to hear regarding the Public Option, and I still believe we will get that Option.

But Baucus was correct - the speach was a game changer, just in an area I didn't expect - mandated healthcare.

I feel thoroughly sodomized by the administration over this issue. It's a sell out, and, IMO, reveals Obama's corporate sympathies.

[rudy23]

4. The olive branch is nice and very appreciated.

However, if they expect progressives to back down on a public option, or attack progressives for not signing a reform bill with a weak public option, all hell will break loose.

If the President thinks he can play "the sensible one" and paint us as rigid ideologues who are just as bad as the right, his presidency will be destroyed. His narrative of hope and change will be crushed by his own hand.

[Ignis]

15. Good point. "Hope & Change" =!= triangulation.

But I'll join you in a :toast: for the civility of the OP.

[redqueen]

5. K&R

It's a bitter pill to swallow.

We need many more progressives in congress, that's the long and short of it.

[DrDan]

7. or less lobbyist dollars in Washington

[redqueen]

9. Seems to me the two go hand in hand.

My definition of progressive means someone who sees public financing for campaigns and limited lobbyist influence as an extremely important goal.

[tnlefty]

14. I swear I can remember someone talking about how the lobbyists

would lose their influence in a certain administration, the lobbyists were/are a huge part of what is wrong in DC, but it seems as though they're still running the show.

[DrDan]

17. you are correct about that - they are running the show

those with the dollars are getting the attention

[kath]

22. Yeah, I remember someone saying such things as well - I think his name may have started with "O"...

[sabrina 1]

8. Yes, and maybe that will be the result

this disappointment. People refusing to work again, just to get a majority, for Republicans with a D after their name. I bought that reluctantly in the past. Won't be doing it again.

One more thing that is needed are more progressives not willing to compromise simply because a Democrat is the one making a proposal. If Bush had proposed this, the reaction would be entirely different.

If Democrats don't want to hear from progressives, and now that has been confirmed by Jane Hamsher, maybe they can live without their support at election time.

[redqueen]

12. It would be great if progressives everywhere would enthusiastically

support more progressive primary challengers in areas where that is possible. Obviously there are some blue dogs who really are the only kind of dems who can get elected... and having the majority of seats does have its privileges.

But there is no reason to have people like DiFi in office. CA should do so much better.

[Prism]

10. Reform is becoming a matryoshka doll of fraud

Health-care reform is like one of those nested russian dolls, with each greater reform cracked in half and peeled away. Single-payer, no mandates, the public option.

In the end, we're going to get this nub, and it will be called reform. We'll be left looking at all the shells that were cast off along the way, seeing all the things we should have had - the size of reform the American people deserve - and we'll know that ugly little peanut-looking thing is less than nothing.

And we'll be told this little nub is a great present, a gift of unparalleled proportions, and if we're not satisfied with this blessing that can fit in the palm of your hand, we're discontented ingrates who are anti-Democratic, purists, radicals, fringist, and every dirty name the right-wing has used to denigrate us for decades.

Meanwhile, the American people will continue suffering, the corporations will continue with their obscene profits, and the true reformists will continue being villanized and kept in their place so that the status quo can reign for another generation.

President Obama - "I am the change."

No, actually. You weren't.

[PATRICK]

16. Strategies, possibilities, action

Some have tried to compare this to a military strategy situation which it inherently is not. It is inarguable but unstressed that the casualties of for profit health care in lives and maiming occur daily and will mount catastrophically toward the ruin of all, not just the victims.

The planned invasion of Japan was figured to cost hundreds of thousands of our military in casualties alone and casualties meanwhile were ongoing. We had the bomb. After a brief period of angst and hopeless negotiating with a logically doomed Japan we dropped it. Not the war, not the invasion, but the bomb- on civilians- twice with several more lined up inexorably behind them.

The thing is the administration and the party can never see themselves at war with the corporate world. This is Clinton2 writ large, can't we all get along- and do without a radically better world. Not just two sides though, the entire planet is doomed by not taking that bull by the horns- as will be seen well into the massacre of billions guaranteed by the several slow deaths inflicted on mankind by pleasant capitalist myths- the failed scenario of "getting back to normal".

It is not the same and eerily larger than WWII military strategy. By its logic though we would be making continual overtures to Japan as we tossed lives away on both sides, afraid that the implications of dropping the bomb would be too radical to the future of the world and getting back to normal. And, if as one would argue, that negotiations MIGHT have worked who can project the surrender of corporate greed and tyranny over our lives by the present approach of concession upon concession and rejection of even the concept of conflict in the first place???

More Americans will simply die in domestic abnegation of sense and responsibility than were ever threatened by the fortunes of war. The torture the despair and nation destroying injustice- instead of,
red-faced, following the moderate examples of most developed nations will guarantee murder for profit- not "getting back to normal". U.S. Progress on reform is reinventing the wheel with nothing but angles.

In my sleep I could have given the health care speech, the same passion, better simplicity, harsher balance of real victims versus Mammon and not be concerned with dissing the best starting point as "the far left" equating them with the diseased cancerous far right. I could have at least have gone along the model of proposing the initial legislation for Social Security- now in the only dominant position we are ever likely to see again without massive overhaul of politics and parties. If Social Security had been planned according the WH model which is part of the party that thinks the New Deal is ultra passe it would have been DOA, a horror show of private insurers leeching it to ruin, or the fulfillment immediately of all the RW arguments against it for their own purposes.

We could have started with New Deal fervor and "progressed". We could have started with the examples of other countries, whose systems also contain flaws of compromise with profit, etc. Instead we go begging, apologizing, dealing and conceding to the enemies of citizens and democracy- as they murder and lie and steal- as a starting point to get back to "normal". The Pollyanna fantasies of small town Conservatives have some visual reference for wistful hypocrisies. The insanity of the RW incorporated into New Democrats is something horrible and exceedingly complex, beyond words to explain. It sure ain't pragmatism or conservatism. In this, the victims certainly do not count, all lip service and rubber check doles to the contrary. In war civilians rarely are, but this is not war- except for the death toll exacted by human evil. The advantage of the victory of democracy in crisis and failure of life for profits has not even been imagined by Dem leadership. And we knew that well in advance of the election against EVEN WORSE alternatives.

Reason and truth, lives deflected, the madness of the bent American way. People ahve been condemned but charge the beaches, throw money and bodies to the sensible plan.

Also, the frustratioin is that the WH has committed a grave offense in making the "left" a scapegoat for supporting the win/win scenario handed as another bloody gratuitous gift to the GOP. The legislation is ruined or Obama is defeated(the ultimate result of the first possibility in all likelihood). Or another way, the bill is defeated by the GOP and the "left" or a monster that profits the insurance industry and the coffers of blue dogs strengthens all cancers and ruins progress in the party itself into the bargain. Meanwhile, people simply die, go broke, suffer for the profit of a scummy few. Needlessly.

[sabrina 1]

18. Good post.

Meanwhile, people simply die, go broke, suffer for the profit of a scummy few. Needlessly.

Resignation is is what will happen, you can see it already and we'll never hear a politician acknowledge the numbers who have died as a result of Capitalism gone wild. Not from Democrats either.

[Prism]

19. Nicely stated

This should be an OP, imo.

[area51]

23. Great post.

And why does the media allow people to call themselves "pro-life" when they're anything but? They don't give a shit about the 100,000 people who die each year due to lack of healthcare. Obama's/Congress's borrowing of Newt Gingrich's idea of a law to force people to buy rightwing, extremely expensive, unregulated health insurance is insane. We don't need GingrichCare, we need healthcare. What Obama & Congress are proposing won't reduce the need for Stan Brock of Remote Access Medical to keep coming to this country to save our asses and provide some healthcare. We're a barbaric, third-world nation.

[PATRICK]

24. I will be composing a letter

to Blue Choice this Open Season against their industry in general as I opt back into the union plan I should never have left even if the service and price was tougher to bear. My saving money, my care is at the cost of lives and suffering of my fellow Americans and for villains who have exposed the core of their malpractice in using my premiums against America. I wager the cost of myself alone is more than they chuck out for a busload of their premium financed goons.

I suggest everyone carefully search out plans that in no way attack democracy and universal care and abuse your premiums. I wonder if lawyers are ready for a class action law suit against abusive use of stocks and premiums. Some are already questioning various health plans on their recent acts of coercion and intimidation using premium payers and stockholders money. The next step by any who can take it should be as swift as opting out of dangerous food products. Start peeling away their money especially at a time when failing business contracts are swindling as well.

[damonm]

11. A K&R for the most disgustingly CIVIL OP iv'e ever seen...

:P

[flyarm]

13. better read this...and don't miss the comments! we have been sold out!

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/11/reid-endorses-wellpoints-co-op-plan/#comments

Reid Endorses Wellpoint’s Co-op Plan
By: Jane Hamsher Friday September 11, 2009 9:46 am


The Senate Majority Leader endorses the Mike Ross/Kent Conrad/Wellpoint authored co-op plan:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) endorsed the concept of health insurance cooperatives Thursday, siding with centrists in the House and Senate who want healthcare reform but oppose a public option.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also hinted she could accept that approach a day after President Barack Obama delivered an address to a joint session of Congress that offered encouraging words for both centrists and liberal Democrats who have demanded a public insurance option.

I think I may have to adjust my prediction for the co-op "squeeze play" on July 20:

The easiest political path to passing health care is still running the "co-op" crunch. Regardless of what the House does, the Senate can pass Conrad's shitty fake co-op. The Blue Dogs band together and refuse to vote for anything else, and that's what comes out of conference. There's a PR blitz to sell it as a "public plan" (which is why we've worked so assiduously to define it as NOT a public plan), and in a rush to get something passed, Rahm starts twisting progressive arms -- which have been historically very easily twisted.
Blue Dog Mike Ross presciently submitted virtually the same co-op plan in a July 31 amendment that finally emerged this week in Max Baucus's Senate plan. But since it now looks like Pelosi is on board with co-ops, that means the Blue Dogs aren't going to have to take the hit.


let me say this very clearly..the Public Option was Obama's campaign idea..none of us made it up..he did,.......

I will assure anyone who knows me..I will never vote again..especially for a dem if there is no public option..that was the last compromise I was willing ( and not so willing) to accept!

Not another dime of mine will go to a dem, not another minute of my working for them..nothing..I will be finished.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

20. IMHO, the only way we will ever get true health care reform is only if we have campaign finance

reform and along with that, doing away with corporate lobbyists.

Without this, no meaningful health care reform will happen. Our government is owned by the deep pockets of corporate interests and an important percent of our elected representatives are corporate whores. Plain and simple.

[JerseygirlCT]

21. Good point. nt