Why did healthcare reform fail?

[INdemo]

Was it the millions of dollars the insurance and drug companies spent to keep the status quo. Was it poor strategic planning by the Obama administration?(Emanuel?) Why was Obama insisting that a bipartisan bill was necessary? Obama,an LBJ he is not as far as steering legislation through Congress..Obama has the Majority in Congress, what most Presidents dream about, and could not get a real healthare through Congress.So was this administration out maneuvered by the insurance industry or were they just soundly defeated before the health care battle began..Millions of dollars can buy an awful lot of no votes and public opinion.Right..
So the healthcare issue is dead so why do Democratic leaders keep trying to revive a dying issue or an issue on life support..Democrats should pull the plug and move on.

[babylonsister]

1. Has it failed? I hadn't heard that. Got a link? nt

[WeDidIt]

6. The last I heard, it was still moving along in the Senate and had a slew of progressive supporters

Dean, Krugman, even Kucinich ALL support the plan being put forward by Reid.

It's funny when the DU purists are puritier than Kucinich!

[polpilot]

2. Lack of clear objectives, lack of leadership (Obama), complete incompetence...

[WeDidIt]

3. Where's the link to the story about the Senate killing the bill?

I had not heard the bill died in the Senate.

Link please because the last I heard it was still moving right along in the Senate.

[derby378]

28. What you're hearing about is the corpse of reform, not reform itself

Not to mention the fact that insurance companies can now place annual limits on policyholders under the current Senate plan.

[WeDidIt]

30. Ah

So in other words, health care reform is not dead, you're just pissed because you didn't get a pony.

[derby378]

31. Dude, you need new material

If that's the best you can do, I wish you well. My coverage will suffer under the Senate plan, but by all means, keep riding that pony until it throws you off.

[WeDidIt]

32. I'm not the one pissed off for not getting a pony

:shrug:

[derby378]

33. Again with the "pony." What is this "pony" you speak of, specifically? (n/t)

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Lack of leadership

[Craftsman]

5. Moneyed interests have bought congress a long time ago

[Vermontgrown]

12. Hold on now.

Congress passed the bill remember. It's the dirty rotten senate that has just about failed us. By any means the American people need to take this to court and start a law suit, charging the United States government with treason for taking bribes from insurance and drug companies.

[liberal N proud]

7. When the final bill is voted on or the bill dies let's not call it a failure

If it does not have the things we all wanted in it and passes, then we can call it unsatisfactory or unacceptable. But failure?

Failure depends on ones definition of success.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

15. unsatisfactory or unacceptable?

That sounds like my breakfast choices...

[liberal N proud]

18. Next time you drive through McDonald's for breakfast...

try something different

[newfie11]

8. Congress for the most part has been owned by lobbyists.

So much for working for the people that elected them.
And go figure, idiots like ben nelson will be elected again and again and again.

[pampango]

9. Those millions of dollars have certainly bought a lot on "no" votes from republicans.

They were almost unanimously opposed to the House bill and are at the same level of opposition to the pending Senate bill.

We will see if all that money does cause the reform effort to fail totally. You know the repubs hope so, both as fronts for the insurance industry and with the hope that Democrats, with the presidency and majorities in both houses of congress, will fail to enact anything and suffer an electoral defeat in 2010. If so, the winner will be the insurance industry when it goes back to "business as usual".

[INdemo]

22. Talk to other Democrats that may not be be as active on progressive blogs

or other media sources and they will probably tell you they are pissed because Democrats failed to act.They dont want the Republicans to win in 2010 but they see little difference. They see these corporate Democrats acting like Republicans and the corporate media is going out of their way to make sure these Democrats are front and center in the news.. So rather than vote for a Republican many of the Democrats will stay home. In the history of elections that is how Republicans win..When Democrats dont show up at the polls.

[calico1]

10. Lack of strong leadership, too much

desire to compromise with the Conservatives...from the President. Combine that with the fact that many in Congress get lots of campaign money from insurance companies. A handful of them are fighting but it's not enough..Unfortunately when it comes down to it the Democrats are not fighting for the average American much more than the Republicans on some major issues.

[Waiting For Everyman]

11. The 60-vote illusion.

[CTyankee]

13. Let's stop the talk about LBJ. He moved on Medicare/Medicaidwhen he had a huge advantage.

A president had to be shot dead, for chissakes, for the time to be ripe to pass whatever he wanted. Had it not been for JFK's assassination, the legislation might never seen the light of day (I believe "never"). It was a confluence of tragic events that something good sprang out of it...

[INdemo]

23. My point with LBJ was that LBJ knew how to work legislation through Congress.

One Major reason JFK picked him and the other was Texas..Obama should have studied LBJ's tactical skills working with congress and then we might have gotten legislation through that was not so watered down.
Most of the responsibility is that of Emanuel..and he might not have been the best choice for that position..

[CTyankee]

25. You are right about LBJ's tactical skills. But even those, by themselves, would not have

pushed Medicare thru. The fact is that the country was in deep shock and mourning and he seized the day. In those days there were some decent Republicans and I remember them. They sure as hell would not be pulling the stuff the Republicans nowadays pull.

And yeah, I'm beginning to wonder about Emanuel. He seems to be too much of a street fighter and not a skilled enough negotiator.

[FarPoint]

14. Please try to pay attention

to the issues before you post.......

[INdemo]

24. I do pay attention to the issues ..

and one can easily see that we have lost on healthcare reform. What the Democrats are doing now is trying to salvage something,anything they can get through Congress and get the votes and pass..It wont even resemble healthcare reform.They just want something to give them some sort of bragging rights and say they passed this so called healthcare reform.

[Shagbark Hickory]

16. I can see why this one is currently

[TxRider]

17. Because it is going to cost a trillion, and we're in a deep recession

We're in a huge economic hole, amplifying our deficit and national debt, tax revenues are down, and they cannot find a way to pay for it.

That's my take anyway. They all promise no healthcare of it adds to the deficit, and there's no way to insure 30 million people without it doing so.

[buchols]

19. One word: Democrats

Because Democrats aren't all created equal -- we need 60 of them for the plan, but their ideas of what's right range from single payer all the way to free market exchanges and HSAs (like the Repubs, whose plans range from doing nothing to doing nothing even faster).

The REAL people who blocked reform? Not the GOP, it's the 4-5 right-wing conservative Dems who won't sack up and vote with their party for once.

Honorable mention to a lack of leadership to whip them into shape -- a role everyone expected Reid to fail at but hoped Obama would take.

[ipaint]

20. It was designed to fail.

Follow the money. I'm surprised that people still think that the vast majority of politicians who are outright bought by the elite will ultimately vote or lead with workers/citizens interests at heart. Never happen.

People apparently enjoy the mind numbing show.

[anarch]

21. because of capitalism,

because Americans in general are complacent and easily distracted, because of the powerful influence the insurance companies have over our legislators, because there is a significant number of people who are idealistically opposed to "socialism" for whatever reason.

I wonder what the response would be on an individual scale, if you asked someone in need of healtchare whether they'd like to have it for free, through a publicly funded program, or whether they'd like to pay for all or part of it through a for-profit system...I wonder what most people would choose, if it was right there for them to make a choice?

[timeforpeace]

26. Gimme a link. Gotta have a link. How dare you have an opinion without a link?

[kenny blankenship]

27. The money, the money, and the money -in that order.

The insurance racketeers' money is tempting to all the players, but it clearly has full control of more than a handful of Senators. And after running on the reform of healthcare with the creation of a public not-for profit option available to all, President Obama showed he has much more solidarity with Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman and their patrons in the F&I industry than with us. He was outright allergic to the public option once he was elected, always finding the opportunity to indicate he'd accept much less. He thoroughly mocked his own pledge to make the horsetrading with industry lobbyists transparent. He embraced the individual mandate to buy insurance- a thuggish shakedown for which he eviscerated his primary opponent for proposing. And he constantly indicated his indifference and abdicated his role as the People's guardian, chief negotiator, and advocate, leaving the insurance and pharma mafias to work it out between themselves with their fighting dogs in Congress. Evidently -to judge from his silence and passivity-he will sign anything that meets with insurance industry approval. We should have just nominated and voted for Aetna instead.

[anonymous171]

29. Obama left it up to congress. He chose temporary political expediency

over long term success. It shows that he has no confidence in his health care proposal. If he did, he would not hesitate to fight hard for it, because it would guarantee his reelection.