"......Extortion for a Protection Racket"

[amborin]

"Watching Sherrod Brown, Ron Wyden and Harry Reid try to explain why the Senate’s emasculated health reform bill was still worth voting for was painful. These men know they’ve been defeated and humiliated by an unprincipled extortionist fronting for what amounts to a deadly protection racket.

Whatever Joe Lieberman’s motives, the reality is that he just performed a moral crime on national television. He’s essentially said that if Democrats want to provide even poor health insurance to 30 million uninsured Americans, the federal government and those citizens will have to pay blood money to an industry protection racket that will have the economic and political power to set the terms of that protection, shield itself from oversight and competition, and raise prices at will.

......This is about organized crime. The victims aren’t "progressives" or other Democrats.

No, the victims are ordinary people, like the thousands, lovingly filmed by Eve Gitteleson, who showed up at the free clinics because they’d lost their jobs or their insurance and hadn’t seen a doctor or dentist in years, and the victims are those who will continue to go bankrupt, struggle to survive, or suffer and die......

snip

Ezra Klein on Countdown made the argument many will now make: it may be unconscionable for Joe Lieberman to threaten to leave 30 million people uninsured, but that also means it would be unconscionable for Democrats to kill the bill and leave 30 million uninsured. A brutally divisive debate will rage and split everyone who actually cares about the 30 million.

......We are arguing about paying extortion ransom money......

The health reform debate is no longer about "reform." It has now become a hostage rescue effort for more than 30 million innocent victims.....

<http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/18938#comments>

......Lieberman basically got everything he wanted with staggering speed. While there are no specific lists of what’s now in the bill and what’s out, all indications are that every piece that liberals swapped in exchange for the public option will be removed, and the public option won’t be triggered but eliminated.

.....Another major addition in the mystery “deal” on the public option, the extension of the medical loss ratio to 90% (meaning that insurance companies would have to spend at least 90% of premiums on medical care), took a major hit from the CBO, and an ideological one at that. Doug Elmendorf basically said that such a medical loss ratio would make the private insurance industry into a government entity, “so that all payments related to health insurance policies should be recorded as cash flows in the federal budget.”

This would make the health care bill cost several trillion dollars in CBO’s eyes despite the fact that nothing would have materially changed, and so this arbitrary decision basically killed the medical loss ratio, at least at 90% (it’s unclear what the magic MLR number is that turns the private insurance market into a government entity....

snip

• At his press conference after last night’s meeting, Sen. Reid said this bill would pass the full Senate next week, without explaining what in blue blazes the bill is. But Chris Bowers gets confirmation of the schedule:

The cloture motion on health care reform will be filed either tomorrow or Thursday, setting up a vote two days later. With a very crowded legislative schedule, and demands from the White Hosue to pass the bill in 2009, there really isn’t any other option. My bet is that Olympia Snowe will probably vote for the bill now, as will Roland Burris. All of this makes even the unlikely prospect of a no vote from Bernie Sanders on the cloture motion irrelevant. Barring further mendacity, this bill now has sixty votes.

.....puts final passage right around Christmas Day. And since the Senate’s on a White House-set schedule all of a sudden to secure passage by the end of the year, they had to give Lieberman basically everything to stay on that schedule....

<http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/12/15/where-were-at-on-the-lieberman-health-care-industry-profit-protection-act-of-2009/>

Those who are up in arms over Sen. Joe Lieberman’s "veto" of the extension of Medicare should remember this. When Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Washington, D.C. in 2005, he selected as his mentor none other than: Joe Lieberman.

Here’s David Sirota writing about this, after discussing Obama’s stab in the back of the progressive Lamont in Connecticut and his stab in the back of the progressive Christine Cegelis (Obama backed Duckworth) way back in 2006:

Although Obama said such high-profile primary endorsements were rare, a similar controversy arose a few weeks later. Just as Ned Lamont’s antiwar primary campaign against prowar Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was gaining momentum, Obama traveled to the state to endorse Lieberman. Like the Duckworth endorsement, Obama’s move was timed to derail an insurgent, grassroots candidate. To progressives this may seem surprising, given Obama’s progressive image. But remember, according to the New York Times it is Lieberman–one of the most conservative, prowar Democrats in Washington–who is “Obama’s mentor in the Senate as part of a program in which freshman senators are paired with incumbents.”

snip

<http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/18929>

from daily Kos:

The passage of this bill isn't so much about what happens regarding health coverage reform; it's about demoralizing your base a mere 11 months before a critical midterm election.......let's be honest: every American who sees this pathetic effort by Democrats, in spite of their overwhelming majorities, can only come away with the impression that Democrats just can't get the job done.

It's embarrassing and we can already see 2010 shaping up to be a potential disaster.

snip

1. Losing the public option doesn't change the bill that much
Maybe, but it sure does kill the enthusiasm of the Democratic base, including a record number of first time and young voters who only participated because of hope for change. Losing either chamber will mean the next 2 years will be even more ridiculous than the last 2, and Obama will be fighting for his political life in 2012.

2. The health care bill is still a tremendous piece of legislation for liberals - Sure, if the year was 1968. But sorry, in 2009 we can look to several other countries that have systems that put ours to shame. And perpetuating the antitrust exemption and the mere concept that profit trumps care when it comes to health coverage is a travesty.

3. The individual mandate will not bring about armageddon. - Yes, it will, because it's unconstitutional and there are MANY, including myself, who will go to court to challenge the notion that the federal government can force me to buy a product from a for-profit company protected by an antitrust exemption. The entire premise is ludicrous.

4. Working against this bill is an absolutely disgusting display of political ignorance - As is pretending that there won't be serious repercussions for essentially abandoning your base on an issue that has been a prominent plank in your party's platform for generations. We all know by now what reconciliation is. THERE WERE ALWAYS 51 VOTES. IF YOU'RE GOING TO SIT THERE AND TELL ME THAT THE REPUBLICANS CAN USE RECONCILIATION TO PASS GOD DAMN TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, BUT DEMOCRATS DON'T HAVE THE COURAGE TO USE IT TO PASS MEANINGFUL, BENEFICIAL HEALTH COVERAGE REFORM, THEN YOU BETTER BELIEVE BY GOD I'M GOING TO STAY HOME IN NOVEMBER 2010......"

snip

<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/15/814077/-why-today-made-me-disgusted-to-read-daily-kosUPDATEDx2>

"

[WeDidIt]

1. NEW SENATORS DO NOT SELECT THEIR MENTORS

Firedoglake is LYING.

Say whatever else you want to say, Lieberman was CHOSEN BY THE DEM LEADERSHIP to mentor Obama. Obama had no say in the matter.

[amborin]

3. Obama campaigned for Lieberman in Connecticut, against Lemont!

"And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman “his mentor” and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called “Bush’s closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War""

<http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5413>

[WeDidIt]

4. I do not deny that.

I do, however, correct the lie that Obama chose Lieberman as his mentor. He did not. New Senators do not choose their mentor. Their mentor is chosen for them by the leadership of their party.

[amborin]

6. so far, all the links show senators choose their own mentors

"The freshman Senatorial mentoring program started six years ago, when Senator Mark Pryor was a freshman.

“I felt like my orientation was lacking for a new senator,” the Arkansas Democrat recalls. “I just didn’t feel like I got a lot of direction.”

Washington Post columnist David Broder gave a talk to a bipartisan group of senators including Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), Carper, Pryor and Alexander. Out of this meeting, the four decided to approach their respective leaderships with a new idea for how to better prepare incoming members for the rigors of the Senate.

The program was launched in January 2004 with President Barack Obama’s freshman class. Obama chose as his mentors Voinovich and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, whose relationship with Obama has begun to warm anew after the Connecticut senator campaigned for Sen. John McCain in last year’s presidential election."

<http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/18073>

[dgibby]

5. How do you know that?

Not challenging your assertion. Just curious as to the mechanism.

[OHdem10]

2. My money is on the GOP. They have gotten just what they wanted.

Do not forget Lieberman owed the GOP big time. When it looked
as if Lamont might take him out.--It was the GOP to the rescue.
Remember they threw their own candidate under the bus, rallied
their voters for Lieberman and carried Lieberman over the
line to Victory. Lieberman owed his seat to the GOP.

The GOP wanted this thing stopped. They got it.

The Democrats have never pressed back against the
Republicans. Pray tell me who really tried to make
a sale for HCIR????? The Perception is the GOP
is more strongly against HCR than the Democrats are
for it.