Hey Progressives, the Health Care Fight Is Still On: Time to Push Back

[HuckleB]

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/144754/hey_progressives,_the_health_care_fight_is_still_on:_time_to_push_back/

"Like so many progressives who have fought for a public option plan which privileges the all-American principles of choice and competition, I am both heartbroken and outraged as Joe Lieberman--Senator Aetna himself--dominates negotiations on the final Senate bill.

The healthcare situation is a desperate one, with 46 million people uninsured, and those who are insured at the mercy of profit-maximizing Big Insurance. The raw politics of our time--including a GOP hell-bent on crippling and bringing down Obama's presidency and corporate Democrats who do the bidding of lobbyists--makes getting a good healthcare bill all the more difficult. Ours is not a parliamentary democracy. There are limits to what the majority can achieve.

We progressives are not so naive as Rahm Emanuel would have the American people believe. Most of us understand the need for compromise in this system. But, as I wrote earlier this year in a Nation cover story, while "compromise is inevitable. The hard question is whether the compromise opens the door to greater progress or forecloses opportunity." The White House mantra is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Yet as I argued, "The danger is that this process may make the weak the enemy of the good."

Throughout our history, real reform has come in fits and starts. Witness Social Security and Medicare. As Paul Begala observed in a Washington Post op-ed, "No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act...If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start."

..."


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"Kill the bill" is not the only option for progressives.

Or so I say... but I'm probably just a single-payer advocate who supports passage of the bill (and is still advocating for improvements) shill.

[Cant trust em]

1. Public option will probably be a deal breaker...

but Progressives should cling like hell to a high medical loss ratio.

[HuckleB]

2. Indeed.

:hi:

[HuckleB]

3. I know I shouldn't think this...

... but the lack of response to Ms. Vanden Heuvel's plea makes me wonder if at least some of vehemence of the anti-HCR posts lack a true purpose. Is it all bluster?

What gives?

[Duke Newcombe]

4. Because a lot of us are already "still fighting"....

We just don't expect to fight against our own party, time after fucking time.

Also, we know that "we can try again later" wrt HCR means 20-40 years from now. History is not on the side of the pollyannas espousing what I call the "Mañana, Mañana" meme.

[HuckleB]

5. I'm sure some are still "fighting."

But the ranting and raving at DU, combined with no real call to action, and a non-response to this call to action, makes me wonder just how many are "still fighting."

[Swamp Rat]

6. How do the unemployed and uninsured fight?

Millions of us want to know.

[HuckleB]

7. Are you saying that most of the DUers who are ranting and raving are unemployed and uninsured?

Or are you just jacking up the emotional level to prove my point?

[Swamp Rat]

8. I am only speaking for myself, and for others I know who do not even have access to a computer

I don't know about other DUers or jacking up people. :shrug:

[HuckleB]

9. So you have access to a computer...

And you post at DU, but you don't know any ways to continue the fight?

Really?

And my comment had nothing to do with anyone not posting at DU, so I'm not sure what your friends have to do with my comment.

:shrug:

[Swamp Rat]

10. unrec

eom

[HuckleB]

11. So you were just proving my point.

:eyes:

WOW! It never ends, anymore.

[Swamp Rat]

12. I was asking for help, but it seems like DUERS JUST WANT TO FUCKING ARGUE!!!

I am taking a long break from this place.

Bye bye! :hi:

[HuckleB]

13. It looks to me like you were the one who wanted to argue.

You're a long-time DUer, and I think you know the answers to your question.

Goodnight.

[tnlefty]

14. If I get the granite cookie for this it will be worth it:

Do you have any idea who you just posted that bit of high falutin' shit to? Think: NOLA, Katrina, and I think he knows a bit about poor people, people who've been screwed over by insurance companies and for the most part the rest of the country? I think he might know a thing or two about poor people who have been fucked over with or without insurance.

Have you forgotten that suits were filed against State Farm and other insurance companies for the pitiful excuses they used for not paying claims for the total loss of homes? So he has access to a computer...so what? I'm certain that he knows many people who don't and like he have been fighting to try to improve their lot in life and have been met with hurdles that I can't begin to fathom. And while that type of insurance isn't exactly HCR, community hospitals were being closed and just like the Shock Doctrine seems that damned near everything was up for privatization.

Please go smack yourself. Then smack yourself again, really hard.