Bob Herbert: "The door is being slammed on the American dream & THEY STILL DON"T GET IT"

[kpete]

Op-Ed Columnist
They Still Don’t Get It

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 22, 2010

How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.

The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many.

While the nation was suffering through the worst economy since the Depression, the Democrats wasted a year squabbling like unruly toddlers over health insurance legislation. No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits.

The public interest? Forget about it.

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/opinion/23herbert.html?ref=opinion

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Either Herbert is wrong or the Obamacrats have to change.

>>>>>>The question for Democrats is whether there is anything that will wake them up to their obligation to extend a powerful hand to ordinary Americans and help them take the government, including the Supreme Court, back from the big banks, the giant corporations and the myriad other predatory interests that put the value of a dollar high above the value of human beings.>>>>>

In my experience, Herbert is very rarely wrong about anything.

[kenny blankenship]

2. No one in his or her right mind could have believed...

No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits.

That means about half of Democratic Underground is either crazy or mentally disabled. It was clear as crystal from at least as early as June that the Senate was NOT going to produce anything like Health Care Reform but was instead brewing up a guaranteed profitability act for Big Insurance and Pharma at the expense of taxpayers. IIRC that is when we began to get the first reports out of the Senate Finance Committee helmed by Max Baucus and a select group of REPUBLICAN friends. Up to that point things didn't look to good; after that point hope was foolish. Features of the legislation that emerged from day 1 and stayed like a herpes infection such as the individual mandate made it clear that passing the eventual bill would be the political equivalent of guzzling RAT POISON, particularly for Democrats. It was clear to everyone, that is, but Hill Democrats and the mental defectives brigade at DU. Then there was the overall failure of any iteration of the plan or of the final bill to reduce the complexity/redundancy of our system, which is a source of much of its exorbitant costs, or to address the real engine of our spiraling costs - the insurance racketeers who NEED TO VANISH INTO HISTORY'S DUSTBIN. The early death of the public option, itself the ghost of real Health Care Reform (called Single Payer when it was alive), was the final straw. Anyone who gives a damn and "is in their right mind" should have known at that point that this process was headed for UTTER CATASTROPHE. You can't impose mandates to buy insurance on people and not give them the option of a non-profit plan to escape to from the predators. It will not contain costs and it is MORALLY and politically wrong and insane. Health care is a PUBLIC crisis in America, arising from the failure of PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, which demands a PUBLIC POLICY response, not an incomprehensible maze of rules enabling privateering and subsidies which would just make the people's government into an enforcement/collection arm of the insurance mafia.

[Quantess]

3. Recommended.

[gkhouston]

4. Wish I could rec this about 5000 times. n/t

[Kablooie]

5. Do we have to say it again? "It's the economy, stupid!"

[AzDar]

6. K & R

[Edweird]

7. Kick and Rec. Come November, the losses will everybody else's fault.

If Mass. is any indication, there will be insulting and delusional post after post blaming the citizens for the deceptions and empty promises of the politicians - and the predictable and inevitable consequences of bait-and-switch.

They are running out of time to pull their heads out of their asses and avert disaster.
They have been warned.
They still appear to be oblivious.