Who do YOU think is controlling the healthcare debate?

[Ken Burch]

This question goes to the heart of why things are happening as they are happening.

Who, in short, do YOU think is calling the tune on this dance?

[jaxx]

1. Congress......nobody else gets to vote but them.

[Tippy]

7. And who tells Congress how to vote......?

UNTILL we get big money our of elections as in Campaign Finance Reform, we have to deal with it.....

[donheld]

12. Who pays them for how they vote?

[chimpymustgo]

2. Obama adminstration, taking cues from Pharma and Forma, is leading Congress to create this steaming

pile.

[jaxx]

3. but but but I thought people said Obama wasn't doing anything in the health care debate.

[chimpymustgo]

4. He's not doing anything to bring about REAL HEALTH CARE REFORM.

Or keep his campaign and Presidential promises.

[jaxx]

6. I disagree with you on that.

Real health care reform will happen when the final bill is passed. Real as in it's not been done before and folks this is real. As for promises, you need to go to exacts, not innuendoes for this one.

edit for spelling....jeez

[Armstead]

5. 3 AND 4 -- It's a performance with Big Insurance and Pharma pulling the strings

[frazzled]

8. Health economists

The preponderance of ideas in both the House and Senate bills are the result of decades of work by health economists.
But they did not get everything they envisioned by a long shot: to get something passed, deals had to be cut with everyone from big pharma to labor (yes, even labor) and everyone in between.

And so we (seemingly) end up with a broad framework for reform sketched out by the economists, blunted and bruised in many ways by a host of special interests. But the framework is what remains. We are all disappointed that so many compromises had to be made, but at least we will have a framework on which to build and reconfigure and retune and expand and contract.

[TexasObserver]

9. Big Pharma

[butterfly77]

10. The media..

[FrenchieCat]

11. The fucked up corporate media......

and they have been all along.

The fact that they aren't included in your poll demonstrates
that some folks don't want to have a clue, how hard it is to fight
the media these days....when they decide what the memes will be.
It wasn't an accident that a few town howlers got as much air time as they did,
nor was it a coincidence that the PO was declared "DOA" since Health Care
was placed on Obama's priorities of "things to do".

[ima_sinnic]

15. right--Obama would have been ignored if he even TRIED to counter the teabaggers

how convenient that there was nothing at all, for most of the summer, from the master of "instant response teams."

so you're saying that Obama was out there giving speeches about the importance of a public option and how it would work, addressing the teabaggers' distortions and ignorance, day after day, week after week, and we didn't hear about it because it's "hard to fight the media"? They simply ignored the president, the way they do Dennis Kucinich? (were any of these speeches even recorded?)

He really used every avenue at his disposal to relentlessly build a case for a public option, and there was a media blackout on it?

wow. in what universe did that happen?

[Odin2005]

13. The insurance companies.

[johnaries]

14. No one. It's totally out of control. nt