I Now Oppose ANY Healthcare Reform Bill Put Up

Baucus would not even allow Single Payer to be heard. Says no way.

Fine, I say no way to whatever piece of shit comes out of this.

Any "reform" that doesn't address the real problem is just going to make the problem worse.

Any attempt to fix this without single payer is just going to cause more problems.

that lines the pockets of the CEOs for pharmacy, insurance, and multi-state hospital corporations.

"Our" elected leaders will tell us they have given us reform and it will be years before they'll even discuss it again.

It's why I've been calling it "The Insurance Company Profit and Campaign Donation Protection Act".

Or some such crap. The system we have is fundamentally broken. There is no mythical linear combination of the form (a)(existing system) + (1-a)(single payer) that helps.

A public option is what was promised. Look I'm in the same boat as you and millions of other Americans. I don't have insurance and can't get real insurance because it would have to be an individual (make believe) policy. But there will come a time where my body will start failing me. Why work so hard all my life only to end up bankrupt and in dept from medical bills? Might as well not even bother, right?
So if we don't get this problem solved, I stand to lose everything I've worked for.

But President Obama isn't going to let that happen, mmmkay and if he does then I'll move to canada or mexico (where their president promised universal healthcare for all by 2011)

so I refuse to give anything he comes up with a chance.

and a hearty FU! Single payer is the ONLY plan that will not line the pockets of Pharma and Insurance. GREED is the evil keeping America from becoming a first rate country again.

I do hope President Obama is giving lip service to ins and pharma to keep them from dumping Billions into another "Harry and Louise" add. yet it does make me nervous as to what the outcome will be.

Corp Dems are on the wrong side of this, politically. Short term bribe paid, but will hurt them and the rest of this if they don't step back and look at widespread support for affordable, universal health care. There will always be a bad time, economically, to do this.

Obama needs to frame this debate and speak aloud about what single payer, public option means, because the public doesn't know enough to make informed opinion.

so doing NOTHING is better than the alternative.

Do you just plug your ears and go "na na na na nan na can't hear you can't hear you"

We will get a public government run healthcare plan that anyone can get. Who gives a rats ass if there are still private insurance companies trying to rip people off. Employers aren't going to go for that anymore. They can't compete on price and their service isn't going to win any awards. They can't insure people for $100 a year and still pay their CEOS 10s of millions each year so they will go belly up and we then have a nice smooth soft landing into single payer.

That's why I say patience grasshopper.
You can't just immediately change the system in a few months or weeks.

and that didn't happen.

They have to at least make believe he's listening to the health insurance company's concerns.

No ifs ands or buts. Nothing of single payer will be in the bill. They're doing smoke and mirrors with a "triggered" public option, which means NO public option.

That's it exactly...and Obama's going along with it.

Screw it.

Without a single payer option theres no real reform.

Let the insurance companies have a fit and raise rates in retaliation, that will only (finally) force the hand of "our representatives" to stop the game and put a single payer option back on the table.

You make a pretend effort but keep discussion of any meaningful reform off the table. You then let the foxes who have been eating your chickens rearrange the roosts in the hen house, pass some laws that maintain the status quo and then claim you did something but didn't get enough support for what the electorate really wanted, but gee you made a bi-partisan attempt at it. Then you shrug your shoulders and walk away from the problem for the next eight years. Hey, it worked for Clinton.

That lead DIRECTLY to a GOP takeover in '94 and gave us eight years of Bush the Dumber.

brought to the forefront this time when Hillary ran for President. He still was voted in for another term, so it didn't affect his political career at all. I voted for Clinton back then because he had promised national health care. In retrospect he turned out to be another corporate whore who made promises to get votes. Surely, he wasn't so dumb that he didn't see that Hillary's plan would get shot down in flames. That would be the end of that and he wouldn't be obligated to revisit that promise again.

then I will fight WITH the republicans to defeat this.

Nothing is always better than crap. Crap that we'll be stuck with for possibly decades.

that is it's of benefit to Big PhRMA and no one else, like the patients who need it. It can be fixed but no one is approaching the fix, not in the White House, nor in Congress.

looking good so far.

If they we don't get real health coverage for everyone, I'm outta here.
I will relocate to some other country where I won't lose everything I own over the inevitable medicaly bills that people get as they age. I'm not a gamblin' man.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5777260&mesg_id=5777260


I'm not totally in agreement (that we should give up on real reform just yet), but I certainly agree that if the bill does not contain a VIABLE public open (open to everyone who chooses to opt in, at an affordable price) then the bill would only ENTRENCH the status quo, and enrich the insurance industry, and make true reform MORE difficult, if not impossible, in the future.

For the public option to be able to have a competitive price for average-risk Americans, we would have to have a LEVEL playing field. That means that private plans would have to have OPEN ENROLLMENT, be open to all comers (just like the public plan), so that "Adverse Selection" would not make the public plan a high-risk group of all the sick, non-profitable patients, forcing premiums too high for average risk Americans.

But, unfortunately, that's not the direction Schumer is headed. he recently refused to consider OPEN ENROLLMENT. His plan is turning out to be an insurance industry bailout, with the public plan the only one open to high risk individuals. This will be a poison pill for the economic success odf the public plan, just as the Big Boys want.




Looks like those who thought that industry interests could not corrupt the process to turn "reform" into CORPORATE WELFARE, may have, in GWB's famous word, "misunderestimated" them once again.

Further, it is a big flip off to the millions that would benefit from such a plan. I take offense.

Seems like we'll need to determine if any plan is, on balance, a step forward, or a step backwards.

I'm inclined to think Baucus is set on constructing a bill that would be a big step backwards, and that will make true reform more difficult.

But I'm not ready to give up on reform just yet. (Maybe Kennedy will be a positive influence in the Senate. Or maybe we can get a better bill in the House.)

But it seems to me that we need to make absolutely clear that we cannot be taken for granted, and let the party leaders think we will go along with any so called "reform", no matter how bad it is.

The corporatists are intent on not only damage control, but they are attempting to enact a corporatist agenda under the name of "reform".

And that kind of pseudo-"reform" would be quite damaging, were we to allow it to occur.

So, in that sense, I agree with the overall drift of the OP (I just don't think we're quite there yet.)

There will only be smoke and mirrors.

The only smoke and mirrors is the smoke the admin is blowing up the republican's asses to keep them from airing harry & louise ads.

Get real. Baucus is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the insurance companies.

Hell, they financed his re-election campaign.

They still have to get this bill passed. A public option is a good compromise to the idiot republicans who would rather go broke from a minor illness and lose everything. It will transition to single payer in relatively short order.

committees by the time of the August recess?

Too bad we have become a nation so addled with the "on demand" consumerist mentality that people don't understand patience anymore and think that they can get what they want simply by whining and bitching loudly enough.

Click here and scroll down toward the bottom. This makes a pretty good case on why a public option won't lead to single payer and, in fact, may poison the well for any future reform.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php

A REAL government option would be.

A "triggered" public option cannot be. The public option dies on the vine because of the ridiculous bar that will set the "trigger".

... Although a VIABLE public option, with a level playing field (OPEN ENROLLMENT/community ratings in both the public option and the private plans - so that adverse selection does not make the public option simply a dumping ground for high risk, low profit patients, forcing the public plan to be non-competitive for average citizens) COULD be a path to single payer.

But if the corporatists succeed in tilting the table, so that the public plan cannot compete economically, then it won't lead to Single Payer, but only to enriching the insurance racketeers.

development:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5780587