I am beginning to think that Obama has double-crossed on on health care.

If you are also beginning to suspect that Obama is no longer serious about a true public option (as opposed to some watered down thing like co-ops), then please recommend.

If you disagree with me, if you think Obama is still with us on real health care reform that gives us a choice between keeping our current insurance or going into a public option, then please explain the facts upon which you base your belief.

In my opinion, Obama has let the health care legislative process get out of hand. Who is in charge here? Obama or Baucus or the health care insurance companies? Obama needs to give us a clear answer to that question. This is about whether the American people can trust him.

Sure, a lot of the protesters on the right are racist and just downright hateful. But let's face it, do you really know what the health care bill is going to look like? What will it say about the public option? Who will be eligible for the public option? What will the health care bill cover? What changes will it mean for our health care in the future? The American people do not want to hear that nobody knows. They want clear answers to these questions. I have read a couple of bills. But Baucus of course has refused to get his act together, so we don't know what that bill will look like.

Everyone on DU is criticizing the demonstrators on the right, but there is a vacuum of information because there is no clarity on a bill, and the void created by that vacuum is being filled by all kinds of misinformation. Obama lost the momentum on this because he allowed Baucus to take charge. Obama should have stayed home. He should not have traveled overseas until he had the health care bill ready to sell. He needs to get his priorities straight.

I would love to be persuaded that I am overly pessimistic. Please give me reasons to change my mind if you can think of any. I am really discouraged by the events surrounding health care reform.

Obama seems to realize that spiraling costs are a big part of why health care isn't working. A public option, being 20-30% cheaper than private plans (since it is more efficient) will play a big role in saving money by reducing the rate at which health care costs increase. obama's healthcare plan seems largely lifted from the commonwealth fund, which found that having a health care exchange with a public option would lead to roughly 3 trillion in savings over a decade by cutting health care cost increases from about 6.7% a year down to 5.5% a year. If you eliminate the public option, private insurers are not forced to compete to cut costs. That is why private insurers are so opposed to a public option, but are not as opposed to competing with each other. They know they can't compete with a public option unless they undergo drastic changes in how they operate, which means lower profits, lower wages and being nicer to insurance patients (fewer recissions).

I think Obama knows that, and because of that I think he will fight hard for a public option. However, I don't know if we will get it.

But, I'm not seeing that in him right now.

is riding on if he can reform health care the right (left) way. I hope he doesn't compromise with the republiCRAZIES.

It's his pick--4 or 8 years in office.

make me believe he wants the best health care bill he thinks he can get.

all I heard was insurance insurance insurance
and all I heard from Waxman, on the Daily show, was insurance insurance.
Mandatory insurance is NOT "affordable" health care.

before he was elected, Obama used single payer language.
Now he uses private business language.

I woke up at 4:00 a.m. on election day to work the polls in that state and was so exhausted when I got back to where I was staying that night that I slept through the election results. My children called to tell me that Obama had won.

I really worked and sacrificed to get Obama elected and I am really disappointed. He was not my first choice, but I had such high hopes for him. He has not managed the health care reform issue well. Not at all.

is a lack of jobs. I really feel if Obama had made jobs his top priority and gotten something solid and tangible done in that area at least some of those so-called "protestors" wouldn't be there.

But he promised health care reform during the campaign. And to make the cost of hiring American workers competitive internationally, we have to have cheaper health care. The cost of health care along with the cost of our bloated military are bankrupting the nation. There is no political will to reduce our military presence around the world, and maybe there should not be, but we can and must reduce the cost of health care. And that means drastically reducing the profits of health care insurance companies.

So our job market will not improve until we lower health care costs. Single payer or a robust public option are the only ways to lower health care costs in the long run.

...as usual. k&r

could they not understand that you have to educate the public as well as fight back.

especially in the Senate know exactly where he is headed on health care and has let them take the initiative out from under him. He should have told them. You will pass a health care bill with a strong public option or else. Discussion is great, but sometimes a leader has to take charge of the process. He could do it in a nice way. He could explain that the discussion has degenerated into bickering that is counterproductive and that, since members of Congress have not been able to persuade each other and cannot seem to come to agreement, he is going to take it upon himself to decide the issues upon which they disagree.

He needs to do that now so that he can answer the questions of the people who are swift-boating health care reform before Labor Day.

But I understand your frustration. I think we hired a President who is a pragmatist. He'll get what he can for us but I never really believed he'd be able to deliver on the whole promise. Given the song and dance we've seen that last few years his accomplishments will be nothing short of remarkable, if a little off target.

The right wing is doing the only thing it has left, which is to threaten violence if they don't get their way. The protesters don't even know in many cases who is funding their causes nor do they care. We should pay attention to this but I'm not convinced we should give in to the tantrums.

Look at who is supporting the legislation and who is opposing it. I mean in the business and professional world. What the Democrats need to do is to clearly state what the bill will and won't do. As it is now the right is able to say anything and everything about the legislation. Who supports this thing? Do you trust more? Your doctor, or your insurance company.

I campaigned for Obama for 6 months, knocking doors, working phone banks and busting ass on the promise of significant changes.....

And I know these things take time, but for fuck's sake, let's at least see some progress - real progress - in areas like "don't ask", gitmo, removing troops, healthcare..... HOW IS IT in 2009 we are still even discussing whether 2 men or 2 women can marry?? Real america is still a scary oppressive place when you scrape away at the surface.

When batshit crazy Oily Taitz is receiving more airtime and discussion then our President's true message and mission on healthcare - well then SOMETHING needs to be done. And I believe it's time for Pres. Obama to adopt an "I WILL NOT BE FUCKED AROUND WITH" attitude....

Pres Obama is a POWERFUL man and needs to step up and act like it - with assertiveness, grace, strength and empathy.

WHY are these fundie, redneck, uneducated motherfuckers able to say the things they say and do the things they do without being completely exposed for the blathering racist idiots that they are? Rachel and Keith only have so many hours of airtime to counter the bullshit and frankly, they are only preaching to the choir anyway.

Don't we have a majority in DC??? WHY does it still feel like we are pandering to the right and corporate america??

aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggghhhhh!!

Sorry for the highjack and the rambling - I'm feeling frustrated and your thread gave me the opportunity to bitch.....

The media is protecting its own corporate interests in trying to thwart his agenda. He puts the message out, but it is not within his power to control what the media does with it.

longer waste his message on the ignorant masses by speaking in nuances and subtleties.........

His message needs to be brunt, factual and concise.

Stupid people don't understand subtle.

I believe he knew going in that he wasn't going to get exactly what he wanted and was willing to settle for less. It's a start. Single payer is a ways down the road but it's still there. The President understands the political realities of health care reform and I think right now he wants to get something passed that will help as many of us as possible.

NOT when settling for less means pandering to corporations, lobbyists, religious nuts, racists and just plain willfully ignorant assholes.


:shrug:

Personally, I think that some of them are just on the payroll of interests that do not want health care reform and that some of the lack of agreement on a plan is intended to disrupt in Congress.

Senator Baucus is more subtle about it, but in a sense he is disrupting the Congressional process and preventing progress on a strong bill in the same way that the demonstrators at the town halls are disrupting the discussions and preventing the exchange of information.

It is time to stop this process. It has become unworkable and counterproductive. President Obama needs to simply come out and tell Congress and the people what he wants and say he will veto any bill that pretty much isn't what he wants.

I agree with you that he will make a wise decision about what we should have at this time. I have more confidence in him i than he has in that respect than he seems to have in himself. He has said that we have to have a strong public option. He needs to stick to that decision and not be swayed by extremists like the teabaggers or paid agents like Senator Baucus.

And President Obama needs to speak loudly and clearly to the American people to let them know that these wild stories about killing elderly people are not true. He needs to come right out and tell the American people that he will veto any bill that contains a provision that would permit cutting necessary care for older people or funding abortion or sex change operations (or breast enlargements that are not medically necessary for that matter) and all the other stupid stuff that the teabaggers fear and that will never happen anyway.

he's on the corporations' side, not ours.

and understands change is incremental.

Even this step may fail. Do you think really think single payer would go through?

zero

to allow people who are the biggest threats to insurance/drug companies into the discussions, instead they were excluded.

Nice of the Democrats to silence the opposition to the corporations.

:sarcasm:

At least in the early 1990's Congress asked the CBO to score a single-payer system, this time around there has been no such request.

Also some members of Congress who had supported HR 676 backed off to the follow Obama's lead, here is a video of Waxman saying as much.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=336207&mesg_id=336207

Very discouraging.