Weiner Reacts To Health Care Ruling: "We know this: the public option is constitutional."

Rep. Weiner 'still pissed' about public option
By Michael O'Brien - 01/31/11 04:38 PM ET

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) says he's "still pissed" that Democrats gave up on including a public option in their healthcare reform bill.

On the heels of a federal judge's ruling on Monday striking down the entirety of President Obama's healthcare law as unconstitutional, Weiner expressed regret that his party abandoned a government-run health insurance option.

He tweeted:


We know this: the public option is constitutional.


http://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room/other-news/141315-rep-weiner-still-pissed-about-public-option

:patriot:

:)

Public option would be just one option on exchange and CBO estimate was that it would be slightly more expensive than others. (Still it would slow down rate pf increase probably). It wouldn't change the mandate, it would just make one of the choices on the exchange a government run one.

But the fee for Medicare for all probably would be collected as a tax and judge was saying the penalty was in no way like a tax...
(Of course...why is mandatory Medicare constitutional even now if this judge is right?)

I think that we can expand Medicare by lowering the age or simply by making everyone eligible for Medicare. Easiest public option.

But, in a way you are right. Obama guaranteed to the insurance companies, on day one, that he would make sure they remained vital to health care delivery and profitable, in order to get them to come to the negotiating table. As if wild horses could have kept them and their lobbyists away.

As soon as Obama made that promise, effectively giving away all hope of real reform, a public option was off the table.

So a public option was a possibility until Obama opened his mouth and proved that he has Zero negotiating skills. None!

Having spent 15 years in a career that required quite a bit of professional negotiation, I can tell you first hand that he truly sucks, and has no basic skills at all.

If he had fallen back and relied on advisers who did have those skills he would have done much better, except that his advisers are all wealthy corporate hacks, so they all come from the opposition and will represent them in a pinch.

So Obama's choices seemed to be either negotiate himself, which he was clearly unqualified to do, or have his advisers do it, and have them give everything away. Either way, we lost everything and got a shitty Republican outcome.

to justify to failures as successes.

In order to convince himself that all these right-wing results he keeps getting are really what he wanted to achieve, he's accepting that he really wanted to get right-wing results from the start and becoming more right-wing over time.

Not that he was a truly honest progressive when he ran for office. A lot of us saw through the PR machine that created the phony hype around him. He was too good to be true, and too fake to be real. But I think there must have been a core of progressiveness for them to build upon.

I don't think that core is surviving very well, and I don't think it will still be there by the end of his term. I think he will be a true ConservaDem by the end of his term.

they say it was the republicans that introduced the mandate into the bill but now the republicans and some democrats want it taken out. So why not give in it to them so they would shut up? but that wouldn't work if thats what he wanted all along.

when will you apologists stop spreading this crap that the public option was some far left dream that was never achievable? It was achievable the whole time, they simply didn't want it. They were more interested in giving big pharma a nice fat hand out (going against everything they promised us duing the campaign) than helping actual people in need of healthcare.

Can't say enough about it...

to anyone but the rich.

Sorry, thanks for playing. The public option would not have the 20% overhead that private plans have, and would therefore be far less expensive than those. Since people wouldn't be paying 20% to the robber barons, they would flock to the PO.

Your defense of the President's ineptitude is pathetic at times.

There has to be a mandate to make it affordable and allow pre-existing conditions.

I do agree with the lower overhead with no profits to shareholders, CEO bonuses, marketing costs, etc. But, lots of folks will still find the premiums more than they "want" to pay.

It's because the costs are based on premiums paid in vs. benefits paid out. If they have to cover pre-existing conditions, but there's no mandate to buy coverage, then only sick people buy insurance, and the ratio goes into the tank.

You have to have a single-payer, tax-financed system or nothing. This unholy hybrid called PPACA is unworkable.

NGU.

He voted for the health care bill even after originally saying he would never vote for one that didn't have a public option.

Just another politician that had a chance to stand up when it actually mattered but decided not to. Now that it doesn't matter he talks a great game, thanks buddy.

...fought as hard as he could for what was right, then ultimately did the best he could for his constituents. Rare, I know, but nothing to be feared.

:rofl:

NGU.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/weiner-i-dont-see-any-way-i-can-vote-for-bill-without-public-option/

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“I dont see how I could,” said Weiner, when I asked whether he’d vote for a bill without a robust public plan. “I dont see any way I could.” His throwing down of the gauntlet is more striking when you consider that he’s known at home in New York as a moderate who’s not known for bucking leadership.

Indeed, Weiner also suggested that liberals should defy the President and Nancy Pelosi and oppose a bill without a public option. If not, they only have only themselves to blame for their lack of clout relative to, say, Blue Dog Dems, he added.

“All of the protest letters in the world don’t add up to much if you don’t finally stand up and vote No on something the President and Nancy want,” Weiner said. “There is clearly a sense that progressives in Congress are easily rolled.”


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Well said Mr. Weiner. Too bad you were lying.

Had he actually stood up to the administration we might have gotten the public option since they used reconciliation anyway.

could be a golden opportunity for all of us to get HCR right. Dump the mandate and bring back the public option or single payer.

The harmful features of this bill are really related to the structure of the reform.

Plenty of DU'rs have checked out the Kaiser calculator and realized that a lot of lower income people won't get health care anyway, or least only restricted access to it. It may be health care reform for hospitals, but it is not health care reform for many vulnerable individuals, and that is why it has not generated strong popular support. The American people do want health care reform, but this did not quite get there.

I happen to agree with the decision, but I also think this may in the end be a plus for health care reform. There is no question that a tax-financed system would be constitutional.

Note: I think the most recent decision was absolutely wrong about severability. I don't think the whole act can be struck down. I just believe that individual mandate, if considered constitutional, gives Congress so much power that it will be misused.

I give Congress a lot of credit for trying, but I have never been able to make the numbers work, and as time goes by, the gap seems to get worse instead of better.

And the mandate is what is (supposedly) unconstitutional. If you want to ban pre-existing denials, you have to have healthy people in the pool, and thus you have to have a mandate. Otherwise, only the sick buy insurance and the costs skyrocket.

Single payer or nothing. Those are the only choices.