The Health Care bill was not .....

passed by reconciliation.

A Public Option never had the votes in the Senate.

How long will these myths last in the Democratic party ?

are you saying they are ....

It doesn't matter who or where sometimes.

That's why many RWers, despite hearing to the contrary from W's own mouth, still believe there were WMD, and that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks.

Edited to say, it's very sad to see the same thing happening at DU... but you're right, it sure as hell is happening.

I think they KNOW the truth , and decide to tell the lie to push their twisted views.

Rage/hate-oholics.

If they can get the whole "states can opt out of the mandate as long as they meet the same coverage standards" thing to kick in 2014, that pretty much washes out any bad taste it has, in my opinion. For the first time, there will be a federal standard that says the vast majority of Americans have to be somehow covered. Government will subsidize it on a progressive income scale, insurance companies that want the subsidies have to participate and adhere to the regulations of the exchanges. No more pre-existing discrimination, no more rescissions, no more lifetime limits, thousands of new free public health clinics, implementation of cost cutting technology and that all still barely scratches the surface. Its a damn good bill and I'm proud we passed it.

about preexisting conditions and such horrible practices and provided subsidies. I won't call it progressive though because it was mainly made up of Republican and Heritage Foundation ideas. I call it an improvement.

After Scott Brown was elected, we lost the 60-seat lock in the Senate to completely prevent filibusters (when all Democrats + Lieberman and Sanders were voting in unison on something). Reconciliation was the only way that ACA became law (or am I mis-remembering what happened?)
As I recall, the votes COULD possibly have been there for a public option (or an expansion of Medicare)- if a strict non-reconciliation majority vote had been held. A filibuster threat of the entire package by Republicans (and by Lieberman if a public option and/or expansion of Medicare were included) sunk the chances of both of these things ending up in the final package and I believe that there was some kind of reconciliation rule that prevented the public option for being included.

Am I remembering things correctly???

Reconciliation can only be used for strictly financial issues. Any creation of a public option or health exchanges or any other regulation of the existing insurance industry must be done through the normal vote process. There was a vote in the house with a public option, there was a vote in the senate without a public option. Normally the two bills go to conference and another (regular) vote would be held to pass both the house and senate on the conference committee's resolved bill. There was an understanding among Senate Dems that if the conference put the Public Option back into the bill, they would vote in unison to overcome any filibuster in the Senate. Howard Dean reported on this strategy om Hardball, Countdown and Morning Joe. Then Ted Kennedy died and Martha Coakley lost the replacement election.

We had two options, go forward with the conference bill and have the Republicans filibuster and effectively kill Health reform for another generation or the House could vote on the EXACT same bill the senate already passed and therefore avoid another vote in the Senate. This would bypass the election of Scott Walker entirely.

The public option couldn't have been passed in through the reconciliation process and we didn't have a supermajority to thwart an attempted filibuster of a HCR bill with a PO under the normal vote process. If the HCR bill (with a PO) had been allowed a straight up-or-down vote, it might've passed. However, regardless of how it happened, I was much in favor of getting something through instead of nothing.

Do you have a link that shows it's not possible?

House passes health care bill on 219-212 vote

President Obama won a historic victory in the struggle for health care reform Sunday as the House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill overhauling the American medical system.

The bill passed in a 219-212 vote after more than a year of bitter partisan debate. All 178 Republicans opposed it, along with 34 Democrats.

The measure, which cleared the Senate in December, will now go to Obama's desk to be signed into law. It constitutes the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-21/politics/health.care.main_1_health-care-entire-house-democratic-caucus-pre-existing-conditions?_s=PM:POLITICS

The House didn't like it and cut a deal with the Senate to pass it if they agreed to use reconciliation to pass a fix after it was done.

The senate had to agree or they would have to write another bill and try and pass it with Scott brown in office , wasn't gonna happen.

The bill was passed as is , the fix was then passed by the Senate on a reconciliation vote.

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-12-24/politics/health.care_1_health-care-gop-filibuster-piece-of-social-legislation?_s=PM:POLITICS

Thanks for reminding me. The HCR bill passed through the normal channels then the "fixes" were passed via reconciliation.

"the fix"

what else could have been included in "the fix"

to say that "the Senate did not have enough votes to pass a public option" sorta begs the question

the question being "When did Obama give up on the public option?"


Then, there is the table. Candidate Edwards said you cannot allow the insurance companies at the table because they will try to eat all the food. Well in this negotiation the table included insurance companies and pharmacies and doctors. The only people who were kept from the table - advocates of single payer.

they were two different things.

The fix included things like tax credits, Increased Penalties for Employers Not Providing Insurance, Closing the Donut Hole, expanded medicare coverage...

BTW , You can stop with the single payer spin , we all saw how the PO or a expansion of Medicare was shot down in the senate , to imply SP would have passed is absurd.

> a Government takeover
> Socialized Medicine
> adding to the deficit
> a way to kill grandma
> rationing
> the end of life as we know it

But that doesn't stop repug bastards from saying that.

but what about the dems ?


> The Public Option had 50 votes and could have passed.

> HCR was passed by reconciliation.

> A different President could have passed Single payer.

I hear crazy shit right here on this board.

n/t

failures.

Remember that too.

They're on a roll.

Show me a list of the 50 senators needed for reconciliation , if the PO could be passed that way.

that the the GOP killed health care reform than have anything pass. the fact is the public option wasnt going to pass. those of us living in the real world know that and would rather see something pass than nothing which is what would have happened if a PO was included.

...to pass their Supplemental War Appropriation in 2008,
they went out and GOT the votes.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/17-5


"But it was ALL Joe Lieberman's fault!
He is a Superman.
There was nothing we could do!
We just didn't have the votes." :cry:

Weak, Pathetic, and Untrue.

If the Democratic Party Leadership had really wanted "the votes",
they could have gotten "the votes".
SEE: LBJ or FDR

What really happened is that Obama had already traded away the Public Option behind closed doors with the Health Care Industry,
so all that
"We don't have the votes :cry:"
was pure Kabuki Theater.


"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

mandated "coverage" is not the same as access to care.

The main point of the bill was to protect the insurance industry. Even with the mandate the CBO says the number of uninsured will start climbing after an initial drop and there's no estimates on how many more people will be underinsured. In a few years we'll be even worse off than we were when this "historic reform" was passed.