Democrats take public option off life support
16 August 2009 12:46 pm by Jane Austen
http://tinyurl.com/mp8dvx
How did this happen when a majority of Americans were in favor of a public option only a few short months ago? Is it the American public that is fickle or is this what our elected officials were hoping for?
This post was submitted by Jane Austen.
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Taylor Marsh
Will Democrats get a health care bill? I still contend they will. Is it health care reform? It depends on how hard you want to push the partisan rhetoric compared to what actual health care reform should look like.
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We will have some form of health insurance reform but it won’t be what we envisioned and it won’t be enough. In subsequent years we will find out just how short-sighted we were. By that time the system will be a mess.
It is crashing around us as we speak.
When the concept of the HMO was introduced, I think during the Nixon years, I had grave doubts about what it would/could and wouldn’t/couldn’t do. Subsequent years have borne out my fears. I’m not saying there are no good HMOs. Kaiser Permanente, I believe is one such HMO that has been very successful. I belonged when I lived in North Carolina but they then closed shop; when I moved back to NY I found Kaiser in Westchester County but they then left. I think the only place you have Kaiser now is on the west coast. That’s the only place that I know of for sure.
Read this for clue on how some folks think:
“This plea circulated around progressive websites in hope that Cigna Insurance would reverse its decision to deny a teenager a life-saving liver transplant. The company’s phones and emails were jammed with petitions to save 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan’s life. Cigna bowed to pressure reversing its denial Thursday, December 20th; however, Sarkisyan died that same day–10 days after doctors determined she needed the surgery.
Nataline had leukemia and needed a liver transplant because the organ failed after she received a bone marrow transplant from her brother.
The California Nurses Association took up the cause to save Nataline’s life. Member and RN, Geri Jenkins noted, “…it is deplorable and appalling that CIGNA needed to have hundreds of people pounding on their doors and besieging them with calls to take the humanitarian step they should have done long before today.”
Michael Crook, on December 21st, 2007 at 6:19 pm Said:
This isn’t something to be upset over. It wasn’t anything personal, it was business. Insurance companies have the right to decline pretty much whatever they choose to.
This girl’s parents should have been more devoted to getting the money as opposed to fighting city hall.”
http://tinyurl.com/qygj7u
Good afternoon Jane and djjl~
Well a big part of the problem aside from the cowardice of the Dems and ineptitude of our President and his staff is the framing being done by the MSM.
Just take this morning’s shows. Jake Tapper in for George Step had two Republicans debate the policy issues; Arlen Specter and Orin Hatch from Utah.Now I know Specter jumped ships but that was just to save his personal bacon. Then he gave Hatch the majority of the airtime and only half way corrected one( of many) lie. When Spector was able to talk he spent half the time being “clubby” with Hatch.
‘Meet the Press’, was practically an advertisement for the status quo,with Dickhead Army getting most of the air time and Maddow forced to occationally pipe up at some of his outragous lies.I kept expecting him to backhand her his comtempt was so obvious.
Sebeluis made a cameo on ‘Face the Nation’ and literally put me back to sleep.
djjl…who is Michael Crook? Is he from the insurance company? He sounds like Tony Soprano.
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 1:29 pm
This is my problem with any “reform” that doesn’t include public financing of health care. If there isn’t public funding, we will inevitably leave this system in the hands of people who think it’s “not personal” when they deny care to a child who then dies.
I don’t understand the facts of this case, but the possibility that this decision was driven by profit motive, in order to keep that all important medical costs ratio” low, is reason enough to be concerned about it. This is how these people operate, and it isn’t going to stop because Congress passes some legislation that’s supposed to magically make all the bad things go away but not affect the insurance companies’ bottom lines.
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 1:29 pm
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This one case alone is why I don’t believe that health care should be part of the free-market system. It’s “personal” to me when someone’s life is in the balance. I don’t care who it is.
Cujo359 says:
16 August 2009 at 1:37 pm
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Transplant surgery is extremely expensive and Cigna did not want to pay for it. Whether this girl would have survived with a transplant, I don’t know, but by the time Cigna had reversed their decision she had died.
Crook was just a poster. There were numerous comments like that.
This is something that happens all the time. This story got aired because the people fought and got other people firghting for them.
Jane Austen says:
16 August 2009 at 1:41 pm
Figured as much, but I think the big bit of information I’m missing is the girl’s chances of survival afterward. At some point, giving a liver to someone is a bad idea, since it’s a costly procedure and donors are somewhat hard to come by. If there was a reasonable chance she would have lived a normal life span, they should have gone ahead with it. If the chances were a lot worse, then maybe someone else should have gotten the procedure.
Anyhow, the insurance companies have such an obvious motivation to not do such a procedure that I’m always going to be suspicious. Given how high their profit margins have grown in the last decade, I think I’m right to be suspicious.
Try this. I remembered reading about this at the time:
http://tinyurl.com/dn9wlh
“Diamonte’s mother did not have dental insurance or Medicaid coverage; a timely $80 tooth extraction could have saved his life, according to the Washington, Post.The Post reported that when Diamonte first began experiencing a toothache, his mother was having trouble finding a dental provider who would accept Medicaid to extract six abscessed teeth from Diamonte’s younger brother DeShawn.. After finally finding an oral surgeon who would accept Medicaid and making an appointment for DeShawn, she learned that her Medicaid coverage had lapsed and cancled the appointment. The coverage lapse apparently occurred when her family moved had moved from the homeless shelter address listed on the Medicaid application.”
Cujo…you make good points about how medical decisions are made with scarce resourses but the way I understand it the medical professionals were part of the fight with Cigna…or did I get that wrong?
cujo359
I think the people who were most able to make the decision were the medical personnel. The medical personnel would have taken all appropriate facts into consideration BEFORE recommending the procedure. It isn’t as if a patient or their family can simply say they want a liver transplant.
Sounds like some Medicaid procedures need adjusting too. There are so many stories like this and the health fairs with their long lines,why isn’t the MSM at least giving them equal time to the “goons”?
http://tinyurl.com/npqx5q
Geragos said Cigna twice took Sarkisyan off the liver transplant list
and purposely waited until she was near death to approve the transplant because the company didn’t want to pay for her after-care.
Cigna announced yesterday — just hours before the girl died — it would pay for the transplant. “Cigna decided that they were going to take profits over this little, beautiful princess’ life,” Geragos said. “We believe that they single- handedly decided that they wanted to have her die and wait so they would not have to take the after-care coverage.”
Many americans are experiencing a ‘great depression’ right now. You know it is very demoralizing when we have this happening now,with Katrina in our recent history. Call me naive but I really thought we lived in a better country than that.
Why has this story not be used and others like it to illustrate to people why reform is needed? Those people thought they had insurance.
If this turns out to be the case then fu*k em. I mean plain old simple up their a*es fu*k em. I’m throwing in the towel because frankly the fight ain’t worth beating my head against the wall anymore.
Hell, I’ll be able to fit in, I’m a white(to all appearances anyway) male. To bad for the rest of you. To bad about that hope thingy. Watch yer backs cause from this debacle nobody in office will.
Lake Lady says:
16 August 2009 at 2:05 pm
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So did I. The stories you all are relating right now are the face of health care in this country. I would never have been so passionate about this one issue if it didn’t involve the human element. I’ve seen too much suffering because of a health care system that is unresponsive to the real needs of the people it is supposed to provide for. When you have the profit motive overtaking the human element, you’ve lost me.
bbl.
The brutal truth about America’s health care.
http://www.truthout.org/081609A
I don’t know how Taylor can read this article from truthout, and say we don’t have third world medicine in some parts of our country when organizations like the one profiled where started to serve third world populations?
Yes, we do have great innovations like bio-identicles Taylor but do you think these people have had the opportunity to fine tune their healthcare to the point of bio-identicles?
Jane Austen says:
16 August 2009 at 2:09 pm
When you have the profit motive overtaking the human element, you’ve lost me.
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Fair enough. But what about the economic element? Regardless of whether health care is a for-profit system, there will always be an opportunity cost for providing health care. Especially in the area of organ transplants, where demand far outstrips supply.
Can any of you say with complete certainty that this poor girl would have gotten a transplant under a public option, or even single payer? Organ transplants are expensive; many more people need organs than are available; and organ transplants frequently don’t work long term. (I googled the story and the physicians who protested CIGNA’s decision said she had a 65% probability of surviving for six months.)
Because of these factors, a gatekeeper function is required, whether the system is for-profit or not. Sadly, that means that someone will literally decide whether a human being lives longer or dies. CIGNA may have effectively ended Sarkisyan’s life because of profit concerns. But it’s not clear to me that a public option or single payer system wouldn’t have reached the same conclusion on resource allocation grounds. Suppose her competitor for the organ transplant had a greater probability for living longer, and was otherwise less of a risk? Wouldn’t any rational gatekeeper, government included, make the decision to award the organ to the competitor instead?
So you can take the profit motive out of healthcare. But you cannot fix the underlying issue of resource allocation when we are dealing with scarce health goods like organ transplants. A public system is not the panacea. That said, the WaPo article on the tooth abscess is completely different, as you’re not dealing with a scarce resource. And I hope that the insurance reforms underway make it easier to address these sorts of problems.
Off topic, but…
Am I the only one to be pissed off and bewildered because AMC isn’t running a Mad Men Marathon all weekend long ending with the premier of season #3 tonight?
What was AMC thinking???
The POINT is that the non-medical – the insurance company – made the decision not the doctor and patient/family.
I understand that point. But it only takes you so far. The doctor is considering only the specific patient. A gatekeeper has to consider how to allocate scarce resources among many similarly-situated patients. After all, if the patient had private means to pay, this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s only an issue because some group — all of us in a public plan, fellow employees otherwise — is collectively underwriting the provision of health care costs. So, with all due respect to the doctor/patient relationship, ANY system — whether public or private — will need to determine who is the best recipient of a scarce health care treatment.
ogenec says:
16 August 2009 at 2:37 pm
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I have seen patients with odds higher than 65% survive transplant surgery. The one thing this young woman had in her favor was her age. I don’t know if she would have survived. There comes a point where no amount of treatment will benefit a patient but there’s also a point where you can save a critically ill patient. My friend is a case in point – 16 years ago he had a 15% chance of surviving heart transplant surgery but a heart became available and he received it. He was literally at death’s door. He survived the surgery and two years later underwent a kidney transplant because he was in end-stage renal failure as a result of all his co-morbidities associated with his heart problems and diabetes. He survived that transplant and lives today.
Transplant surgery is a whole different area of medicine because of the availability of organs and the expense associate with it. Not everyone will get an organ for transplant because of the scarcity of available organs. And you have compatibility issues to deal with and the threat of rejection if the organ is not as compatible as it should be. When matching a potential organ transplant recipient all these factors and others are considered.
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 3:04 pm
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Many insurance companies make decisions that only doctors/families involved with any case should be making. This is what bothers me the most. I know that there are patients who will never benefit from any treatment if they are at that point where they just won’t survive no matter what you do but I find insurance companies making decisions about who lives and who dies not right. Medical ethics is something I started to look into about 5 years ago and there is a lot to be said about how health care is rationed in this country, who gets treatment and who is denied treatment and what they base either treatment or non-treatment on. This is going to be an on-going problem or issue because as advances are made, cost and treatment are going to be part of the equation.
Jane Austen says:
16 August 2009 at 3:50 pm
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I’m sure you are correct. Probabilities are just that — probabilities. I’m sure there are many who outlive expectations. And that’s a very good thing.
My only point is that organ transplants are a scarce good. So we have to have some system of allocating. That, it seems to me, is really what this whole debate is about. Some would say, the “good” should go to the person who’s willing to pay the most. The free-market argument. Others would say, the good should go to the person who deserves it the most. The utilitarian argument. The problem of course is determining who “deserves” it. The older patient who has no other realistic option, or the younger person who wants the same shot at a long life as the older person?
Either way, you need a gatekeeper. So I’ve never bought the argument that medical care is solely between the patient and the doctor. When you pay out of pocket, yes. But not when it’s subsidized by others.
ogenec says:
16 August 2009 at 4:13 pm
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Interestingly enough, organs are allocated according to who is the best match. Not everyone will ever match because of blood type and other variables. And you cannot get an organ for transplant by just paying for it unless you go to the “black market.” Like I said, transplant surgery is a whole ‘nother game. But I understand what you are saying.
The health care debate is not a debate on transplant surgeries and the allocation of organs.
One only needs to look at the thousand in line in LA for free medical care.
The point of patient/doctor decisions is intended to quash the false argument that any government support health care places some bureaucrat between the patient and doctor. There is already someone there in most cases – the insurance bureaucrat.
I take my statement about “just paying for it” back. I met a 70- year old gentleman who needed a kidney transplant and he actually went shopping for one among his lady friends. He found one who was willing to be a living donor for the right to be his “girlfriend” and a nice sum of money. You can make of that what you will.
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 4:32 pm
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One very big issue I have with some of the insurance companies is the denial of life-saving CAT scans and MRIs. When they deny these tests they are putting the dollar before the patient. And it’s the bureaucrat who is making the decision. He/she is literally playing “God.”
I’m not saying the health care debate is all about allocation of scarce resources. But a lot of it is about that. I’m using transplants only because you mentioned it. But there are other examples. Like the cost of biologics, for which the annual cost starts at $20,000 and escalates pretty quickly. Who should get biologics, and at what cost?
Free market would say, if you can pay out of pocket, have at it. People insured under a plan would say, the plan should cover biologics. But because the annual cost far exceeds what the patient is paying in, there must be some way of allocating who gets biologics and who doesn’t. Add to that the debate as to whether makers of biologics should get more exclusivity protection than other drug manufacturers, and the issue becomes even more acute. If you are a biologic maker and Congress reduces exclusivity from 12-14 years to seven, your rational response is to increase price to offset later loss of income. Then insurers have to increase premiums or reduce access. Separate from the for-profit system, a public option would face the same quandary.
So yes, many — if not most — health care issues are ones of resource allocation and opportunity cost. In a purely economic sense, health care is no different than any other good. If the good is finite, and demand exceeds supply, you need a system that allocates resources. Which, unfortunately, produces winners and losers.
I dont think there is any good answer to the healthcare reform debate.
When talking about transplanted organs, yes, they are a scarce resource. Working for a transplant center, I can say that the patients who will get listed are expected to survive. If they are too sick for transplant, they do not get listed.
Having said that, to maintain a patient’s health post transplant requires lifelong medication treatment, which insurance plays an important function. (Meds are not cheap).
UNOS is the agency that is presently responsible for organizing the transplant lists by region, and ranking the patients on it when organs become available. Essentially, they are the ‘gatekeeper’ for this scarce good, and the system is as fair as it possibly could be.
What concerns me is that what will the ‘public option’ look like? Will it include coverage for major treatments such as transplant, chemotherapy, or prolonged chronic illness management… or will it just cover basic preventative measures and major medical?
The public option is designed to cover those that do not have coverage. We are already paying the cost of those who are uninsured now… with higher premiums on our own care. In order to bring the costs down for everyone, especially those who have coverage, then the public option will have to be an apple-to-apple policy to compete with the current plans that are out there.
If there is no competition, then the rates we have now will not change. If there is no similarity, and the public option is a ‘watered down policy’ then, we will still have people who won’t get the care that they need.
There is no easy answer here.
Morally, yes, everyone should have healthcare, access to healthcare and be insured. Financially, I don’t see how it’s possible in our society. Our American culture promotes life, sometimes at all costs. Preemies born months too soon, are on life support until they are viable infants… in other countries, this wouldn’t be an option.
As in many societies, religion and culture play an important role in life/death arguments. In America, our diversity prevents us from any kind of consensus and may, in fact, be our achilles’ heel when re-designing the healthcare system.
I mentioned transplants only because of the false argument that insurance companies are not placed between a patient and physician – you know the argument being raised by Republicans like Palin, Gingrich, etc.
Thanks for your comment RD.
RD says:
16 August 2009 at 4:54 pm
What concerns me is that what will the ‘public option’ look like? Will it include coverage for major treatments such as transplant, chemotherapy, or prolonged chronic illness management… or will it just cover basic preventative measures and major medical?
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RD – I don’t know what part of the country you’re from but I know here in NYS Medicaid (not Medicare) covers transplants.
I didn’t mean to imply that Medicare doesn’t cover transplants, it does, only to say that Medicaid does cover transplant surgery.
Ogenec:”A public system is not the panacea.”
Yes it is. Or at least as close as you can get. EVERYONE has equal access. In this case it would mean she would have been put into the lists accourding to her severity of illness and chances for good outcome just like anyone who had enough insurance or was rich enough to afford it. It’s not going to guarentee outcome, just equal access.
RD:”Morally, yes, everyone should have healthcare, access to healthcare and be insured. Financially, I don’t see how it’s possible in our society. Our American culture promotes life, sometimes at all costs. Preemies born months too soon, are on life support until they are viable infants… in other countries, this wouldn’t be an option.”
Where do you get your information and xenophobic attitude?
“Our American culture promotes life, sometimes at all costs.”
As opposed to THOSE people in other countries who just don’t VALUE life like WE do huh?
“Preemies born months too soon, are on life support until they are viable infants… in other countries, this wouldn’t be an option.”
Yeah, in England, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, The Neatherlands etc. etc. etc. they just throw up their hands and say NOPE, gonna cost TO MUCH to trat this preemie!
That is a bald faced lie. In the single payer/universal care countries you get trioged for severity of need. Elective stuff is put on a list. IMMEDIATE needed treatments are done. NO COST or very little cost to patiant.
And that comes along with personnal knowledge of a preemie born in Canada that didn’t come home from the hospital for 6 1/2 months after birth.
”A public system is not the panacea.”
Yes it is. Or at least as close as you can get. EVERYONE has equal access.
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Sec, the quote you excerpted was part of an argument that replacing a private gatekeeper with a government gatekeeper doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. If the argument is that the young lady would have been alive but for the private insurers, I’m saying we can’t say that for sure. A public gatekeeper might well have denied coverage too, because someone else was more deserving.
It strikes me that the real debate is not about whether health care is a good that should be rationed. Everyone pretty much accepts that there has to be rationing. The real debate is about who the rationer should be: the free market or the government.
I agree that we should have a system that promotes equality of access but not outcome. I disagree that the public option is the only way to ensure that. If we had mandatory health insurance, with no exclusion for pre-existing medical conditions etc., why wouldn’t that also ensure equality of access?
There cannot be a system that assures outcome. The issue with the young lady is that HER Doctors felt that the surgery was appropriate. They were overridden by the insurance company.
BTW, RD thanks for your comment as well. Good to hear a new voice.
The issue with the young lady is that HER Doctors felt that the surgery was appropriate.
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Yes, djjl, but my point is that what the doctors felt has little to do with a system that underwrites collective risk. If her parents could have paid out of pocket, there wouldn’t be an issue. But they asked their insurer to pay. And the question any insurer faces — including not-for-profit — is whether the benefit is worth the cost to it. When you overlay the issue of maximizing shareholder profit, the resource allocation problem becomes even more acute.
So, in an insurance-based system, it’s not particularly pertinent that her doctors thought surgery was appropriate. The issue is whether the gatekeeper did. And what we are debating is who the gatekeeper should be. For obvious reasons, many of you want it to be the government. For other reasons, others think that a tightly-regulated private market is sufficient. Speaking again in economic terms, my thinking is that if health care insurance reform improves some outcomes for the uninsured, and does not make the-previously insured worse-off, it’s a pareto-optimal solution and we should proceed.
RD says:
16 August 2009 at 4:54 pm
What concerns me is that what will the ‘public option’ look like? Will it include coverage for major treatments such as transplant, chemotherapy, or prolonged chronic illness management… or will it just cover basic preventative measures and major medical?
…and we now hear the foundational reason Dems find themselves in this position. You can’t wage a campaign without simply explaining, at least the bullet points, your intent and what you want to manifest. Well said, RD.
a pareto-optimal solution is not what we need
Nate Silver said there is plenty for Dems to be worried about in 2010 and 2012:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/08/likely-voters-and-unlikely-scenarios.html
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 8:12 pm
a pareto-optimal solution is not what we need
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By definition, it absolutely is. Pareto-optimality is the point at which some people are better off, and no one is worse off. Any more change, and at least some people are worse off.
But instead of debating what we need, I prefer to focus on what we’re actually going to get. And we are not going to get a public option, at least on this go-round. That we are talking about what manner the health care reform will take, rather than whether there should be reform at all, is to me a very significant achievement.
I didn’t even bother reading the Op-Ed. Rethugsar are fighting a no rules war, and the President’s response is an Op-Ed in the Times of all papers. Yeah, that’s going to reach Apalachia. Someone needs to tell the President the pen is not mightier than the sword when your enemy would sooner cut off both hands before allowing you to sign any kind of health care reform legislation. Bringing a knife to a gun fight is bad enough, but the President brought a pen to an all out of war.
Taylor Marsh says:
16 August 2009 at 8:04 pm
Piggybacking on your and RD’s points, this could have been a whole lot simpler if the Democratic position had been “Medicare for everybody” instead of single-payer, or “Medicare for those who want it” for “public option”. People like Medicare. They like it better than health insurance, generally speaking.
From this, I can only conclude that either the Democrats weren’t that motivated to provide a realistic option for ordinary people, or they are completely incompetent at messaging.
Folks, I have read what everybody says. Amazingly, one of my husband’s classmates sent an email out to everyone of the classmates. And as I’ve told all of you many if not most are right wing. But Dick sent an email about health insurance companies and 2 personal experiences he had with them. Here is what he wrote:
Hi Folks,
There currently is a lot of heated debate about health care, and from what I read and see on the TV and get bombarded with on the Internet, I suspect there is more emotion, fear and ignorance floating about than honest attempts to understand all the facts and aspects of our health systems, present and proposed. Two personal experiences of dealing with health insurance companies follow:
Our small company in Missouri established a family health plan for our employees. Joyce and I had a health plan as a part of my retirement from the military, but our son, his wife and the nine other employees did not have any medical coverage. Thus, we established a company health plan. The company and the employees paid into plan for several years, and then a female employee developed an eye problem and filed a claim with the insurance company. The claim was paid, and shortly thereafter we received a registered letter form the insurance company notifying us that our company’s health insurance policy would not be renewed at the end of the policy year.
Our daughter once worked for our home town newspaper in Missouri, a small company with about 30 employees owned by local friends. The company had paid into a company health plan for many years, and then the wife of a long-time employee was diagnosed with cancer. The insurance company was a different company from the one we had, but this company also soon sent a registered letter to the newspaper company notifying them that their health plan would not be renewed at the end of the policy year.
I am not trying to defend or to defeat any of the current health system proposals. I am merely trying to offer two personal examples of why I believe there is room for improvement in our current health system.
Partisan politics aside, I dearly hope that after years of doing virtually nothing and basically avoiding the national health issue, congress, which has an exceptionally good health plan, will finally get off of its dead ass and do something for the rest of us–hopefully positive.
Dick
So, I think all of us have heard these stories, which means that they are much more prevalent then the right wing claims.
Cujo359 said…
From this, I can only conclude that either the Democrats weren’t that motivated to provide a realistic option for ordinary people, or they are completely incompetent at messaging.
Or both.
PLUS, they made the mistake of underestimating the “enemy.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/15/cpr-tricked-women/
This is why the President should have been prepared to do more than the belated op-ed – as NMP says gun fight and all.
Cujo359 says:
16 August 2009 at 8:43 pm
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I think your last line says it all. And my first thought for a public option was to expand Medicare.
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 8:49 pm
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Maybe the Brits, by twittering, can do what Obama couldn’t do for this country, convince the average American that a public option might not be so bad after all.
Hey I’ll take help from where ever.
Ogenec:”If we had mandatory health insurance, with no exclusion for pre-existing medical conditions etc., why wouldn’t that also ensure equality of access?”
Why in the name of a heaven that ain’t thar should we guarantee profits and buisness for insurance companies?
Only if the Government provides a pool coverage that would be geared towards payment tied to income with guaranteed coverage, no pre-existing nothing. You’re covered for the whole shooting match.
sec
That’s what civilized societies want to do for their citizens.
I love that the clown from England has enraged the Brits and lt’s beginning to look like it will have a profound affect on their next election. When polled Brits and canadians and virtually every other industrialized countries inhabitants support to out right LOVE their national healthcare.
Only in America could you have the most reactionary, racist,anti populace bunch of money grubbers actually WINNING the PR campaign over a healthcare reform that would benefit the entire country. Frankly save BILLIONS, literally BILLIONS of dollars and save many, many lives. And the repugnantklaners playing on ignorance and racism are able to get the peckerwoods to be against the very thing that would help them. ONLY in America!
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 9:13 pm
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ditto djjl.
secular – if you’re still here I left a question for you down thread on prosperity gospel.
whew. after a long contacting and feeling out all the folks I know in congress and labor orgs along with pct chairs in my very large tx city the situation is beyond bad. it appears to me the party is headed towards civil war. black and latino members of congress-many like rep bernice johnson todday- who have made their end very clear for a long time-are prepared to not support a bill without such an opt. the aa community will be devasted if no pub opt. period.
grassroots level-and i aint jsut talking online roots i mean the folks who do the most dirty grunt work here locally-are unanimous. i have not one reply good on this. they say-kiss it goobye obama. kis goodbye bc we wont do lick of help for you ever again. that is what im hearing. and i mean that is IT. period.
so we have a viceral reaction-near complete ont he left among the activists that this is and was their red line to not be screwed with. it looks like now it will be. obama has lost the left. i can conclude nothign else. there will be a very emotional fight over th epub opt u bet. dean’s dfa is ready to primary all appeasers.
i IM with several dem congressfolk daily. what i was told-”we are blindsided. how can we host townhalls with now even the pub opt now questioned by wh? we will keep fighting on and wont back a bad bill.”
obama now has a real insurrection onhis left flank bc he ignored it all these months. his press shop undercut and surprised members of congress who are right now pushing pub opt.labor plans a repsonse tommorrow btw
exan4hillary says:
16 August 2009 at 9:25 pm
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I said it once and I’ll say it again – Taylor has been saying this for weeks.
Well, let’s all stand a give an ovation for Obama and his passion for bi-partisanship.
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 9:39 pm
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BS to bi-partisanship. Start the arm twisting.
yep. obama will lose the left if he severes the pub opt. again-i do not think a bill will pass and if it does without pub opt then i fully expect a primary top to bottom in 2012. u bet on it
how’s that 50 state strategy working for the progressive wing of the
democratic Party.
Work like a President who really cared to do the right thing – twist arms like Lyndon Johnson. To do the RIGHT thing.
like taylor said-if this thing melts away expect it to impact our entire foreign policy also. im jewish. many jews voted for him but really dont trust him much. they think he is weak on middle east. esp israelis. this would highlight weakness. i fear the consequences
obama shouldnt be so cocky here either. he used internet to bring down hillary and edwards. dont think for one sec internet cannot be used to bring him down. dean showed us the way.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/obama-picks-public-option-fight-with-liberals-2009-08-16.html
Thanks texan4Hillary
Where are you in Texas.
I’m a long removed Texan – Houston. Happily living in Little Rock Ar.
hah ambinder now has admin saying seb mispoke. hmm those pesky unions must be bitching them out
She’s not in the loop?
Are we not ready for prime time?
maddow is right.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/08/the_maddow_protocol_on_health_care_politics.php#comments
But ultimately, if the president decides that he’s going to go with a reform effort that doesn’t include a public option, what he will have done is spent a ton of political capital, riled up an incredibly angry right wing base who’s been told that this is a plot to kill grandma, grandma, and he will have achieved something that doesn’t change health care very much and that doesn’t save us very much money and won’t do very much for the American people. It’s not a very good thing to spend a lot of political capital on.
We aren’t ready for prime time!
nyt-aexlrod tries to walk it back. rockefeller-we must have pub opt. panic. in. wh.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/health/policy/17talkshows.html?_r=1&hp
ok here is what seb. said-this is nuts. im confused. did ap dare say pick and choose? seb needs to go home to ks and getthat sen seat. she needs to go guys.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/8/16/213836/501/292?mode=alone;showrate=1#c292
im in houston diji.
An interesting discussion about organ transplants. It’s not just about money and allocation of scarce resources, it also about our society. Taking out the subject of health insurance (assume everyone has exactly the same insurance) The allocation would still not be fairly applied. Let’s be honest for a moment; some people are considered more “important” than other people.
Examples: Pennsylvania’s former governor Robert Casey. Casey’s heart and liver deteriorated in the summer of 1993, he was told he needed a double transplant, and he got one the next day.
Or take the case of Mickey Mantle, the New York Yankee’s center fielder who received a liver transplant in 1995. Mantle had liver cancer, hepatitis, and cirrhosis of the liver. The latter was attributed to his many years as an alcoholic. When Mantle’s medical condition turned “critical,” his name was put on the waiting list for a liver in Dallas, and he was admitted to the hospital. Mantle’s name stayed on the waiting list just 48 hours before his diseased liver was removed and he received a new liver.
Source: http://highschoolbioethics.georgetown.edu/
djjl says:
16 August 2009 at 11:19 pm
“We aren’t ready for prime time!”
Yeah, but are we even players?