I am trying to understand whether or not republicans are interested in creating reform or more if they just want to oppose Obama until the mid-term elections. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/policy/19repubs.html?hp Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Bill By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY WASHINGTON — Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks. Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed. “The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.” The Democratic shift may not make producing a final bill much easier. The party must still reconcile the views of moderate and conservative Democrats worried about the cost and scope of the legislation with those of more liberal lawmakers determined to win a government-run insurance option to compete with private insurers. On the other hand, such a change could alter the dynamic of talks surrounding health care legislation, and even change the substance of a final bill. With no need to negotiate with Republicans, Democrats might be better able to move more quickly, relying on their large majorities in both houses. Democratic senators might feel more empowered, for example, to define the authority of the nonprofit insurance cooperatives that are emerging as an alternative to a public insurance plan. Republicans have used the Congressional break to dig in hard against the overhaul outline drawn by Democrats. The Senate’s No. 2 Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, is the latest to weigh in strongly, saying Tuesday that the public response lawmakers were seeing over the summer break should persuade Democrats to scrap their approach and start over. “I think it is safe to say there are a huge number of big issues that people have,” Mr. Kyl told reporters in a conference call from Arizona. “There is no way that Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-plus bill.” The White House has also interpreted critical comments by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican negotiator in a crucial Finance Committee effort to reach a bipartisan compromise, as a sign that there is little hope of reaching a deal politically acceptable to both parties. Mr. Grassley, who is facing the possibility of a Republican primary challenge next year, has gotten an earful in traveling around his home state. At one gathering last week, in a city park in the central Iowa town of Adel, a man rose from the crowd and urged him to “stand up and fight” the Democratic plans. If he does not, the man yelled, “we will vote you out!” The White House, carefully following Mr. Grassley’s activities, presumed he was no longer interested in negotiating with Democrats after he initially made no effort to debunk misinformation that the legislation could lead to “death panels” empowered to judge who would receive care. Citing a packed schedule, Mr. Grassley has also put off plans for the bipartisan group of Finance Committee negotiators to meet in either Iowa or Maine, the home of another Republican member of the group, Senator Olympia J. Snowe, before Congress resumes. Further, Mr. Grassley said this week that he would vote against a bill unless it had wide support from Republicans, even if it included all the provisions he wanted. “I am negotiating for Republicans,” he told MSNBC. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Grassley said he had simply been repeating earlier comments that he would not support a measure that did not have significant Republican support. He said that raucous town-hall-style meetings might have made the job of reaching a compromise harder, but that he had not given up. “It may be more difficult than it was before,” he said. “I am intent on talking. I am intent on seeing what we can do.” Administration officials, who maintain that Republicans are badly mischaracterizing the legislation that has emerged from three House committees and the Senate health committee, said they had hoped to achieve some level of bipartisan support. But they are becoming increasingly convinced that they will instead have to navigate the complicated politics among varying Democratic factions. The officials said the White House hoped to make the case to the American people that it was Republicans who had abandoned the effort at bipartisanship. Republicans countered by saying that they simply opposed the legislation and that the public outcry had validated their view and solidified their opposition. This week’s careful administration maneuvering on whether a public insurance option was an essential element of any final bill was seemingly part of the new White House effort to find consensus among Democrats, since the public plan has been resisted by moderate and conservative Democrats who could be crucial to winning the votes for passage if no Republicans are on board. For the second time in two days, Mr. Obama did not mention health care on Tuesday, a marked departure from the aggressive public relations campaign he mounted in July and early August. The White House is striving to stay out of the fray, aides said, until the president can get away on vacation this weekend. Even as the administration showed some flexibility, angering liberal Democrats who consider a public plan essential, Republicans turned their attacks from the public option to the health care cooperative idea being promoted by some Senate Democrats. In what Democrats regarded as further evidence that Republicans were not serious about negotiating, Mr. Kyl and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking House Republican, described a co-op as a public option carrying another name. The continuing opposition was noted Tuesday by Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, who said of Republicans that at best “only a handful seem interested in the type of comprehensive reform that so many people believe is necessary to ensure the principles and the goals that the president has laid out.”
They don't have a plan for anything, they just know they're against whatever gets floated no matter what. They're a bunch of bastards. The Democrats need to go to the mattresses and ram this through, whatever it takes. Give them a taste of what they dished out under Bush.
Its pretty simple. Conservatives do not want a government ran entity. The libertarian side finds it unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy. A public option will never be an option. Unfortunately, the conservatives are not producing any better alternatives. Health Care reform will not be accomplished by regulating insurance companies further. Liberals on the other hand, blindly trust the government will produce a golden age in health care, despite report after report of serious flaws in other countries that have socialized medicine. The US is a vastly different country than our other socialized counterparts. They pretend the other government bureaucracies of other agencies will not apply. None of this is health care reform. Its all about a power grab. The Republicans want to keep the private sector for the power and the Dems thrive off of bigger government. Unfortunately, the real fix takes away power from both sides. Reform and regulate will not fix the current system and the government duplicating the current system will not fix it either. Poll choice 2: "No, they are more interested in embarrasing Obama, winning mid-term elections". Just a reminder that the conservatives have been against socialized medicine for decades. Those who voted for this clearly have no idea whats going on in politics. This has absolutely nothing to do with Obama and mid-term. Yes, the conservatives are desperately trying to hold off until mid terms because they know it won't stand a chance after that.
I don;t understand conservatives on this one 1. Socialized Medicine [or public Option] is BIG GORVERNMENT but 2. More Regulation of Insurance Agencies is BIG GOVERNMENT as well So . . . . What else is there? How do you reform without the Government taking a hand in this cause seems like system wide collusion among the Insurance companies Rocket River
Shall we strip away public schools, roads, fire departments, police, social security, etc. too? I’d wager your statement of “simplicity” grossly incomplete and (probably) a strawman in practice. The fact of the matter is that what constitutes a good society is the level of services available equitably. The neo-feudalist attitude towards unrestrained free-market capitalism results in little more than serfdom. With regard to health care this is particularly true, as can be seen by the swath of uninsured poor here in the USA. It’s further reinforced by the propagation of wage-slavery working in tandem with medical costs that are three times the level of any other industrialized nation. The naïve libertarian philosophy of corporate carte-blanche is really just inverted socialism that favors special interest groups and insanely rich corporate entities instead of the welfare of the citizenry. Says who? Seriously – where is this cast in stone? We have public schools, but you could certainly send your kids to a private school. We have public water, but no one is preventing you from buying every gallon for your bath from Ozarka. The rationale for public options is not anti-corporate nonsense but rather just the pragmatic response to the simple reality that corporations cannot supply to everyone and still make money. As was pointed out in another thread, one is left to wonder whether or not the right thinks that all people deserve health care. On its face, this question is silly – since no “conservative” is demanding that we shut down emergency room availability to the uninsured. Ergo, one is left to conclude that the “conservative” prefers a grossly inefficient system simply on the basis of ideological distaste. That alone is worthy of disdain, but I find it hard not to view the matter as also indicative of a callousness worthy of my disgust. While you may not be under the crunch of oppressive medical costs (yet) there is an overwhelming amount of data that shows you to be the minority. On top of the numbers of uninsured previously mentioned there are also statistics such as infant mortality, life expectancy, the ludicrous number of personal bankruptcies associated with medical treatments, the small army of folks utterly incapable of getting insured due to “pre-existing conditions” and so on and so on. Which makes your ideology-based rancor all the more antiquated and disgusting. Why I am just shocked, shocked I tell you, that you are not linking to any data of this caliber. In fact, having read through just about everyone of these healthcare threads I have yet to see this data. The only serious flaws that are obvious and undeniable are in the US system that has us paying exceptionally more for private insurance that provides worse service and cannot even cover ½ the population. Please Space Ghost, link me to proof of this statement. I dare you. And by serious flaws, I sincerely hope you are referring to more than “wait times”, “rationing”, or (please god no) “cost”. These are all rather pathetic given the acknowledged flaws and machinations of the current process. Show me how these "flaws" are resulting in worse care or no care than the US system. (Note: This is impossible) Furthermore, I find your poorly supported derision of “liberal infatuation with government programs” silly. I fully expect a public option to have growing pains and issues. However, I rest confident that it’s damn near impossible to be more inefficient (intentionally so) than private entities and (much to your chagrin) there is a working model of this in medicare. Yes. The super-wealthy here have convinced the lower-middle class that they're on the same side, and that what is good for the new nobility is good for Joe the Plumber. This isn't too hard, because Joe the Plumber is a moron. Europe and Japan are run by the middle class. It's better that way. I worked for a contractor to the federal government for five years. The primary inefficiency was with the contractor middle-men, not the government. That ruse of logic still drives me nuts. This might be the one thing you wrote that I agree with. What is this “real fix”? How is what the government is planning in any way a “duplicate” the current system? These comments need much more articulation to be considered worthy of rejoinder. And yet they have offered no solutions while our health care system sinks further and further into a mire of excessive cost and poor service. The republican mantra of “Private sector! Private sector!” has been shown wanton and corrupt. You contradict yourself in the paragraph above.
Damn. THat's it, you and the next person who responds to Space Ghost are being reported to Child Protective Services.
You seriously need to take a moment and QFT. You have no clue what my post was about or the subject of this thread. There are multiple threads debating health care; don't turn this into one. Since you fail to comprehend what my post was about, i'll explain it to you in laymans terms, so we don't continue this thread as another HCR debate. Paragraph one highlights how an objective liberal views the conservative standpoint. EG: A liberal who takes the time to understand the conservative side and is not accusing the conservative of "a liberal hater who is trying to crush obama". Paragraph two highlights how an objective conservative views the liberal standpoint. EG: A conservative who takes the time to understand the liberal side and is not accusing the liberal of being a communist or socialist. Paragraph three is my only opinionated piece ... and as shocker .... you agreed with it!!! Paragraph four explains why any opposition to a liberal HCR has nothing to do with Obama.
Agreed. How dare you drag us off into the land of frolic and detour with your 'health care" nonsense, when the thread is clearly about health care, not health care. You suck Rhad.
I'm actually suprised you responded at all. Your normal modus operandi as of late has been to "pull a basso" and dissapear when called out. At least you post your own material, but I digress. I appreciate your bravery, much like I appreciated how in your first post in this thread you managed to type roughly 250 words without yelling "SOCIALISM!" as some sort of magic justification for being extremely misinformed. Anyhow, if you would like to discuss the supposed topic of this thread, perhaps you should answer the question it poses yourself. No where in your soliloquy did you answer whether or not republicans “want” reform. In fact you avoided the question entirely, other than to remark: “Unfortunately, the conservatives are not producing any better alternatives.” One might take this as “desiring” of reform, or one could postulate it as deflection, since the end result is (apparently) still a lack of reform. That’s all worthless banter though, in reality, since the topic of this thread is more generic than you would like to pretend (I.e., why is the a republican stance on HCR so rigid?) and accordingly colors your initial post in that vein. I merely responded in kind. Do try and keep up, will you? Yes, and this “objective” (*snicker*) standpoint is hypocritical, politically androgynous, and ethically vacuous as I point out in the course of deconstructing it. Well, well. Suddenly our friend Space Ghost criminalizes himself as a run-of-the-mill un-objective and intellectually dishonest “conservative”. Furthermore, I make it quite clear that this supposedly “objective” viewpoint you espouse lacks qualitative data and is stupidly stereotypical. Am I surprised that you avoided those charges? Not at all! But I’m sure you thought this silly diversion about “thread topics” suitable to avoid the questions again. The reality is that your “objective” pieces were not objective at all. If you did not want to debate them, perhaps you should not have posted them. Maybe it would be wiser for you to continue to shout misleading slogans? One half of it. And it is an epic fail. It avoids answering the thread topic (your pious remarks in this thread notwithstanding) and is contradictory. You state that the “conservatives have been against socialized medicine for decades” but you offer no opinion on whether they desire (or how they plan to) reform the current system. In fact, the current republican methodology appears to be in support of maintaining the status quo. Apparently, you are too scared to admit that in this thread (regardless of the given topic - ha!) which was the obvious source of my ridicule. The question was not “what are they against” but “what are they for”. In fact, I answered that question for you. What they are "for" and have been "for decades" is a failure. Try again.
Obama is trying to take advantage of whatever honeymoon period he has left to ram (rahm?) this down the American public's throat. He's more interested in stifling protestors and limiting debate in his effort to increase the government's size. Health care run by the US government, which is comprised of people more interested in getting re-elected rather than coming up with responsible solutions? uh, no thanks.
As opposed to the status quo, which is health care being run by people who are selected purely on the basis of profitability and have no interest in America save for her money? no thanks. I'd rather something as important as healthcare be placed under the control of people who are under the leash of the American people, at least in some way. I distrust the gouvernment as much as anyone else, but it is the lesser of two evils here.
I agree. Obama's "Stifling Squads" have been oppressively arresting people who show up at the town halls to protest, particularly those who yell and shoult in the meetings and even more egregiously the people who come to the protests armed with handguns and rifles. Yeah, because the corporations, whose only commitment is to the almightly dollar, will be much more likely to have my health as their primary concern.
Where the hell is Obama's leadership in any of this health care debate? He's under water and sinking fast
i think it's more than reasonable to think that everyone is for improving healthcare. It's also more than prudent to want to proceed cautiously and very thoughtfully...not just a blind, complete sweeping overhaul. It was a stupid move in the first place.
Republicans are in such a minority right now that they practically have to oppose health care reform or else their base will desert them.
