Scott Brown is owning the dems in the commonwealth state

nice

comparing Olbermann to a terrorist

you guys are something else!

 

Of course the public wants healthcare reform in a big way. Everyone knows someone who's having a terrible time attempting to pay outrageous bills for the care of a sick friend, a sick co-worker, an sick relative, their own sick child. I know regular middle class folks who can't afford insurance for everyone in their family because one had a pre-existing condition and the premiums are so high that insurance is essentially impossible to get. Most of America "gets" that we need healthcare reform, regardless of the predictable crap spewed from the GOP and its minions. What they don't understand is the convoluted thing making its way through Congress. They're confused. That makes them upset even with people they like, such as the President.

As I said earlier (and it's not the first time), the President has been spreading himself too thin, making too many speeches about too many agendas, making too many trips, when he needed to be staying in Washington insuring what he got elected for became a reality. Not everything at once, which has been the approach, IMO, but focusing on a few really important things. One of those important things was getting a Democrat elected to this vital seat. A win was thought a slam dunk. The Party should have been pouring resources and people into this race long ago, not when Brown suddenly jumped up in the polls, helped by $12 million dollars from his national party leadership. That's a big reason why I'm so ticked off. President Obama was getting bad advice. He should do a complete review of his staff, his top people in the White House, and figure out who did the most (or the least) to drop the ball on this election. This election was very, very winable. I really don't blame Obama much. The man is incredibly busy, attempting to right the Ship of State from the disaster of the Bush/GOP Congress years. A top team of advisors is crucial. In this case, they didn't serve him well. Makes changes, like yesterday.

 

:grin:

 

I was going to start a thread on this but I'll just respond to this post. unfortunately too many people want this guy to do to many things at once. he is getting spread thin, but if he doesn't focus on one thing he gets blasted.

lets look at this site for instance. you got one poster clamoring for the president to prosecute previous admin memeber for abuses over wire tapping. to that poster's defense, obama probably isn't going to prosecute anyone, which maybe not in the best interests of the law, but at least give the guy a chance to get other things done.

then you have the other really odd poster, who was a big supporter of any and everything the prevoius admin did, who criticizes the current pres for not doing more to help the gay community whom this poster claims to support, when he supported an admin that actually proposed an anti gay marraige amendment to the constitution. really strange and odd poster.

then you have people attacking the guy for actually trying to make an informed decision on afghan, when the pres actually ran on focusing this war. and when he's removing troops from Iraq, they actually criticize him on not removing them fast enough, while criticizing him for not closing gitmo fast enough.

its pretty ridiculous the expectations on this pres, let's not even get into the economy he was left to deal with

 

It's looking like Obama's administration will be one great failure when it is all said and done. Talked a good game...but never got anything done due to the great divide by the parties. Republicans will probably bounce back and our next president might very well be Republican. It seems there is short-term memory loss among the people when it comes to either side. It's a "what have you done for me lately" country. Will Obama pass any big legislation that he actually puts his weight behind? I highly doubt it. In the end, nothing significant gets done is the likely outcome...and his presidency may very well go down as a failure.

 

Do you really believe that the people of Massachusetts just elected Republican Scott Brown, who ran on a campaign centered around voting to kill the Democrat's pending health care bill, because they believe the bill under consideration does not go far enough? Really? Senator-Elect Brown is going to vote to kill this bill, and he will not be voting for a more expansive bill that is for sure. Not that any such bill is actually likely to be discussed again for at least a generation.

Many of the Democrats in Congress may not be excited about the Republicans proposals for health insurance reform, but these Republican proposals are widely embraced by the American people. The Republican proposals are much more targeted and narrowly crafted than Democratic proposals. And they are the focused on topics that resonate will with, and make sense to the American public. Especially tort reform and being able to shop for insurance across state lines. These are no-brainers for most people, but Democrats seem to be against these ideas for some reason.

However, it apparently needs to be noted again that the people of Massachusetts just voted for Scott Brown in a rebuke to Obama and the Democrat's health care cram-down effort.

It is time for the Democrats to wake up and come to grips with reality. We are a center-right country that is currently governed by the left. Either the country is going to have to move to the left to line up with the Democratic leadership that is currently running the country, or the Democrats are going to have to move to the center to try and line up with the will of the American people. Or, there is likely to be a major house-cleaning in the November 2010 as a result of the radical disconnect between our government and the will of the people. One of the three is virtually certain to occur, and right now, it is shaping up to probably be the house-cleaning.

Here is looking forward to November 2010.

 

I agree - he should probably just resign immediately. No point in trying to finish the next three years of actual governing when you have 41 senators using a parliamentary tactic to frustrate every single initiative, no matter how popular or worthy.

DOOOOOMED

 

That was a national poll, not a Massachusetts one.

Brown is a bit of a unique situation. In part, Coakley was terrible, but realistically, terrible should be enough for a Dem to win in Massachusetts. The other part is that Massachusetts is the one state that already has universal health care. Having it at the national level doesn't benefit them at all - so passing a national health care plan wasn't remotely a priority for the state. Brown support that state universal health care and that's part of why he was in in office there in the first place.

Such as?

Tort reform has shown to be completely ineffective in the states it already exists in. I guess if you like reform that doesn't do anything, sure, go with that. Shopping for insurance across state lines isn't a GOP issue - people in both parties support and oppose it. It's a states' rights thing - the states all want the right to regulate insurance in their state.

Actually, it needs to be noted that they voted for Scott Brown. Anything else is unclear at this point.

 

He's a victim of ambition, really. He has all the intentions to back up his promises, it's just unfortunate that he's unable to do so because of the rift between parties. Politics as usual, I suppose. The rift seems to only be getting wider, so even if a Republican does get elected in 2012, unless they have the majority to the point where they can pass whatever they want, the same failure of their policy push will continue. Again, politics as usual.

I'm pretty tired of American politics, and I've only been paying attention for 2 years. It seems horribly broken, and a legitimate third party would actually make it work again, IMO. The "Tea Party Patriots" could fill this role, potentially, but they're going about it in entirely the wrong fashion, and are really just ultra-conservatives and mostly ex-Republicans.

If this administration is a failure, it's not because of broken promises, it's because of politics as usual; it just looks like broken promises because Obama had all the ambition/intention we wanted in a president, just couldn't break the status quo for Washington politics.

 

And for what it's worth, while the Republican plan doesn't extend healthcare coverage to uncovered citizens, if it helps drive the cost of healthcare down for currently covered folks, I'm all for it. At least it will be something, if not reform. Once cost is down, then perhaps we can discuss expanding coverage.

The current healthcare bill in the Senate has been so utterly compromised, it's not worth passing. I think most of us agreed on that for some poll posted here.

 

The problem is that it's all interconnected. You can't get costs down unless the healthy are paying into the system, and unless you don't have to pay crazy emergency costs for the uncovered. So universal coverage and cost controls are kind of intertwined.

You can make some incremental reforms on the margins - the cross-state insurance as Mojoman suggested, electronic health records, insurance exchanges, etc - but none of them have much impact unless you take on the real problems.

 

as anyone else just thought that the population of the bay state just has a thing for pretty-looking white republicans? this is the same state that elected mitt romney as its governor.

 

Is there a breakdown somewhere of where healthcare costs come from in the US? How much of what we pay is due to emergency costs for the uncovered? For some reason, I'm having a hard time believing it's a large portion. I seem to remember a graph that showed operational costs (or some synonym) as a giant portion -- a portion that seemed mostly like waste/greed.

 

Here's a study from 2003 - lots of people have lost care since then and costs have gone up probably 30% or more in 6 years, so you can adjust those numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

A 2003 study in Health Affairs estimated that uninsured people in the U.S. received approximately $35 billion in uncompensated care in 2001.[78] The study noted that this amount per capita was half what the average insured person received. The study found that various levels of government finance most uncompensated care, spending about $30.6 billion on payments and programs to serve the uninsured and covering as much as 80–85 percent of uncompensated care costs through grants and other direct payments, tax appropriations, and Medicare and Medicaid payment add-ons. Most of this money comes from the federal government, followed by state and local tax appropriations for hospitals. Another study by the same authors in the same year estimated the additional annual cost of covering the uninsured (in 2001 dollars) at $34 billion (for public coverage) and $69 billion (for private coverage). These estimates represent an increase in total health care spending of 3–6 percent and would raise health care’s share of GDP by less than one percentage point, the study concluded.[79] Another study published in the same journal in 2004 estimated that the value of health forgone each year because of uninsurance was $65–$130 billion and concluded that this figure constituted "a lower-bound estimate of economic losses resulting from the present level of uninsurance nationally."[80]

But it's not as simple as $x is spent on the uninsured. Having all those people raises administrative costs a whole lot as hospitals have to chase payments and deal with defaults. They have to raise rates on the insured to make up those payments, which causes imbalances and prices more people out of insurance and perpetuating the cycle. If you cover them, you also lower total costs through additional preventative spending, etc. Then you can add on the benefits to GDP from having a healthier population, the reduced bankruptcies and financial turmoils, the reduced stress on your population, etc.

 

So in 1994 did you think that the Clinton Presidency was doomed or in 1982 that the Reagan presidency was doomed?

 

Brown's election does not mean Obama's administration is now a failure. The message was more to tell Obama to honor his campaign promises. Unfortunately, I don't think Obama will change course -- too humbling.

However, if he will still be a great success if from now on he:

1) Governs openly (push Democrats to allow full C-Span coverage, for example) rather than governing from behind closed doors. IMO the American people view him as a hypocrite. Personally, I believe that he is much too inexperienced to govern and his only leadership quality is the ability to read a good speech. He's got to stop being such a weakling.

2) Governs with regard to the equality of rights and needs of all U.S. citizens from a centrist position as he promised. For example, IMO he made a huge mistake singling out union benefit packages for exemption when people making the same or less money were not given the same exemption.

3) Scrapping the current health care fiasco and starting over. Most Democrats, Republicans, Indpendents and Tea-Partiers believe health care reform is desperately needed. However, a more pragmatic, bi-partisan, fiscally responsible approach is needed.

Perhaps he should, after scraping the bill, create a committee of eight Democrats (4 House, 4 Senate) and seven Republicans (4 House and 3 Senate) to hammer out a plan. While the panel is doing that everybody else can concentrate on jobs and economy.

Health care reform should have several focal points, primarily on: insurance coverage, medical malpractice, medical finance, medical education and medical infrastructure.

4) Vet his administrative personnel more carefully. Radicals like Glenn Beck are having a field day scaring and inflaming people by pointing out the radical views held by Obama's picks.

5) He needs to lay out his vision to the American people and publicly provide specifics to Congress of what he wants to do. If people see that he renounces exeptions to partisans or waffling in the heat of backers and attackers, he will earn the respect he needs to lead.

But that's just my opinion. Meanwhile, I'm working as hard as I can for Republican moderates and Blue Dog Democrats.

 

Glenn Beck has already turned on Brown:

 

Obama= Adelman

Congress = Tmac