Tag: public option

The beatings will continue until support for a PO improves. Getcher Sticks & Carrots here

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Beatings of a rhetorical sort, of course

    Senator Olympia Snowe all but admitted that a Trigger on a Public Option is total bull yesterday. She basically proved that she is NOT bargaining in good faith, and that if there were any illusions that the trigger she supports is designed to never be pulled, they are totally gone now. How do we know this?

    Because Sen. Snowe VOTED AGAINST a Public Option twice.

    This proves (HELLO! ARE YOU FRAKKING LISTENING DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS?) that Sen. Snowe WILL NOT vote for an actual Public Option, just the idea of one, or rather, the idea of the idea of one.

    And why? What is Olympia Snowe, the Republican Party, the Insurance Lobbyists and at least 5 DINO Republocrat Senators afraid of?

    This quote from yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing sums it up best. . .

    “What are we afraid of? That Americans might actually like it?”

       ~ Senator John Kerry (D-MA)

    Yes. That is EXACTLY what they are afraid of.

    More and a call to action below the fold.

Choice is Good — If you’re a Senator!

Senators can afford to wait for Health Care reform — after all they ALREADY HAVE Health Insurance for their Families!

Trigger? — No Problem!

2013? — Who Cares!

Public Option only for the Few — No Worries …  ( — For Them! )

Montana Senators have a wide Menu of Health Care Options, so What’s the Rush?

Health — 2009 Plan Information for Montana

Nationwide Fee-for-Service Open to All

APWU Health Plan (APWU)

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan – Standard Option

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan – Basic Option

GEHA Benefit Plan (GEHA)

GEHA High Deductible Health Plan

Mail Handlers Benefit Plan

Mail Handlers Benefit Plan (HDHP)

Mail Handlers Benefit Plan Value

NALC

SAMBA

State Specific HMO, HDHP and CDHP Plans

Aetna HealthFund (CDHP/HDHP) – South, Southeast & Western MT

New West Health Services – Most of Montana

No shortage of Insurance Optionsin Montana!

Ron Wyden: Public Option Doesn’t Go FAR Enough

Wyden amendment gaining support

By Tony Romm, The Hill – 09/22/2009

An amendment to the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill that would permit employees to shop around for health insurance policies is slowly gaining momentum on the Hill.

The idea, pitched by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) last week, would open the proposed “insurance exchange” — where consumers can compare and purchase insurance plans — to Americans who already receive coverage from their employers.



What has made Wyden’s proposal especially appealing today, however, is the Congressional Budget Office’s recent cost estimate. By their math, his amendment would reduce the bill’s impact on the deficit by about $1 billion over the next 10 years.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…

(UPDATED) Pelosi to Blue Dogs:DEAL! UNF$%KINGREAL!

UPDATED: (and not surprisingly!)

Sept 23, 2009

    Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami emailed us late last night to assert that no final decisions have been made on the shape of the public option: “It is inaccurate for anyone to assert that the Speaker or the Leadership has determined the form of the public option. How we move forward on the public option will continue to be discussed by the Leadership and the Caucus, which will meet on Thursday.”

Didn’t Take very long for this bullshit to happen. Shoulda seen it coming.

Sept 22, 2009     Speaker Pelosi is nixing a deal she cut with centrists to advance health reform, said a source familiar with negotiations.

    Pelosi’s decision to abandon the agreement that was made with a group of Blue Dogs to get the bill out of committee would steer the healthcare legislation back to the left as she prepares for a floor vote.

    Pelosi is planning to include a governmentrun public option in the House version of the healthcare bill. She wants to model it on Medicare,- with providers getting reimbursed on a scale pegged to Medicare rates.-

    -“The speaker is full-steam-ahead,” said a senior Democratic aide.-

thehill.com

     It was a VERY good day for Progressives in DC and working class Americans today. Pelosi has shot down her deal with the Blue Dogsthe MAYO Clinic is going to support a Public Option and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) has said that he is now VERY confident that a Public Option will make it to the President’s desk in Health Care Reform.

   Hell, even Harry Reid grew some temporary spine and said that a 51 majority vote will be used to pass health care reform if all else fails.

   Let’s see who long Harry’s new found vertebrae lasts.

   So, all in all it is a good day for Progressives politically, and working class Americans everywhere as we push harder for a Progressive agenda that benefits working class Americans FIRST.

   Let’s hope more good news is coming soon. I could get used to writing happy diaries like this am getting f#$king sick and tired of this BULLSHIT

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

IF we get the Public Option, WHO will Get the Choice?

Health Reform’s Missing Ingredient

By Ron Wyden, Senator D-OR, NYTimes Op-Ed

September 17, 2009

The various bills making their way through Congress would, as the president explained, provide some consumer choice by establishing large marketplaces where people could easily compare insurance plans and pick the one that best suits their needs.

[…]

The problem with these bills, however, is that they would not make the exchanges available to all Americans. Only very small companies and those individuals who can’t get insurance outside of the exchange – 25 million people – would be allowed to shop there. This would leave more than 200 million Americans with no more options, private or public, than they have today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09…

Wait a second, I thought the Public Option, would give us a Choice —

give US ALL a Choice?

The Insurance Exchange will be closed to “more than 200 million Americans”?

that must be a typo!?!

The Health Care Deceit

     by Paul Craig Roberts

This concise, succinct analysis of the current state of health care reform was posted on Counterpunch (9/14) and Global research (9/15)

I think it will add to our clarity on the subject.

So I post it with the kind permission of Paul Craig Roberts, beyond the fold…

Dear Dems, Feed me a Sh!t Sandwich on HCR and I’ll BURN THIS MFing TENT TO THE GROUND

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    After reading Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH10) DKos post titled The Private Mandate Sausage Machine which explains how Health Care Reform may/will be twisted into a bill mandating that I purchase private insurance but lacks all content of reform, I would like to make the following statement.

    Dear Dems, Feed me a Sh!t/Sausage Sandwich on Health Care Reform and I’ll BURN THIS MFing TENT TO THE GROUND!!!!

    If the Private Health Care disaster is addressed by making it madatory that I buy junk insurance from the bastards that caused this mess, I will make it my personal business to drive the Corporate snakes from the tent and burn the tent to the ground.

    Simply put, if Dems pass a HCR bill with mandates and no public option, I will kick these Dems frakkin asses, and you should too.

    More below the fold and a call to action..

     

Doctors strongly In Favor of the Public Option, just like the Nation

Poll Finds Most Doctors Support Public Option

by Joseph Shapiro, NPR — September 14, 2009

When polled, “nearly 3/4 of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options,”

[…]

Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.

Most doctors – 63 percent – say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance.

[…]

another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they’d like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…

Hmmm? I wonder if Doctors, know anything about our Broken Insurance System?

Ya think!?

Putting the Vicious Health Insurance Dogs on a Leash

Also available in Orange

From one of my comments in buhddydarma’s most excellent diary:

I’d liken it to a vicious dog behind a fence. Given access to the fence, he will worry it and try to dig under it, or hang out by the gate and eventually get out. Like a group of corporation with massive profits locked behind a regulatory wall, who will eventually find a way to get a loophole put into the wall.

Tie the dog up in the yard so he can’t get at the fence, the combination is more effective than either alone.

A robust public option works like the leash tying the dog up. The corporate insurance companies cannot squeeze too much harder than the public choice without losing market share, so it will be much harder for them to organize to break the regulations in the health care exchanges.

Snowe(d): Trigger is OUT, Co-Op Cop-Out is in. Won’t even risk it, the cowards

Crossposted at Daily Kos

From ThinkProgress.org

Sen. Snowe, regarding a “trigger” for a Public Option

Snowe:     “It’s(a trigger) not on the table, and it won’t be, we’ll be using a Co-Op as an option, as a means for injecting competition in the process.

    They’re not even going to risk a trigger, the cowards.

    I’m SUPER PISSED.

More below the fold, and a Call to ACTION.

Devils and Dust

We’re a long, long way from home,

Home’s a long, long way from us . . .

Millions More Foreclosures Coming . . .

Only 12 percent of U.S. homeowners eligible for loan modifications under the Obama administration’s housing rescue plan have had their mortgages reworked, and millions more foreclosures are coming, the Treasury Department said last Wednesday.

Impending Commercial Real Estate Crisis . . .

Federal Reserve and Treasury officials are scrambling to prevent the commercial-real-estate sector from delivering a roundhouse punch to the U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat.  Their efforts could be undermined by a surge in foreclosures of commercial property carrying mortgages that were packaged and sold by Wall Street as bonds.  Similar mortgage-backed securities created out of home loans played a big role in undoing that sector and triggering the global economic recession.

Banking System Bound for Hell With the Hammer Down . . .

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.  “In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”

The Afghanistan Quagmire . . .

The Taliban are back. The Afghans are tired of American troops in their midst  . . . virtually every military expert agrees that Afghanistan is the last place on Earth for a modern army to wage war and that includes every NATO general.

Long ago, the British learned that Afghanistan is a place where empires go to die. The notion that democracy as practiced in the West can be transplanted there is farcical . . . since the 1700’s the primary export from Afghanistan has been heroin and it remains so today.   Other than growing poppies, there’s not much that passes for an economy there.   It doesn’t matter who’s elected because the business of Afghanistan is opium.  American troops will not alter that.

And the business of America is corporate greed, corporate profit, corporate expansion. Obama won’t alter that.  It doesn’t matter who’s elected, because other than speeches and smoke and mirrors policies, there’s not much that passes for reform here.

I don’t see any real change,

I don’t feel much hope,

I feel a dirty wind blowing,

I see Devils and Dust.

There’s Trouble Dead Ahead — And the Band Played On …

What the band played as Titanic slowly began to sink is never disputed – ragtime, waltzes, specific tunes noted by survivors included ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ and ‘In The Shadows’. But a question mark still hangs over what the last song was as Titanic’s stern began to rise clear of the Atlantic Ocean, and indeed, would it be physically possible for them to play anything in those conditions?

http://www.titanic-titanic.com…

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