Health Care Reform–Even More of a Gift
UPDATE: Greg Sargent (via Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter feed) notes that I am hardly alone in my concluding pargraph.
The last even semi-useful part of health care “reform” (and that was of dubious value) is dead:
The idea of letting people ages 55 to 64 buy into Medicare, announced just last week, had threatened to explode the Democrats’ hopes of getting a bill through the Senate when Sen. Joseph Lieberman came out against it.
Yes, that’s the same Joe Lieberman who told a Hartford newspaper that it was good idea three months ago.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) said Democrats agreed that the dispute over Medicare shouldn’t hold up legislation that would extend coverage to tens of millions of Americans.
How can you tell when Son-of-a-Birch is lying? (His father is rolling over in his grave, probably at Warp Seven.)
There is now no reason not to vote Republican in all future elections—if you bother to vote at all, that is.
“No reason not to vote Republican…” Now that’s some flame bait, Ken. Yer telling me we’re better off in a world where Ben Nelson and Holy Joe are the 55th or 56th most liberal members of the D caucus rather than, say, the 62rd or 53rd? Sorry, but I can remember 2006 and before.
Who was the chucklehead who made a primary challenge to Leiberman? The Democrats must really regret that little play.
If you want to kill a prince, you have to kill the prince, wounding Joe was a really bad idea.
Vote? We need to return to the days of yore, when politicians were independently wealthy and were not available for purchase. At least then the “voters” can appeal to nobilesse oblige of aristocratic gentlemen, instead of lobbyists that manage the investment in their purchased property.
Probably decent people do not mention Joe Lieberman in polite company. I thought he was a creep when Al Gore nominated him. And when the high end reporters and commentators rolled over themselves gushing about how much better it would be if Cheney and Lieberman were at the top of their respective tickets, I knew the country was doomed.
But we fight on. As bad as the health care “reform” is, maybe extending insurance to everyone and imposing some regulations on the insurance companies is a toe in the door. We’ll have to see if we can clean up the mess later, or if this is just another step in America’s supply side march to ruin.
Extending Medicare to the 55 to 64 age range sounds good in theory, but how is $600 per month per individual affordable to this age group? Many have lost their jobs and can’t find others? Or are woefully unprepared for retirement and $600/month for what is essentially a protection racket is $600/month not going toward savings? For some in this age group $600 is equal or near equal to a mortgage or rent payment. On top of this, Medicare doesn’t pay everything, and many have to pay for supplemental insurance on top of this.
I’m glad this pathetic idea bit the dust. Oh, and by the way, I’m so disgusted with the corruption in D.C., my plan is to vote against EVERYONE (i.e. the Taibbi article) currently in office on my ballot, at the federal level, regardless of party affiliation or platform. I wouldn’t believe a thing any of them said.
Oops, sorry about the misplaced ?’s.
A vote against the new comments layout…two clicks to read comments? Outrageous!
“There is now no reason not to vote Republican in all future elections—if you bother to vote at all, that is.”
Huh? Joe was beaten in the Dem primary by Nick Lamont and ran as an independent. He was elected primarily by Republicans, and if he runs in CT again he will need them to win. No wonder whose side Joe is on here.
I see the Libs are starting to realize what a bad idea “O” was. Oh, and the Dem party is and always was a party of disparate factions created by their vicitimization propaganda. When everyone is a victimhaw can there be any heroes?
Lieberman is a classic tool of the plutocracy. To think that he was ever close to being VP is scary in the extreme. In fact his defeat was the only good result of Gore’s defeat. He is also an Israel firster who puts Israel’s interest over those of the USA. I find him as despicable as any person in the USA including murderers and other hard criminals. In fact he has probably done more evil than most of them..
Well since you can’t get what ought to be passed, you have to start with something flawed. If you could get the extension enacted, then you could get the premiums reduced. And the extension expanded. You have to get a wedge in somehow vs. the private insurers and this is about the only way to start, but it was knocked down because they saw the danger and are able to veto anything they don’t want in our corrupt to the core political system. The USA is a miserable corrupt nation that screws all the “little people” on a constant basis. The USA is fit only for millionaires.
Coberly,
But we fight on.
Are you trying to put on a hypocrisy clinic? So to you its R=evil and D=good. You complained about this on another thread, ergo the hypocrisy.
Chucklehead? You mean the guy who BEAT Lieberman in an honest contest?
Lamont did nothing wrong, it was the Democratic Senate Caucus who put collegiality ahead of small d democracy and largely backed Lieberman against the official candidate of the Connecticut Democratic Party that screwed the pooch. Ya think they maybe should have got a clue when Joe named his new Party ‘Connecticut for Lieberman’ instead of ‘Lieberman for Connecticut’? Joe couldn’t have made his true priorities more clear even if he had called it the ‘Me! Me! Me! Party’.
Under you premise progessives should never primary any incumbent from the Left out of fear that the incumbent would put his own needs ahead of those of his constituents and Party. Democratic leadership treated Lamont like a leper and now are reaping what they sowed.
Too, true, M & M. What amazes me is that the sheeple continue to believe anything the media spews out and go along with this farce of governance.
And to those who think the media is all liberal, I would point to FOX, Limbaugh, and the corporate owners of the majority of news outlets, who continue to misinform the undereducated, underclass out there into believing that selling out the middle class is good for the country. Try taking Soc 101 again, and you’ll be given a refresher on the invasiveness of the elite in America. Once upon the time, the media was Jeffersonian, a bulldog going after corruption, but not any more. There are scores of journalists who have been forced out or simply dropped out of mainstream media over the last two decades, for doing exactly what ethical journalists are supposed to do, question those in power.
Guest,
Actually there is no reason to give money or any support to moveon.org or to anyone with the angry left mentality that drove Liberman out of the democrat party. For republicans the crazy left discraced themselves for going after Liberman because he supported the president in Iraq. For those in the middle left they should be mad at groups like moveon.org for causing them to lose on a big issue for the petty personal attack on Liberman (which was partially because Liberman is Jewish).
Margery,
Keep talking like that and I don’t see you getting a new dreidel from Hanukkah Harry. And he’s friends with Santa.
If you want to kill a prince, you have to kill the prince…..
Whatever Democrats are at fault, they certainly left themselves in a mess.
Could it be the crazy left is messing over the Democrats and the crazy right is messing over the GOP? Ugly.
A little harch there Margery?
Rusty, the crazy right will only take on RINOs. Dems on the other hand will take apart any candidate just right of them, and today’s far left Dem party is deep into socialist leftist movements.
Passing this abortion of a healthcare bill will only incite the anti-DC voters next year.
Connecticut is the insurance state of the US the same as South Dakota in the Credit Card state. That would look kind of cool on the respective license plates for each state. Is there any reason why Joe would support healthcare reform when these companies are some of his major contibutors? Senator from Aetna . . . .
CU,
Your frustrated, and nothing wrong with that but, not much evidence out there to support your position.
Pew Research Center for People and the Press (2007 Survey)
Journalists surveyed: 585 national, local and Internet journalists surveyed
National journalists self-characterization in 2007 Pew Survey
Liberal: 32% Moderate: 53% Conservative: 8%
Public’s self-characterization in 2007 Pew Survey
Liberal: 19% Moderate: 39% Conservative: 36%
Pew Research Center State of the News Media (2004 Survey)
Journalists surveyed: 547 national, local and Internet journalists surveyed
National journalists self-characterization in 2004 Pew Survey
Liberal: 34% Moderate: 54% Conservative: 7%
Public’s self-characterization in 2004 Pew Survey
Liberal: 19% Moderate: 41% Conservative: 33%
“All of the news outlets except Fox News Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as USA Today, NPRs Morning Edition, NBCs Nightly News and ABCs World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by their measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNNs NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABCs Good Morning America. Fox News Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks evening news broadcasts. All of their findings referred strictly to the news stories of the outlets.”
Somebody needs to track down how Lieberman is being payed to make the decisions he is making. At the end of the day, Joe is Liberal Democrat, and my guess is his decisions have nothing to do with favor for insurance companies, and more to do with political positioning, but I’ve been wrong before.
Cantab
no. i am not being hypocritical. but i can’t fit anything complicated into your bistable thought system.
you might have noticed that my comment, to which you refer, implied some disgust at “the reporters and commentators who gushed at both the R and the D candidates for VP. Whereas I thought both the R and the D were dangerous creeps. This does not square very well with the conclusion you have drawn. A remedial course in basic logic perhaps?
As for the health care reform, you misunderstood me. I don’t like the current proposal. But as there is no chance of seeing either of my suggestions enacted… including the one in which i attempted to avoid complicated regulations, the heavy hand of government, through a straightforward free-enterprise model of having the existing insurance companies bid for the jobs from a knowledgeable customer with equal power in the marketplace. I realize this is way too complicated for you, but maybe if you take it one sentence at a time you will get some idea that it does not reduce to R=bad D=good.
Jimi
it’s easy to see why you’ve been wrong before. your logic is a bit short winded.
i have no doubt most journalists are liberal. they are, after all, “educated.” i hasten to add that this does not mean that they are intelligent, or that they do a decent job reporting the news. my local paper is somewhat “liberal” i believe, but you won’t see a single article ever, not even a letter to the editor, that acknowledges that Social Security is solvent, or that state workers earned their pensions.
you are a bit overimpressed with labels, and a bit careless about who is a “member of the set.”
oh… and i dropped my main point: all those liberal journalists work for bosses who won’t let them speak the truth.
Joe Lieberman is almost 68 years old, which is an age when a lot of people start to show some early signs of dementia. Lately he’s not just been arguing with Democrats, he’s been arguing with himself. Only recently he strongly supported virtually every position that he opposes today. A few years ago he supported a public option…in fact, he was one of the biggest supporters. Only a few months ago he not only supported expanding Medicare to include people over 55, but he also supported making the federal employee health insurance menu available to the public. And in 1995 he pushed for abolition of the filibuster in the Senate because it made marginal Senators effectively kings over critical issues. In short, Lieberman appears to be off his rocker. Mentally unsound. He seems to have bought into this heroic image of himself as the Original Maverick…more Mavericky than Sarah. He doesn’t seem to have any connection to his own past. The good news is that he will be toast in 2012.
2slugs, from my earlier post: “
Rusty, the crazy right will only take on RINOs. Dems on the other hand will take apart any candidate just right of them, and today’s far left Dem party is deep into socialist leftist movements. “
I believe you just made my point.
Coberly,
I realize this is way too complicated for you, but maybe if you take it one sentence at a time you will get some idea that it does not reduce to R=bad D=good.
It not that complicated. All you have to do is reverse this to R=good and D=bad. The country got sick of republicans so I guess we just have to go through a process to remember how much the the democrats suck. Its happening as we post.
Slugs,
The dems knifed Lieberman in the back. Maybe this will be another one of those mistakes that they learn from. They make so many. Remember little Elian Gonzalez? The Cuban community in Florida wouldn’t stay on the liberal plantation so they disciplined them with Elian. Forget about hanging chads, this is why they lost Florida and the presidential election in 2000. They did it again with Lieberman because of his support for the Iraq war. Now they are going to come up short on what they wanted to do with healthcare. Yeah, sure they learn.
Guest,
Then you didn’t read what I said. My point was that Lieberman is not arguing just with Democrats, he’s arguing with himself. His positions change radically from day to day. He is mentally unsound.
There are many Democrats that are more conservative than Lieberman, but Democrats are not howling about them. Lieberman’s problem is that you can’t tell from one minute to the next what his position will be on any given issue. A policy that he supported in the morning could be something that he’d want to threaten a filibuster over by the evening news. Like I said, I think we could be dealing with the onset of early stages of dementia.
Cantab,
How did the Dems knife Lieberman in the back? He lost a primary but wasn’t man enough to accept defeat. Instead he developed this inflated image of himself as some kind of truth teller that the nation just couldn’t live without. He really started to take himself seriously. The Democrats allowed him to campaign against Obama without extracting any retribution. They’ve allowed him to play all kinds of childish and irrational games with healthcare, but yet he is still allowed to caucus with the Democrats. Face it, if he had been a Republican you know perfectly well that McConnell and the GOP leadership would have purged him from the party and stripped him of all seniority. The Democrats have bent over backwards with Lieberman. So your comment just strikes me as ludicrous. The problem isn’t that the Democrats have knifed him in the back; the real problem is that they HAVEN’T knifed him. At some point they are going to have to pull him aside and explain the facts of life to Old Joe. And if Joe thinks he’s going to be re-elected in 2012, then he really is beyond early stages of dementia…he’s headed to full blown dementia.
Which, uh, was my point, as well.
Coberly,
I realize this is way too complicated for you, but maybe if you take it one sentence at a time you will get some idea that it does not reduce to R=bad D=good.
It’s not that complicated. All you have to do is reverse this to R=good and D=bad. The country got sick of republicans so I guess we just have to go through a process to remember how much the the democrats suck. Its happening as we post.
I think Lieberman should switch to the republican party. I want him with us.
NO, not at all. Shrill perhaps.
He’s disgusting enough to be a fine Republican. You’re so welcome to him.
Isn’t Lamont planning to run for govenor of CT.?
Sigh….HP, it is not by design, and it is outrageous. And so far I have not found a way to correct the html. I make changes one way and something else happens….I make changes another and again some other thing changes. It is in the blogger comment section html that I cannot get around. For such a small job no expert wants to help out. Any volunteer??
I am afraid you may be correct regarding the inconsistencies 2slugs. I see no Dems attacking Nelson. Watching Lieberman on Tv is unsettling.
The news of the death of Birch Bayh is premature.
Lieberman left the Democratic Party after he showed that his policy positions were no longer acceptable to registered Democrats in the State of Connecticut. He could have stayed in the Party in another capacity or simply as an informed voter aware that his personal position was at odds with that of his Party. To suggest that voters exercising their prerogative to select the person who best supports their views with “drove Lieberman (sic) out of the democrat party” is to demonstrate the problem. Lieberman showed by naming his new party Connecticut for Lieberman rather than Lieberman for Connecticut that he is exactly the kind of sociopath that would hijack democracy and subject tens of thousands of Americans to a death sentence because of lack of access to insurance by all appearances because he got his feelings hurt.
And Jesus Christ before accusing people of anti-semitism maybe you could learn to spell. It’s “Lieberman” and “disgraceful”. The only reason we are losing on a big issue is because Lieberman decided he was more important than democracy and was willing to be the effective candidate of the Republican Party while still demanding the right to stay in the Democratic caucus.
Liberals don’t hate Lieberman for being Jewish, we hate him for showing that his name really requires a hyphen, i.e. Lie-berman.