Remember the townhall event the other day when President Obama said “nobody’s talking about government run health care“? Well, this is exactly the type of rhetoric we cautioned people against in an earlier post when I said that the White House will most likely not alter the health bill, but instead will insult the intelligence of the American people by just altering the sales pitch(lie), and think they can find other words for the bill that will still allow them to get it passed.
But why wouldn’t President Obama assume he can lie to and deceive the American people regarding this health bill, when he got elected by them based on the same principles? And now we have Nancy Pelosi out there saying that saying the complete opposite. She is saying that she cannot let it pass without a “public option.”
By Kristin Jensen and Catherine Dodge
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said legislation to revamp the U.S. health-care system won’t get through her chamber unless it creates a government-run insurance program to compete with the private industry.
“There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option,” the California Democrat said at a press conference in San Francisco yesterday.
Pelosi drew a line in the sand on one of the most contentious issues surrounding the health-care overhaul after Obama administration officials earlier suggested the White House might be willing to back away from the public option to win broader support. Republicans and even some Democrats have said the idea is a nonstarter in the Senate.
“The government-run plan would turn into a bureaucratic nightmare,” Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, wrote in a USA Today opinion piece on Aug. 19. “In the finance committee, six of us leading the negotiations are working from the premise that there will not be a government-run plan.”
Enzi last night joined in a call with the five other senators in a group led by finance committee Chairman Max Baucus that’s trying to craft a health-care plan. The panel is the only one of five congressional panels with jurisdiction over health care that is attempting to find a bipartisan compromise.
They’ll Meet Again
“Our discussion included an increased emphasis on affordability and reducing costs, and our efforts moving forward will reflect that focus,” Baucus said in a statement last night after the telephone meeting. He said the six senators plan to convene again before coming back to Washington in September.
The group’s effort is getting more complicated as lawmakers face protests at home and as proposals such as the public option draw fire. Supporters say a government plan is the best way to bring down costs and insure more people; opponents say it would expand the role of government too much and undercut the market for companies such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc.
Obama yesterday reiterated his support for the proposal.
“If we have a public option in there, that can help keep insurers honest,” he told a group of Democratic Party community organizers in Washington.
Continuing the push for his top domestic priority, Obama asked the activists who helped his 2008 campaign to organize neighbors to support the health-care effort and urged them not to “lose heart as we enter into probably our toughest fight.”
Ratings Fall
Obama’s approval ratings have fallen as the health-care debate has intensified in contentious town-hall meetings held by Democratic lawmakers across the U.S. Obama, who spoke at three town halls last week, told supporters their help is needed to correct misperceptions.
The president said he’s willing to work with Republicans, while adding “there are some people who for partisan reasons just want to see this go down.”
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released today found that half of Americans oppose changes to the health system based on what they know about the proposals, compared with 45 percent who support them. Still, when asked about whether they would support a government-run option, 52 percent of poll respondents said they would, compared with 46 percent who wouldn’t.
The fissures between the chambers and the parties raise the possibility that Democrats might try to use their majorities in the House and Senate to pass legislation on their own. In the Senate, that means they would likely have to use a process known as reconciliation, which is designed for budget issues and requires only a majority of votes for passage.
‘Never Stopped Talking’
“We’ve never stopped talking about reconciliation,” Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, said in an interview. “It’s by far not the preferred option.”
Obama and top congressional Democrats say they favor a bipartisan approach yet have pledged to pass the legislation by the end of the year.
“We will not make a decision to pursue reconciliation until we have exhausted efforts to produce a bipartisan bill,” Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said on Aug. 19. “‘However, patience is not unlimited and we are determined to get something done this year.”
Senators have started conferring with their parliamentarian about potential problems with reconciliation, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on a conference call today.
Finance Panel
The Senate finance panel is the only one still working on a plan. Three committees in the House and one in the Senate have approved their versions of the legislation on party-line votes.
Unlike those committees, the finance group is leaning against a mandate on employers to cover workers or pay a penalty. Instead of a public option, the senators on the panel are considering allowing the creation of nonprofit cooperatives with government seed money.
There’s also the question of how to pay for a plan that may cost $1 trillion over 10 years. House Democrats want to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans; the Senate negotiators are weighing a tax on the most-generous health plans.
“Something as big and important as health-care legislation should have broad-based support,” Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican negotiator, said Aug. 19. “So far, no one has developed that kind of support, either in Congress or at the White House. We should keep working.”
Besides Baucus, Grassley and Enzi, the Senate negotiators include Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine and Democrats Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.
House Changes
Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, today said House leaders are considering changes to their plan, including raising the threshold for a proposed surtax on the wealthy to those earning at least $500,000 a year from $350,000. He sounded a different note on the public option than Pelosi.
“I’m for a public option, but I’m also for passing a bill,” Hoyer said. “We believe the public option is a necessary, useful and very important aspect of this, but you know we’ll have to see because there are many important aspects of the bill.”
Pelosi yesterday said lawmakers have to pass a comprehensive bill rather than a watered-down compromise.
“Frankly, I don’t know when we’d do it if we don’t take that giant step now,” she said.
Spence, you are totally misconstruing the idea of a public option.
It is a public insurance option, meaning option to buy insurance from the government. That does not mean you or anybody else has to buy it. And it definitely doesn’t mean health care will be government run. Hospitals and doctors will remain in the private sector. Why does this option scare you guys?
Old people love this option. For them it’s called Medicare.
Copperhead,
It is very concerning to the initiative driven, self reliant and non-dependency minded people of this country that folks with your paradigm fail to see the perils in a “public option.” Because human beings are, by nature, dependent beings, the majority of the people, even Republicans, will be running toward a public option if it costs less money and less responsibility on their part. “Dependency is death to initiative and we must fight it like the poison that it is.”
This is how people slide into a situation where government has to do everything for them -by accepting all this help from government in the first place. Government is an ever growing and expanding monster. It never stops growing. Why is that? Because, depending on who is at its helm, there is always justification for taking the power(initiative) away from the people to create their own environment. In short, we are creating a culture of dependency that will infect future generations and will, therefore, will lead to lack of self accountability.
We are here, as Steven Covey put in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People(not a book for socialists and liberals), “to act and not to be acted upon.” It is very concerning to me that government feels the need to “act upon” as if to suggest we are not capable of acting for ourselves.
You see, it is the individual’s growth that Conservatives, not liberals, are concerned with. If you guys really wanted to help the little guy, you would help him make choices for himself that would bring a greater sense of achievement, rather than doing everything for him. “If You give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If You teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime.”
The last thing we want is a country full of dependent people. That is not the purpose of the Constitution and our dear country. If the people become so dependent upon government, not being able to act for themselves, but to be acted upon, then you will have a dictatorship. Don’t let government fool you into thinking that it is trying to help you with your most distressing problems. Do you really think that anyone who wants to create a government program, some politician, really has your most essential needs at the forefront of his mind?
If you cannot understand this principle, there is no point in debating you until your paradigm gets a dramatic shift. You are part of the problem.
“It is very concerning to the initiative driven, self reliant and non-dependency minded people of this country”
What makes you think I am not like this?
A little background on myself. I was born to absolutely poor Midwestern farmers. We were so poor, there are virtually no pictures of me as a young child because my parents couldn’t afford a camera.
In the meantime, I performed stellar through school, worked since about the age of 13-14 with any type of work I could find.
I got scholarships to college, and worked the whole time through college, where by the way I earned degrees in engineering and computer science. I’ve had minimal support from anybody else. Yes, I had some student loans, thank god, but those are being paid back.
Since then, I’ve traveled and lived in several countries, taught myself several languages, and work in a technical field that few can do.
My wife came from an even poorer background. Her mother had to make their clothes from scratch.
So sorry, I don’t believe someone like silver-spoon born George Bush or Mitt Romney have shown anymore self-reliance than myself or my wife. And it’s definitely hard to believe that they can understand the struggles of those that are born into much less privilege.
I have read Covey’s book, and I found it quite boring. It was full of just common sense. I didn’t learn anything from it.
I don’t want a country of dependent people either. But let me ask you since you are so anti-government. Which agencies or programs of the federal government would you like to cut and why?
A before you answer that, you might want to research the history of the creation of them, and the affect of them. You’ll find that the vast majority of them were created with popular support, and most people wouldn’t dare think about getting rid of the services they provide.
And the issue of self-reliance has no relevance to some services such as environmental regulation. How can a person be more self-reliant against possible poisoning of their water by some business? Would you suggest every person be a chemist and know how to test their own water for every possible toxin?
For example, how about this agency:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_Safety_and_Health_Administration
Should we dump it?
Here is a entertaining link while you ponder this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0
So correct me if I’m wrong..I know you will..but isn’t the public option just a lower cost health insurance option? Isn’t it designed to give those folks making minimum wage a chance to buy health insurance instead of having them just go to the emergency room when they are sick, then never paying the bill cause they can’t afford it, or causing them to sell everything or file for bankruptcy, thus making healthcare providers suck up the costs which in turn make everything more expensive and add to the ever increasing costs of medicine and medical care? Isn’t the main idea behind the public option to create low premium alternative to the market (a very liberal way of thinking, competition in the marketplace) which if I understand how the free market works, would make other health insurance providers lower their premiums? Thus making health insurance affordable to …everyone?
Come on, government trying to take over our lives and make everyone dependent? A dictatorship? Government is simply doing it’s job..fighting for the average citizen in an arena so large that a single voice simply cannot be heard. The US Gov is the only organization big enough to take drug companies and HMOs. These multinational corporations whose outrageous growth has been at the expense of the poor and the elderly and the middle class.
Say hey to Anime for me!
I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that.
“government of the people, by the people, for the people”
Yes Spence, the government is doing it’s job. With Bush it was asleep at the switch and having his friends raid the fridge.
Anyway, any response to my earlier post?
Gotta clean a whole bunch of guns in a second….so I only have time for one -Social Security. It won’t last and all it did was put people in that state of dependency that stifles their ability to create for themselves. This is why President Bush made an attempt to privatize this program.
So the nearly 3 years that Mitt served as a missionary in a foreign country with only about $50 per month to live off of doesn’t qualify him for understanding what it is like to not have much? He sacrificed 3 years of his life to walk the streets preaching, taking persecution and was pronounced dead at one point. He went into people’s homes to help them overcome addictions and many other challenges. Unlike most politicians, he has actually been in a situation to help the weakest and the poorest.
I know because I served a mission as well. Ignorant people erroneously labeling Mitt as having been fed by a “silver spoon” cause me to feel like I am lowering my i.Q. by simply listening to them ramble on with their psycho babble.
That is a matter of opinion and personal preference or of personal paradigm. Your frame of reference appears to have come from a shallow place. There doesn’t seem to be any substance in your agenda. You will never change my understanding, and I think I will never change yours. We can debate and waste all the productive time in the world going back and forth. I’d rather spend my time doing something worthwhile, so don’t get your feelings hurt if you don’t hear me responding to mindless chatter:)
Wow Spence. You want to do away with Social Security.
By far the most popular and most successful program, next to Medicare ever in the history of the United States. They have accomplished what no church or religion ever did in the States.
Charity is a great thing, and I encourage it, but unfortunately, it has a trifle impact compared to actual law and good government.
Please, I encourage you and fellow Republicans to stick to your guns and your principles and run on that platform of getting rid of Social Security, or putting it in the stock market, which as the economic crisis showed, was a brilliant idea.
As for Romney, sure, he probably as a better understanding of poverty than say W does. But still, you can hardly compare a religious mission, where he knows he has money to come back to and also has the knowledge he can leave at any point. Actual poor people do not have that luxury.
Just in case you missed something, “privatizing” social security hardly means doing away with it. In the next 10 years we will have an enormous amount of boomers retiring who will all start taking from social security. If people had the option of taking the money they would have put into social security and putting it into their own investment, then they won’t have to blame the government when the program tanks and they don’t get anything.
Read Paul Zane Pilzer’s book “The Next Trillion” and you’ll see a very well known economist saying the same thing I have. Pilzer has been spot on in his predictions.
This is my personal opinion and it would not be a wise platform to run off of because people are too dependent on this flimsy program.