of office?

Maybe someone with more process knowledge of the Congress and Senate can let me know why? It seemed like they spent the first half of his year in office selling the bill and making it bigger. Couldn't they have just rammed through a basic Health Care reform bill without any Republican votes last year? After that, they could have weeded through the details. To me, it seems as if they weeded through the details while they were also trying to sell it to the American public. Why have they let it go this far?

I must be missing something.

After their experience padding TARP and the Stim package with pet projects (read: pork) they realized that simply signing onto a healthcare bill without being compensated for their vote would be foolish so they held out. Harry Reid said as much. They just didn't have the votes. They had to pay for them, and that took time to negotiate. Meanwhile they lost momentum and allowed time for the opposition to get out their spin, effectively killing the bill.

End thread.

I got a better odds this won't happen than I do on my puppy-bowl square.

They didn't have the votes? Harry Reid and Pelosi couldn't get the votes when they just won the election and had Congress and the Senate? I mean, didn't the whole "Bluedog" revolt only come about over the mid part of Summer? Couldn't the Dems have just put forth a simple bill in Obama's first 3 months? It just seems ridiculous that they couldn't.

1. "pork' IS stimulus.
2. A 'simple' healthcare bill is not very useful. Our healthcare system is a huge, multifaceted clusterfuck, many aspects of which needed to be unwound at the same time to make any sense or difference. In fact, I would argue that the bill should have had MORE in it- Tort Reform being at the top of that list.
3. The Dems really are pussies.

When did he say that?

Personally, I think they were looking to hit the home run for their base rather than going for a single or double. And why wouldn't they? They had the house, the senate, and the presidency.

And that is part of it, too.

You left out the part where the held out too for more republican votes as political back cover. Thus once again democrats were political pussies.

This too.

This is part of it, well most of it really, but also Obama is truly a centrist and a moderate. Ramming a bill through congress as a pure exercise of political strenght is not a good idea. That's something a radical would do. Or more accurately, a radical would flat out lie to congress and the American people about what was contained in the bill or WMD's or what have you. A moderate agenda is fraught with political peril because you are sure to piss off the extremists on both sides. Extremists typically make the most noise while having the least to contribute. Therefore it requires a level of integrity that is highly unusual in today’s climate. It is far easier to abandon the path of wisdom for political expediency and approval ratings.
For example a lot of people on the left were highly dismayed that Obama did not just up and close Gitmo and withdraw from Iraq on his first day in office. But that would not have been wise for a lot of reasons. Same thing applies to ramming a bill through congress just because he had the political momentum to do so. Political momentum is how Bush/Cheney got us into Iraq. Is anyone still delusional enough to argue that this worked out well?

A simple plan to correct flaws in a complex tangle of laws passed over decades would not have worked - attractive as the idea might be.

Plus you seem to underestimate the power and determination of the insurance industry and their allies who have blocked previous attempts at reform and came to this fight well-armed and with the entire Republican contingent ready to do their bidding.

Then there was the seven-month delay in seating Al Franken that gave the Republicans the advantage of being able to filibuster to death most of the Democrat's efforts from the beginning of the new administration - and which will now continue with the Scott Brown election.

There was a presser where Reid said that any senator who complained that he/she didn't get to insert their pork into the bill had themselves to blame because the rest of them did, admitting that it was being used as a vehicle to bring home the bacon by those willing to play ball.

Seriously, they could have done a bill that was very basic and no frills. Cover all children, allow people to keep their insurance even if they move to a different job. Provide basic check ups via health centers to all Americans.

Funny how when you change a few words it all still makes sense.

And don't tell me what a small percentage of healthcare costs are caused by malpractice insurance. It's the very idea that it wasn't even on the table.

To his credit Obama later said he would consider it, but at that point it was moot.

Oh yeah, and don't think I'm defending the Republicans.

They too can lick Carl's mic.

Again - the insurance industry wanted NO reform at all, and this is what this whole thing is about.
Plus the Republican leadership's strategy of obstructing ANY reform and ANY political victories by Obama and the Democrats meant no simple plan could have been passed anyway.

I could get behind that. But I'm not holding my breath.

This is the new "Oh crap, socks too"

Tort reform -i.e. caps on damages - is a red herring. Malpractice torts represent a few percentage points of total healthcare costs, and it has NOT reduced costs or insurance premiums anywhere it's been imposed.


I will tell you this because it is true.

Bullshit. It's a tidy excuse that fits your world view but not grounded in reality. There were plenty of republicans like Snowe and Collins in Maine who were ready to play ball.

You will continue believing the hype.


But it isn't bullshit - the insurance industry has played this game for a long time.

What part of quid-pro-quo don't you understand?

The votes were there early on. Obama's biggest mistake was letting Congress fight it out instead of setting up some benchmarks. He dithered and lost.

What part of the insurance industries efforts to limit access to courts for redress of grievances - overturning a concept fought for by the Founders based on the history of limiting such access to elites and aristocrats - do you fail to understand?

The votes were not there early on.
There was no bill to vote upon and the Democats faced a Republican membership determined to deny them any success.

The idea that this could have been whipped out and passed quckly is ridiculous and based on ignorance of how things work in Congress.

yawn

Take a nap. Thinking is hard work.

This

So is seeing both sides of an issue.

Take a nap. The sound of one hand clapping is better than Ambien and Scotch.

I don't think you've seen half of one side of this issue.

Obama went for too much. He had a mandate. He let it slip. End of story.

Even if Obama had presented a fully-written bill during his first month in office, the result would have been the same - the Republicans had enough votes to filibuster it to death and the insurance industry had enough Democrats in their pockets to keep it from passing.

The "mandate" myth can't cut through that either - the 2008 election was not a landslide for Obama and he did not win the power to assume a dictatorship.

Fuckin' Teddy Kennedy

Did the Dems have a majority in fillabuster majority at this point last year? I can't quite remember. I know that Franken took awhile to be seated because of the lawsuit regarding the counting.

Mitt Romney too.

If Teddy hadn't pulled the assfuckery when Kerry was running for president none of this would be a conversation right now.
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I'm out of breath myself. Dems always shooting themselves in the foot.

and with out Federal assistance, MA couldn't afford its health care plan.

they all have mandates until they try to implement the policies they think that mandate supports and the people in the middle who gave them the mandate quickly rescind it.

Smell the mic.

Yeah, then the dipshit went and died on top of it.
In hindsight, there were 2 instances where a strong player in this debate, either of which very well might have made the whole process vastly different, dropped out:

Kennedy, and Tom Daschle ('cause of his limosine thingy). How ironic that they both didn't make the debate. Anybody check for pulonium?

True enough but Obama had the votes to get more things done even after the initial wave of spending bills. He calculated wrong. And of course nobody could have ever seen Mass. play out the way it did.

No - that's why the Republicans mounted a series of filibusters during that seven-month period and blocked a lot of bills and a lot of Obama's appointments, and they are now - as of 5pm today - set to do a lot more of it.

Yeah, I'm with you on this one. When I read that the Republicans invented the filibuster after Obama was voted in I was furious.

None of Bush's appointments were ever blocked. Ever. Wah.

Tort reform?

The health care industry is a one and one half trillion dollar business per annum. "Torts" (lawsuits, litigation) come to a little less than 30 billion dollars a year costs.

In other words, one half of one percent. Line up a hundred pennies and cut the last one in half and chuck half of the halved penny away and tell me how much it cost you.

This is a specious, absurdist argument put forth by the same people that scream about how litigious American society has become, but who never fail to utilize said system when they feel like suing (to wit, Rick Santorum and wife suing a chiropractor after Ricky spent years attacking "friviolous lawsuits").

As Screeg pointed out, this is a well-organized and very powerful, wealthy lobby that stands to lose everything is "Medicare for all" or a public option sees the light of day and will fight to the death to prevent such things.

Like most liberal statistics involved that little story Johnny told you, it doesn't tell you about all the costs of procedures needlessly done because doctors do not want to get sued. CYA is the name of the game and that costs a shit ton of money.

And don't tell me what a small percentage of healthcare costs are caused by malpractice insurance. It's the very idea that it wasn't even on the table.

Read: "It's ok if we're bought and paid for, but not if YOU are." Johnny, you're not an imbicile, you must see the point here. I specifically stipulated that it's not a large portion of healthcare costs. That wasn't my point and I'm pretty sure you know that.

No... he just needs to do a search over at the Huffington Post and be done with it. Probably dug that "fact" up in show prep or from one of his in the can guests.

A 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.

If it's 2%, why would it be on the table, Jeff?

That's all of malpractice. And the "defensive medicine" that supposedly also drives up costs via unneeded tests is at most 60B a year in a business whose entire worth is 2.3 Trillion dollars. (Harvard med study).

The profit margin on this industry is, however, at around 350 billion dollars a year. Eliminate that and costs automatically go down 15%.

Oh so now you're a fucking doctor? Which procedures would those be? With every doctor I've ever met (and I've met a lot) the name of the game is trying to improve people's health or save people's lives, you tool. In my experience doctors only concern about malpractice suits is how much the insurance companies are ass raping them, just like they're doing to the patients. Legally speaking it is very difficult to sucessfully sue for malpractice.
You're advocating insurance company accountants deciding which procedures get approved and which don't. Well that's kind of how it is now, except when the doctor prescibes a procedure or test and the insurance company doesn't feel like picking up the tab, guess who pays?