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Rockefeller’s Public Option Killed in Senate Finance’s Health Care Bill |
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UPDATE: Schumer’s public option amendment got killed as well, 10-13, with Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln voting against it. Disgrace.
Looks like one version of public option just got killed in the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s public option amendment, the strongest of the public option amendments offered, was just voted down 15-8, with five Democrats voting against it: Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Tom Carper (Del.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.).
As Rockefeller said before the vote:
Why would we not do this? People come second and the profits come first if we’re against this.
Looks like the People lost this one. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will now offer another public option amendment. Let’s hope the Nay-saying Dems have time to check the People’s pulse before they shoot down another public option.
According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll out today, half of 18- to 34-year-olds surveyed say they support a public insurance option as part of health care reform.
Last week, a poll by the New York Times/CBS found 65 percent of those surveyed support a public option and only 26 percent oppose it. A public option would give consumers a choice—and private insurers are opposed to it because they’re afraid it will reduce their massive profits.
So who exactly is being represented in this vote?
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All the confused babble about a “public option” will hopefully be ended. Now that this miserable “public option” portion is thrown out, the true nature and glory of Obama’s “public health reform” is now revealed. A massive corporate greed rip-off of the American people. Good riddance.
Now is the time to DEMAND ‘MEDICARE FOR ALL” and get rid of the health care gangsters and parasites altogether.
The opportune time for Mr. Trumka and the AFL-CIO to voice the Pittsburgh’s convention support of MEDICARE FOR ALL is NOW!
Not one of them makes for a good looking prostitute.
Again our democratic FRIENDS have screwed us.Will we never learn?Keep voting these same friends back into office,we should be joining the Indendent Party by the thousands but will we No.We will vote right down party lines again and again.With the AFL-CIO’s help most of these fools we get re-elected.
The best way for Democrats to generate expanded campaign contributions from people like me, would be for Congressional Democrats to act more vigorously as Democrats. I for one, want to see major health care reform with a public option, cap and trade legislation that sharply promotes energy conservation to include much higher mileage standards, approval of the EFCA, a re-regulation of the US banking and investment sector, downsizing our military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other progressive agenda items. I suspect as progressives
see evidence of significant change in policy to benefit the American people, campaign support from working families should dramatically increase.
What independent Party would we join? The ones that can’t even get in a debate? The ones that don’t have the money to win? Politics in this US is a rich man’s game. That’s why we can’t get people elected to support the average person’s interests. We MUST get private money out of campaigns as now politicians are bought and sold to whomever. This is not Democracy, it is a Corporatocracy. The Supreme Court is looking at giving the corporations even more rights to give money in elections which will only make it worse.
Don’t give up on the public option. It’s in the House bill, and will come up again in conference.
And it’s what we need. This is America. We put a man on the moon. If we put our minds and hearts to it, we can have the most accessible and cost effective health care system in the world.
But at present we are dead last in the industrialized world. Not at the top end of service — we’ve always been a leader there. But the disparities in access are so great that, on average, we get less and pay half again as much for it.
There are two things we need to do. First, we have to deal with the disparities in access. Frankly, a lot of the disparity is a self inflicted wound: we have structured the health care market so that insurance companies compete by increasing the disparity.
Second, our payment and delivery systems for health care are a morass. We badly need a program of testing and experimentation to find our way out of this morass. We didn’t get to the moon without a clear sense of what we didn’t know, and a test plan for finding out what we needed to know. We need to do the same with health care.
Both these objectives are implemented in the public option (sections 221-225 of HR 3200). We need these provisions in the final bill. We should strongly support the public option.
And I haven’t heard an argument to the contrary. At least, not one that addresses the proposal that is on the table. I’ve heard ideological generalities that are opposed to something that is not even on the table. This is just politics, doesn’t qualify as sensible dialogue, and certainly won’t get us the best health care system in the world. Which is where we should be heading.
We need to approach health care like we approached going to the moon. This is America. We can do it.
frisbeeredcat,you are exactly the kind people I am trying to reach so long as you and people like you are unwilling to leave the democratics or the republicans,the politicans will not care how angry we are.If enough people leave the entrenched parties they will talk to us,so long as Independent Party is a minority no one is going to listen.Its easy to change your party no one even ask why your doing it.Go ahead keep voting for the same people over and over again.If you want change make an effort to get it.
Dr., I am not a party line voter. As a matter of fact I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, (boy that worked out well), and several times for other party candidates. I never, until this last election, ever voted for the winner in a Presidential election. I stand by my previous statement and add – The system is rigged for 2 parties. Perot had quite a following and even he, as rich as he was could get nowhere. I just don’t see the independent vote as a way out of this mess. I’m starting to think we should split the country red/blue and each go our separate ways!
Abuelo : With all due respect to your comment “don’t give up on the public option plan”.. We have no idea what is in this public option. Until Obama and congress force the pharmas to negotiate and lower medication prices, the insurance companies agree to not pass on the expense to their customers the cost for insuring those with pre-existing conditions, and agree to actually lower premium costs to ALL insured, then there will be no reform at all. That is why insurance companies SHOULD not be at the table for “reform”. WE should all be focused on single payer. Rep. Weiner’s amendment to HR 3200, which would replace 3200 with HR 676, single payer has not come up for a vote. The AFL-CIO should be verbal on this amendment and push for it to pass!
It is time Democrats–and Democratic members of congress (House & Senate)–take stands like Sen Rockefellar and Congressman Grayson from Florid–who has said it like it is on the House floor yesterday.
It is time Democrats understand that to keep power, we have to earn the respect of the American people. They gave Democrats a chance–in the last election–to take hold of leadership and LEAD in order to gain & hold that respect. We are not living up to that charge and opportunity. It is time Democrats quit kissing Republican ass and start kicking it. That is what the American people want to see. If they don’t see it this time, Democrats will be relegated to hind teat for another generation and Republicans & their corporate bosses will continue to plunder the working man and woman in America.
Congressman Grayson (D-FL) must not apologize! He must not be forced to acquiesce by the Party or House Leadership! He was right in what he said and right in the way he said it, notwithstanding Rachael Maddow’s feigned indignation yesterday over his use of the word “holocaust” .
Holocaust was a word with meaning long before the Hitler era. 122 American victims of our healthcare system suffer & die each day because they don’t have healthcare coverage. They & their families are living and dying in their own actual holocaust! Let us say it the way it is! Support Congressman Grayson and Senator Rockefellar! Tell them to continue trying to make the Democratic Party go to real battle for the American people in deeds as well as words. Republican asses are for kicking, not for kissing!!! It is time my party–the Democratic Party–put up or just shut the hell up! Live up to LBJ! Put the kicking boot back on Dems!
Dr,
Independents have no loyalty to anything; that is why they are independents. Tell me what Independents really stand for with respect to making America a better place. They are intellectual cowards who have no intention of working in the real political process; the political party structure; the nuts and bolts of our system to make things happen. They just sit on the sidelines until a nominee from a major party is chosen and flip and flop back and forth to no real avail for the nation’s sake. The have no platform that reaps results or even attempts to reap results. No sir, the real way to do battle is make the Dems do what is right and rip the guts out of Republicans with reckless abandon. The Party of W H Taft, Jay Gould, Richard Nixon, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, Lee Atwater, G W Bush, Karl Rove, et al;, will run rampant over this nation & pluner it to death if the Independents ever gain a foothold. It is for labor and other progressive political entities to damn the Republican Party for all time and work through the structure of the Democratic Party to make it do what it must do and have no recourse.
Ironically, the guy labor hated the most in the late 50’s & early 60’s got more done in the last half of 60’s on behalf of workers, old folks, sick, too young, minority, environmentalists, education, and so many other things than all the philosophical progressives and “liberals” combined could have ever accomplished. He didn’t kiss asses, he kicked ‘em! He blackmailed, cajoled, dealt, bullied, extorted until he made things happen to bring this nation out of the dark ages! His name was Lyndon B. Johnson. He was a political, social and economic pragmatist! He still gets no credit from labor, Blacks, women, Limo Liberals or even the most significant beneficiary of his works; Barak Obama.
One name needs to be added to the Party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy; that name is LBJ! President Obama needs to credit that man and employ some of his tactics immediately if he wants his name in that list!
Whoever runs this blog doesn’t want real meat in these boxes. He/she wants pablum. That is what is killing labor and progressive Democrats. Pablum is for babies. meat is for grown-ups. I tell it the way it is and get a blank space. Forget it. I’ll do my battle with and for those who want to win and make this a better country. I’m sick of the wimpy way! I am a proud militant Democrat!
Your other posts were in the queue, not deleted. We moderate as we can throughout the day. We don’t have staff to moderate every second.
Harley j your loyalty to people who take our support and screw us with it is the problem.The Independent Party will never be able to help the people if people are so blind to stand by and watch the 2 party system destory them.Just what is you are so proud of that the Democratic party has done for you.I was a member of the Dems for 35 yrs, before it finally dawned on me the only thing that a politican thinks more of than money is which party might have a large enough body of members to get him elected.Right now the Independent Party is not large enough but times are changing and I think you’ll see a turn around in the next few years.But if you want to blindly support the Democrats it’s alright with me,but I would like to remind you this is not a sporting contest where the best team wins,this has gotten to the point all the people lose.Democrat or Republican they are not working for us.