Posted on 08/20/2009 6:13:31 AM PDT by La Lydia
Maybe the White House meant to signal that it was backing away from its commitment to a "public option" as part of new health insurance exchanges. Or maybe the hedging words of administration officials...It doesn't matter, because, either way, the reality is that, if the Obama administration wants to get health reform done, it's going to have to back away from the public option sooner or later -- and it's getting awfully late.
This is not a matter of ideology but of political nose-counting. The kind of comprehensive health reform that the president rightly wants...requires 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats could muscle through some provisions with 50 votes, but a Senate rule limits how much can be done through that route. Measures such as establishing insurance exchanges or imposing new coverage requirements on insurance companies...might be vulnerable to being stricken. And there's no way to amass 60 votes with a public option in the bill.
To listen to some Democrats talk, reform without a public option is scarcely worth doing. This is crazy...Mr. Obama was right when he described the public option as "just one sliver" of the overall proposal.
...the president's advisers have been taken aback by the ferocity with which the left is opposing dropping the public option. That seems hard to believe. We wrote back in April that the left's "fixation on a public plan is bizarre and counterproductive." If anything, the administration fanned the flames of this irrationality...Now it is paying the price.
There's blame to go around, and there will be even more if reform fails, but the most disappointing performance has come from Republicans who sense a political opportunity and seem unwilling to accept any proffered compromise...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ok, I’m lost: why does the LEFT oppose a “public option” unless it (supposedly) keeps a “private option,” except we all know it won’t? Certainly they have to know that.
Grip your wallet and your rights very tightly. The Libtards are just putting on a different color condom. BOHICA!
They will just change the name to Co-Op. What a scam.
That’s what I thought I said.
This is all about the government creating a new taxing authority.
When King Henry had taxed his people to the maximum, he noted they still paid their church tithing - so, he created the Church of England and made the people give the tithing to him.
That, is why our founding fathers in the first amendment wrote the government cannot create a church.
I never would have gotten out of 7th grade if I had been required to diagram that sentence.
One of the biggest problems on the left is that they tend to believe their own propaganda.
In this case they believe they can't pass a pure single-payer public option without fooling the rube Americans with a false choice. When the regular people reject only the plan the left wants then they circle back in their logic and try to do the same thing again in the same way because they can't change what they believe even in the face of verifiable facts.
Confused? Of course. This circular and unchanging "logic" is what leads some to believe that liberalism is a mental disease. A logic disability. They lack even the most elementary common sense because of it. And they get angrier every time they are proven wrong and have to start over doing the same thing again from the beginning.
Hah! For most of these spaghetti-spined jagoffs, this was their very first battle after years of being on the front lines. They've never done anything until this point.
Unfortunately, they don’t teach kids how to diagram sentences any more.
They’ll pass a public option by calling it something else. This crew is good at that.
what is bi-partisanship in Washington? When Republicans cave to Democrats.
This is an old joke, but you see how true it is in the health care debate. For a health care plan to be bi-partisan (as in both parties meet in the middle) the Dems wwould have to scrape at least half of the proposals in their current plan. Instead they say they “might” scape one part of their plan and accuse the GOP of not being bi-partisan.
Telling someone you are going to cut off all their fingers, then saying they can keep one pinkie is not compromose.
Took them until the last paragraph, but yes, they finally wrote that the biggest share of the blame for the health care mess belongs to, you guessed it, the Republicans.
Is it too late to put a mega-barf alert in the title?
Time to start calling it like it is. Truth be told, there never was a “public” option in HR3200. There WAS, however, a “government” option. And, that option was the pathway to the LibTards’ real goal of single payer, government run health services; just like Canada and the UK, and elsewhere.
It NEVER was a public option, and NEVER will be. It’s all about control. The elitist, gasbag, libtard DhimmiRats are caught up in the mad march to marxism under the guidance of the anointed one and the 0bamunists.
It’s time to take back the country.
I don't believe the Leftists will back off the so-called "public option" one iota. This is nothing more than yet another media rope-a-dope campaign to get the opposition lulled into thinking they've won in order to get the opposition to back off. We cannot fall for this trick.
As I heard on the radio the AM, liberals confuse the goal with the method.
Discussing the public option, someone called in and asked why they were against health care for everyone. The host explained that he favored health care for everyone, but thought there was another way to do it.
The caller was hung up on the idea that the public opiton = health care for everyone. They couldn’t grasp the point that there are other ways to provide health care for everyone without having the government do it.
“There’s blame to go around, and there will be even more if reform fails, but the most disappointing performance has come from Republicans who sense a political opportunity and seem unwilling to accept any proffered compromise...”
There can be no compromise with a government takeover.
You nailed it perfectly!
Obama said it was now or never. I vote never. But like Rush said. He is building a monument to himself.
Pass the popcorn.
This is all BULL. The WaPo is trying to put the opposition to sleep with an article that reads like a strategy White Paper from the DNC.
Do not let up for even a moment. Remember that the bill is not done until the House and Senate versions are reconciled. The ‘Rats can put the Public Option back in the bill in a closed-door, late-night session FOLLOWING passage of a bill with no public option in it. Do NOT underestimate the utter corruption of these people.
Well, for one thing, there are too many commas in it.
The ENTIRE Auschwitz/DeathCare Bill (Zeke Emanuel’s plot to destroy the American people) with its euthanasia and intended power grab must be thrown into the sewer where these Elite Socialists spawn. The American people know, without a doubt, that we cannot trust any of these arrogant Socialists. They crave total power over the American people to feed their demented egos and contemptible greed. They have proven their disdain for the American people and their intent to destroy our Constitution and our way of life. To think otherwise is to be a clueless fool!
Neuter them in 2010
Throw the rest out in 2012
Clean up the sewer that is the US Congress and the current Administration. We owe it to our forefathers and our troops.
People, you better get ready because all Hell is about to break loose in America. It is ours to lose, so speak up loudly stand your ground and don’t back down.
And where was the Wash Post when the Dems sensed a political opportunity in opposing the Iraq War (and have largely dropped such now that they are in control)?
“When they argue about replacing the “public option” with insurance cooperatives or insurance exchanges, they are talking about a choice of HOW the government will take us over, not IF it will take us over. “
Yep
“Public option” = Socialized medicine. They think we are stupid.
Indeed, they do think we are stupid.
And, to them, the fact that we oppose their superior vision is proof of this.
There was a quote in an IBD op-ed today stating as much - basically, we have to use the stealth move of the “public option” to get to the superior single payer system because the public will oppose single payer.
Do you remember, just a few weeks ago, when zer0 lashed out against death care opponents saying "you'll destroy my presidency?"
Maybe his own self esteem is so wrapped up in accomplishing his version of healthcare reform when so many other leftists have failed that the death of deathcare could cripple him emotionally.
I sure hope so. He'd make a very nice lame duck for the next 3.5 years IMHO.
Golly! Why cant they play nice like how the Democraps did with Social Security reform!!!
Reid would have a difficult time getting 60, unless Byrd and Kennedy are hauled in on stretchers.
Of course, he can almost always rely on a ‘bipartisan’ [aka, turncoat] or two. [Trust Collins? Snowe? Graham? McCain?]
That’s what I thought, but the article doesn’t seem to be written that way. Surely these bozos know that ANY “health care bill” will sooner or later leave us with only the “public option.”
You are assuming the Wash Post is intellectually honest. It isn’t.
I would be inclined to agree.
Geez...am I the only one who gets tired of the onslaught of lies dumped upon us by the powerful in order to keep us docile?
Puhleeze. I walked away from a succesful career as a stockbroker 20 years ago 'cause I wanted to get away from this shit.
I think that's a very fair characterization of 'rats ideas of "compromise".
Theres a scam here. The entire goal is single payer nothional healthcare. Suddenly they give up the only goal they have when they have a clear majority? I don’t buy it.
They are only trying to disarm the resistance.
There's a boatload of ignorance out there that's truly amazing -- people who haven't even an elementary grasp of supply and demand.
The cashier at our local supermarket lamented the rising prices of groceries with, "You'd think they wouldn't raise the prices when the economy's so bad." When I tried to explain to her that a "bad economy" affects not only consumers, but also farmers, processors and retailers, her eyes glazed over.
The same attitude prevails about health care. It's expensive, so it must be because of obscene profits by somebody. Forget inefficiencies (including government programs), overuse, malpractice lawsuits, taxes, illegals, etc. There's got to be a villain, and the left has done a good job of identifying and isolating the target (the insurance companies) and glorifying the solution (the government) for these people.
From a summary of that frightening 'history' in an email making the rounds & reprinted by Rich Lowry@NRO:
In it, author Schmitt briefly chronicles the history and strategy behind "the public option." It was devised as a deliberate, explicit subterfuge that would draw unwary voters to support something that all the polls indicated they opposed: “single payer” nationalized health insurance. This strategy was then sold to the various Democratic presidential candidates way back during the primaries; John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama all bought into it.
Please direct others to this article. It confirms exactly what we have sensed all along: that “the public option” is a Trojan Horse effort to drag us into socialized medicine on the installment plan.
We are all soooo naively being played right now by these slimes in the WH & their media flunkies.
I agree. These people should be thrown out.
Most of the Congress is in need of some stoutly wound hemp..
No, they will have to throw in the towel for any health care plan at all. They are trying to change the dialogue so it is only about the public option, that way they can pass some type of bill and put the BS stuff back in later.. The people are pissed about the whole stinkin, bill, not just the public option.
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