Posted on 07/10/2009 8:45:40 AM PDT by The Pack Knight
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday acknowledged the tough going for his health care overhaul in Congress but rejected the notion the legislation is doomed if lawmakers fail to act by August. "I never believe anything is do or die," Obama said.
"We're closer to that significant reform than at any time in recent history," Obama told reporters at a news conference in Italy. "That doesn't make it easy. It's hard. And we are having a whole series of constant negotiations."
Conservative Democrats are demanding significant changes before they will support a sweeping health care overhaul, forcing the House to join the Senate in stalling Obama's top domestic priority.
The "Blue Dog Democrats" group released a list of demands on the eve of House Democratic leaders' planned unveiling of their final bill Friday. The bill release was pushed back to Monday at the earliest and Democratic leaders agreed to devote Friday to meetings with the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs to work through their concerns.
These include the need for more cost containment measures, protections for small businesses and a focus on rural health care.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I’m drawing a blank at the moment. Can someone name a “conservative democrat” for me? I didn’t know such a thing existed...
Why do they have to be conservative democrats if they break ranks? Why can’t they just be decent people that know it’s wrong?
We would probably be better off swapping the whole bunch of our RINOs for this group.
In Medicare and Medicaid, we already have two government run health-care systems with out of control costs and poor service.
Medicare has an unfunded liability in the tens of trillions of dollars which dwarfs both the official ‘national debt’ and the liability from the Social Security system. The late night airwaves are full of companies selling cheap junk with the promise that Medicare will pay for it, while doctors are not allowed to provide service that does not fit into some pre-defined box.
Much of the cost of Medicaid is forced onto state governments, and for the last two decades it’s costs have increasingly devoured a larger share of state budgets, taking priority over ‘discretionary’ spending on roads and education. Medicaid Fraud is rampant - googling the phrase ‘Medicaid Fraud’ yields 878,000 hits.
Both Medicare and Medicaid are financial disasters because politicians will not make hard choices to raise fees or cut promised benefits. Why in the world would we allow these same politicians to take over the rest of the health care systems?
Something to think about. I just don’t see the words Conservative and Democrat in this day and age as being compatible.
So what. They are just posturing for their constituents. In the end they will vote for it, no matter what it looks like—just like they did the Tax/Trade bill and TARP.
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