Obama Tells Dems They Can Be 'Own Worst Enemies' And Asks For Health Care Unity

Fine and dandy, O-Man ... but we don't want that 'bill we like least.' It blows. Push for that, and you'll be talking to some pretty skinny crowds in 2012. A real bill is in your hand; just close your fingers around it!

Which sounds nice and all except that it's not so much I "don't like" that one bill, like we were picking paint colors or something, it's that one of the bill has the potential to ruin my life, me personally, as a person who lives constantly on the edge of being forced into contractor/self-employment work.

Give me a bill which fails at fulfilling of my ideological desires and hey, if it helps someone, somewhere, let's go for it anyway! A tenth of a loaf really is better than no loaf.

But give me a bill which potentially creates a situation where I cannot get health insurance which pays my medical bills, but I am being forced to pay for insurance anyway...? I am forced to do anything I personally can to keep that bill from passing, just out of self preservation. This loaf us worse than no loaf. This loaf is poisoned.

Or, more to the point: no mandates without a public option. There can't be negotiation on this. If the government requires purchasing insurance, then the government has to take on the responsibility of making sure some minimally acceptable insurance plan exists to buy.

Can we get the rest of the qoute? We need more context.

What a joke. We should settle for the bill we "least like" because 4 or 5 dino narcissists don't want to disappoint their insurance overlords? Give me a fucking break. Here's an idea, Mr. President. Drop the ineffectual pragmatism and LEAD. The public option, despite the onslaught from Republicans, remains widely popular. If we are victorious in getting a P.O., let it be known it wasn't because of Obama, but instead because of the tireless efforts of grassroots organizations and the House Progressive Caucus.

It was a terrific speech, watch the whole thing because the context is key. No one's settling for less, but for all of us who have been working all spring, summer and fall, going toe to toe with wild eyed teabaggers this was tonic for the thirsty.

It's good know the President isn't tired, 'cause if he's not then I can work a little longer too and get this right.

Funny. He wants us to think about the bill we LEAST like while the Blue Dogs and Centrists will think about the bill they MOST like.

Hmm, who is doing the compromising here?

I don't like the sound of what Obama is saying. To my ears, it seems like he is prepping us to accept a bill that doesn't have a public option.

As I read between Obama's lines, it seems that there are not yet 60 votes for cloture on a good bill.

Democrats must unite!
Nelson, Lincoln, Leiberman, Conrad, are you listening?

The health care exchange in the Senate Finance Committee bill isn't available for everyone. That bill has mandates that could force people to buy very expensive health insurance. No bill is better than a bad bill.

A political site with people who don't like politics? Magic thinking is an odd thing to find here among the supposedly hard-boiled. Obama as the king of a tiny land where his will magically turns the leaves blue and the rivers into chocolate. And his will is always my will too. What happened to the patience for the slow boring of hard boards? Not on-line shoppy enough?

Would have been nice to have a link to the speech in the story.

Here it is: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/oct20watch

The bill we least like would increase coverage by mandating health insurance, but forcing us to buy from the same insurance companies that have been ripping us off for years. It may count as a win in O's book, but it is a dismal defeat in mine.
All the positives he pointed out in the Finance Committee bill won't make up for that one negative. When is he going to get that?

... and by 'sometimes' he means, 'for the last 60 years'

If the Baucus mess passes as a final bill, a whole lot us us will be screwed!

A clunker for a young person will be a cadillac plan for older Americans. Plans that would be low enough for a tax credit for the younger generation would cost us the earth because of the age rating.

Exchanges, as they are described in the Baucus plan, do not allow individuals or very small businesses to participate in group rates. Exchanges, as set up for federal employees, have one rate for everyone per plan. No one is excluded from participating.

There will be federal mandates to buy insurance but no federal plan to purchase. Private insurance companies will get even more of our money. Why should the federal government shovel more dollars into an already sinfully profitable industry?

This bill is the worse thing I've ever seen.

In the HCR effort we like least, who gets what?

Big Phrma: 30 million new customers, no drug competition from overseas, no negotiated prices

AHIP: 30 million new customers, individual madates, no po

AMA: 230 billion "FIX" for medicare "under payments"

American People: THE SHAFT

Sorry Mr. President. We can do better.

The Republicans lost power because of the things they did. Doing what one Republican, Snowe, wants could cause Democrats to lose power. If you beat them, join them?

Well, if you ever needed a more clear telegraphing of what is and isn't going to happen, this pretty much ends it, for the perceptive.

The toughest job all along for both Obama and the congressional Dems has been how to proceed with their prefab agenda... pass "something", and eliminate the public option so as not to piss off Wall Street... in the face of a strong public demand for the public option.

The endgame was set long ago; I don't think they ever anticipated such an audible groundswell for the public option. And the "tell" was whenever the President, or a "White House official", or a "leading Senator" would, from time to time, exprss annoyance at the Democrats, the activists and the members of the public who were getting noisy about the public option. The whole, "You're not helping matters!" reaction, which they kept having toward a larger and larger percentage of Americans.

By the time it got to this, it was pretty tricky to keep up the scam, pretending as if supporters of the public option were a small, "squeaky wheel" minority, when they were anything but. Still, the whole attitude of condescension and annoyance, by leaders who were supposed to have been on our side, was the dead giveaway that the deal had been cut, and we (i.e., most of the country) were just making life difficult for them.

When they pass this bill with no public option, and President Obama goes on his p.r. victory lap, hailing all the "good things" in it, they're counting on all the sausage-making being long-forgotten by the peons, in 2010 and 2012. This is why the broad-based supporters of the public option have constantly been admonished by this Administration to sit down and shut up: they didn't want the end result to be styled as anything but a popular success. All this "demand" from the bleachers is pissing in their Post Toasties, so to speak.

However, this is where Obama will meet that "Waterloo" which that Republican dweeb was hoping for. People are just too hep to the jive, now, not to have been following what the health care debate is all about. They will remember (especially since nothing will have really kicked-in, by 2012, and running against Nothing will be a piece of cake).

This game is over. But I don't think it's going to work out the way Barack and Rahm and Harry and Chuck and the rest think it will. Oh well. Hope you can deal with extreme Republican rule.

Wow. Looks like Obama stirred up the hornets nest on this one! LOL

It's interesting that his remarks are being interpreted as a call to accept the "bill you like least."

He said nothing of the sort. Instead, he was trying to offer some perspective by making a larger point that, even what's obviously perceived (among people here) as the "worst" bill will still be a tremendous step forward for many Americans with and without insurance.

Fine, if you don't agree with the point that eliminating discrimination based on preconditions, ending policy recission, creating an exchange that lowers prices, and expanding care to cover 29 million of the ~30 million uninsured is a good thing.

But, most Americans would not describe those major changes as "insignificant" or "not REAL reform." That was the only point -- nothing more, nothing less -- being made. This was an attempt to offer perspective. Obviously, the effort to relay that intent failed somewhere along the lines between the messenger and its recipients.

"Sometimes Democrats can be their own worst enemies, Democrats are an opinionated bunch ... "

Well, for starters, Mr. President, you told us that your election wasn't the end, but the beginning of a more participatory government.

Second, when Democrats took over Congress in 2006 and could do nothing about anything (save that shameful bipartisan / Chamber of Commerce love-fest over yet another lopsided trade bill, this time with Peru) you cried the blues that you didn't have sixty votes in the Senate, so nothing could be done. Since then, we gave you the supermajority you asked for, in both Houses in fact, and the White House to boot.

Third, in direct contradiction of the will of the electorate, you subjugate governance under that supermajority to six Senators, not 60/40, but equally divided between right wing extremists and Republicrats from sparsely populated states, many of whom who've received large contributions from the health care industry.

Fourth, in direct contradiction of the majority of Americans, the Finance Committee, led by so-called Democrats, produced a bill without a public option. When the committee voted out the bill, you fawned all over Olympia Snowe, and people like Wyden and Rockefeller, true Democrats who advocated the public option were snubbed.

Fifth, those Republicrats, awash in contributions from the very people we need to regulate, tell us they can't get sixty votes. But we know that sixty votes applies only to cloture, a procedural vote on which both political parties traditionally enforce unanimity. We see no action on the part of Harry Reid to enforce the tradition with serious consequences for those who don't honor it.

Finally, it's coming to light that the public option will in fact reduce the deficit for the next ten years.

With all these factors in favor of a public option, you have run out of excuses, Mr. President.

So yes, we DEMAND a floor vote with a public option in it. We demand each Senator go on record as to which side of history they will stand.

Don't start in with us that we're all wearing our pajamas and need to realize how tough you have it. If you have it tough, it's of your own making.

And don't lecture us about the perfect being the enemy of the good. We are not arguing for the perfect. We are arguing for some shred of relief in return for giving health insurers the windfall from 45 million new conscripted premium payers, subsidized from taxpayer coffers. Without a public option, there is nothing left to drive down the 30% costs used to pay health insurance CEOs $50,000 an hour by denying care to their customers in their very hour of need.

Yes, you're right we're an opinionated bunch, and this is your litmus test: under all these favorable conditions, if you fail, there will be dire consequences for Democrats in 2010 and 2012. Because, if you fail with all wind at your back, what the hell good are you?

Get it done, or pay the price at the ballot box. We're tired of all this screwing around and making up excuses that don't even pass the laugh test.

I like my president, but this is just doesn't seem right. I'll admit I didn't hear him speak and my posting is based on the written article, but it seems he is preparing us, if not campaigning, for "the bill you least like." It is especially frustrating. coz it seems we are finally in a climate where there is a serious and realistic opportunity to pass a PO bill.

I'm already imagining, some of us Obama crowd, will aoon begin telling the rest of us. why we shouldn't whine about not having the PO. Just thank god, O managed to pass the bill we like the least.

Obama said "the bill you least like in Congress right now, of the five that are out there," would give 29 million uninsured Americans health care

PUBLIC OPTION NOW or let the insurance company death panels have em!

I know no more than the next person, on the back room dealings, the hurdles, the White House position on the PO. But there are no more than three possible Obama positions on PO, I reckon:

1. Obama is offering passive support for the PO for strategic reasons.

2. Obama is agnostic, he doesn't really care whether bill includes PO or not, he just wants to pass "something" that is better than "nothing."

3. Obama is actually more in favor of a bill without the PO, the one similar to Baucus plan.

Take your pick, for me it looks like its somewhere between 2 and 3 and if true, its deeply disappointing.

"Sometimes Democrats can be their own worst enemies,

tell me about it . . . like when we're played for suckers and fall for the Hope-A-Dope

So trashing the President is in the best interest of our democracy, as long as you respect Robert Reich?

My intention wasn't to trash Reich. You were practically deifying him, and I just happen to think he's nothing more than one really smart guy who has an opinion. There are many others, including Barack Obama. The difference is that a convincing majority of Americans elected Barack Obama to be our leader, and he has a much more difficult job than Reich.

I'm all for questioning the President, but I'm tired of liberal angst. I'm tired of the insecurity that makes our side so prone to turning on our leaders at the mere SUGGESTION of compromise. That's why we haven't accomplished ANY of our major policy goals for decades, and the GOP has. It's time to grow up. It's time to get over old wounds and push forward.