Earlier Benefits Could Be On The Table In House/Senate Health Care Conference

What the hell did we give up anyway?

The Public Option was already so watered down in both bills that it would only cover a few million and might have had such a high cost pool that it would prove ineffectual

The medicare buy-in? Excellent idea except for the fact that it was never scored in relation to other reforms. I strongly suspect that this too would prove a still born reform for 55-65 year olds would be buying into a risk pool of seniors and permanently disabled persons at what premium?!?!?

Early start dates a good trade and perhaps single shot reforms aimed at hospitals. big pharma, insurers ..like a decent medicare buy in via reconciliation that works

polish polish polish

Five plus five is ten. Ten plus ten is twenty. No more Tim Pawlenty.

"It's hard to run for office on the platform of having passed an unpopular bill that hasn't really done anything yet."
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If only they could have found something to include that would have made it more popular.

http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/sign/natpollresults121809/

I think the exchange should be on a National level, and be up and running in 2011/12. Creating one large group for each 'plan' will get us the biggest 'negotiated' savings on premiums. Very much like several different 'public option' plans to choose from.

But it's really mind boggling to think about all the development/implementation and coordination that will be needed to make all this happen.

I have a neighbor friend who I love dearly. He's a music composer and needless to say the economy hit his field hard over the past few years and as a consequence, he couldn't pay his health insurance prremiums anymore. To make matters worse, he has every disease known to man so he is uninsurable. As I said, I love him dearly but he is 50 years old and never had a real job that ever paid a lot of money, but he loved what he was doing. So now because he's stuck in a profession that isn't paying the bills and has no insurance, he's pissed because under the new bill he will have to pay for insurance. I don't remember Obama ever campaigning that there would be free health care - just affordable health care. He says he can't afford any insurance payments but the guy always seems to have money to do the things he wants to do. I am having a difficult time feeling sorry for him. He wants full socialized medicine. I told him to move to another country

What exactly is in the legislation if there is no public option?

The only reason I want to see this get going earlier is so we can see what a piece of crap it is before Obama leaves us.

In another election cycle, the Democratic rallying cry will be 'Balanced budget!' and the subsidies promised in this bill - sure to set the middle class against the working poor - will be on the chopping block in no time.

It was a great year. In congress the corporate-acracy was saved and reinforced. Nominated the same guy who got a PhD on the Great Depression and whose sole job was to monitor the economy but yet failed to see the biggest recession coming down the pipe when all signs where there. Sent more troops over to Afghanistan with no clear plan but just as long as the DoD and the Petagon wanted it, it must be the right move! Could've ended "Don't ask don't tell" with an executive order and could've closed Gitmo and sent the prisoners to another facility on that same order. Let the entire Bush administration off the hook for their crimes against humanity.Looking forward to more spineless negotiating and kowtowing to extreme right-wing interest.

And yet you right-wing conservative buffoons still can't see how good you got it.

Birthers, teabaggers, radical right wing "christians", secessionist, healthcare anti-reformist,etc., are all the same core group of poor, uninformed ultra-conservative pawns tricked by the corporate masters and cheerleadered by AM conservative talk radio to get these people to believe and vote against their own self interest.

It isn't any wonder that the main weapon to keep the rank and file conservatives in check is fear. Conservatives fear that their guns are going to be taken away, they fear that U.S. will become socialist, they fear that health care reform will kill off the elderly, they fear that the president is a muslim, they fear that when minorities are in power that reverse racisms will run rampant, they fear that every nation under the sun wants to destroy the U.S. and on and on. This is the main message of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, et al. to be afraid. After 8 hours a day at least 5 days a week conservatives literally become
brainwashed through the radio and then some on Fox news to be afraid and angry.

Conservatives don't even know what exactly they are trying to conserve. They speak of fair play and freedom but when a group other than their circumscribed group speaks about and want such things (i.e. gay rights, immigrants, minorities, the poor)these ideas suddenly become liberal pandering.

Conservatives don't realize that what they fear most is change. The changing of American society and of the world. Thus their behavior is not much different from other conservative movements around the world, i.e. Taliban, Al Qaida, Likud, Abadgaran. These groups want to maintain the status quo and use fear and sometimes violence to achieve their means. These groups target the same type of people to believe in their ideology. These are usually the poor, rural denizens who feel that the rest of society is moving too fast and that they are being excluded because the city centers are thriving and they are not.

It is this simple mind trick that has allowed the military-industrial complex to roll along unabated for so long. The very thing president Dwight Eisenhower,a Republican, warned against. However, it was only recently that Republicans were up in arms against the slashing of the military budget and discontinuance of the F-22 and only a couple of days ago voted down the defense appropriations bill. This is just another example of how twisted and convoluted conservatism/republicanism is. It contradicts one of their venerated leaders and ideals.

Unfortunately, contradiction and hypocrisy have become the norm for conservatives, so much so that entire shows are based on it and have become very popular (The Colbert Report, Countdown, The Daily show etc.). When conservatives are confronted with this, the usual retort is that it’s the “main stream media” distortion, wholly ignoring that “main stream” = normal or average, non-fringe. Again this is just fear working on these people, fear that their ideology is being pushed to the fringe creating the us vs them mentality.

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” Edmund Burke.

The recent tom-foolery in the Senate is further proof, that the jingoistic, uber-patriotic rhetoric by the republicans is just that, empty rhetoric. The republicans/conservatives don't care about human lives, concerning military operations nor domestic welfare. How can anyone support a party whose ultimate goal is political gamesmanship to keep the status quo? Democrats are not much better, being to spineless to hold up to their ideals. Negotiating like a bunch of dithering do-nothings.
People who support this type of buffoonary need to really look at what they are contributing too. This is the type of crap that makes government so inefficient, in particular the Senate. At least this debate on health care opens the eyes of the aveage lay person to realize how Senators have become the House of Lords and that this so-called aristocratic bunch believe they can play games while people are dying here and abroad. They have totally forgotten that they are supposed to be representatives of the people.