All according to PLAN… & only the first step towards SINGLE PAYER.
The “drama”, the bogus articles about “infighting” & the “Presidents reluctance to support the Public Option” (all to eagerly parroted on this site).. the nonsense about “triggers” was simply political brinkmanship by MASTERS.
Those States that are STUPID enough to “opt out” will have to explain to their constituents WHY they can’t CHOOSE for themselves.. & the party responsible for it will seal themselves into their OWN TOMBS.
The HOUSE is now pushing (& will GET) an accelerated schedule so as to make provisions like the elimination of “pre-existing conditions” & the health insurance industry’s anti-trust exemptions as soon as early NEXT YEAR.
Coupled with the “Opt-OUT” clause, States who decide to choose against the Public Option can ALSO choose against PRIVATE INSURERS as well & set up a STATE-WIDE “Single Payer” system.
Imagine.. people living in California adopting SINGLE PAYER as soon as next year!!!
Their ECONOMY will SKYROCKET, as businesses no long FETTERED by the burden of covering their employees will be able to GROW & start to recreate our middle class.
CHECKMATE
Indeed, the strategy from the beginning was for Obama NOT to link himself to the health care bill so Repubs couldn’t use the anti-Obama paint brush on it.
Instead, they came up with Death Panels, Kill Granny, Sex Clinics in High Schools, Government Takeover…but they couldn’t tie the racism and hatred of Obama directly to it…not that they didn’t try by calling it Obamacare (copying their “Hillarycare” campaign in the 90’s).
The big picture was, try to get a bill before the recess so Repubs couldn’t use the recess to mess with public opinion. When they missed that deadline, they said, let them go nuts, who’s going to believe that we want to kill grannies.
That was a minor mistake, too many elderly dimwits did believe the Death Panel thing and support dropped for reform and the public option.
The upside was that the loonies on the right were taking over the fight and turning off anyone with a full set of teeth.
What Obama and his team decided was, okay, we messed up a bit and lost the battle in the Summer but we will wait to use our strengths in the fall, speaking to the nation in a joint session and campaigning on all media to win in the end.
Obama wasn’t shy about claiming the Stimulus Bill, he made a concerted effort not to insist on anything in health care reform because the kneejerk reactions of GOP jerks would have been to march against that.
He didn’t give them the target they wanted, that was smart.
Still, that DLCer Rahm, like others in the DLC, has been very comfortable about selling out the people and the public option as long as it means Dems keep control and keep getting corporate donations.
So, it hasn’t all been brilliant and planned out to make the public option a reality but it is looking very good right now thanks to some of the foresight by Obama.
Too, not to!
I want to know about cost containment. I’m all for universal access. But I am more concerned about cost control.
The French give it to everybody and spend appreciably less then we do.
The fact is that about 30% of our national expenditure on medicine is wasted. Needs never be spent.
Couple that with the administrative savings of a single payer and we will have a nice bonus.
Next we just need to forget about being the last colonial power, and cut the military in half, then all will be substantially better.
And I dropped PK an e-mail. Perhaps you could respond?
Like I said before cutting costs through regulation is the most direct way to cut cost. Limit private insurance profits and overhead. Limit the number of for profit hospitals and regulate drug and medical devise and equipment prices. Maximize government grants for med students so doctors are not six figures in debt. And yes even limit tort reforms along with malpractice insurance rates. All these things are the only direct ways to cut costs. Single payer does not even cut costs without everything else legislated. The public option is the cowards way out but it’s a huge change because it will start changing our entire view of the employer based system and start putting downward pressure on provider costs. I almost want no employer mandates in the final bill because if they have to go into the public pool we will have virtual single payer faster and that’s when we can really start lowering provider costs.
No.
First fix is end Fee for Service.
And in the top ten is end advertising to the public by Pharma.
Patients demand stuff they don’t understand and don’t need, and doctors give stuff that is not necessary for any number of complex reasons, but law suits are just a small part of that issue.
Stop paying doctors and hospitals for dolling out pills and proceedures, and pay them for results.
True fee for service is the #1 reason we waste $800MMM/year in our disaster of a healthcare system.
Oh and guess what the president was right. The current healthcare system wastes about $800,000,000,000 a year so one year of cutting wast would pay for 8 years of universal healthcare.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091026/ts_nm/us_usa_healthcare_waste_4
Well said I tend to like the Stratego analogy better because the chess thing is getting stale.
The grand strategy never changed no mater what the naysayers said. The game changing moment for the public option where it got resuscitated was the speech before the joint session and the media blitz supporting healthcare reform with the public option. That got progressives going again, especially those that counted in congress. All this reading the tea leaves the last few days has been nonsense. I think the president got bad advice from his advisers who underestimated the support for a strong public option in the Senate. All it sounds like because we don’t know is the president was talking about was what he thought that could pass not what he wanted. This is the exact reason why negotiations are not public because different people reach different conclusions in the same meeting.
It’s amazing now how Aryanna is taking credit and her flock are taking credit now when they have really been undermining the president’s agenda all along by fostering apathy with progressives that by into their bullshite.
I have my bottle of Champagne cooling in the fridge, you will hear me cheering from way over the blue Pacific. I’m ready to rock!! 🙂
Completely agree. And believing in this chess game of Pres Obama’s has kept me from despairing through this entire mess.
It amuses the hell out of me that the trolls on HP are seemingly so completely floored.
Btw. Agent86’s profile is back on the site.