Come on dude, -are you serious?? Without the public option, all we will have is just a slightly different version of the completely fucked-up healthcare system we've got now. So in the interest of real talk, please Obama, stop bullshitting us with that nonsense and demand that we have a strong public option.
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This thing is turning into a joke and Obama has nobody to blame but himself. People pushing for reform never gave a clear picture of what the reform would be or how it would be funded. Instead, you get newsbites like "small businesses will be forced to pay more taxes," "NY's wealthiest will have effective tax rates of 60%," "this will cost a trillion dollars," and "healthcare as you know it is going to change." I'm not even talking about the patently false stuff, like the death panels and how this would be like Canada's system. I'm talking about real aspects of the reform which are confusing and potentially scary without a clear explanation as to what is going to happen.
During the campaign, Obama's team was praised for being able to "control the message." Here, they never really got the message out to begin with, let alone control it. Instead, we got a generic message of "change" and "everyone can get insurance" when they should have been having community meetings with the details broken down in their simplest form. This is a complex issue that requires public education. Maybe the Obama team thought that Obama had so much goodwill with the public that they were going to get down with anything he proposed. In any case, this bumbling allowed the anti-Obama crew the room it needed to get out with misinformation to try to torpedo this.
Obama did himself no favors by originally putting a short deadline for passage of the legislation. Remember that this is a fundamental shift in how America handles healthcare. You want to ram this through Congress in a few weeks when most of the public does not even understand what is going on? The "ship be sinking" moment in my eyes was when Congress Classic John Conyers admitted that he had not and likely would not even read the bills. I'm not sure how anyone thought voters would be cool with sweeping change when people in Congress appeared more concerned with pleasing the president than the substance of the bill.
Bottom line is that Obama fucked this one up and the only one to blame is the man in the mirror (MJ RIP).
-Real talk.
You think the Hannitys, Palins and Glenn Becks would have stopped trying to mislead people if Obama had just made a clearer case for reform? You think the media would have reported the facts instead of giving air time to liars and lobbyists? You think the Tea Partiers and Birthers would have rolled up their Hitler posters and gone home?
You can fault the White House for lack of message discipline (I do), but here's the deal: Obama tried to have a grownup conversation with the American people about *policy*, and the right wing responded with distortions, blatant lies and a coordinated effort to prevent meaningful conversation. I wish Obama had managed this better too, but laying 100% of the blame at his feet is nonsense.
There is always the possibility that this is some classic rope-a-dope strategy where Obama's playing some unseen angle here... Hopefully that's the case and he's just 3 moves ahead of everybody on this one. However, the more likely explanation is that he's just being a politician and caving under the pressure. Hopefully there will will be enough of a backlash from the (sane/rational) public and he will stick to the original script and make a public option possible.
The whole healthcare proposal earily smacks of George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security at the beginning of his second term. Same half-assed approach, same, "well gee, looks like folks don't really want this to go through" attitude. These are sort of mock-runs to prime people for actual policy change sometime in the future--I don't really believe that Obama's team thought they were going to get this thing through so easily--but it looks good to the people who put them in office because at least they gave it a go.
For the record the privatization of Social Security is a terrible idea for many reasons, which I'll gladly go into if anyone disagrees.
Health Care reform has to happen in some shape--but it won't likely follow the prescription of the 1000-page bill we've heard so much about. When we eventually DO have a viable plan for reform I only hope it does something to change the fact that between 46 and 50 million people in the U.S. remain without any sort of health insurance. And the fact that half the personal bankruptcies filed in U.S. are due to outstanding medical bills--and in half of those cases the individual declaring bankruptcy has health insurance, but their coverage isn't sufficient to cover the costs of their care.
Hmm...I think a lot could be achieved by 1) getting rid of the tax break for employer-provided healthcare and 2) allowing insurers to compete nationally rather than along state lines. 1) would raise $250bn/p.a. in tax revenue which pays for plenty of healthcare for the less well-off, and it would remove a grossly unfair part of the tax code.
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