Every indication public option is dead at WH. So, reform means taxpayer funds transferred to for profit companies to cover more people. That won't fly on the left
Not only not fly with the Left, the Progressive Caucus will not vote for the bill. Darcy Burner has organized 60 Democrats, in the House, to support a public option only bill.
Burner said liberals have new organizational muscle to back up their threat. As evidence, she pointed to a fundraising effort coordinated by MoveOn.org and left-wing bloggers that netted about $400,000 in small-dollar donations in just a few days for 60 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Those lawmakers signed an Aug. 17 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pledging to vote against a bill that doesn’t include a robust public plan.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear health care reform will not pass with a public option.
Not at all, she said. Asked by HuffPost if she would allow a reform package without a public option out of the House, she responded: "It's not a question of allow. It wouldn't have the votes."
Obama spent his political capital on the hope Charles Grassley and Mike Enzi would support health care reform. The White House has finally come to the conclusion Grassley and Enzi will never vote for any Democratic backed health care bill. Obama is left with a health care bill with no public option that will not get through the House. The President risks losing his base. This is Obama's "read my lips 'no new taxes" moment.
Shulter made a great observation of Obama's brand of change.
@jillosopher that's right. Corporate welfare to a group obama said was holding the economy hostage. So now let's give them more money and more hostages. Odd
Shuster fears Obama will sign a bill requiring all Americans to buy private health insurance. Taxes will be used to help lower income people get private insurance. This is a giveaway to the insurance industry. Democrats need to vote against this. If Obama really is pushing for a private insurance bamboozle then the Democratic Party should run candidates against the President in 2012.
Shuster may be on to something...read Bill Nelson's very recent quote in the Lakeland Ledger...when majority centrists make these kind of statements, it is not looking good:
ReplyDeleteToday, from the Lakeland Ledger:
Nelson later told The Ledger in an interview that the public option also can't pass the Senate.
"The public option is only one of hundreds of issues concerned with health care reform," he said. "Public option means different things to different people. Some people think of it as socialized medicine, but that type is not and has not ever been considered.
"Still any public option will not pass," he said.
What is left for a public option are the progressives and liberals in the House...they will have to stand up to the Senate & probably very soon, the White House.
Good luck with that...
I think the Democrats have made a very poor choice, they will of course continue to be beat up from the right, and now start getting it from the left...they have mis-calculated their centrist base...I believe it will shrink, largely into the edges of the moderate left, which may lead to lost elections in the mid-terms.
They have compromised with big business, the right will take it as a political 'win' and the Dems will look disorganized and lacking in leadership skills. Bill Nelson and his ilk may think they are protecting their seats, but on a national scale they are drawing us back into the Bush era...the possibility of a repeat, God help us.