Thanks Jon!

Isn’t this the Tim Griffin of the US Attorney scandal?

This is the kind of poll we need to get into the press any plans on how?

You mean one of Karl Rove’s lapdogs?

Shoulda figured the Republicans had a secret weapon to get back in power. I just didn’t realize that weapon was called “Democrats”.

Lets see Rahn spin this

The poll would have been more informative if it had polled about the House bill and other policy options. As it is, it looks more like opposition against any healthcare reform instead of a reaction to the Senate bill’s excise tax. Because the state has been so heavily propagandized, when the actual benefits of the resulting healthcare reform bill (for example expanded primary health clinics) are known, there might be a reversal in the poll before November.

And a 4% margin over the status quo is likely within the margin of error of the poll. So on that opinion, it’s a tossup.

My sense is that Congress is so far along in its internal negotiations that it is beyond the reach of public opinion. I’m not sure how helpful this poll is from a political standpoint; it seems to be irrelevant.

That’s the one.

My sense is that Congress is so far along in its internal negotiations that it is beyond the reach of public opinion. I’m not sure how helpful this poll is from a political standpoint; it seems to be irrelevant.

I agree with you Tarheel. It is a done deal. We just as well get the moaning and groaning over and take a page from the Tea Party.

In my view Liberal/Progressives have two options. Form a political interest group outside the Democratic Party or work from within. To work from within means more than just showing up for meetings and complaining. See this article in NYT this am. We could learn a lot from the Tea Party.

Speaking of Democrats killing their own majorities, I see Chris Dodd is not only chasing away a few more potential Democratic votes but is simultaneously doing a little pre job interview work for JPM, GS, BAC or whoever he is currently in job negotiations with.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704363504575003360632239020.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird

Consumer Protection Agency in Doubt
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is considering scrapping the idea of creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, people familiar with the matter said…

Gotta love those pols, lying, cheating, self dealing scum till the end.

Maybe he can get another sweetheart mortgage deal with whoever he agreed to drop the Consumer Protection Agency for…

Obama’s Health Care reform is such a loser the Democrats are all ready losing the 2010 elections

I am ready for Massachusetts to elect a Republican Senator. Massachusetts, the only state to support George McGovern in 1972, voting Republican.

Maybe then Rahm and Obama will wake up and take action before they are buried in the fall. Somehow Rahm and Obama think they can get Democrats elected with “moderate” Democrats, conservative Independents, and those bipartisan Republicans that have supported him in the first year.

Perhaps they can reuse “Hope and Change” for this election cycle as well.

Nate Silver just posted an article sharply criticizing Firedoglake for this article and the poll in question. The story is tited, “Liberal Website Helpfully Tests Messages Against Vulnerable Democrat, Finds Them Wanting.”

link

And people were hoping that the fact he wasn’t running again would be a catalyst for him to do the right thing and push for a strong CPA! Just shows how foolish it is to expect any ethical behavior from most politicians. Even on the way out, they’ve got the interests of their corporate donors at heart.

Not running again, it is necessary for him to feather his post-senate nest.

A lot of the comments on the article at fivethirtyeight seem somewhat critical of the basic idea behind the article, which is encouraging I think.

From “Henry” at Nate’s

I have discussed that here before, I see little difference between the FireDogLaker’s and the Teabaggers – neither group is beyond lying to make their point.

OT – a little shameless blog whoring for relief funds for Haiti.

Stay at Nate’s then. Find the pure there and at Daily Kos.

The dems are going down over this shitty bill. Let’s see Obama and Rahm spin THAT.

But hell, even with the mythical 60 votes they STILL couldn’t get a decent bill passed. So let’s see what they do without the 60.

It’s not only AR that’s disgusted/outraged with the mandate.
They can’t arrest US all.This is so blatantly unconstitutional I can’t imagine how it has gotten this far.
Is it like putting the frog in the gradually warming water ’til it croaks ( no pun intended)
We should start refusing insurance mandates at ALL levels.

I read part of the article. His points about the order of the Qs, the selection of the Qs (e.g., satisfied with own health care), and the wording of the Qs seem reasonable. I have done only 2 surveys with a professional poller, so I am no expert, but to avoid bias you need to be very careful about all of those matters. The survey looks biased to my untrained eye.

A mandate is essential to any universal healthcare plan short of single payer. If you’re actually interested in improving healthcare reform instead of being childish twits you should be pushing for measures that reduce costs in the long run and improve coverage.

Right now, you’re not pushing Obama or Congress from the left, you’re dishonestly and shamelessly attacking from the right, and it’s disgusting coming from a (formerly) respected liberal blog.

Hey, K..We are pretty quiet here today…and where we are dark & wet with no sunshine expected..:(…I definitely agree on the mandates….the clearest view was that a mandate could only be feasible with a PO, otherwise, it’s robbery. Go figure.

“My sense is that Congress is so far along in its internal negotiations that it is beyond the reach of public opinion”

If Congresspeople don’t care about what people think, that’s a great way for them to become ex-congresspeople.

If Congresspeople don’t care about what people think, that’s a great way for them to become ex-congresspeople

Rahm’s model, as I understand it, is that if you have enough corp contributions, you can win over enough low-info voters to win.

Speaking of corp contributions, anyone know when SCOTUS is going to release its decision overthrowing campaign finance reform?

I do not normally agree with you, but I always credit you for being intellectually honest. It is a rare and good trait.

Thanks.

You start out by saying we all must take it as fact that a mandate is required, but no, it’s not. If you want to cut costs you do things like pass the Dorgan amendment rather than cutting deals with PhRMA and the other corporate healthcare lobbyists. What you do by cutting deals with corporate lobbyists is that you keep health costs high and things like the mandate and the excise tax result in wealth transfer from the middle class to the rich healthcare execs and lobbyists. If you want me to take is seriously that there’s a desire to keep costs down, don’t do things like murder the Dorgan amendment.

There are 192,480 precincts in the US (as of last count). Liberal-progressives can make the most impact on the Democratic Party not by trying to primary Nancy Pelosi but by organizing in precincts that the Democratic Party has written off to Republicans. Because it is the precinct leadership in these precincts that is seen as a thankless task because of repeated failure to win the precinct. If there is indeed populist appeal at the grassroots, it need not be channeled into Dick Army’s astroturfed Tea Party movement — and this is what the press has been covering, not any of the splinter Tea Party groups. That means that there is grounds for competition for voters who don’t want to be co-opted or astroturfed. The precinct liberal-progressive leaders who can deliver these voters in support of progressive policies will be the ones who will transform the Democratic Party.

Fighting the Democratic establishment over the solid progressive, and easy to mobilize, precincts is what frustrates progressive attempts to move the Democratic Party and why progressives are taken for granted.

Liberal progressive precinct chairs have to deliver more value-added to the Democratic Party than the established chairs do in order to gain power. For California, those would be in the northern and eastern counties. For Massachusetts, those would be in Worcester County. For New York, those would be in the Mohawk Valley and Finger Lakes regions. For Minnesota, that would be the center of the state. That is the larger level. But within progressive strongholds, there are areas that tend to be swing areas or are written off as Republican precincts.

As I understand other developed countries, where the cost of medical care are half of U.S. on a per capita basis, the costs are held down by price controls, manifest in one form or another. In the U.S. that would never pass the congressional giggle test, as controlling prices of their campaign contributors would be “off the table.” Reimportation of PhRMA is a pimple on a full body boil, and you can see how far that got.

It is very depressing. We have noted here before about some of the cynism coming from the patent disclosure of the complete take over my money interests…in the campaigns,etc. It just goes on & on; maybe the Supreme Court case should trigger a huge protest march. To your earlier question, don’t you imagine that the release will be on a quiet Friday news dump. Like now, buried in the Haiti tragedy….

Yes, I mentioned on an earlier thread that SCOTUS is gonna do the Friday 5pm data dump thingy.

I’ve begun to wonder, does it really matter what party get’s in? Stomped by an elephant or trampled by an ass, take your pick. You’re screwed just the same.

The FDL poll might have problems but the Dems look like they might loose Ted Kennedy’s seat if that happens then the Dems can’t expect to hold Tim Griffin’s much more purple seat.
How many Dem seats are were rated more Blue than Ted’s?

There are 192,480 precincts in the US (as of last count). Liberal-progressives can make the most impact on the Democratic Party not by trying to primary Nancy Pelosi but by organizing in precincts that the Democratic Party has written off to Republicans

I agree. In my parochialism I assumed it would be understood that these are the precincts that should be our aim. (sigh) I would hope the nit pickers can discern the differences between the real Conservative Blue Dogs and Nancy Pelosi’s minor pragmatic moves. There is also an advantage of finding ways to get genuine Progressive candidates to run in “hopeless” races in GOP districts. That being. to have Progressive values enunciated in the public arena.

Have you had your head so deep in the sand that you’ve missed the simple fact that this is not health care reform?

Not to mention that you’re somehow overlooking the additional simple fact that with the glaring omissions and gaping loopholes this is not even health insurance reform?

I have no problem with the Dorgan amendment. Those are the sorts of changes you guys oughta be pushing. However, it’s been thoroughly explained on multiple blogs that if you ban denial for pre-existing conditions without also imposing a mandate, everyone who’s not currently sick gradually leaves the system and premiums skyrocket for everyone who’s left. A healthcare death spiral, I think it’s been called.

FDL, at this point, has resorted almost solely to bashing the mandate, and it’s purely right-wing framing. This poll didn’t ask about a mandate with or without a public option or medicare buy-in. If I just saw this poll with no context I’d assume it was a Republican push-poll, because in essence that’s exactly what it is. Keep up the good work.

Nate makes himself come off pretty poorly:
“Most people are happy with the health care coverage they receive … that finding has been shown in poll after poll. And it’s one reason why the bill has been a tough sell for Democrats. The number of people who are too sick and/or too poor to get health care constitute a minority, and an extremely disempowered minority.

But asking people to focus on their own experience with health care right out of the gate is potentially a little biasing, as it gets them in the mindset that there’s no need to change the status quo. If you had asked, for example, what they think about the health care situation overall in America, you might be getting significantly different responses to the questions you asked about later on.”
It looks like Nate himself is trying to get biased results because he doesn’t want questions asked that might go against him. It’s perfectly legit asking people whether or not they like their HC, but Nate doesn’t want that legit question because he’s afraid of the results.

“It’s fine to mention the fine. But it’s perhaps not so fine to mention the fine without providing any additional context. Why is there a fine? Well, because otherwise people will game the system and cause everyone else’s premiums to go up by 30 or 40 percent. What’s fair about that? But of course there’s no effort to provide that context.”
Nate in trying to criticize a poll is advocating push polling! How do you expect to be taken seriously if you criticize a poll for not being a push poll?

“The choice of the fair/unfair phrasing is also a bit unusual and some pollsters would avoid it for being emotionally loaded”
Nate is either being very dishonest or is very ignorant of proper polling methods. It’s entirely legit to poll people by asking them if something is fair or unfair. Here’s for instance a Gallup poll that asked the fair/unfair question:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116101/Americans-Housing-Aid-Unfair-Necessary.aspx
Then there’s this one on Sarah Palin by TPM:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/poll_fifty_percent_says_news_c.php
Then there’s this from UPI:
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/13541.html
So Nate is bashing FDL for doing polling like Gallup and UPI while the polling negative of Palin. Nate seems to just want to do a hatch job on FDL.

The entire political establishment, pundits and politicians alike are afflicted with Rahm Emanuel’s tunnel vision that sees all Democratic failures and losses as symptomatic of not being conservative enough.

I do believe the problem is the opposite.

Get a genuine Progressive Democratic candidate or two in red state districts to come close or win an election and maybe someone will begin to notice. You better believe the business community will become aroused, and not in a good way.

“I have no problem with the Dorgan amendment. Those are the sorts of changes you guys oughta be pushing.“

That has been one among the many aspects covered at FDL.

Now… what part of “Obama and the Dem leadership lied and deliberately conspired to kill the Dorgan amendment in order to protect their backroom deal with PhRMA.” do you have trouble understanding?

Yet Obama campaigned on that. Was Obama doing right wing framing when he criticized Hilary’s mandate? I hardly see how supporting Candidate Obama’s HCR position has anything to do with the right wing.

None. By all means, yell and make a stink about the Dorgan amendment until you’re blue in the face. Raise hell about the public option and medicare buy-in and taxing high incomes more instead of middle incomes. All fantastic.

This fixation on the mandate, detached from any discussion about the other stuff, is straight up Republican framing. Like I said, the mandate is essential to any reform plan short of single payer, and we’re not going to get straight to single payer without some intermediate steps. When you attack the mandate solely on its own merits you’re working to kill any and all universal health care plans, not just the current one that you don’t like.

Wait, I thought it was a fixation on the public option that was the FDL-flavor progressive’s problem?

You argue that a mandate is a critical ingredient in any reform plan short of single payer. Even granting that having a large portion of the populace participating (ie, not gaming) is very helpful in keeping costs down, a mandate isn’t critical, at least not according to candidate Obama. What about all the other ways of keeping costs down that haven’t made it in? We have to have the one path that actually guarantees that aggregate US spending on US health *insurance* rises? Oh, I guess there is the excise tax, which reduces aggregate expenditures by raising the cost of individual’s insurance.

You are missing the point that a large part of the argument against the mandate is that it is a political disaster of epic proportions to be mandating that people pay a portion of their income to a private industry. Full stop.

It’s even worse to mandate that people pay a portion of their income to an industry that is responsible for screwing them and the larger health care delivery system over. It’s a giant cash transfer from (lower) middle class americans to health insurance companies.

It may be a drag that this will be a Republican attack point next fall, but it is the case.

Leaving the mandate out will be at least one thing that would have the insurance industry willing to come back to the table in future. If they get the mandate, all they need to do is keep any further action from happening, and they have guaranteed customers, backed by IRS enforcement.

Democratic leadersheep should wake up and smell their own droppings.

Tim Griffin is a destructive, mediocre Kar Rove functionary. His resume is pimped up by false claims, hot air and wingnut welfare. That he even temporarily has more statistical popularity than a competent, experienced elected official is a collective shriek from the public that something is deeply wrong. And the Democrats are doing it, whether they originated it or just picked up the leavings they found on the sidewalk and took them home in their pocket as prized possessions.

Griffin’s lead in a race that Rahm Emanuel would typically seek to micromanage from inside the Beltway is also a sign that Democratic arrogance has led them to drop the message ball. They are fumbling it along so far that they’re about to score another goal for their opponents.

Wake up, Obama. Even oligarchs have to run their government competently or other oligarchs will take their place.

But when asked if it were fair or unfair to actually fine people 2% of their income if they do not carry private health insurance, even that limited support tanked: 76% of people thought this specific penalty to be unfair. Even 59% of Democrats believe fining someone for not having private health insurance is unfair.

yet, in the summertime, when town-hall meetings were being disrupted, one of the legitimate points of outraged opposition was exactly this, the mandates.

which side was FDL on, back then? sneering dismissal of the uncouth, ignorant protesters interfering with the Democrats propaganda, and wonkishly supporting and pony-wishing upon the miniscule, symbolic ‘Public Option’, as if that contrivance would ameliorate peoples plain and simple outrage at being forced to tithe into the insurance cartel.

critiques from the left were met with firm message discipline, and the on-their-face stupid, wrong, and politically disastrous mandates were not polite to mention, until JH referred to their possible political impact, in September I think.

The mandate with all its criminal penalties is NOT an essential component of genuine health care reform. It is essential only for insurance companies to be able to continue to make their obscene profits.

The only workable formula for universally available health care is the Medicare model. All are automatically enrolled at birth. It is financed through nominal premiums and the taxpayers. In fact the infrastructure already exists.

That said this insurance company welfare bill is a done deal. We need to mourn, stop whining and move on.

The mandate is one of the most onerous parts of this terribly flawed bill. If congress can be made to reconsider it revisiting “other stuff” will be necessary. Trying to call attention to an assortment of problems with the bill cuts your traction… and time is not on your side.

Leaving aside your other points, do you understand that without an individual mandate you simply can’t get guaranteed issue? This wasn’t just some political compromise or tradeoff to make the insurance companies okay with no longer being able to deny people for pre-existing conditions; the system would fall apart without the mandate. You can’t just say we’ll leave it out for now to the insurers “to come back to the table”.

“You are missing the point that a large part of the argument against the mandate is that it is a political disaster of epic proportions to be mandating that people pay a portion of their income to a private industry.”

And you think letting the tiny portion of Americans either allowed into the exchanges with a public option or old enough to qualify for medicare buy-in would somehow change that?

Obama was wrong on the mandate in the campaign and you guys are wrong now. Whether he knew it was needed as a candidate or not, Obama adopted the mandate as president because it was realized long ago by Democrats who are serious about HCR that the mandate is essential. It’s sad to see FDL with their collective heads up their asses on this issue.

Just wait until Barack gives his speech. That’ll fix the bad PR.

Here’s copy of the rough draft:

It’s been a rough road, and we’re still not there yet, but history was made yesterday and this country has embarked on the very change we set to achieve a little over a year ago. A big part of the YES WE CAN slogan can now be said, yes we did. I signed into law yesterday the comprehensive health care reform bill the United States has desperately needed.
No more, will insurance companies be able to deny coverage to individuals based on pre-existing conditions.
No more, will insurance companies be able to deny policies to individuals or charge them exorbitant rates just because they are unemployed.
No more, will the cost of health care cripple our nation’s economy.
No more….
Wait a minute. This is SUCH BS. How did I get here? I…..I….I’m sorry. Grandma, can you forgive me? Momma? I’m not a bad guy, really I’m not. But…Malia and Sasha… your dad’s been making promises he never intended to keep. For your sake, I have to tell the TRUTH now. I said I would bring real change and then I went and brought in the same old establishment insiders. I made sure people who tortured and broke the law didn’t have to pay for their crimes and got to keep their jobs and continue to do evil things. I said we could dare to hope then I got into the White House and compromised everything of value with respect to health care reform away to the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. I knew I was selling snake oil. It was dishonest and WRONG and I CAN’T do it anymore. I can’t. I’m sorry. I really am.
American People, the state of your union is that it’s not yours. It hasn’t been for a long, long time. It belongs to Big Finance, Big Insurance, Big PhRMA, Big Agra, Big Energy and Big Defense. The job of the president of the United States is to rekindle inspiration in the next row of investors in the pyramid scheme, but it’s run its course. The middle class is under threat. We’ve got some tough times ahead. Get used to it. And oh yeah, don’t forget to go to the voting booth next November and push on the ESS/Diebold generated icon for your candidate of choice. That’s where your power lies (double entendre intended).

It’s sad to see FDL with their collective heads up their asses on this issue.

With respect, Morgan you seem to be the one with the eyes in a dark place. See my #47 reply to you.

WTF are you smoking? I’m all for Medicare-for-all, but where exactly do you think you’re going to get the votes for that when they couldn’t even get 60 for the public option? I’d be surprised if they could even manage 51. There just isn’t any way we go directly from where we are now to single payer. Maybe if you can first figure out how to get rid of the filibuster, but even then we’re still talking about years down the road from now.

The only potential path to single payer, with our flawed political system, is first enshrining universal health care as an accepted American value, and that requires guaranteed issue and an individual mandate. If you’re serious about universal health care, focus your efforts on improving the current situation by pushing your representatives to support the addition of the features like the PO you want to see added. This focus on the mandate by itself helps no one but Republicans.

So did you support Candidate Obama who was supposedly going to lead our HC system into a death spiral and destroy it?

I did support Obama, but not because of health care. Frankly, I thought it was a waste of time to obsess over the particulars of Obama’s and Clinton’s plans for a legislative issue when details of an eventual bill were always going to be dictated by the make-up of Congress. Like I said, Obama was wrong then and you guys are wrong now.

“I thought it was a waste of time to obsess over the particulars of Obama’s and Clinton’s plans for a legislative issue when details of an eventual bill were always going to be dictated by the make-up of Congress”

Exactly. I mean, how gullible does one have to be to believe in “Change?”

BTW, the make-up of congress, would that be a big layer of flat white base with a gaint circle of red around the mouth, a red rubber nose and a curly wig?

You are behaving like you think this piece of Insurance/Pharmaceutical Company welfare is a meaningful step toward universal health care. It is not. A mandate is not equivalent to affirmation of a human right to succor when ill. It is regressive and only empowers those who are destructive to the welfare of the people. The mandate simply provides the jackboots to serve the corporate lords.
Glenn had a great diary on this the other day. Here is a link to a great description by Rob Kall Health care Slavery in America.

… and morgan did chant

“… and that requires guaranteed issue and an individual mandate.”

Guaranteed issue of junk insurance and a mandate to buy corporate when they jack rates sky-high for pre-existing conditions.

You’re frightened not because focusing on the mandate has somehow become a “right-wing” issue… but because it’s the only plausible chance left of stopping the bill and you would do anything, say anything to save this bill in its current form, true?

(The kool-aid is strong with this one…)

Trying to fight already-lost battles for reimportation or the fig leaf of a watered-down public option are… no longer options with this bill.

And as has been extensively illustrated here at FDL by a variety of posters the vaque promises of hoping to “fix it later” are not based in reality either… the bill is very deliberately designed to entrench corporate interests beyond any rational expectation of retrieval.

The only cure is to kill this version of the bill and start again.

And for all the Rahm Emanuelesque cries of “inevitability!” you are terrified of peeling away the layers of obfuscation and dealing with the guts of the actual bill in front of the American people.

If reform is “inevitable!” then why are you so scared?

If reform is “inevitable!” then it’s inevitable and killing this travesty would be a minor bump on the steamrollered road to success.

Or do the drumbeat cries of “inevitability!” only apply to the current mess of a bill… the mess of a bill that was (literally) mandated by the corporations from the start?

I think by following this path we would end up shackled with the most expensive, most byzantine, and least accessible health care system in the modern industrialized world for another generation or more. Right now I’m looking for all-around health care reform much more than I’m specifically looking for universal coverage. Costs have to be brought down, cherry picking has got to end, rescission has to end, what else? After these things are taken care of we may be able to afford to cover everyone — reasonably. To try and cover everyone now, without these other things being addressed first, for twice the money spent in other countries, strikes me as ludicrous. I think we’re getting what we are because this is pretty close to what Obama and his backers will settle for, but it’s a joke compared to other systems. If it’s not what Obama wants, then he screwed up royally by not doing needed preparation, but that is no excuse to blunder forward.

That’s the thing. Once the mandate is in place, the insurance companies will have every reason to resist any attempts to pass single payer healthcare in the future. Think about it. If you ran a company and people were forced to pay for your services with the help of the IRS, would you ever want to give that up? This bill does not “enshrine” universal healthcare as an American value. It just makes the democrats in congress look like they are in bed with corporations just like republicans.

Remember when Candidate Obama attacked Candidate Clinton for having those very mandates you now uphold? Are you saying that Candidate Obama is attacking President Obama’s bill from the right?

If opposing mandates in HCR is “attacking HCR from the right”, then Candidate Barack Obama was doing just that when he attacked Candidate Hillary Clinton’s health care plan for having mandates.

What I find bitterly amusing is that the same Obama hyper-partisans who during the primary wars hated Hillary’s icky old mandates have now turned on a dime to embrace them as Obama himself has embraced them. (And I say this as someone who first backed Edwards and then Obama during the primaries.)

Nobody here has ever argued that the mandate is bad POLICY. It does make sense in the big scheme of things. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s constitutional, or even right. I would love for Obama to sign an executive order making Single Payer funded through progressive taxation the new law. But that too would fail constitutional tests.

The two big issues I see with the mandate, are 1) I believe it to be unconstitutional, and if it’s ruled NOT unconstitutional, then you and everybody else better be ready for the next indrusty to lobby Congress and the President successfully enough to have their product/service mandated. Because this kind of mandate has never been done, and the precedent of doing it is almost certainly going to have negative unintended consequences.

Secondly, if they want to “force” all of us to purchase private insurance (which again DOES make sense from an insurance POLICY prospective) rather than single payer, then they should provide ALL of us with vouchers that will purchase it. That way, the cost is paid 100% in taxes, and is therefore collected progressively (our tax system isn’t as progressive as it once was, but it is still progressive). Instead, they’re using a mandate to force the costs to be paid NOT in a progressive fashion, by forcing everyone to spend their own money that makes above a certain percentage of the FPL (I think it’s 133%).

So, they had a choice of funding this policy progresively or not progressively, and they chose not progressively. And yet progressives are supposed to support it?

When combined with the other failures of this bill, it’s worse than doing nothing. As an example, someone mentioned ending pre-existing conditions. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the “fraud loophole” still exists though. In that case, it will not be very different from today in practice. Because that’s how they justify not paying for pre-existing conditions now. They look at a person’s application and then their history and if they find one little thing missing (I’ve heard in one case a woman was denied care because she forgot to mention she had acne as a teenager, sorry no link). If this is true, then even this is all more just bullshit with little teeth in it.

Also, by forcing us all to be customers of the totally unnecessary middle man insurance companies, they will become even more stronger, wealthier, and harder to defeat in the future when anyone tries to go for real reform. Because real reform at some point means you get rid of that waste and unnnecessary profit margin. But we’re setting it up so that basically will be so hard that it’s likely never going to happen. Thus killing real reform once and for all. Which makes the “we should take this and improve it latter” line a bunch of crap, IMO.

So progressives are supposed to support a likely unconstitutional mandate (at the least a very scary precedent), a way of funding that is intentionally not progressive so as to shield the rich from paying their share, that has enough loopholes in the regulations that are there to drive a Space Shuttle through, AND that likely kills any future chances of Single Payer???

Really?? Any more principles you would have us just throw away in support of anything called a health care bill? (And of BTW, this bill doesn’t provide health care, it provides health insurance. Big difference, because right now there have been millions (YES MILLIONS) of folks that have had to declare bankruptcy that HAD HEALTH INSURANCE.

I guarantee you had the Republicans been in power and passed something like this, most of the same ones defending now (on our side) would be SCREAMING about it. I mean, this bill was basically written BY the health insurance industry (litterally, IIRC, a staffer for Baucus that wrote it used to be an insurance industry executive). You mean progressives wouldn’t have been screaming about it?? I seem to recall a LOT (including me) of complaining when the Republicans let the PHARMA industry write the Medicare Part D legislation.

But now it’s ALL good if the Democrats do it, right?

Jeebus jeebus jeebus.

Way way overdid it with that one. Sorry. I’ve GOT to learn to make my comments shorter.

Apoligies to all. Don’t blame anyone not reading that long crap.

Yes, it is. The second link in Jon’s article (the one about the PPP poll in Nov.) said he was a “star” of the U.S. Attorneys scandal. He was Karl Rove’s buddy, the one Rove tried to get installed in the USA slot in Arkansas.

A negative endorsement if ever there was one. Yet he leads the Democrat in the race. That should show what a lousy job the Democrats have been doing.

And what were you doing to pass single-payer? (Sorry, bashing FDL — which you seem to hang around a lot for a place you do nothing but attack — doesn’t count as “helping to pass single-payer”.) When FDL tried to get the SP folk to put their money where their mouths were, they ran from Jonathan Tasini just as the SP “supporters” in Congress ran from it when it looked like it was coming up for a vote.

By the way, if you’re wondering why the far-righties get more of what they want than do the far-lefties, it might just be because unlike the lefties (who are, the farther left they go, the more likely to be influenced by the Marxian idea that participating in capitalist electoral politics only delays the onset of the workers’ paradise), the far-righties actually believe in trying to take over a major political party rather than preening over their own purity:

The Tea Party movement ignited a year ago, fueled by anti-establishment anger. Now, Tea Party activists are trying to take over the establishment, ground up.

Across the country, they are signing up to be Republican precinct leaders, a position so low-level that it often remains vacant, but which comes with the ability to vote for the party executives who endorse candidates, approve platforms and decide where the party spends money.

A new group called the National Precinct Alliance says it has a coordinator in nearly every state to recruit Tea Party activists to fill the positions and has already swelled the number of like-minded members in Republican Party committees in Arizona and Nevada. Its mantra is this: take the precinct, take the state, take the party — and force it to nominate conservatives rather than people they see as liberals in Republican clothing.

Thanks for this! I thought Nate was blowing smoke, but you actually hunted down the Gallup and other examples to prove it.

There is no enforcement mechanism in this bill for those insurance regulations. That’s left to the states, which have already proved themselves to be unequal to that task. The only thing that will be enforced is the individual mandate.

Therefore, those insurance regulations against rescision, exclusions of pre-existing conditions, and maximum medical loss ratios are all things that do not exist in any meaningful sense. This is so blindingly obvious that I’m amazed anyone would be fool enough to put forward this argument.

Yet here you are.

So explain to me why an insurance industry that has shown no signs of caring about what happens to its customers will care now that it has a captive market.

Shoulda figured the Republicans had a secret weapon to get back in power. I just didn’t realize that weapon was called “Democrats”.

I think it’s more accurately called “Rahm and Obama’s Secret Deal-Making with Insurance and Drug Company Assholes and the Bill That Resulted.”

Nate Silver is just pissed @ FDL for being smarter than he is, and for calling him out on his stupidity.

Every word was necessary. No apologies needed.

Here in Arkansas we lefties are fearing the worst. There may be a place called Hope down this way, but it ain’t in the 2nd district. Not only will the seat likely go GOP (unless the Democrats pull a Blue Dog Rabbit outta their hat), but it may well go to the Donald Segretti of the GW Bush era. Dear Jesus, why are you forsaking us?