December 20, 2009 12:00 PM
Dean hopes health bill can be fixed after Senate vote
DOWNLOADS: (548)
PLAYS: (1376)
Embed
Dr. Howard Dean wouldn't vote for the Senate's health care bill but he isn't giving up on the process. After the Senate passes their bill, Dean hopes that provisions in the House's versions of the bill can be combined with the Senate bill to create major health care reform.
"I would certainly not vote for this bill if this were the final product, but the House bill is quite a good bill. This bill is improved over the last couple of weeks. I would let this thing go to conference committee and let's see if we can fix it some more," Dean told NBC's David Gregory Sunday.
Yes...let's all hope!
Hope that the war comes to an end.
Hope that we get healthcare.
Hope that the Democrats take away Joe Lieberman's chairmanship.
Hope Hope Hope.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
Why forward a bill that stinks? I saw the argument on Bill Moyers that the congress should pass this bill as seriously flawed as it is, because it could be fixed at a later date and Obama would have a point in the win column that he could carry to the next election. I have a better idea: fix it now before it gets entrenched into the bureaucracy making it near impossible to fix. Why take a chance that the house will choose to repair the bill rather than simply pass it out of expediency will all of its flaws.
If Obama and the rest of the dems think this bill is going to provide them with political capital in the next election, I think they are going to be very surprised when it ends up costing them dearly.
Oh a couple months maybe, six months max no longer then that. Rumsfeld.
Change! Change! Change! Change! Change! Change! Change! Change!
"We are on the cusp of meaningful healthcare reform." -Pres. Obama
Ahhh, I feel soooo much better....Cusp wise. Thank you Mr. President.
Of course, we all know "hope is not a plan" but apparently there never was a plan except throw it to the Congress and let them work it out.
We're likely to see this thing fall completely apart in conference. Let's see what the WH does in response.
Yes We Can FUBAR
"I can't keep doing this on my own with these...people."
I was born Taurus on the cusp.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Dean "hopes" health bill can be fixed.
He must be wishing, thinking and praying too. Kinda like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycbgHM1mI0k
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiGPQVUJqq0&fe...
His heart may be in the right place but his ego gets him in trouble everytime! He did not leave the DNC under good will..
We have 'conference' to settle the best we can get-- then amend-amend- amend- Just like social security in 1936----
This is not sausage ---it is haggis! But at least something will get on the books..
If you have no land to build on ---the mansion is a mute point!
Yeah, no one knows exactly what the final bill will look like. The House is the more powerful chamber so it should improve some.
The House bill is more powerful.
The House's schwarz is even bigger than ours!
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
is bigger then the bill and these guys that's obvious.
Did Howard Dean forget that President Ben Nelson has threatened a VETO of any bill from the conference committee that deviates from the bill he has blessed? And President Lieberman has left his Veto on the table as well. Then there's President Snow and her veto. . and 97 other vetos that could happen after that.
These people won't "fix" this bill because that would mean they actually have to deliver on their promises. And that ain't happenin'.
Just another give away to corporate cronies that the people will be shafted with(see Cheney Energy bill). If the past is any indication, we can all expect an increase in our insurance premiums soon enough, if you're fortunate enough to have it. If not, they will be sure that you pay anyway, the way it looks right now. What a joke.
har har. The Enronization of Health Care.
Fast forward
business owner complains about high health care prices, trader is heard on tape saying, "I just looked at him. I said, 'Move.' (laughter) The guy was like horrified. I go, 'Look, don't take it the wrong way. Move. It isn't getting fixed anytime soon."
ONE scream!!! One stupid scream........
This guy (Dean) should be President.
Even he admitted a few days ago that Nelson and Liebermann would still have a great deal of power over the bill when it went to the house bill.
He still says the bill sucks. He just knows that this is what the Senate is going to pass. He already gave his recommendation to the Senate, but (surprise) they're not going to listen to him.
So, he has two choices: Fight to kill the bill altogether, even as it proceeds to conference committee; --- OR --- say that you'll hope and work to improve it in conference committee, but oppose anything in the end that still sucks this badly.
It's just a Yogi Berra "it ain't over 'til it's over" moment. Dean can say that he won't give up entirely right now, though he's admittedly pessimistic, or he can just say the whole thing sucks, and he won't be involved in anything but trying to kill it. At this point in the game, I'm not sure the latter choice would make any sense, especially knowing that this is what the Senate is going to pass.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
It is obvious that Howard Dean was trying hard to be very polite and nice to his avowed enemies inside the Democratic Party Establishment and in the Obama White House.
This is obvious. After all since Dean wrote his fine article in the Washington Post, the Obama administration has been in frontal attack mode against Dr. Dean ever since.
Two Examples of the White House countering Howard Dean are:
The New York Times
December 20, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Why the Senate Should Vote Yes on Health Care
By JOE BIDEN
Washington - "IF I were still a United States senator, I would not only vote yes on the current health care reform bill, I would do so with the sure knowledge that I was casting one of the most historic votes of my 36 years in the Senate. I would vote yes knowing that the bill represents the culmination of a struggle begun by Theodore Roosevelt nearly a century ago to make health care reform a reality. And while it does not contain every measure President Obama and I wanted, I would vote yes for this bill certain that it includes the fundamental, essential change that opponents of reform have resisted for generations."
Read entire article @:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20b...
The Washington Post
The moment Ted Kennedy would not want to lose
By Victoria Reggie Kennedy
Sunday, December 20, 2009; A19
"My late husband, Ted Kennedy, was passionate about health-care reform. It was the cause of his life. He believed that health care for all our citizens was a fundamental right, not a privilege, and that this year the stars -- and competing interests -- were finally aligned to allow our nation to move forward with fundamental reform. He believed that health-care reform was essential to the financial stability of our nation's working families and of our economy as a whole....Still, Ted knew that accomplishing reform would be difficult. If it were easy, he told me, it would have been done a long time ago. He predicted that as the Senate got closer to a vote, compromises would be necessary, coalitions would falter and many ardent supporters of reform would want to walk away. He hoped that they wouldn't do so. He knew from experience, he told me, that this kind of opportunity to enact health-care reform wouldn't arise again for a generation....Even with the committed leadership of then-President Bill Clinton and his wife, reform was thwarted in the 1990s. As Ted wrote in his memoir, he was deeply disappointed that the Clinton health-care bill did not come to a vote in the full Senate. He believed that senators should have gone on the record, up or down...Ted often said that we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. He also said that it was better to get half a loaf than no loaf at all, especially with so many lives at stake...."
The entire article can be read @:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/...
Yes, the Obama White House has been busy attacking Howard Dean and now sending various surrogates out there to try and discredit what Howard Dean has been saying which is true. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are evil men in my opinion and think their lies go unnoticed.
Today, was one day where I agreed with Mary Matalin over her DLC-Husband James Carville.
You all need to remember that Paul Begala, James Carville and Rahm Emanuel are avowed enemies of Howard Dean....None of these three scoundrels ever gave Howard Dean any credit for the wins by the Democratic Party in legislative victories or the Obama win...
Compare the records of DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe--Carville, Begala and Emanuel's pal to that of Howard Dean when they both held the same position.
The Dems lose election after election in Congress when the Clinton people like the ones mentioned above are at the helm. I hope people don't forget this. Now that the DLC types are all back in the fold, the Dems will lose more and more election as in the pre-Howard Dean era.
It's interesting with what passion they go after Dean for merely suggesting that a better Bill could be tailored while at the same time refusing to utter a collective peep over the GOP's stated desire to kill off the thing entirely.
It seems clear that other than a handful of committed progressives,everyone else concerned observe drone like obeisance to their corporate superiors and possess zero intention of doing otherwise.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
On FnS this morning, feux Democrat Kent Conrad told Chris Wallace that if the House changes the bill that came out of the Senate, there was "no way you could get 60 Democrats to vote for it."
He went on to say that if the House changes the Senate bill in "any" way, it's toast.
* There are two types of Republicans: millionaires and suckers.
"Mugsy's Rap Sheet": Recording history for those who seek to rewrite it.
Let it be Toast then, but....then again--you have Nancy Pelosi and her relationship with Rahm Emanuel is tight...
Pelosi will do her best to please Emanuel and the White House....you know the "Impeachment of George W. Bush is off the table" lady for fear of the Democrats losing to the GOP in elections.
Oh, yeah...It will be killed in conference. (60 vote wise)
WWOD???
(What will Obama do?)
"I can't keep doing this on my own with these...people."
I watched it for many years since the day of Spivak. But in 2003, well really since about 1998 it had lost all of its honesty, and fairness, and had become nothing but a corporate tool.
But I continued to watch until 2003 when I realized that it had been corrupted and damaged beyong repair.
The whole MSM has been destroyed by the same greed that has destroyed the economy.
With the people we have in the senate and congress there is no hope of fixing it. They are the biggest part of the problem.
I think the only thing we can do is destroy our current government. Clean it out from stem to stern and start over with average people serving one term and going home. Like it was supposed to be!
Dean has reconsidered his initial reaction to kill HCR entirely. It would be a very good idea to see what conference produces.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Sorry Howard, this voter has stopped believing in "hope." Fool me once, and so forth...
Let. It. Die.
To heck with the insurance companies and the lobbyists they rode in on.
I think if the conference committee can't come up with a compromise it will die of it's own accord.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Subsidies for Jack Daniels and Prozac.
The dems have all the majority they need to pass whatever they want. How are they going to fix it later, when they are the one who're screwing it up now!?
Why doesn't Gov. Dean form a third party. Oh...that's right...there's no money in it. My bad.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
I'm not sure I'd blame that in particular.
I think I'd blame the pointless polarization of the political parties on relative non-issues. I mean, I understand that gay marriage, flag burning, abortion and haircuts make good press, but they're hardly issues on which I would base my allegiance to a political party.
Someone once pointed out to me that the Democrats had the edge on being the "party of Jesus" until Roe vs Wade, at which point abortion was used as a "wedge issue" to drive evangelical votes to the GOP. You know, since Jesus would have otherwise been a better candidate for the Democratic party planks (since he was more of a longhaired radical socialist jew than people ever seem to remember) more than he would have ever been a Republican.
We're Americans, and we love concentrating on minutiae rather than seeing the larger picture. How could we possibly vote for candidates to end a war or bring out a single payer healthcare system when it makes so much more sense to vote for who wears the best flag pin?
I hate to break this to you, but we're pretty fucked.
(A third party would have to really energize people in a way not seen since the 60s. Well, discounting screaming to fill large holes in the sand with money halfway around the world ...)
This bill in both forms is a travesty!
I find it unbelievable and unconscionable that the US would short change and quibble so much about providing it's citizens what the rest of the industrialized world already has to the point of actually lying about it's being unworkable (Really? I wonder how Europe copes with it's impossible plans...) and ignoring the FACT that it not only IS workable but that it IS working spectacularly in ALL of Europe.
And now here's Dean talking like this is the best the US can do.
If that is the case then you truly are screwed, because it seems to me that the US can't really do much of anything any more with the notable exception of bombing hapless brown peasant children into red spray and and getting it's public to believe that they were "insurgents"and "terrorists".
Can anyone be more obtuse that David Gregory?
he's insufferable. the bill's content is nothing to Gregory and 'savvy' colleagues. his easy point is the process. not necessary to read legislation. have a few drinks with holy joe's chief of staff, and you're ready to yammer on sunday morning.
driftglass demolishes "the mouse circus" every week with his recurrent "Sunday Morning Comin' Down" posts. but logic and proportion mean nothing to these shameless stooges and the millions of idiots who keep watching them. Oy!
Riiiiiight!!! Just like that FISA bill giving the telecoms immunity for their crimes was fixed afterwards. Uh-huh.
Is there anyone who doesn't think the bill is more likely to get WORSE than better if people continue to change it? Apart from a few phony feints, the trend has been steadily toward a worse and worse bill.
Maybe President Snowe will start muttering something about wishing she could vote for the bill "if only." That would trigger a DEFCON Minus Infinity in the White House.
Rahm: Mr. President, if we just gut these nine other parts of the bill, we can have a BIPARTISAN bill and the American people will see what a fantastic LEADER you are, sir. Even Teabaggers will support you. This is an opportunity we cannot pass up! (Plus, it will make the insurance companies even happier.)
Obama: Go for it, Rahm!
Gut...gut...gut...gut...gut...gut...gut...gut...gut...there, beautiful.
President Snowe: As much as I would like to, I find that I cannot support this bill in its present form. On the other hand, if only....
Back in the White House, Rahm's ears prick up...
Sorry Howard, but the "fix" is already in. Rahmabama and the corporate fascsists' won, the American people 0! WaaaWaaaaaaa.....
Forcing people to buy shitty overpriced health care from the loan sharks in the private insurance industry, is going to be a real plus for democrat's next November. I can just see it now; all of those unemployed homeless folks paying their fines for not buying private insurance. I am sure the will be happy as a lark. I expect that you will get millions of these enthusiastic people to go out and campaign for you.
Except for the republican base, how stupid do these assholes think we are?
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
Comments are closed on this entry