to Mr. Dean... if not, they'll be listening to the American people!! I don't know how they don't get it... the people want a public option so be damned what the politicians want!!

Everybody will sit on their hands . . .

NEXT!

Time for a new political party. The ones we have aren't worth keeping.

We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces sayin' whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

.....be President right now.

I suspect killing the public option would be a tipping point with no return for most Americans. Its all rather obvious already the politicians dont give a rats ass about average Americans already but this will wake even more up and perhaps they will get their fat asses off the couch and start to affect change you really can believe in. Obama is just another globalist stooge. Sad but apparently true.

I hated to vote for the straight Democratic ticket last time, but I felt that they had the best chance at dislodging those Pukes from office.

Vote for Greens or Socialists = Repukes win

Vote for Democrats = Repukes out of office but spineless Democrats roll over, play dead.

Oh, crap.

Watching the debate on Rockefeller's Amendment for the Public Option in the Senate Finance Committee. I swear Grassley is a direct descendent of the children of the corn.

I recommend Bruce Dixon's Why the Public Option is Doomed To Fail, and What Can Be Done About It… here, to clarify the confusion over this PUBLIC OPTION.

I see three possibilities:

1 - The Congress passes a shitty health care package mandating purchase of lame policies from private insurers who will make bundles from the millions of additional government subsidized suckers to their swindle, but there is a ROBUST Public Option which allows anyone to jump from their current lousy policy to buy into the government plan, which costs less and covers more.

This is NOT LIKELY, at all, since THERE IS NO ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION being considered in any of the committees proposals.

However the Left Wing in their Dream Like trance keep dreaming that this is actually what is being considered. The present post continues in that self deception.

It isn't, but IT SHOULD BE. Or better yet, HR 676.

Get Wall Street out of the health insurance business altogether. I would like to get Wall Street out of business altogether but I digress.

2 - The Congress passes a shitty health care package mandating purchase of lame policies from private insurers who will make bundles from the millions of additional government subsidized suckers to their swindle, and there is an equally shitty public option that no one but the poor or the sick can opt into. It will not cover more than a few million folks which is just as well because it costs the same as the private plans and it does not control cost because the insurance companies will not allow it.

This is a possible scenario. It is essentially Obama's plan. The Congress could leave off the shitty Public Option and use some subterfuge like a TRIGGER which would promise that somewhere down the road maybe this shitty option would be invoked. Or they could go with Co-Ops which is another subterfuge.

OR

3 - The Congress could fail to pass anything.

This is a possible scenario.

Somewhere down the road, unless some miracle happens that a REAL ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION comes about, or HR 676 is passed…

Somewhere down the road people will wake up to see that they have been swindled again.

Which is a primary reason that these lame proposals are meant to take so long to go into effect.

It acts a memory cushion.

By January 2013 who will remember.

I think you waited too long to enact campaign finance reform forcing all candidates to work with public funding and disallowing corporate interests from bankrolling candidates.

What I don't get is why Obama, who was heavily funded by small donations from individuals, has toed the company line.

we don't get it, do we? we are not important to the big washington money people. obama and company know that while the campaign money keeps flowing into the democratic coffers, they will win elections and they don't need us common folk. as long as they have that campaign cash not going to GOP candidates, they will win. They don't care about us common folk. we aren't important. they can pass sum bs health care legislation that only favors their donors and we get mad and nothing changes. what threat are we to obama? none. he will hold office as long as he doesn't do anything against the big money people.

Hatch just spent 15 mintues demonizing the government.

Isn't he a part of the government?

So, he's a demon, right?

Sweet Jeebus!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHhKnc0XZrs

the end of the Democratic Party on the national level, then yes, I agree with Dr. Dean.

Maybe they think they can win elections without their base. I don't know. But I do know if they pass any legislation without the Public Option, they'll find out that they can't!

We need you more than ever, man.

I voted for you in the Florida primaries even though the media had already killed you off (the "scream" and all that) cause you were the man then and you're the man now.

I'll vote for you next time up.

Come on, Howard, the country needs you.

trying to "figure it out".

Unfortunately we constituents also pay way too much attention to the special interests. Or rather, we pay a hell of a lot of attention to the ads that they finance.

He's right.

The bill does nothing. Get ready to rumble.
*

the senate finance committee just rejected the public option. let's organize to get those pols out of office.

Health care, like most of our current problems, is presently structured to be insoluable. It simply cannot happen in a society where there is a such a huge gap between a small caste of the rich and the rest, and a terrifying abyss between the shrinking middle class and a growing underclass of workers who make minimum wage-- or less. Of course minimum wage jobs more and more come with no benefits. We're in a race to the bottom. Many of the working poor make less per year at two jobs put together than the amount a corporation that offers health insurance benefits pays to insure each middle class salaried worker and his/her family.
A significant number of doctors and administrators are among the rich-- and the middle class realizes that paying these rich people to take care of the health needs of poor people will cost THEM: in taxes, or reduced benefits, or the continued shrinking of the purchasing power of Medicare and Social Security. The lower class can't pay: the top class won't, and has the power to defeat legislation that would force them to. So the middle class quite rightly fears that any attempt to "cover" the uninsured will make the rich richer and push them further down towards the humiliation and insecurity and blame associated with being poor. The right is tapping into those (justifiable) fears, and the Democrats can not counter with the only prospect that makes sense -- a vigorous redistribution of resourses in the interest of minimizing inequality-- e.g. "Socialism".
We have exploited mimimun wage workers-- especially African Americans, because New Deal and post WWII social safety net was deliberately designed so that the sort of jobs nonwhites had access to would fall through the cracks-- and the less than minimum wage workers who come here on visas or illegally--- for generations, letting them die here un-cared for or with some attention by pro-bono professionals; or encouraging them to go for care to countries where doctors and nurses make salaries that are proportional to what these workers are "worth". Until we can figure out a way to use "all people are created equal and (should be) endowed with certain rights that include food, shelter, education and basic health care" as a measure of "worth" and a policy guide, we will continue in this death spiral.