No mandate without public option

[Uben]

We cannot let them pass HCR with a mandate without a public option. To do so, would only be putting more money into the hands of insurance companies and their CEOs. HCR was supposed to be about relief for American families, not insurance companies. Now we see what our political donations buy us. We are paying these bastards to cheat us out of our money!

I will not support any bill that has a mandate without a public option, and you shouldn't either, unless you are an insurance exec.
I pay $18K+/yr in premiums for a catastrophic policy. That is thievery! I am strongly considering dropping my health insurance altogether. If I get sick, I'll die rather than give these bastards all my hard earned money. I'd like to leave my kids something, but at this rate, all they will get is unpaid bills. Where is the value? There isn't any, and the insurance companies should be held accountable like other businesses, ie anti-trust laws.

[kenny blankenship]

1. The public option was just a fig leaf to cover what they were doing

they needed it to pretend to be acting in the public interest as they layered one giveaway ontop of another. As long as it was there in some form they could maintain the pretense that we were achieving a balanced compromise and not just screwing their constituencies: you give a little, you get a little. It was clear early on that it would not survive, but they kept waving it anyway to keep us onboard and to forestall protest. Then when it was time to unveil the "final product" the public option vaporized. Even distant echoes of it like Medicare expansion to 55+ could not be allowed to spoil the moment for the Insurance racketeers and their Senate cronies.

[MineralMan]

2. That's a great idea. Too bad we don't have the votes to do that.

You will not support it? OK. There's one constituent vote. Got anything else? Gonna stop paying for health insurance? OK. Then your nose will be missing, but your face will be spited. What does that accomplish?

The answer is to work like crazy to replace Republicans in Congress with liberal Democrats and to do the same with Blue Dog Democrats. There is no other answer. Nobody cares if you don't have health insurance. It doesn't affect anyone but your and your family. I'll bet they care, though.

Lots of people on DU are "demanding" things over which they have absolutely zero authority. We need to work on making our demands possible. Giving up and letting the bastards win is hardly an answer.

[customerserviceguy]

3. I don't think you'll have to worry about it any time soon

Unless President Obama goes back to the drawing board to do this in a truly open and bipartisan approach, both the House and Senate bills are dead. I don't see that happening for the rest of this year, even though it might happen in 2011.

[stray cat]

4. No subsidies or coverage of pre-existing condition without mandate

[Marr]

5. You know, I'm starting to think Obama missed an even bigger opportunity than W.

George W. Bush had a real opportunity to improve things after 9-11, but instead went with jingoism, warmongering, and enriching his cronies.

Obama had a year when he could've pushed for (and I think forced) a real, populist agenda that would've mobilized the population. Instead, he frittered it away stiffling the liberals of his own party, and handing out tax money to his sponsors and political allies. With this recent Supreme Court decision (which you could see coming a mile away), I don't think that's ever going to be an option again. At least not peacefully.