You know, I would be more receptive to the "incremental change" idea...

[Ardent15]

..if this health care reform bill was actually a health care reform bill.

It's a health insurance bill that is a gift to the insurance companies, and it sets back real reform by many years, as few in Congress will want to revisit this issue again in the near future.

[Cleobulus]

1. The big problem is that there are so many things in the bill that will have to be replaced...

and/or fixed, if you prefer, BEFORE it is fully implemented, so that it can actually help people.

[dkf]

2. This bill assumes insurance fixes our problems when in reality they are the problem.

When you can't even identify the problem there is no hope of fixing it.

[Electric Monk]

13. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.

nt

[dkf]

17. Well they are paid to use a hammer.

[NYC_SKP]

3. If I choose a non-profit or a CO-OP from the exchange exactly how does that help insurance companies

:shrug:


"Although there will not be a public plan option in the Exchanges, the Office of Personnel Management,which administers the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, will contract with private insurers to offer at least two multi‐state plans in each Exchange, including at least one offered by a non‐profit entity. In addition, funds will be made available to establish non‐profit, member‐run health insurance CO‐OPs in each state."

:patriot:

[eridani]

20. Makes no difference. They have to act like for profit entities or go down

Puget Sound Group Health used to be a co-op, and they sitll call themselves one. When for-profit HMOs invaded the area and offering cheap age-rated insurance to younger people, GH had to follow suit or go under. Now they offer the same shitty range of "choices" that the for-profits do.

[TheWraith]

4. Thank you for flinging the same bullshit at the wall as 100 times before.

It's not sticking.

[sandnsea]

5. Thank you

I chewed off the tips of my fingers to keep from writing that. :hi:

[Ken Burch]

6. Well, your wing of the party WANTED this bill to be as meaningless as possible

and you got your way. Rush and Beck will be gloating when this is signed. So will all the insurers.

Maybe someday, when it's too late to matter, the people might win.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ken Burch]

14. The right were gonna do this with any bill Obama submitted

Don't you get that YET?

Obama could have submitted a bill using the GOP language on everything and they'd have gone scorched-earth on THAT.

The fact that they oppose it doesn't prove it's progressive. It proves that they're atavistic psychos.

It's just that I know failure when I see it, and you're willing to settle for "getting SOMETHING passed". Even though just getting a "health care bill" passed, period, isn't actually an achievement.

I'm glad that we had a victory in name. But just be honest and admit that that's all incremental change, especially TINY incremental change, can possibly be.

No mention of this bill on the fall campaign trail will inspire a single sheer.

[miscsoc]

7. it's a dreadful bill

but do you think that if it isn't passed, it'll be more likely that real reform will be passed in the near future? I can't imagine that happening really, but i'm open to persuasion. (I'm not an American, just an interested observer) I can't really imagine how that would play out - i.e. how rejecting this would get you closer to a civilized, european-type health care system.

[MilitantRabbit]

8. GOP's game plan: Pulling a Boehner and a Bunning

What I'm afraid of, and I'm sure I'm not alone, is that the GOP has absolutely no good ideas, and for that matter no ideas at all on reform because they don't want to reform the system. If we scrapped the bill, the GOP would do nothing and pull a Bunning when we try to bring it back up incrementally. If the GOP beat us in November, they do nothing and (try to) pass another tax cut for the rich, which Obama will refuse to sign. Thankfully, vocal minorities work with both parties. We can Bunning too.

[LibDemAlways]

10. This country will never have a "civilized european-type" health

care system. The US is run by well-entrenched corporate interests whose mission, besides ripping off the public, is lining the pockets of crooked politicians. The people of the US get the government they deserve, however, because most of them are too busy watching American Idol to give a damn that the corporations, in cahoots with their elected officials, are screwing them over. And, in their ignorance, they've bought into the ridiculous rightwing notion that legislation like single-payer health care, which could potentially do them some good, is evil and "socialist."

I think we're beyond help.

[miscsoc]

16. i'm a socialist

and I do actually think universal health care is a socialist idea; a good one, not an evil one! But I suppose when the right wingers say it's socialist, they are basically implying it will turn you into soviet russia or something. Bizarre that socialism's so associated with soviet despotism to a lot of Americans, when your own old U.S. socialist party from the turn of the century was the most radically liberal, democratic, libertarian socialist movement in the world.

Maybe you are beyond help. You managed to create Medicare and Social Security and things, though. And if you do manage to get some sort of universal healthcare system passed, it'll be there forever, I think. When people actually experience that sort of social programme, and the way it just obviously WORKS, they mostly want to keep it. I'm not really qualified to assess the bill and see if it DOES create anything in the direction of universal health care, but if it does, I'd say go for it. Even people too dumb to understand the benefits when ppl explain them to them verbally will mostly appreciate them when they actually feel the benefit in their own lives.

[LibDemAlways]

18. Seniors love Medicare and Social Security - even Republican

seniors. But millions of people in the US are brainwashed by blowhards like Rush Limbaugh into thinking that the "every man for himself" philosophy is the ideal. The Republican motto really should be "I've got mine. Screw you." Any bill that serves the greater good is seen through Republican eyes as inherently bad. Republican politicians are masters at getting people to vote against their own interests. Sadly, too many Americans have no idea what those interests are. Unfortunately, there's an anti-education bias here as well, and a populace so convinced that they live in "the greatest country in the world" that they have no desire to travel and see how other people live. Despite their cheerleading for the Iraq War, I guarantee most Americans couldn't find Iraq on a map.

You are fortunate to live in a more enlightened society!

[miscsoc]

19. we're really not that more enlightened

it's just that we were lucky enough to get universal health care in the forties, so we've been forced to acknowledge that it's the only sane way to run a country's healthcare, because we've experienced it working. Even my grandmother, who has voted for right wingers in every election since she came of age in the 50s, appreciates our very socialist healthcare system, because she's benefited from it directly for all of her life. In the U.S. she would be a teabagger, since experience wouldn't have interfered with her prejudices

You're right that the "greatest country in the world" stuff in the U.S. is a big obstacle to improving anything abt your social system. And how can you persuade people to consider the virtues of other countries when your media is in the hands of people who benefit from the perpetuation of the existing social system? We're slightly behind you on the slope towards total ignorance over here, but not by much, we're moving in the same direction; all Europe is.

[inna]

9. Exactly. It's a Health Care Deform, really.

:shrug:

[Ozymanithrax]

12. The DLC, Blue Dogs, and the GOP oppose this bill in congress...

The rest know progressive when they see it.

[Nikki Stone1]

15. Or if it were really incremental instead of revolutionary

which is what it is.

And not in a good way.

[tallahasseedem]

21. This bullshit post...

is like Christmas...you know it's coming.

Read up on incrementalism and its place in shaping public policy.

Here's a start: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447700/