Rahm Emanuel's Nightmare - Health Care "Reform" Illegal

[truedelphi]

Federal judge has declared that the Rahm/Obama Health Care Reform is not constitutional!

Those of us who had been pleading all during the summer of 2009 for

SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Can only shake our heads as we remember:

That the President met with Conservative, Republican Senators, during that summer. Sometimes he'd see a conservative Senator some 45 times or more!

Rahm held plenty of backroom deals that were designed to give the Big Insurers and Big Pharmaceutical Companies whatever they needed in the "reform" Act

The Progressives were shut out of the process.

I don't even think that the President met with Dennis Kucinich until that fateful Air Force One ride, in which Kooch was threatened with loss of his Chair position on the Financial Oversight Committee if he didn't vote for the Big Industry/RahmEmnanuel "Reform" Act.

[wndycty]

1. Can't pass an opportunity to go after Rahm. . .

. . .oh boy.

[villager]

2. dutifully unrecc'd in the apologist scramble...

n/t

[jaxx]

3. This is a Reagan appointee and we knew he'd rule this way.

Why the glee? The people need the reforms, they need to keep their kids insured and they need preexisting conditions covered and they need to know they can't be dropped for getting sick.

[wndycty]

4. The glee is because some folk can't pass up the opportunity to diss the administration/Emanuael

:kick:

[jaxx]

5. They need to remember one thing....Democrats passed that bill.

Democrats. It took 100 years to get it passed and it needs to stay passed.

ps...good luck to Rahm. If I still lived there I'd vote for him.

[karynnj]

7. That and this posters inability to accept that single payer was NOT going to pass

- even though Bernie Sanders said there were less than 10 votes in the Senate.

[truedelphi]

13. You know what, karynnj -

If the President had just FOUGHT for the notion of Single Payer Universal Health care, and whether he won or lost, I wouldn't be being such a Be-itch.

But show me where he fought... Please. Show me.

Direct me to the link where he says, "I will do as the idealistic young man I once was and demand Universal Single Payer HC. I will remember my words of my campaign in 2004 - that Single PAyer Universal HC is the best and most logical solution to the health care debacle and its reform that we are faced with. meet with the Progressive Caucus.

"I will be for the People, and not the Corporations, and I will do what I see the people need."

But he never did that, did he? When it comes to the citizenry of this nation, be it the beleagured people of the gulf who are told by the EPA that the black gunk on the bodies of the fish is not related to the oil spill, but is "Black Gill disease," to the continuing indebtedness of the US Treasury such that we fund Wars, but not the States and their education programs, and safety net programs, which are currently underwater in over 35 states, and on and on, this President has not been a "Give 'em hell kind" of President. He has been too worried about his second term from the start.

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. +100000!

:applause:

[truedelphi]

18. In solidarity with you -

:hug:

[ProSense]

17. Well,

"If the President had just FOUGHT for the notion of Single Payer Universal Health care, and whether he won or lost, I wouldn't be being such a Be-itch."

...you're right: If he had lost, the constitutionality of a non-existing health care law wouldn't be an issue.

When Bernie Sanders gave up his bill because he counted less than 10 votes for it, that wasn't because the others were holding out for the President to push it.

The fastest way to single payer for most states is going to be through the health care law, which provides federal funding.

[JoePhilly]

19. Ben Nelson was NEVER going to vote yes. Never.

There are other who would NEVER NEVER vote for single payer. Reality is a BITCH!!!

[karynnj]

20. Knowing that it would be an incredibly tough fight to pass anything ,

it would not have made since to do what you suggested. It could have defeated the entire thing because it would have been called a HUGE defeat for the President where three quarters of his party in the Senate voted against him. (Not to mention, the lost time to write that bill - take it through the hearings and to the CBO. )

One of the people who passed a bill out of committee was Ted Kennedy, who in 2005 wrote a single payer bill. He did NOT start with that bill in 2008 when he started to write the bill in 2008. The reason - in 2005 the possibility of passing a bill was Zero. Writing an idealistic bill cost nothing - in 2009, the chance of a life time to pass it was there.

[truth2power]

21. Excellent response!..

:toast:

[karynnj]

6. Tell me how you pass single payer with fewer than 10 Senate votes

Ten, as the max, is not my estimate, but that of Bernie Sanders. (John Kerry, who supports it also said that the votes were not there and that there was no way that they could get them as too many were ideologically against it - and were not winnable.) I assume either of these Senators knew their peers far better than you. Kucinich did not have the numbers in the House either.

You might remember that the bill barely passed each House - and among the nos, at least in the Senate, there was not a single one who would have voted for single payer - and many yeses would have been lost.

In addition, in other states, it was found to be legal. This will be appealed.

[truedelphi]

10. Had we gotten ourselves a "Give 'em hell," kind of President

I suspect that the country could have been roused to take action and see to it that they got what they wanted.

In poll after poll, people who were asked about Universal Single Payer HC said that was what they wanted.

But instead of a give 'em hell kind of Presidnet, we got a man who started his Administration with a deck stacked high in favor of the Big Corporations. Rahm/Geithner/Mike Taylor, and so many others I cannot list them all.

And when asked to comment about the HCR bill and what is should be - this is what Obama stated (Aug 12th 2009) "Well, now. Look. I cannot suggest what will be in the final bill. No one knows if the public option will even be in the final bill. It is just one tool among many tools."

He backed away from even suggesting what he thought might be good for the citizenry in terms of Health Care Reform. He let us know that the Executive Office cannot "overstep" its constitutional checks and balances - at least not where health care reform is inovlved. But contrast that position with what went on in last Dec 2010, when he stepped to the plate and made sure that "negotiations" went down that resulted in the rich get their "negotiated" settlement of the full four percent tax exclusion.

To me, a "negotiator" would have given the Uber Rich half of what they wanted - in other words, only two percent rather than the full four percent of their demand. But the rich in this nation know that Obama will always give them exactly what they want.

And the rest of us are told to chill out, because why should we get a pony?

But then, when has this President been on the side of the citizens, and not the side of Uber Rich?

[Recursion]

8. Rahm was against pushing for the bill, incidentally

He wanted a more gradualist approach; pass one thing at a time.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. So? When did a single judge decide constitutionality?

[jeff47]

11. Since 1790

Constitutionality is always decided by a single judge. Initially. If the losing litigant doesn't like the ruling, they can appeal up the chain. But it starts with one judge.

[ProSense]

12. Well, that makes

two!

Steve Benen

<...>

Republicans are thrilled, of course, because activist court rulings are to be celebrated, just so long as it's activism the right can agree with.

Second Update: It's also worth emphasizing that two Republican-appointed federal district court judges have now found that the individual mandate -- an idea Republicans came up with -- is unconstitutional. And while that's important, let's not forget two other federal district court judges, appointed by Democratic presidents, came to the opposite conclusion.

Indeed, overall, about a dozen federal courts have dismissed challenges to the health care law.

In other words, when you hear on the news that "courts" have a problem with the Affordable Care Act, remember that it's actually a minority of the judges who've heard cases related to the law.

It's the conservative way.

Think Progress: Lower Courts Struck Down Social Security, Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act and Minimum Wage Before SCOTUS Upheld Them

[truedelphi]

14. Please see my reply seven and my reply ten. n/t

[ProSense]

16. What do those have to do with what I posted? n/t

[truedelphi]

22. My blood does boil to think that the same people that initially came

Up with the idea of the individual mandate now think it is a horrid idea.

But despite what you are saying, I still cannot stomach a program that has allowed the same style of executive running the Big Insurance and Big Pharma companies, some of them making billions of dollars, while we are forced to pay thirty percent more than necessary due to the continuation of the private insurance companies. While so many people pay vastly inflated preiums, along with massive deductibles, and co pays. Just this past Friday, I heard a women in the cubicle next to me burst into tears, as she simply didn't have the deductible money her insurer demanded before her "Platinum" insurance policy kicked in.

For what principal do we still avoid what the other nations have? For the principle of capitalism? Capitalism died the moment that our government allowed Bernanke/Geithner to funnel nine to thirty trillion dollars to the biggest financial companies, without any strictures on how the money was to be spent.

For that nine trillion dollars we could have offered the Public some five years of Single Payer Universal Health Care.