The "Two Party" System And The Public Option... From David Sirota... What Say You, Fellow Dems ???

[WillyT]

Obama's Money Party Debt Commission Validates Push for Public Health Insurance Option
by: David Sirota - OpenLeft
Thu Nov 11, 2010 at 18:00

<snip>

The Obama administration's debt commission was bound to propose a mostly awful, regressive plan. We knew this the moment the president decided to have an investment banker (Erskine Bowles), a former Wyoming Republican senator (Alan Simpson) and the former head of a pro-Social-Security-privatization think tank (Bruce Reed) run the commission. If you can admit the two real parties in Washington are not the Republicans and Democrats but the Money Party and the People Party, then you can admit that this commission is not a bipartisan commission - it's purely partisan for the Money Party.

Not surprisingly, this Money Party commission's major tax proposal for dealing with the national debt is pure Arthur Laffer: specifically, a proposal to lower the top-bracket tax rate and lower the corporate tax rate. Equally unsurprising is the commission's demand for massive Social Security and Medicare cuts. None of this makes sense if you are a Regular Person - but if you are a constituent of the Money Party, it makes perfect sense.

And so that's why the real shocker in the commission's announcement is its support of one of the most important progressive health care priorities: That's right, a public health-insurance option to compete with private insurers.

When a Money Party commission is forced to admit that the nation needs a public health insurance option, it's a good sign that such an option should be considered a pragmatic "moderate" idea - not an ultra-liberal/quasi-socialist boondoggle, as the political media regularly called it.

<snip>

Link: http://www.openleft.com/diary/20828/obamas-money-party-debt-commission-validates-push-for-public-health-insurance-option

:shrug:

[xchrom]

1. Recommend - the admin and plenty of senators

Know/knew the PO was the 'moderate' position.

[amborin]

9. didn't independents also favor it?

[xchrom]

2. Dupe

[tularetom]

3. That was my first thought when I read that they touted a public option

The current pay to play health care system in the US is somehow detrimental to the financial health of their wealthy pals.

Either that or they've figured out a way to scam a system with a public option.

[eleny]

4. If you gut Social Security you have to throw the dogs a bone before you snatch it away

[ProudDad]

5. Especially when one considers that the Feds already

supply 60% of the funding for USAmerican Sick Care...

But even a "public option" crafted by these bastards wouldn't take care of the real culprit -- the profit motive...

[WillyT]

6. Hey PD... How Ya Doin ???

Gettin the itch to take it to the streets again, you ???

:evilgrin:

:bounce:

:hi:

[ProudDad]

7. I'm out there a lot...

But it's a lot tougher here in Arizona than it was in S.F... :) :hi:

[WillyT]

8. LOL !!!

Keep up the Good Fight, my man !!!

:patriot:

:hi:

[patrice]

10. Without a strong PO, de fact monopolies have no incentive to control costs, as Medicare

undergoes the knife in order to reform, you have controls/caps possibly placed upon Medicare services and, at the same time, no controls on costs, because there is no PO. Increasing costs results in decreasing services, until you have nothing but a guaranteed jobs program being fed fodder comprised of the sufferings and deaths of the vulnerable young and old. Not necessary to cure anyone, because the longer they stay in the system, the longer it pays, and you can always just say you can't afford to anyway, until the patient's body wears out and s/he passes on, only to be replaced by another from an infinite population of the same.

Nothing CONSERVE -ative about the foregoing, especially since there's nothing to control costs, except limiting what you will do for folks.

[WillyT]

11. Kick !!!

:kick:

[chill_wind]

12. The Money Party and The People Party.

Brilliant!

http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/11/23/bipartisanship-hides-the-real-power-equation-that-no-one-talks-about/

K & R.

[WillyT]

13. That Is EXACTLY What I Was Thinking !!!

:shrug:

:hi:

[chill_wind]

15. That's perfect. I love Sirota:

"To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, I would remind progressives that partisanship in the defense of regular people is no vice, and Washington’s faux bipartisanship in the pursuit of selling out is no virtue."


:hi:

[laughingliberal]

14. If only our Democrats would start framing it like this. nt

[Tesha]

16. Why would they? Most of them are from the "Money" Party. (NT)

[WillyT]

17. Kick !!!

:kick: