Re: Health Care: Hitting the Re-Set Button

Jay Newton-Small:
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What a seemingly unintentional indictment of the process and its participants.

Long gone is Mr. Smith's Washington...Congress requires twisting arms behind closed doors...what kind of hands-on role he'll take in the [inexplicably secret back-room] negotiations...

Actually, come to think of it, the situation sounds just like Mr. Smith's Washington:

Smith faces media manipulation, false claims, and a "muzzling" of freedom of the press by the Taylor machine: "Not one word of what he's saying is being printed in that state. Taylor has practically every paper in the state lined up and he's feeding them doctored-up junk."
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Saunders [the sympathetic reporter] transmits a dictation to Smith's mother (Beulah Bondi) that will be printed in the only free press left - Jeff's Boys Stuff publication. With the support of an army of faithful boys, the boys' paper is type-set with the headline: "JEFF TELLS TRUTH" - the only uncensored news available to Smith's constituents.
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With wagons and bicycles, the handbills are distributed in support of Smith, and the boys organize a parade. When the word that there is opposition reaches Taylor's headquarters, McGann sends the word out to confiscate and destroy the Boys Stuff newspaper and disrupt the parade, resulting in injuries to many of the boys. A carload of boys distributing newspapers is deliberately forced off the road by Taylor's forces, resulting in a gruesome crash and accident.
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Mrs. Smith phones Saunders, distressed by the repercussions: "Children hurt all over the city. Tell Jeff to stop!"

, doesn't it, Jay Newton-Small?

I'd say it will end up being about whether the media will allow American to hear the message or will they continue to confuse the public by only discussing the lies and craziness being promoted by the Republican Party. In the end, either the media will get out of the way or be part of the problem. Because help the cause is out of the question.

Can you guys (i.e., Time bloggers) wait a few minutes to enter a new post so the previous one can sink in a little bit?

That being said, it's scary to think that Kennedy wasted his breath six years ago trying to persuade his fellow senators that going to war against Iraq was not in our best interests.

Jay Newton-Small:
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If the WH tries to spin this as insensitive liberals working to defeat the first African American president, they might have problems with that line:

September 3, 2009
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The Honorable Barack Obama
President, United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
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Dear President Obama:
We eagerly anticipate your address before Congress next week regarding the urgent need to reform America's ailing health care system.
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As the Members of Congress who represent the men, women and children who are disproportionately under- and uninsured, and whose health and wellness have suffered because of the numerous gaps in our nation's health care system, we are deeply concerned about the current discussions surrounding health care reform and the possibility that current components of the bill – such as a robust public option and myriad health disparity elimination provisions – may be stricken in order to lower its cost to about $500 billion.
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We sincerely hope that you stress unwavering support...in your remarks...
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We want to assure you and your Administration that the members of the Congressional Black Caucus are committed allies and partners in the fight to reform America's broken health care system.
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Together we can seize this unique moment in our nation's history to ensure that we not only reform our nation's health care system, but that we transform it in a manner that eliminates uninsurance with a robust public option, achieves health equity for all Americans, and makes us – as a nation – healthier and stronger.
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We appreciate your attention to this letter and look forward to working with you on this critically important legislation.
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With regards,
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Congresswoman Barbara Lee
Chair, Congressional Black Caucus

ms small

I suggest you read Norman Ornstein's op -ed in The Washington Post on September 1, 2009.

Yes, JNS, but the Congresscritters will be influenced by the change if any in public opinion, and presumably the public will be listening... if they had listened to speeches, facts etc. we would never have gone to war in Iraq. Unfortunately the public was duped.

I'm not sure that it matters all that much what Obama has to say at this point (except whether or not he futher alienates his base of support). Re-set this:

"I know that the White House is debating it internally," [Sen. Sherrod] Brown said in an interview with TPMDC. "But Congress is writing the bill, the President's not."
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"I don't know for sure if I would support it with out a public option but it would be hard to get there.... We're not going through this to write some namby pamby bill so we can check a box and say we did health care reform."
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"If the insurance companies are satisfied with this bill it's not a good bill," Brown said. "It's clear that if the major interest groups line up for this bill it's not doing what it's supposed to do."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/brown-to-white-house-congress-is-writing-the-bill-the-presidents-not.php?ref=fpa

President, Bill Clinton made his famous Healthcare reform speech when it looked like everything was in place and just one issue was in contention. (“Famous speech” because he was reading a prompter that had the wrong speech on it and yet he improvised beautifully. Remember the raised “veto pen”?)
Yet despite how relatively peachy things looked at the time the Healthcare reform efforts failed.

It is not looking good for the Obama Administration in this attempt to overhaul a broken system. The President needs to do something incisive to contain this hysteria.

People are ignorant or misinformed about it-- and the campaign of misinformation is being allowed to continue unabated. Conjecture rules the airwaves and many are swallowing the propaganda.

Prior to taking on such an ambitious plan, the Obama folks should have undertaken a massive campaign of information dissemination.

It will be very sad if this bill is not passed because of hysteria fueled by a systematic dissemination of lies. Really sad.

http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

Why is Van Jones in Washington, advising our President?

Van Jones the "Green Czar" for Obama. Signed the 9/11 "Truthers".

Van Jones the avowed Communist.

Van Jones like Jeremiah Wright accusing "whites of poisoning people of color", why is he so close to the President?

Why indeed

"One group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, sent a mass-distributed e-mail quoting a Texas man saying he is "dropping out of political activism" because of his disillusionment with Obama over health care."

I believe I have finally found one thing I share in common with a "Texas man". President Obama's continued equivocation on the inclusion non-inclusion of a public option as part of a final healthcare bill does not help promote a continuation of my belief in "change we can believe in".

The one thing I definitely do not believe in is that the private healthcare insurance industry, operating without the necessary competition provided by a public option, will on its own free will change it's basic business profit-maximizing model of "denying care while increasing premiums".

Nor do I have any reason to believe that the documented economic trends evidenced over the last ten years during which rising healthcare insurance costs have resulted in corporations reducing employee healthcare benefits, the flat-lining of employee wages, an increasing decline in the number of small businesses offering healthcare benefits due to lack of affordability, the increasing rise in healthcare premiums and/or co-payments paid directly by the employed, and the percentage of our gross domestic product devoted to healthcare increasing annually all while the quality of our healthcare has been marginalized and the number of uninsured Americans has increased will, without the inclusion of a public option, suddenly reverse themselves and start trending in a less costly better direction during the next ten years and in turn help give rise to a future solid competitive economic base.

I do not believe it and anyone with any common sense should not believe it either. And for sure, it was the common sense spoken by our President during his election campaign on a great many issues and in particular in regard to the necessity of real healthcare reform that lead me to vote for him and not the Repudiated Republican Party of No in the first place.

I had suspended my general disbelief of politicians to vote for and actively support the one politician I believe would fight for the real changes required to ensure that this new century is America's Century as the last one was. The inclusion of a public option as part of a true healthcare reform bill designed to effectively provide quality affordable health care for both the insured and the uninsured is part and parcel of the changes needed. And I expect President Obama to stand up for it.

In summary, like the Texas man quoted above, I will be very disillusioned and indeed extremely disappointed if our new President sells out the much needed public option in futile pursuit of a bi-partisan ineffective healthcare bill.

Such an outcome will not be change I can believe in.

Public Option or Bust!