Ablogination

When all the petals are pulled off, you no longer have a flower. Just a stick that used to be one.

Howard Dean, Sen. Bernie Sanders, all the Liberal pundits…
There is only one correct thing to do.
Kill this hen-pecked Health Care bill, bring it back immediately as a budgetary issue aimed at extending Medicare to all Americans (single payer), Reconcile, pass it with 51 votes.

To hell with Republicans, to hell with Joe Lieberman and Conservative Democrats. The vast majority of the American public favor the Public Option. Single Payer is even better.

The great Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders offered an amendment to install single payer. Repiglikans asked for a “reading” as a stall tactic (Lord knows it would take ten years for a Republican to read anything). Sanders pulled the amendment and thwarted the stall, but not before he spoke for 30 mins on the floor…

“I would like to support it, but I’m not there yet,” Sanders said. “The only way I will know that you’re going to have real cost containment and comprehensive universal health care is a Medicare-for-all, single-payer bill - and that’s certainly not going to pass. If you don’t have that, then at least you have to provide real competition for the private insurance companies through a public option.”

Sanders, of course, is correct.
Howard Dean, today, challenged Obama (who seems to have lost his balls again) and publicly condemned the aberration that once was a decent piece of legislation coming from the House.
It’s good for Obama to hear this because as much as I admire some of the things he’s accomplished, nobody likes a president who’s a chicken shit. That’s one of the reasons Bush was such a disgrace. Cowardice.
Dr. Dean, on the other hand, has never failed to man-up in his life….

Health-care bill wouldn’t bring real reform

By Howard Dean
Thursday, December 17, 2009

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries – in the range of $20 million a year – and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a public option or a Medicare buy-in would restore competition and hold the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to.

To be clear, I’m not giving up on health-care reform. The legislation does have some good points, such as expanding Medicaid and permanently increasing the federal government’s contribution to it. It invests critical dollars in public health, wellness and prevention programs; extends the life of the Medicare trust fund; and allows young Americans to stay on their parents’ health-care plans until they turn 27. Small businesses struggling with rising health-care costs will receive a tax credit, and primary-care physicians will see increases in their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Improvements can still be made in the Senate, and I hope that Senate Democrats will work on this bill as it moves to conference. If lawmakers are interested in ensuring that government affordability credits are spent on health-care benefits rather than insurers’ salaries, they need to require state-based exchanges, which act as prudent purchasers and select only the most efficient insurers. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) offered this amendment during the Finance Committee markup, and Democrats should include it in the final legislation. A stripped-down version of the current bill that included these provisions would be worth passing.

In Washington, when major bills near final passage, an inside-the-Beltway mentality takes hold. Any bill becomes a victory. Clear thinking is thrown out the window for political calculus. In the heat of battle, decisions are being made that set an irreversible course for how future health reform is done. The result is legislation that has been crafted to get votes, not to reform health care.

I have worked for health-care reform all my political life. In my home state of Vermont we have accomplished universal health care for children under 18 and real insurance reform – which not only bans discrimination against preexisting conditions but also prevents insurers from charging outrageous sums for policies as a way of keeping out high-risk people. I know health reform when I see it, and there isn’t much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.

The writer is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a Medical Doctor and was governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2002.

First, the Public Option remains NON NEGOTIABLE.
Second, Senate rules must be officially changed in order to push the Progressive agenda through. We can’t continue to allow a Zionist Pig like Lieberman to run roughshod over the American People.
Third, and most of all, Obama has to remember his own words.
In his Nobel speech he talked about people who don’t want peace, who don’t seek common ground due to their evil wants and desires. People who cannot be reasoned with.
Like Al-Qaida, Republicans, DemoCons and Joe Lieberman cannot be reasoned with. Therefor they must be trampled under foot like so many ants.
Barack Obama began with “coverage for all". Now we have coverage according to Lieberman. I wonder how it feels to be the President of the United States and be made Joe Lieberman’s bitch. Glad I don’t know at this point. But Obama is about to find out if he doesn’t ball up a fist and start socking people up.

Not a hair, Mr. President. You don’t have one hair on your ass if you let a handful of un-American filth take this epic effort, shit on the people, and wipe their asses with it.

Obama, Harry Reid….man the fuck up or just admit that you can’t handle it and resign. The nation can wait no longer.