To my fellow bloggers on the right,
After the toughest week yet for health reform, leading Democrats are warning that the party likely will have to accept major compromises to get a bill passed this year – perhaps even dropping a proposal to create a government-run plan that is almost an article of faith among some liberals.
With August dominated by angry faces and raised voices at town hall meetings, influential Democrats began laying the groundwork for the fall, particularly with the party’s liberal base, saying they may need to accept a less-than-perfect bill to achieve health reform this year.
“Trying to hold the president’s feet to the fire is fine, but first we have to win the big argument,” former President Bill Clinton said Thursday at the Netroots Nation convention, a gathering of liberal activists and bloggers who will prove most difficult to convince. “I am pleading with you. It is OK with me if you want to keep everybody honest. . . . But try to keep this thing in the lane of getting something done. We need to pass a bill and move this thing forward.”
“I want us to be mindful we may need to take less than a full loaf,” he said after recounting the political troubles that followed his failed reform effort in 1994.
At best, we have won a skirmish – IF this is not smoke being blown by the Democrats smoke-blower-in-chief. (I am not convinced we have won even that much just yet.) Yes we have made a serious dent in their schemes, but we are not even close to being out of the woods on this yet.
We have a long way to go on this. Remember that Pelosi has already required that reconciliation be used – meaning that only 51 votes are needed in the Senate. Remember that there is a lot more to hate in these various bills being touted by the Democrats than just the public option.
If they get anything at all, they are looking at this as the camel’s nose under the tent. They will increment and “improve” anything they can get passed until it is socialized medicine. That is the ultimate goal. That is what Clinton pushed and that, very, very clearly, is the message of this article.
This is not a victory. We have to keep focused and keep fighting. We have to.
Don’t get sold the way the left has already. These people have zero scruples and will backstab anyone to get what they want.
Think long haul here, people. We have to be in it until ObamaCare is dead, dead, dead. Do not get suckered by Slick Willy – again.
We can win. We have not won yet.
UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.
UPDATE: Wow – a lot of traffic and a lot of comments. A couple of new developments since I wrote this post. Visitors might be interested in this post and this one. In addition, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) has called the “public option a “wasted effort“.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., one of six negotiators trying to hammer out a bipartisan compromise measure on the Senate Finance Committee, told “FOX News Sunday” that the so-called public option simply does not have the votes to pass.
“The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option. There never have been,” he said. “So to continue to chase that rabbit I think is just a wasted effort.”
It is even more important now that OUR efforts against this expansion of govenment power is not a wasted effort. Thanks for stopping by and reading. Hang in there, folks. Don’t let up for an instant.
UPDATE: And this latest post – the Post Office medical system.
After seven years of standing up and countering the vicious Left I consider it a victory that Insta-Americans are finally getting up off their couches, standing up and getting involved.
Back in 2005 it became apparent to me that it would take Insta-American’s wallets being hit hard for them to rise up, tell the Left that Liberty is a hill worth dying on.
Yes we have a heck of a way to go however at least Insta-Americans are off their couches instead of sitting arrogantly above it all as if they had nothing to do with what is going on today.
Insta-America allowed the Left to be as vicious as necessary, now the fight is a hundred times harder than it was 7 years ago. Live and learn.
Kill the bill … Tort reform now.
The Dems are not even conceding the essentials of a public plan. They are still keeping so-called cooperatives that 1) Will be exempt from State and Federal taxation, 2) Will be exempt from State and Federal regulation, and 3) Will have an unlimited lien of taxpayer dollars. All of this will force private insurance plans off the road.
And provisions of the House bill essentially outlaw private insurance companies from enrolling new members to insurance plans that don’t conform exactly to the plan offered by the public/cooperative plan, which is yet another deliberate tactic to drive private health insurance to extinction.
So there are no even partial victories yet.
The entire Democrat/Obama effort must be killed.
Then we can start with a new approach, involving free-market regulatory reform.
I agree.
The battle of patriots vs. statists is an ongoing death-struggle.
I have only one purpose after job/family: ROLLING BACK LEVIATHAN.
Americans who have participated in the Tea Party Movement and in Townhalls and other Rallies against Obama and the Dems powergrabs MUST make this integral to their lives.
The Krogers across the street was knocked down. I just got back from Whole Foods. You know them, the one with the CEO has the prudent, free-market plan for healthcare (see WSJ). I went with my Patriot Depot “Don’t Tread on Me.” T-shirt. Some of their customers who are statists don’t want to shop there now. In the checkout in front of me was a couple that was there for the same reason I was, to support the company of a CEO who knows how to reform healthcare AND is not afraid to offer his ideas.
This IS America.
Stopping the growth of the federal government is a LIFETIME commitment, not a one-time thing.
This tension and war will not go away, ever.
Now let’s get going and take our country back from Obama and the Dems.
And, push the GOP for a free-market system in line at least partially with what the CEO of Whole Foods proposed.
If the ‘public plan’ dies, then 90% of the House bill dies and that puts folk back to ground zero, the public happy and the far left livid. I expect we will see insurance reform which will take care of catastrophic care, existing conditions, portability and eliminate state boundaries…
Whatever health care plan to pass will be lauded by Obama as victory, regardless of how far from his initial scheme we have wandered. He will look defeat in the face and call it victory, like Clinton did with the balanced budget.
Cooperatives were popular in Soviet Russia too.
They are nothing but another vehicle to allow the federal government to control us.
Don’t forget, it’s not what the law says, it’s what the bureaucrats and O! selected judges regulate and interpret.
Thanks for the post. That was my reaction also. What’s with these so-called Republican’s talking about a “bi-partisan” solution? I don’t have the details, but I saw the other day that Bobby Jindal was talking that way.
If the GOP and RNC weren’t so inept, there would already be a simple bulleted list at GOP.com describing the few points of the GOP plan (tort reform, portable policies, non-longer employer supplied, policies that cross state lines). But no, the only thing I could find at GOP.com under health care was page after page of political bafflegab from the 2008 platform. They’re building a new web site, but apparently there is no sense of urgency.
It could help if everyone urged them to get on the stick. Also, I think it’s a mistake to orient the web site to the true believers. Rather than preach to the choir, they need to be in straight information mode only, oriented to those who are curious about the GOP’s stand on the issues. Oh, well, I guess I’ll have my unicorn from Obama before the GOP buys a clue.
SDN’s point is essential. The “Non-Delegation doctrine” in constitutional law is dead, which means that a bureaucrat from one of the multiple agencies and boards set up what would be a 1000+ page bill can essentially decide what he wants, with no appeal.
And the federal government beaurocracy is overwhelmingly staffed by Lefties.
Democrats know this, which is why they need not make the oppressive stuff explicit in the bill; it will be couched in endless, deliberately obscure knowledge language, sufficient to allow the implementing agencies cover to do what they want.
Sign to watch:
If their new proposal still creates FIFTY ONE new agencies, departments, commissions, task forces, etc…..then it’s still a Trojan horse.
I tried for over a week to find out how many new government employees were anticipated in HB 3200. Final answer: no one knows. They haven’t estimated that yet! How can they say it’s “deficit neutral” when they haven’t figured in the new bureaucracies?! And once they have all those bureaucrats controlling all the data, they can control the direction of debate. THEIR NUMBER ONE GOAL IS TO GET THE BUREAUCRACIES IN PLACE…the rest will follow.
We’ve got to persist…Make them tell us how many new gov’t employees they’re talking about. Hundreds of thousands? (Remember, Obama promised 650,000 new federal workers!) Americans will never go for that…if they know in advance.
Introduce some market reforms: sell insurance across state lines, tort caps, even mandatory coverage with subsidies. But this plan has to go.
Don’t forget the stuff that was passed in the
stimulus bill. Pulling the so called end of life
parts are a red herring. The same thing can be
found hidden in HR1.
Let be done to them what they do to us.
This apparent win is NOT victory. The current Democrat proposals must be utterly defeated and a new beginning made — one that includes establishment of a national insurance market and tort reform.
With a not to Churchill: “This is not the beginning of the end … It is the end of the beginning.”
Battle on!!! this is but one very miniscule victory and until it isn’t voted on it is not a victory. I have seen the other posters say that fighting the growth of government is a constant, they are correct. I vote Republican because they are closer to my ideals however they are as guilty as the Democrats for outrageous spending and all of them must be stopped. It’s the spending you stupid Congresscritters!
So will everyone still be REQUIRED to have insurance under penalty of a fine?? The information for that would come from the IRS monitoring employers and the sel f employed to see if they carry enugh covrage.
The IRS has no business carrying water for the Ministry of Health Control.
I am very wary here, as they are going to everything they can to lay the foudation for usurping health care decisions and industry control. It’s what and who they are.
If co-ops are such a good idea and there are plenty of examples, why do we need the government setting them up?
Shelby was pathetic on FNS. No mention of tort reform and did not refute the AMA dude or the AARP dude.
What can you do when both senators in your state are Dems and emailing them re: ‘vote no on health care’ only results in a ‘thank you for contacting us’ form email reply? My representative, thankfully, has said he will vote no. There aren’t any town halls scheduled this month by my rep or senators, at least not close enough for me to drive to. Any advice?
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Keep calling, keep writing. They actually do start paying attention when enough calls and letters indicate that their jobs may well be on the line. Encourage others to do the same. We are not going to stop every vote for this – there are too many out of touch, elitists in Washington. We have to stop them getting 51 in the Senate.
That’s doable.
American Power tracked-back with, ‘Conservatives: A Win on Public Option is One Battle on Road to Victory’.
Not only must we get tort reform, but the federal government must fix the Indian Health Service. (How about opening competition in drugs by reducing lengths of patents, reinforcing the requirement that new drug formulations be true inventions and not just minor modifications and greatly reducing the number of prescription and behind the counter drugs.)
It’s a skirmish, but the larger battle is depicted here.
COOPERATIVES? Will they be “government sponsored entities” (GSEs) or the equivalent? Call the cooperatives “Healthy MAC”, doing for health care what “FANNIE Mae” and “FREDDIE Mac” did for housing
NOT AN URBAN LEGEND – Congress Exempting Itself From Health Care Reform.
Start reading at pg 113, line 22 of SENATE version of the Health Care Reform Bill (http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf). It describes who will be and who will not be covered by health care reform.
If you are NOT eligible for Federal employee health benefits, as described in US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, then Health Care Reform WILL apply to you.
If you ARE eligible for Federal employee health benefits, as described in US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, then Health Care Reform will NOT apply to you.
Now who do you think is eligible for Federal employee health benefits, as described in US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, and thus exempt from health care reform?
Browse over US Code Title 5 Chapter 89 … http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/usc_sup_01_5_10_III_20_G_30_89.html
For purposes of US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, members of Congress, political appointees, federal employees (obviously), and many others are eligible for Federal employee health benefits.
CONCLUSION: The Senate is attempting to exempt itself from Health Care Reform. Congress, Federal Employees, and other ‘chosen’ ones will get a different plan from the one that will be inflicted upon the rest of us.
SIDE-NOTE: When critiquing/praising health care reform, please quote chapter & verse from the bill (House or Senate version, page #, line #)
No victory is exactly right. There is absolutely no responsibility of government to provide health care coverage to it’s citizens. And practically no one has gotten this message through yet. These government programs in my opinion, are like a disease infected salesman at your door. All it takes is one little toe in the door, one small piece of legislation, and you’ll be swept aside by a massively spreading disease which infects the entire neighborhood.
There is nothing acceptable about a plan tthat ‘merely’ bans insurance companies from underwriting based on pre-existing conditions and sets a federal minimum standard. In such a system, any insurance plan with more generous benefits will have to accept patients in the future who sit in afederal minimum standard plan until a grave illness. It will not be feasible to sustain any coverage, whether for cancer or end of life care, that exceeds the the minimum standard unless you can underwrite to factor out pre-existing conditions. This is a government takeover of insurance, folks, public option or not, the feds will design and control healthcare.
Although ObamaCare might be wounded for this year. They will still try to get some steps in their direction. Keep fighting and we might be as lucky as we were in 1994.
Newt Gingrich bought us 14 years respite from socialism that Bill Clinton “triangulated” through (despite any acutal convictions he might or might not have) and George W. Bush seemed not to have the vision or ability to act or communicate that government control of economic activity is the antithesis of freedom and limited government established under our Constitution.
Via YouTube, Ronald Reagan is doing a more effective job against socialism today than the most recent former President did even in office. Reagan left us writings and recorded audio and video speeches. From George W. Bush we see no more than the high tide leaves of a sand castle with respect to the fight for constitutionally limited government.
Now, rather than letting the socialists work on America incrementally, maybe it would help to read ahead a few pages in their playbook.
After socialized medicine, won’t socialized food be a control point?
The whole strategy is to eliminate traditional individual, family, local community and market choices in every aspect of your life and replace it with themselves as your government and decision maker.
Starting now to undermine their socialized food effort might aid in the current fight against socialized medicine.
In the long run, centralized decision making will always fail. We should be encouraged by that. Sadly we can also foresee the enormous human misery that will be the unnecessary cost of this new attempt at government control.
My favorite quote of the day comes from Patrick Carroll at http://www.professorbainbridge.com:
“Leftists are ahistorical because it makes it easier for them to construct their Sorelian myths.
Trying to make a leftist remember the crimes of the left is like wrestling a greased pig: you get nothing but dirty, and the pig enjoys it.”
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Damned straight.
Instead of having a purely public option they’ll just forge ahead with controlling everything in the ‘private’ systems thru strangulating regulation.
IOW socialism in fascist garb.
BTW, I had a call from some RNC fund-raiser today and basically hung up on them.
Said I’d donate again when they come up with a coherent policy instead of just counting on Obama to screw up.
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I’d also add the greatest danger is Republican idiots and RINOs in House & Senate declaring victory by dodging a couple bullets but then giving away the other 90% in the name of spineless ‘compromise.’
I think individual tax-exempt health spending accounts plus high deductible catastrophic are the way to go, but putting the spending decisions more in individual hands are inadequate for unleashing market forces.
The missing pieces need to jumpstart a market where one does not exists are to (at the same time the lawwyer-vultures are pushed back) the medical profession needs to be prodded to play ball too, in making pricing — at least for common things — transparent so consumers can comparison shop. Requiring more openness and and revealing success/complication rates for treatment hospital by hospital, doc by doc, would get a market going — however much that might go against the clubiness that docs share with lawyers (don’t badmouth your professional peers publicly).
Giving people the freedom (and responsibility) to choose providers is near useless if they have no data on which to form informed decisions.
I want a high deductible catastrophic!!
Couldn’t believe it when I went on individual coverage a few years ago. Can’t get medical savings accounts in my state. Can’t get catastrophic plans. All thanks to the government.
It stinks.
The thing the Right has to do is hit back with it’s own plan. Based on some of the comments I think this post of mine yesterday is apropos.
There are ways to improve health care in this country without socializing it more than it is. We should be strongly responding with solutions as well.
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