Obama Trims Sails On Health Reform

[foginthemorn]

Source: WPost



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/01/AR2009080102403.html?hpid=topnews


Obama Trims Sails On Health Reform
He Seeks to Rally Support by Promising Less

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 2, 2009

From the start of his presidency, Barack Obama made clear that his plan for enacting comprehensive health-care reform came down to three words: fast, broad and bipartisan.

That was then.

Now, as lawmakers begin to flee Washington for a month-long recess, the White House team is retooling its message and strategy, hoping a more modest approach will reinvigorate Obama's signature domestic policy initiative and give him a first-year victory for Democrats to carry into the 2010 midterm elections.

Legislative wrangling, a well-coordinated Republican opposition and the sheer complexity of an issue that consumes nearly one-fifth of the nation's economy have taken a toll on the president and his bold ambitions. Polls show that support for Obama's handling of health reform has declined as anxiety deepens about its effect on middle-class, insured Americans.

"There was a view that because of the recession this could be sold as an economic fix," said Howard Paster, President Bill Clinton's legislative affairs director in 1993. "That's not selling. The public has spoken loudly."

With the debate shifting from partisan-charged Capitol Hill to the kitchens, diners and churches of America, Democrats are under pressure to counter the GOP's "risky experiment" story line. ...............

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/01/AR2009080102403.html?hpid=topnews

---

The Huff post has this article with the headline:--which probably sums up the article well.


Obama Tries To Build Support For Health Care By Promising Less

[dmosh42]

1. As long as there's a 'public option'....

The name of the game for the Repukes is to stop any plan like that from being voted on. If they have to vote, then it's a public record against the 70% of Americans wanting the reform. It's just politics for them, so if the Dems get a plan to be voted on, then the 'game' is over for the Repukes. It might not pass, but the 'light' will be on those who denied the country a chance to improve our health insurance.

[Autumn]

2. All politicians do change

so I guess it's to be expected.

[Vincardog]

3. How about trimming it down two words "fast, broad" and fuck the bipartisan shit.

[enlightenment]

4. Because the middle-class insured voters

(and their campaign contributions) want "fast, bipartisan" instead.

The rest of us can whistle up a rope.

sigh

[Iowa]

27. Is that really true though?

Everyone I know who is middle-class and insured wants single-payer! We're all afraid that we won't be able to afford what we have for too much longer, and nobody trusts insurance companies. This business about America buying into the Republican line strikes me as bullshit - perhaps it's the politicians way of saying, "We tried, but the people didn't want it"... a way to appease their corporate handlers while pretending to do something.

[enlightenment]

30. Could very well be - but I know I was surprised (and appalled)

when I recently did an informal poll of my college students - some are traditional students, but many are older (late 20s and 30s) and married with children, holding down two jobs and going to school.

That slightly older demographic is the one I expected see expressing a desire for health care reform, since they're under the gun in so many ways.

Instead they were incensed that they would 'have to pay higher taxes' and 'would be forced to participate'. They younger ones, of course, were grossly uninterested in the whole issue.

So I don't really know. I do know it depresses the hell out of me . . .

[Iowa]

32. It depresses me too...

I saw a Bill Maher clip on-line today. He summed up the overall situation pretty well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p7dlM9ACng

[Joe Bacon]

5. Another set of lies from that liar Ceci Connolly

The Daily Howler has a long list of Republican propaganda that Sleazy Ceci regurgitates in the Whoreshington Post. Sleazy Ceci writes whatever the lobbyists tell her to.

[rocktivity]

6. DING DING DING! Joe Bacon, you're our grand prize winner!

...Sleazy Ceci regurgitates in the Whoreshington Post...

Consider the source--and consider that the source depends on for-profit healthcare ad revenues.

:eyes:
rocktivity

[scubadude]

18. Even though I don't agree with the OP, you are incorrect in this argument.

Ding, Ding, Ding, you are committing a logical fallacy! You are using an Ad hominem attack. In order to e logically correct you must address the substance of the argument, not the person making it. Anyone who takes the subject learns this in Freshman Logic. I was hoping for something substantive. Try again.

Scuba

[rocktivity]

25. The substance of MY argument is that the national media has a financial interest

in healthcare reform failing (which I think is sleazy). Why do you think they've done so little in terms of debunking the lies, condemning the Rethugs' scare tactics, and exposing the influence of for-profit healthcare on Congress?

:headbang:
rocktivity

[nolabels]

31. Corporate owned media are against anything that will curtail their sails

They are also controlled by the other corporate advertisers that wish each and everything be skewed to their favor. It's really quite simple arithmetic :shrug:

[scubadude]

33. They have a responsibility to their corporate masters and chaos,

upon which they thrive. Such are the foibles of a for profit media amidst the infotainment lives we live, and accept (for the most part). They go hand in hand, as many thinking people know. We know the difference though, and that makes us different. We understand the bull that most accept as reality.

I do not disagree, but enjoy the diatribe more when liberally seasoned with substance.

Scuba

[fascisthunter]

7. thank you for that

[nashville_brook]

11. yeah, I don't see masses of people opposing reform b/c of the "economic fix" messaging.

i don't see masses of people opposing reform for any RATIONAL reasons. it's all "the gubment's gunna tell me how to die."

[Uncle Joe]

15. I agree, this is propaganda bullshit from the Washington Post and it isn't

the middle income insured that are worried about serious health care reform, it's the corporate media's commercial/ad buying De Facto clients; health insurance corporations and big pharma.

[fascisthunter]

8. Propaganda Alert!!! Ceci Connolly nails an old story:

Good God! Can you believe it? An ugly disinformation campaign has been in the works. Connolly describes that campaign today—and even says who’s behind it! She doesn’t warn seniors against reading “fliers,” as President Obama did this week (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/31/09). Starting right in its front-page headline, Connolly’s news report identifies the source of these ugly, bogus stories. Sending the analysts into a frenzy, Ceci Connolly gets it damn-straight right:

CONNOLLY (8/1/09): Talk Radio Campaign Frightens Seniors/Counseling Pitched as ‘Death Care’

A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia."

The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.

But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to "kill Granny.”


http://www.dailyhowler.com/

[Frank Booth]

9. This article is complete crap.

If you want any details on how Obama has "Trimmed Sails on Health Reform" don't bother reading the article. Nary a detail is to be found.

Personally, I believe that Obama has compromised too much in trying to get healthcare passed (and a willingness to compromise to the point of getting rolled over appears to be his fatal flaw), but this article contains no actual information that either supports or disputes that conclusion.

[robinlynne]

10. In reality, the opposite is happening. Single-payer is now on the table!

As for the public has spoken loudly AGAINST the public option". really? That's not what I hear out here.

[foginthemorn]

21. I have written to my congresscritters about SP.

[winston61]

12. Well, are all you Obama voters happy now?

I include myself in that number because I would have voted for Barack twice instead of McCain. Did you really buy that 'Change you can believe in' bullshit? Barack was in fact my 4th choice and I did hold my nose while voting. Did you really think that the bought and paid for Congress and the corporate state was let him change anything? Did you really think a machine politician out of Chicago was actually going to accomplish anything? You gotta give the repukes one thing, they are organized. Health care reform, give me a fucking break. The only thing that will be reformed is that insurance and big Pharma are going to work ways to fuck us all out of more money and give us less access. Don't believe me? Wait till the votes come down in September. Health care reform and single payer can bend right over and kiss it's own ass goodbye. Think congress gives a shit? My congressional rep has canceled meetings in his own district because he is scared shitless of the bussed in agitators that will disrupt the meetings. So much for meeting the enemy head on. Thirty years of reagonomics and a willfully, pridefully ignorant population are working. GOP Uber Alles. Are you happy now?

[zoff]

13. I hope this isn't a bait and switch.

They got us all worked up on single payer, public option, medicare for everyone or whatever it is they say they're working on. Then they pull the rug from under us. I sure hope he's not another corporatist in disguise. Like I said in another thread, they can take make their profits overseas but fergadsakes, stop taking it out on Americans! Especially not when it comes to healthcare!

[winston61]

14. It's been bait and switch from the word go--

Get hopes up for single payer, then convince us that it can't be done and then offer us useless bullshit rhetoric and a watered down choice that amounts to a choice between Bowl of Shit A and Bowl of Shit B. Either way you wind up will a bowl of shit.

[pattmarty]

16. I will not vote (stay home) in the 2010 elections if we get a shit plan........

.....As a shrewd politician Obama will settle for a shit plan (no plan is better than that) declare victory and use that propaganda bullshit in the hope that he will not lose that many seats in the house and maybe break even in the Senate. The Dems are really stupid to think that without a really true "reform" (that would include a STRONG "public option") that they will look like heroes. The Republicans will paint them as Socialist, losers and all the other crap they have been spouting and the true liberals will just sit out 2010. They will lose 40 seats in the house and may well lose their majority in the Senate, although the odds are against the Republicans in the Senate, the Republicans will still make gains in the Senate. This is truly the domestic battle of our time, and if we lose it the Dems will be fucked in future elections.

[customerserviceguy]

23. I did notice something on "Inside Washington" today

Charles Krauthammer made the point that President Obama has switched from using the term "Healthcare Reform" to the term, "Health Insurance Reform". Not sure if that is true, but he usually has his facts relatively straight, it's just the spin and twist that he does on them that makes him a wingnut.

Funnelling more money into the health insurance bureaucracy is not the change I voted for, either.

[pattmarty]

26. Right. Bush did exactly the same with his Medicare "reform".

[MarjorieG]

17. Even if better than expected for plan, with merit, don't expect all or nothing DU, or the media, to

be accurate about the heavy lift and actual help we'll get. My concern is not fast enough. Single-payer was never an option, but Kucinch did a great thing by making it possible on the state level where there are efforts happening.

[Cleita]

19. Bipartisan seems to be code for let's do what the corporate whores

want us to do. It has nothing to do with, we the people, or what we want and more importantly need. Mandates are unworkable. We have car insurance mandates in California and yet many still drive without it. Tagging health care onto employment mandates only makes it hard on the employer and employee. Many entrepreneurs will not be able to stay in business because of the cost and jobs that have disappeared to other countries because they have universal health care won't come back here if there are employer mandates. Giving insurance companies subsidies to cover the unemployed and disabled is costing the state of Massachusetts over $6,000 a month per person as contrary to around $3,000 a month that Canadians spend per person under their Medicare plan for more comprehensive coverage than the residents of Massachusetts get. I wonder why? Could it be that health care dollars are disappearing into Wall Street profits?

The problem is and always has been and always will be private insurers and health care HMOs because they will deliver taxpayer's money to Wall Street. This will end up being very expensive and not workable. Also, who said not to enact a lot of this bi-partisan garbage until 2013? If we have Republicans back in power, and we could, because the last administration's criminals are not in prison and are still allowed a place at the public government table to plot and scheme for the next elections. They will just scrap the whole part not enacted, of course that will be after they've finished stuffing their pockets with the money, of course.

So I guess we have to wait another decade for a good health plan. I won't be alive. Thank God! By that time my Medicare will be privatized and I will have died in a ditch somewhere without care like a feral cat.

[bvar22]

20. Well, "Health Care Reform" has morphed into ....

"Health Insurance Reform",

[DollyM]

22. Facebook has become my personal battlefield . . .

for correcting misinformation. I get a lot of good stuff here to use but it is a long, daily, battle. I am so sorry that so many of my friends and casual friends are so darn stupid and Republican! Fresh off another round of "the goverment wants to take away my right to choose my own doctor and will limit my healthcare . . . blah, blah, blah." My personal favorite has been the very right wing person that has twice thrown in, "the government also wants to tell me what kind of car I can drive!" I shot that down twice and then noticed they had gone back and removed their stupid comments on this. Ding, ding, at least I won that round.
I am so afraid that this health care reform will keep getting watered down until it is nothing and the stupid people will spread fear, will have won again. My suggestion is to get on social networking sites like facebook and keep informing and keep speading truth and facts to counteract their spread of fear and fallacies.

[winston61]

24. My notion is that you are beating your brains out for nothing-

The massive willful ignorance and racism against Obama and the millions the corporate state are spending in Congress will win the day. There is a better chance of Jesus coming back than there is in getting single payer. Stop wasting your time.

[unkachuck]

28. "Democrats...

...are under pressure to counter the GOP's "risky experiment" story line......"

....in my neighborhood it's common knowledge and accepted as fact, the Republican Party and their minions receive sizable contributions from foreign and domestic terrorists in order to kill innocent Americans....

....why else would they want to see healthcare reform end and Americans die?

[and-justice-for-all]

29. Risky experiment? This 'experiment' has been run and works...

just ask any other industrialized country with universal health care.