Pelosi to Dems: back health bill even if it hurts

[onehandle]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."

"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul

[ro1942]

1. This is not as bold as social security and medicare

that's the problem, nobody likes it but Insur. Companies

[pundaint]

13. Don't forget the stupid. The stupid will like the bill because it is named reform.

They were smart in not accurately naming it the Health Funding Ripoff Perpetuation Act for the Benefit of a Greedy Few With Crumbs to the Needy, and Tax Increases for the Rest

[IndianaGreen]

15. and because 'Health Care' is in the title, they will think it benefits them

rather than the health industry.

[EFerrari]

16. FDR had people out planting trees within weeks of his inauguration.

These people aren't even trying and their theater isn't even convincing.

[midnight]

19. I wonder why we have been giving this crappy bill, and then told to fight for it?

[IndianaGreen]

2. Y'all commit political harakiri now!

"It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare," Pelosi said, but it would have been the courageous thing to pass Single Payer rather than pass Stupak and appease the GOP, which is what they did.

Adios, losers!

[GinaMaria]

3. If she believes they are there to do the job for

American people, then why not enact legislation that is actually for the American people and not the insurance companies. Compromise made this thing a mess. If it was really about doing what was right, the insurance companies would be screaming right now.

So tired of this BS. This bill is nothing like Medicare. If it was, it would be an expansion of medicare. It wouldn't be this tangled complicated mess and they wouldn't have to work so hard to sell it. Make it simple (Medicare for anyone who wants to buy in is simple to understand), make it easy to access (via paycheck deduction, subsidies etc), and make it available to anyone who wants it (whether they have insurance now or not).

Medicare (which became highly popular). Read... it's popular right now. Why not give the people what they want, understand and need right now? This is beyond frustrating.

These people need to be fired. They have screwed this up at every turn.

[proudohioan]

7. Make it simple? I agree! Good ideas here!

Why does it have to be made so complicated??? Yeah, I guess that's a pretty rhetorical question.....

Maybe raise the income level way up to qualify for Medicaid as well?

[Big_Mike]

12. Personally, I believe this was so incompetently managed

that each and every individual in the next election that has "Incumbent" following their name should be tossed out on their ear.

Let them stew in the wilderness for two or six years, then come back and try to persuade us that they now know what the job is: to do the nation's work, not that work which will allow them to keep on being in Congress!

It is immaterial whether the politician involved always looks out for the district or state: they are there to run the nation, not their community. If they want to run the community, be on City, County, or even State government.

[ixion]

4. Nancy, you little lapdog, you continue to be an extreme disappointment

and you can go straight to hell.

[billybob537]

5. Make repukes vote against it!

This is a huge winner for Dems.
If they pass a public option they will sweep the election this fall.
Why do you think the pukes are trying so hard to stop everything!
They're fighting for the future of their party.
They've already lost the Hispanics, most minorities, GLBT, most women, and anyone with a room temp IQ

[t0dd]

6. Comparing the pro-insurance Senate bill to SS and Medicare is disgraceful

Those programs were actually written for the American people and remain popular to this day.

The Senate bill, on the other hand, was written with large private insurance corporations in mind. The American people overwhelmingly do not want it. At the very least, they do not want forced to buy expensive and inefficient private insurance plans without the alternative of a public option.

She needs to stop characterizing this charade as some sort of moral necessity for the American people. It's not the next SS or Medicare, but it is a new form of corporate feudalism.

[SandWalker1984]

8. MANDATES to buy a private, corporate product is NOT health care reform!

The Senate version of the health care bill is NOT health care reform! It is another big pork giveaway to corporations.

If left up to the Republicans, we would be forced to buy
corporate medical insurance IF we can afford it or, as Grayson put it, die if we cannot.

The Democrats in Congress (and White House) serve the SAME health care corporations/campaign contributors as the Republicans.

However, there is a difference -- the Republicans would coerce us into buying corporate medical "care" by necessity, the Democrats want to mandate we buy it by force of LAW with the threat of expensive FINES or imprisonment. They even plan to use the IRS to enforce the fines.

Democrats are pushing for a forcible mandate for everyone to buy insurance from an artificial, monopoly market place with no options OTHER than corporate insurance. Plus, when the system goes bust from the overhead, and can no longer provide coverage because of unconstrained corporate greed (think 38% increases in premiums) -- people will (a)go broke trying to pay for mandated insurance premiums, (b)get FINED or possibly go to jail for failure to pay fines or (c)DIE.

It is a cruel hoax and ultimately meaningless choice. It is like giving a condemned person a choice of the method of their execution.

One thing is certain. If the Democrats persist in this
it spells the END of the Democratic party (thank you, DLC). They will be wiped out in the next 2 elections and there will be nothing left of the Democrats. YOU must tell them that.

The only thing that can stop the corporate mandates is if THEY finally understand that they are no longer fooling YOU, the VOTERS.


These "chains" aren't what we can believe in, nor should we.

[Amonester]

29. I heard health care is 'free' for life...

...in prison.

With the un-patriot act 1-year extension signed by obama yesterday, maybe that's the only real 'public option' now...

[SlingBlade]

9. So the Democrats have slipped into Delusions now huh.

To compare this corporate monstrosity to Social Security and Medicare
is a slap in the face of every REAL Democrat that has ever lived.

And yea, It'll hurt, It'll hurt real bad come election time when all of those
democrats who expected Change instead of Chains will unexpectedly be absent
from voting booths all over the nation.

[icee]

21. Put very well, SlingBlade. I agree. Without a public option, a passage

of HCR will be a disaster. The Repubs will figure some way to overturn it in 2012.

[IsItJustMe]

10. Even if the Dems pass a health care bill, everyone pretty well knows by now it will be a give away

to insurance companies and not do any real good for the American people. That Corporate money talks, as we have seen in the last health care go around. It' sad, but most diserning people can tell who will really benefit from what ever bill they come up with, and it isn't us the people.

[marshall]

18. Those insurance thugs want what they have bought and paid for!

Nancy knows this--and she knows there isn't a hole deep enough to hide in to escape that cartel.

[bjjblackbelt]

11. She is as corrupt as they come!

Of course, according to Pelosi, single payer, public option, watered down public option and transparency are and need to be OFF THE TABLE!

[craigmatic]

14. She's right. I wonder if she has the votes

[EFerrari]

17. She's reading as script as far as I can tell.

They take turns saying what we want to hear.

This is the same person that told the press she wished Code Pink could be arrested for being out on the sidewalk in front of her house just as homeless people are arrested in San Francisco.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me a brazillion times, I won't be fooled again.

[scottsoperson]

20. americans trust dems more than repubs

to reform health care.

[EFerrari]

27. That's not a very high standard, is it?

Welcome to DU.

[Raine]

22. She makes me want to puke

with disgust! :puke: :mad:

[scottsoperson]

23. vert cute

and irrelevant.

[Raine]

28. We'll see just how "irrelevant"

my opinion and others is the day after the next election.

[dflprincess]

24. Even if it hurts who, Nancy?

I doubt that you're thinking about members of Congress when you say that.

[scottsoperson]

25. dems are pushing obamacare

even though it might cost them their jobs.

[grahamhgreen]

26. MEDICARE FOR ALL, not mandatory crapsurance with no public plan.

[scottsoperson]

30. medicare for all won't pass

the cries of socialized medicine would become deafening.

[grahamhgreen]

31. They already are deafening. Medicare for All is what the people want. We only need to expand it. nt