I cannot in good faith trust the president or the senate leaders to act on the public option.

[freddie mertz]

Here is one reason why:

President Obama, July 17, 2009:
Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.

President Obama, August 15, 2009:
All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else.

http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/002055/

We have been let down too many times.

I will believe only when I see it done, signed, and instituted under law.

[Donnachaidh]

1. +100000 k&r. n/t

[tridim]

2. I'll save a nice fat crow for you.

[freddie mertz]

4. I'd be delighted to eat it, if I am wrong.

And I truly hope that I AM wrong.

But it would be silly to get our hopes up, over this.

[tridim]

10. It's not silly to get our hopes up, it's necessary.

WE need to make sure it happens. Call everyone.

Don't just freaking pout and give up. What's the point of that?

[tavalon]

26. I'll be happy to help you with that crow

I'm doubting we'll be picking crow feathers out of our teeth, but man, if we are, that crow meat will taste mighty fine.

[villager]

6. Crows? The trickster figures, you mean?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EKrTreEpzbM/SHdNSnc79_I/AAAAAAAAA-c/brw4HNTShL4/s400/fox+and+crow+comp.jpg

[Marr]

7. You do that.

I'll save one for you.

[freddie mertz]

39. Looks like you will have to eat at least one half of that bird.

Prez's plan released today includes no PO.

Told you so.

[Greyhound]

40. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone of the skeptical that wouldn't just love to be wrong.

Unfortunately, I don't think the crow will be served on this side of the table.

C'mon Obama, prove us wrong, please.

[freddie mertz]

3. I would NOT be surprised, on the other hand...

If we start hearing the "left and right" being played against each other in rhetoric like we heard on August 15.

Bipartisanship, you know...

[Marr]

12. I think this political "chess player" is highly overrated.

Look at the embarrassing position these frauds have landed themselves in.

They went out of their way to leave no fingerprints on their blatantly corporate approach to healthcare. Everything was "compromised" away, even when they didn't have to compromise. "Oh, those right-wingers", they say, "we've gotta compromise and be bipartisan, y'know!".

Now they've got to lay their cards on the table, and it's going to be the corporate hand-out load of shit they really wanted all along. Far from wiping their fingerprints off it, now they've got to carry it around, kiss it, hug it, and tell you it's beautiful.

[lwcon]

5. While you're at it, don't trust "the public option"

It's just a catch phrase for an incredible shrinking policy that, according to Obama, would cover less than 5% of Americans.

[freddie mertz]

9. I take your point and agree with it.

I would and still do support the effort to get even a weak public option in the bill, however, if only to get a public plan into law that can later be expanded.

It's a pitifully compromise, an almost meaningless element as it stands now.

But it keeps the door open, by the tiniest of cracks.

[lwcon]

13. It may close the door

ObamaCare already cost the Dems a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts.

A half-assed plan, which displaces energy for real reform and which may come to symbolize liberal healthcare reform, could do a lot more damage than good.

[freddie mertz]

16. I understand your point here too.

It is all probably "academic" anyway...

I don't think they have any intention of passing it in any form, of course.

[CTyankee]

18. Yes, but only after it got to its "half assed" state. When Obama was running

it was an attractive plan and it continued to be so until our Congress persons, bought and sold by the insurance companies, got into the act. The "bipartisan" crap turned into the farce that it was. And there we have it!

[lwcon]

23. Like the self-described "blank slate" President

It was vague enough that it could sound meaningful and waylay progressive energies like a roach motel, even as the details got worse and worse.

As Glenn Greenwald said, it was "designed to excite and placate progressives (who gave up from the start on a single-payer approach)." Mission accomplished!

[flyarm]

29. AHHH DON'T BLAME IT ALL ON CONGRESS..remember it was Obama who had secret meetings at the WH

with big Pharma and the insurance big boys and the Hospital conglomerates...don't let that little fact escape you..or anyone else.

Obama can try to wipe that little scenerio from your brain cells..but he will never wipe it from mine!

Obama is 100% responsible for making back room secret deals!

At the cost of ..our..Health "CARE".

[bvar22]

30. Now, now.

Obama himself frittered away bits and pieces all along.

Like the no re-importation drug deal with BIG Pharma

Like pulling the Kucinich amendment from the House Bill after it already passed in committee

Like telling Reid to give Lieberman anything he wants

You can TRY to elevate Obama above this disaster, buy you will be working against documented history.

[CTyankee]

32. I'm not downplaying the WH role in this. I just don't understand Obama's doing all that.

I wish I could figure it out...

[557188]

33. IT WAS ALWAYS HALF ASSED

Anything but Single Payer is half assed and a joke.

[CTyankee]

37. Well, I agree with you. The only problem is that you and I and others who feel

as we do are not in the Congress (with a few noble exceptions). So I lament with you, friend. I lament with you...

[laughingliberal]

44. I'm kind of there, too

At this point, any shred of a PO would beat having none. The shred could be expanded. Without it the only expansion would be more entrenchment of private insurance companies. The freepers and teabaggers think they hate 'gubmint' in their lives. Wait til they get a load of these crooks in their lives.

[t0dd]

8. It was always lip service from Obama on the P.O.

When the public option became very popular, that the people that voted for him actually expected him to keep his campaign promises, he tried to backtrack on its significance. His lack of fight for it and the PhRMA deal just clarified to many what a corporate shrill he is underneath all the fancy rhetoric and empty promises of change.

[stray cat]

11. Of course not - why would you trust someone to do something they don't think is a good idea?

[quinnox]

14. I don't think Obama ever cared about public option

He just wants to get something done and that he can sign, whatever that entails doesn't really matter. As long as it says "Health Insurance reform" on it he will sign it.

I think the public option talk now is mainly talk, but hell, if they can still put it in then great.

[muffin1]

15. I'm with you.

I am sick and damned tired of getting let down.

And to some here who will inevitably chime in, I HAVE called and written letters to my representatives...including the Prez. I'm sure they read every word of every letter we've sent, and are giving them their due consideration.
x(

[DJ13]

17. AUGHH!

[CrispyQ]

19. ...

:applause:

[xchrom]

21. +2

[Aramchek]

20. bitter to the last drop

[Bobbie Jo]

22. +100000 !

Sadly.

[dionysus]

24. rofl...

[freddie mertz]

34. Bitter? Maybe so. And with god frakking reason.

We got sold a bill of goods.

We were played.

You may want to cheer it.

It makes me sick,.

If that's bitter, then fine.

I am cool with it.

Beats being a happy little smurf.

[asdjrocky]

42. What a clever way to dismiss facts.

[jody]

25. Why should one ever trust a politician when it's so easy to trust to TRUST results. n/t

[ShortnFiery]

27. AMEN! Thank-you kindly freddie mertz: my sentiments exactly. eom

[freddie mertz]

35. Thank you too, for the kind words of support.

[JDPriestly]

28. I think the revival of interest in the public option has to do with budget concerns.

The recent spate of premium hikes in the health insurance industry is scaring the Senate into their senses.

Imagine what would happen if you have health insurance reform with that insurance exchange -- and no public option. Insurance rates will rise and rise -- and destroy the budget of the government. It would be exactly what we have called it here on DU -- an unlimited bail-out for the insurance companies.

[bvar22]

31. No.

THIS is what revived the lip service to the myth of a Public Option:

* Would you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the choice of a government administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans?

Favor 82%

Oppose 14%

Not Sure 4%
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010010320/poll-shouts-message-massachusetts-voters-were-sending

"When given the choice between a Republican, and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, the voters will choose the Republican every time." ---Harry Truman

QED Massachusetts

They are NOW forced to at least pretend they care.

[laughingliberal]

45. That appears pretty clear! Thanks! nt

[Vinca]

36. I won't believe it until I see it.

Fool me once shame on . . . what was it Shrub said?:rofl:

[freddie mertz]

38. Looks like I was right. No public option in prez's proposal.

Now let's see what the Senate does.

[kenny blankenship]

41. Or indeed ANY health care proposal (from them). All they've done is to pervert the chance for reform

and turn it into a bonanza to the insurance mafia. Insurance companies' obscenely swelling profits in the last year have much to do with the inefficient "farming out" of public insurance programs like SCHIP to the private sector. What Obama and his good friend Max Baucus now have in view with their comprehensive "Health Care Reform" is to raise that swelling to the power of ten with the construction of gigantic above ground pipeline from the Treasury to the insurance companies' coffers.

This is an epoch defining swindle and the utter perversion of our party's New Deal heritage.

[heli]

43. They let the window of opportunity close - on purpose