Obama faces rare defeat on health help for jobless

[The Northerner]

WASHINGTON – If Chuck Lacasse had gotten his pink slip four days earlier, Uncle Sam would have covered most of his family's health insurance while he looked for a new job.

But Congress allowed emergency health care assistance for unemployed workers to expire on May 31, and seems unwilling to renew it despite pleas from President Barack Obama.

Not three months after lawmakers passed his $1 trillion insurance overhaul, Obama is facing a rare defeat on health care at the hands of his own divided Democrats. Moderates have rebelled against adding billions more to the deficit in a treacherous election year.

"The same Congress that spent all this political capital trying to get people health insurance is going to take a crucial benefit away from unemployed people," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the unemployed.

On June 4, Lacasse lost his job as advertising director for a company that makes nutritional supplements. He'll soon have to pay the entire $1,500 monthly premium to keep his family covered under his former employer's health insurance plan.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100612/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_unemployed

[BeyondGeography]

1. This is the kind of bullshit that ends in economic Depression

Hoovernomics revisited; stupid as all hell.

:thumbsdown:

[OHdem10]

2. Bernanke told Congress--this is not the time for cutting spending

and raising taxes. The Recovery is not far enough along.

[xchrom]

3. congress is offering threats to AIDS funding as well.

'deficit mania' ahead of the election cycle, donchya know?

[HughMoran]

4. I hate election year politics

...especially in the next election after the Presidency changes parties. Our system has some major defects in it.

[OHdem10]

5. Please do not call them Moderates. They are conservative Democrats/

[nashville_brook]

6. conservadems strike again. and why shouldn't they? Rahm's got their back.