cut added after i realized how really long this was. sorry flist

[somedaybitch]

President admits he's not fully familiar with all the contents of the Health Care bill

President Obama may not care to study how many people will lose their current health insurance if his plan becomes law, but like most Americans, we do. That is why we partnered with the Lewin Group to study how many Americans would be forced into the government “option” under the House health plan. Here is what we found:

* Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and, as a consequence, about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage.

* About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

* Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately-insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.

and then there's this fun tidbit for the GLBT community:

The Senate health bill gives the Health and Human Services secretary the authority to develop standards of measuring gender — as opposed to using the traditional “male” and “female” categories — in a database of all who apply or participate in government-run or government-supported health care plans.

wtf? seriously, wtf?


and then there's the final bit - a link in the above back to a HuffPo piece - that sent me through the roof:

While he refused to insist that lawmakers stay in Washington during the August recess, he declared definitively that, "the time for talk is through."

"Now is the time for us to go ahead and act," Obama declared. "We are working as hard as we can and I have told Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that it is critical that we have seen serious forward motion before people leave [in August]."

i'm sorry, but no. the time for talk IS NOT through. the President admits on a conference call that he, himself is not familiar with every.single.aspect.of.HIS.DREAM.BILL. but just push it through and support it people because he said so??????

yeahhhhhhhhhh, tell the truth there, buddy. you know you're losing momentum and support, so you're trying to force something through for your own political gain. yeah, that's hope and change.

which would be fine, relatively speaking, if you hadn't campaigned on a platform for hope, change, trust and TOTAL TRANSPARENCY with the American people.

so, yeah, sorry but no. maybe Congress and the President don't recall how this nation, the one they electively represent, was founded; it was founded by talk. lots and lots of talk. and by bills and measure that were a page or two or three long, not thousands.

any member of Congress that passes ANY legislation WHATSOEVER without having read, and understood, EVERY.SINGLE.PAGE. is guilty of fraud and malfeasance because you cannot vote, as my representative, on a bill that you have not read. doing so is, for all intents and purposes, voting on a tagline.

sure, universal health care as a concept is a great idea. that's not, however, what elected officials ARE PAID to do...vote on concepts. they're PAID by the citizens of this nation to do their bloody job, which includes, crazy, i know, actually fully and completely understanding what they vote on. that, wacky logic, includes knowing every aspect of a bill, the ramifications of every aspect of a bill...oh, and that other tiny detail, how exactly it gets paid for....in the real world, not the fake world.


this isn't solely philosophical opposition from me, btw.

i speak as someone who does not, and has not for several years, had employer health care. i speak as someone who has an elderly mother with a lifetime of illnesses that make her life deeply painful on a daily basis. i speak as someone who has an adult brother who is now brain damaged after having been electrocuted so severely at work that his heart actually stopped. i speak as someone who has watched him struggle NOW, CURRENTLY, TODAY, to get the requisite tests and care and medications and support that he needs simply to function at a basic level.

this bill is an utter and complete travesty. the President and Majority in Congress want me to believe them and trust them about their intentions and abilities regarding health care? fine.

fix Social Security FIRST.

fix Medicare FIRST.

show me, PROVE TO ME that you can do what you say on something that already exists in the hands of the government, and then, MAYBE, you'll have the clout and moral high ground to discuss government-run health care.

because i'm sorry, but right now? your plan is literally suicide and murder. and i don't hold to that.

all emphasis herein mine

Comments

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I'm not sure how you can reasonably expect the president to be familiar with each and every nook and cranny of the bill when it's still a work in progres.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

yeah, actually, i can. because otherwise, he's trying to force through legislation that he doesn't know the contents of.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

But doesn't congress create legislation? He can push it, but ultimately, he can only sign or not sign what he gets. And until the bill gets written, it's a bit silly to expect him to psychically be familiar w/ a bill that hasn't yet been hashed out.

He's pushing health care, he's pushing legislation, but in the end, it's up to congress to put it together - hopefully for him, in line with as much of what he wants as they reasonably can.

Until then... it's one thing to protest what he's asking for, and to protest what he's being given, but to expect him to see the future? That sort of demand only makes like you want him to fail regardless of what he's asking for since it's so outrageously unreasonable.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

we'll have to agree to disagree then, because he's essentially campaigning for something and telling people that it's right...when he doesn't know that yet and he doesn't know it for sure because there is no final version.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

He's campaigning for health care reform, and telling people that the targets/goals he's pushing for are right. At no point have I heard of him promising that the bill congress might end up handing him is guaranteed to contain everything he wants. To say that he is strikes me as... disingenuous or willful misinterpretation of what he's campaigning for. He hasn't promised to sign absolutely anything Congress sends him. He can only push for what he believes health care reform needs to include and push for congress to include it.

I'm not sure how, in your interpretation, he's supposed to campaign for a useful health care bill. Keep his mouth shut entirely, keep his lobbying 100% behind the scenes until congress hands him a bill? I'm seriously at a loss to imagine how he might do that without campaigning for the health care reform concepts he's pushing to be included, and working as hard as he can to make sure they are. We're talking about bills that are over 1000 pages, often, and have plenty of nooks and crannies added and subtracted until the very last second in order to wrangle votes.

He knows what he wants. He's lobbying for it, and to be frank - I'm not sure what I think of the health care bill for a number of reasons, including the fact that it hasn't settled into its final - and inevitably compromise based - form. And if all you're looking to do is preach to the converted with this post, that's cool. I do posts like that sometimes too.

But as someone who may be leaning toward supporting his healthcare reform but is reserving judgement until I see what Congress manages to create based on his suggestions... every time I see anti-Obama-health-care articles/posts/pundits that include ridiculous demands - like the idea that he must somehow magically and instantly and constantly know every nook of what congress is creating as a response to his requests.... a response that of course he reserves the right to sign or not if it doesn't live up to the plan and concepts he's been selling...

It makes me suspicious of the post as a whole, regardless of how fact based the rest of the complaints might be, because the inclusion of ridiculous complaints along with the rational ones indicates the possibility that the author's predisposed to just tear down whatever Obama comes up with, if the bar for satisfying the author is literally, physically impossible.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

No problem agreeing to disagree, and while I can see while my words could offend, that wasn't my intent. FWIW.

All I meant to do was point out that I've got no problem w/ anti-big-government ideology (whether or not I agree), or with substantive critique of the health care reform he's trying to push - or even of whether or not it's necessary. With all of them, I'm eager to hear the arguments on both sides. But when they drift into criticizing his style (a style that, frankly, I'm pretty sure I've heard plenty of presidents use on a variety of topics that I agree, disagree and/or am bored by) it kind of reads like no matter what health care reform Obama's pushing or how he's pushing it, the critic is going to cherry pick details that support their POV and ignore details that negate it.

I'm not saying that's what you're doing, was just trying to point out that the rest of your possibly quite legit (and possibly capable of swaying me) get lost in the noise when I see what looks - on the surface - like an impossible demand. If (regardless of whether you think "big government" is a good idea, and regardless of whether he's right headed or wrong headed about his healthcare ideas) you take on faith that he's just trying to do what he thinks is best for this country (which I think most reasonable would agree on, even if they think "what he thinks is best" is going to take us straight into the crapper) - and you look at how health care bills have been shot down in the past....

He's got a real, reasonable concern that those arguing "delay" are really just trying to kill healthcare reform. I've got no problem reading crit of what he's trying to do. I just have a hard time understanding how trying to push through what he thinks this country needs (in response to a real concern that there are people trying to delay-in-an-attempt-to-kill)... has anything to do with whether he's right about what this country needs.

Totally not asking to debate that because I'm not sure if he's right. But jumping all over him for zealously pushing his fix (with language that doesn't read to me as any different from any other president's rhetoric about their pet projects) and pointing to politically motivated (and motivating) hyperbole as proof of his wrongness... IDK, makes me less likely to give much weight to other "proof of wrongness" I might read in the same post.

Which... I get that convincing me wasn't what you were going for. I like having you on my friends list for a number of reasons, including the fact that we differ on a number of political topics and I like reading reasoned defenses of all sides of the issues I care about. I just... every time I see something like this in what looks like anotherwise reasonable post, it pings to me a lot like the "This can be his waterloo, kill this and we can break him" quotes from some republicans.

And quotes like that... make it look like the crit is more about tearing down Obama, full stop, and not about whether or not his plan might actually help the country more than hurt it. Not saying you're looking to rip Obama a new one no matter what he does... just giving you a heads up that - to someone who skews moderate to liberal but is by no means a koolaid drinker and likes to take each topic as it comes - that inclusion undermines the rest of your argument, or at least makes it appear more politically than substantively motivated, on the surface. For me. And that's totally cool! We can agree to disagree.

*hugs* I'm actually just trying to offer a (totally unsolicited, and quite possibly unwanted) tip that might make your argument more persuasive, regardless of whether or not I agree with that argument. I meant no offence to you or your beliefs.

apologies for the edit. hit submit instead of preview.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

we don't know each other; so i could choose to be offended or i could allow that someone could - though i wouldn't necessarily myself - interpret what i wrote as you have done. fair enough.

having said that, i have no wish to argue or debate you, or anyone, honestly. my post was my reaction to what i read, but it's fair to give you some context.

philosophically, i think government should be as small as is absolutely, humanly possible. there is a reason why local governments have sovereignty, and there is a reason why the individual states have sovereignty, and why the federal government doing something like sending in national guard troops - even on missions of mercy - without a state's explicit permission is an actual act of war.

the federal government, and i don't care what party is in power, should be in charge of as little as is humanly possible. people, even ones with the best of intentions, are flawed and biased and selfish and often stupid - myself included - and governments are made up of people.

and having said that, let me reply to you thus:

conceptually, what you're saying re the President is completely fair....it's perfectly reasonable for the President to publicly support health care, to articulate that it's important as something he'd like his administration to accomplish. under those auspices, yes, we cannot hold the man accountable for anything other than his statements that he, philosophically, wants to see a government-run health care system in order to ensure that all Americans can have access to proper health care.

this, imho of course, is no longer that case, however. that was when he was running for office, and that was when, the legislation for HR 3200 did not exist.

now we are at a place where, as i quoted above, the President says the following,

" While he refused to insist that lawmakers stay in Washington during the August recess, he declared definitively that, "the time for talk is through."

"Now is the time for us to go ahead and act," Obama declared. "We are working as hard as we can and I have told Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that it is critical that we have seen serious forward motion before people leave [in August]."

now we are at a place where the CBO analysis (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071602242.html?hpid=topnews) is damning.

now we are at a place where Blue Dog Democrats are threatening to bring the bill down in committee if changes aren't made. (http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/blue-dogs-threaten-to-bring-down-pelosis-healthcare-bill-2009-07-15.html)

now we are at a place where influential bloggers like Ann Althouse, who voted for Obama, are very, very unhappy. (http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-arent-democrats-giving-us-chance-to.html)

the President should be responsible for knowing what is currently in print. of course he can't be responsible for what might change, but he absolutely should be responsible for knowing the current contents. that's his job.

Re: apologies for the edit. hit submit instead of preview.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I'll check out all those links, but I guess the short version of my point is this.

Let's pretend McCain won, and he was pushing hard for some legislation that he thought our country desperately needed - (IDK, stripping the remaining financial industry regulations to the bone, whatever, let's just pretend it's the small government answer to a huge problem) and which you agreed we needed.

If he were using the exact same "we've got a time limit, let's get on this shit now, bitches" rhetoric to push it through congress, and showed that he didn't know 100% of the bill in question, would you be 1/10th so worked up over those infractions (assuming for a second that they are infractions)?

And if someone who's a self-professed big government fan wrote a critique of the legislation in question (meaning they're predisposed to dismiss it out of hand) that lead with "And OMG look how he's trying to ram it down congress's throats, and he doesn't even know every bit of it"... would that make you more or less likely to give the rest of their points an open minded read?

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that if you believed in the ideology behind the legislation, you wouldn't be quite so upset at McCain using everything in his bag of tricks to push it through, or if he displayed less than photographic knowledge of the bill in question. And if someone started jumping all over him for that, it might make you wonder whether they're just looking for reasons to shoot down this small-government legislation, thus making you less likely to be inclined to take the rest of their crit seriously.

Like I said, I'll check out the above links, but I've already seen pretty cogent rebuttals of the CBO analysis pointing out what they didn't include - like the fact that letting the Bush tax-cuts-for-the-wealthiest expire could fill a good half of the cost gap in question and a tax increase on the top 1% of earners in this country (who made out like absolute bandits over the last 15 years, between the booming economy of the nineties and the bush tax cuts) could cover the rest. And I've seen plenty of other influential bloggers who are very supportive of the plan.

I get the fear of Obama being a tax-and-spend liberal. I do. But I also wonder where all the pearl clutching about spending money we don't have was when Bush was turning a surplus into a deficit with a war of choice and tax cuts for the wealthy that we couldn't afford and may not have resulted in our current recession, but at least preceeded it. *shrug* Every time I see a crit of Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal, part of me thinks, "Better than a spend-yourself-into-a-hole and let the next guy worry about paying for it conservative."

All your crit may be right, regardless of your self-confessed-anti-big-government motivations. I just have a really hard time believing you'd care 1/10th as much about the sins of political hyperbole and less-than-perfect knowledge of legislation if they were performed by, say, McCain backing something you believed in. Which makes it hard for me, as a moderate but swayable liberal, to take those sins into account when evaluating Obama's push to reform this utterly cocked up health care system we're currently stuck with.

That, and I'm still waiting to hear the republican *solution* to our health care problem (as opposed to nonstop criticism of Obama's solution, or a denial that we've got a problem.).

[kerlin.livejournal.com]

*high fives you*

Ugh, I say to the whole thing. UGH.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

:::clings:::

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

Your welcome. :::clings:::