What We Got

A description here.

On top of that, the always-valuable chance to say "suck it" to Republicans and their death panel nonsense. It's not anything real, but I'd be remiss in leaving it off the list.

Digby on why everybody's still pissed:

It's fairly obvious that the administration and the Democrats always saw the public option as a negotiating chip and fully expected to throw it in at the end. There's a reason why Obama hedged on it for the last six months. In fact,it seems likely to me that Reid put it back on life support just so they could ritually sacrifice it. (He knew he didn't have 60 and needed something to "compromise" with.)

So, they knew going in that they were going to use the old "if liberals hate it it must be good" marketing ploy, both to get the Senate princes on board as well as sell it to Real American Independents (the new "values voters.") What they didn't expect was that the wider public would actually like the damned thing, which made that play a lot more risky. And if public opinion doesn't come back up pretty quickly now, that's a risk that may not have paid off.

Emphasis mine, somewhat related to what I wrote about last night, which is that the political conversation is so profoundly fucked that we don't expect the DFH's to be right when they provide ample polling data that suggests OMG PSYCHO LIBERAL positions like "everyone should be able to get to the doctor without getting taken up the tradesman's entrance by some jackass in 'accounts receivable' every time" are actually popular. If you put single payer out there tomorrow you'd have a solid majority in favor and you'd have every pundit and halfbright mummy's boy with an Ivy League degree opining that the 10 percent screaming with teabags are really the sensible ones in America.

A.

Comments

[pansypoo]

we need better democrats. no more campaign BRIBES.

[MapleStreet]

Hardly original to me - the present bills aren't healthcare reform. Rather they are simply reform of who is gonna pay what for healthcare.

With that in mind, simply making sure folks have financial access to healthcare is already a big improvment. As such, the public option / Medicare for Everybody is a big step forward to improving the financial means for access.

Dropping it, takes away a lot of what could have been done.

[Interrobang]

Here in Soviet Canuckistan, about five crazy percent of our population hates our healthcare system and wants to get rid of it and replace it with a non-system like you guys have. Our government is solidly on board with that idea, and the only reason they don't even broach the subject is they know there'd be riots and the opposition parties would call non-confidence on them so fast their heads wouldn't even wobble on their lack of necks. And then they'd be out of jobs, and unable to keep looting the public treasury. Sometimes sacred cows are useful.

[hoppy]

What better proof will we ever get that the federal government is there solely to grease the skids for the super wealthy to acquire further wealth. Just think of how many of those parasites became rich or are becoming rich off of health care. Do you imagine that the shortage of general practitioners among new doctors is for any reason other than the super high fees that medical specialists can collect? And, I have a close relative who has just purchased a 5th house, this one costing almost a million bucks, with all of that paid for by commissions from selling health insurance.