Health care: Months failing, day winning: The Swamp
The Swamp
Chicago Tribune

VP Joe Biden: This is 'how the process works... The process is in train.'

Posted September 17, 2009 2:10 PM
The Swamp

by Mark Silva

Vice President Joe Biden found a way to paraphrase Mark Twain and George Mitchell within virtually the same breath today, all while passing through Iraq.

For all the disarray characterizing the health-care debate today -- with neither Republicans nor Democrats happy about the newest incarnation of legislation that Sen. Max Baucus has rolled out, sans "public option,'' and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring that the bill that passes the House will contain a public option -- the vice president suggested that his decades in the Senate had taught him patience.

"I have not given up on the prospect '' for a bill, Biden told CNN Pentagon correspondent Chris Lawrence, who interviewed the vice president about several issues during his surprise trip to Iraq.

"I was a United States senator for 36 years,'' Biden said. "I got there when I was 29 years old. We have never been in a place where every major committee having jurisdiction over health care or any aspect of health care has either passed a bill out of their committee or laid down a bill. I think that this is one of those cases where the reports of the demise of a health care compromise are premature.

"It's like George Mitchell's famous phrase about his negotiations of Ireland,'' Biden said. "He said there was 700 days of failure followed by one day of success.''

(The retired senator from Maine described those negotiations for peace in Ireland as "700 days of failure and one day of success" in his speech accepting a position as the Obama administration's Middle East liaison in January.)

"That's how the process works,'' Biden said. "The process is in train.

"I am confident, before the end of the year, we will get a health care bill that enhances the security of those who have it and also provide access for those who don't have it. And how we get there, what Republicans are along remains to be seen... Whether Republicans come along or not remains to be seen, but we will get a health care bill.''

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Comments

44,230 more people are losing health coverage each week.


> 191,670 more people are losing health coverage each month.


> 2.3 million more people are losing health coverage each year


Republicans know that a successful health care reform that achieves universal coverage will bury them electorally for a generation, that's what has them Foaming at the Mouth (see the nutjob above), they could care less if people die because they can't afford healthcare.


Health Insurers and their Lobbyists and Big Pharma know that a powerful public option and a Medicare bargaining for prices will kick them off the gravy train permanently. Republicans and Big Insurance Company propagandists know their scare tactics aren't nearly as scary as reality is for the large majority of Americans.



We all remember the commercials that were made by Republicans and their pals at the Big Insurance Industry to trick Americans into thinking that health care reform would hurt average working families. We now see what has happened to the health-care system. CEOs rake in the big bucks from the huge profits they take in as health-insurance costs have skyrocketed.


FierceHealthcare reports the following top 10 CEO salaries for 2008:
------------------------------------------------------
* Ron Williams - Aetna - Total Compensation: $24,300,112.
* H. Edward Hanway - CIGNA - Total Compensation: $12,236,740.
* Angela Braly - WellPoint - Total Compensation: $9,844,212.
* Dale Wolf - Coventry Health Care - Total Compensation: $9,047,469.
* Michael Neidorff - Centene - Total Compensation: $8,774,483.
* James Carlson - AMERIGROUP - Total Compensation: $5,292,546.
* Michael McCallister - Humana - Total Compensation: $4,764,309.
* Jay Gellert - Health Net - Total Compensation: $4,425,355.
* Richard Barasch - Universal American - Total Compensation: $3,503,702.
* Stephen Hemsley - UnitedHealth Group - Total Compensation: $3,241,042.


My rates go up and coverage goes down every time I turn around. And then they just decide not to cover certain medications without an explanation. Even scumbag criminals are resurfacing, like Big Healthcare Insurance Lobbyists like Rick Scott, to try and con America for a second time.
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http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/dont-let-third-way-ben-nelsons-or-repub
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Americans Can't Trust Republicans With Medicare


You want a simple message to counter dishonest Republican fear mongering on healthcare? How's this, Republicans want to do away with Medicare. They've always wanted to take it away, and if they get half a chance in the future they'll get rid of it then. It's not hard to find examples of them saying so in their own words since Medicare started.


Saint Ronny Raygun in the 60s: "if you don’t [stop Medicare] ... you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free."


Republican Bob Dole openly bragged in 1996 that he was one of 12 House members who voted against creating Medicare. "I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare ..."
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http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/07/29/medicare-44/


GOPer nutjob/ "guru" Newt Gingrich said of Medicare, "We don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that's politically smart, we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition, but we believe it's going to wither on the vine." He then went on to propose cutting Medicare by 14% and forcing millions of senior citizens to seek out private HMOs or go without, all to help make sure Medicare would 'wither on the vine.' And it continues right into present day.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/16/us/gop-s-plan-to-cut-medicare-faces-a-veto-clinton-promises.html?sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all


Roy Blunt: "You could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace."
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http://www.firedupmissouri.com/content/radical-roy-blunt-it-would-have-been-best-if-medicare-and-medicaid-never-existed


Former Republican House Majority Leader the Dick Armey reaffirmed this week on MtP that he thinks Medicare is "tryanny" and if that's not worrisome enough, he wants to "phase out" social security too.


Republicans want to do away with Medicare because they're against government healthcare, always have been, always will be. That's a core plank in GOP ideology, they hold it as dear and precious as some holy theology. Just yesterday, when asked about government healthcare, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said the "government is a predator, not a competitor" and went on to note he wouldn't vote for any healthcare reform bill as a matter of conservative principle, even if it has everything he wants in it. So when a Republican talks about "reform," says we must "get the government out of healthcare," pitches convoluted tax schemes and private accounts for the affluent, or spits out terms like "socialized medicine," like a dog whistle they all mean the same thing: getting rid of Medicare.
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/2009/08/sen-grassley-on-health-care-the-government-is-a-predator.php?ref=fpblg


Forget about grandma being unplugged, grandma won't be able to afford being seen, much less be able to pay for hospital admission. Grandma is on her own. All so that conservative zillionaires and their Republican congressional lackeys can save an extra 0.0145 of their gross, bloated paycheck, the same flat rate we all invest to keep millions of senior citizens alive and healthy today.



Republican Congressman who oppose universal health insurance should immediately relinquish their tax payer funded federal health insurance. After all, these members of Congress have long enjoyed taxpayer-subsidized health insurance, a privilege that they apparently believe tens of millions of working, uninsured Americans and their families don't deserve.


If Republicans don't think being uninsured is a big deal, then they should go right ahead and try it out. And if they really believe a public plan is such a bad option, maybe they can persuade their parents to give up Medicare too.



JON STEWART DESTROYS GLENN BECK'S "HEALTHCARE FOR THE RICH, SCREW EVERYONE ELSE" RIGHT-WING TALKING POINTS ON HEALTHCARE.
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http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation
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The Big Health Insurance Lobby-Republican Puppets, who are using aggressive, foaming at the mouth tactics to shut down the possibility of a political discussion on healthcare in this country are reminiscent of the anti-desegregation movement, a point that becomes noteworthy when you aggregate the motives of the Wingnut "birthers", who loudly deny Obama's citizenship, the Wingnut "teabaggers", who loudly declare that the same taxes they paid under Bush are tyrannical under Obama, the Wingnut "deathers", who loudly assert that healthcare reform is secret plot to euthanize seniors and others that the government deems unproductive.


None of these positions makes a damn bit of sense or has any evidence to back it up, but in large part it is the same group of hard-right nutjobs, almost entirely white conservatives that believes all three at once. If you believe the Repug shouters themselves, in their own words, the healthcare debate isn't about healthcare but about a conspiratorial government and the end of the Republic.


This is, by definition, a far-right position, and less charitably a batsh*t insane one, and that it has managed to make it so far and be featured so prominently is testament to just how completely the farthest of the far right has captured the Republican party and why they can't win elections anymore.


These people are pathetic excuses for human beings - Right-Wing Lunatic Fringe 'Protesters" In Action.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K21_teAW0Zg
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What a bunch of junk. The first four are cut and pastes that have already been pasted on other threads, but usually using other handles.

Jon Stewart noted, when he went after the majors for not reporting on ACORN, that he is a "pretend journalist". If Jon Stewart is your source for news, you are sadly ill informed.

Then, the last guy pulls out the race card and tells us anyone who who opposes the proposed health care reform is "reminiscent of the anti-desegregation movement". Doesn't this fool know that LBJ allied with Republicans to get his civil rights legislation through?

It appears that there is a hard core who are eager to paste their flotsam and jetsam on any thread which comes near. But, none of these six think clearly enough to have written this flotsam and jetsam, They are merely stealing from someone else and believing they are not shipwrecked on the reef.

Rick


If Jon Stewart is your source for news, you are sadly ill informed.
Posted by: Rick Caird | September 17, 2009 5:14 PM
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Hey Ricky,
What's wrong, can't you refute what Jon Stewart said?


That's what happens when your only source of "news" is the daily dose of stupid you get from Druggy Rush and Crazy Glenn Beckkk etc all the time.



Just say "No" to Obamacare, and tell the government to keep its laws off your body.


$9,000,000,000,000 reasons why this should not be passed. It will add to the deficit, no matter what BO tells you.

Name a gov;t social program that meets the customers needs and comes in under its original budget. Just one. Step up to the plate libs.


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