Bob Dole, health: GOP 'open for business'

Good for you, Bob Dole.

Someone needs to scold these childish republicans, cuz they certainly don't want to play nice with anyone. We can't go backwards anymore and the reactionary do-nothing gimmick is getting real old fast.

Health reform is absolutely necessary, to pull the country out of this recession and to be able to meet challenges of the future.

Mind you, there's no reform without a public option. There certainly should not be mandatory health insurance until we can break the monopolies of the insurance companies - which means the public option or universal healthcare.

I guess Bob Dole is familar with the internet. Here is much better plan than those presented by the dems. It won't bust the bank for future generations

http://www.gop.gov/solutions/healthcare

Bob:

You had a chance in 1993...it was shot down like Republicans are trying to do now...you can't have health care if you are not rich! What don't you understand about that?

Holy Cow did I read that right? Good for you Bob Dole, too bad none of your old followers listen to you anymore. Maybe Dole should start a talk show on Fox then maybe, just maybe the wingnuts will listen. But until then, they'll just 'Swift Boat' him on this issue!

You mean there are actual sane Republicans out there? Well knock me over with a feather!

Hats off to Dole.

I never cared for him, and always voted against him, but now he seems to be a better spokesman for reform than the Dems.

He seems to understand the historical imperative facing us, and the catastrophe awaiting us if we do nothing.

"If not us, who?; If not now, when?"

America has become like a gigantic ship without power or direction in the middle of the ocean. Since it's so big, it will survive for a while, but eventually the sea will have it's way.

Act now.

What the Hey! Be careful what you ask. If they do get on board of this Health Reform train, watch so they do not have bombs in their shoes and are there to de-rail the train. The health insurance companies are in the process of gleaning from their rolls, the sick, the obese, the elderly, the ones with pre-existing conditions. They only want to insure the healthy, and let the government take care of the sick, the obese, the folks with pre-existing conditions, and the elderly who are about to get sickly. That way they can break the government system and say national health care doesn't work. THE ONLY WAY IS TO HAVE A SINGLE PAYER PLAN AND PUT THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES OUT OF BUSINESS, WHICH IS ONLY A RACKET, RUN BY RACKETEERS! Remember the Republicans never do anything for this country they only do things to this country! whiteagle38

Well, I guess he doesn't wear that Purple Heart on his lapel for nothing.

With full apologies due to my fellow Democrats in deep red states, I must nevertheless admit that I really love the idea of an opt-out public option.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/dems-discussing-public-op_n_313054.html

Not because it's the best idea by any means. A robust single-payer plan would be the best idea. Not because tens of thousands of real Americans won't die and go bankrupt in states with morally bankrupt legislators. They will.

But it would do wonders to completely reframe the entire debate over the public option and healthcare in general by allowing, at long last, those states with Randian ideological pedigrees to truly "go Galt", in a head to head test of ideologies to see who comes out ahead and why. If we play our cards right, it might just be the ticket to Democratic victories in the South. And it might be, over the long run, the best avenue toward real, affordable universal coverage for everyone.

Allowing GOP states to opt out of a public option creates all the following benefits:

* It forces GOP legislators to put up or shut up, leaving them in a very uncomfortable position. As it stands, GOP legislators have gotten away with the worst sort of cowardice and hypocrisy on economic issues by voting against stimulus funds, loading them up with local district pork and then demanding the money that they themselves voted down. The nature of a stimulus package allows them to do that, even as their voters aren't paying enough attention to really notice.
But the pressure on GOP legislators from their base (to say nothing of the insurance industry) to refuse a public option will be immense. They won't be able to skate around it. GOP legislators will actually have to take a vote to watch healthcare costs go down for the rest of the country even as they skyrocket in their own states, or prove that their intransigence was all hot air all along. Rather than leave Democrats in a bind, opt-out legislation put Republicans in the hot seat.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/06/texas-stimulus-nasa/

* It leaves the rest of us with a strong public option, even after it's watered down. As it stands now, we know the public option will be weakened somehow. The chances of a firm, robust national public option coming out of this legislative mess are slim to none. Of all the possible ways to weaken the bill, an opt-out clause is by far the best.
Why? Because the population and economic power of Democratic-controlled states simply dwarfs and overwhelms that of Republican-controlled states. State-based public options won't have the purchasing power to compete with national insurers. But a public option operating in California, Illinois, New York, Michigan, Florida and elsewhere? You bet it will. And once those savings become obvious, the pressure for redder states to fall into line and adopt it will be enormous, at a cost not only to insurance companies but to the very foundations of Republican ideology in red states as a whole.

* It hampers the ability of Republicans to lie about healthcare issues. Suppose for a moment that I'm a Republican governor of a state that has no public option, and strong tort reform laws. And yet my state's healthcare costs are going up 20% every year. Now suppose a neighboring Democratic state with higher malpractice awards but healthy participation in a national public option has seen its medical costs decrease. That's pretty cut and dry, and a hard straitjacket to wiggle out of.
On the other hand, if we impose a public option universally, Republican legislators will be able to blame every one of their own healthcare problems on government interference--and they'll get away with it.

* Businesses will have an incentive to move to blue states. The right-wing and its allies in the media constantly remind us of the business advantages for operating in "right-to-work" states and those with more corporate-friendly policies.
Well, with an opt-out system, businesses that can hire a talented, educated workforce without the necessity of paying health insurance costs will jump at the opportunity to do so, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of economic advantages for those that choose the public option over those that do not. The consequences of failure to adopt a public option will be visible almost immediately upon its availability in other states.

Rarely do the Left and the Right have a head-to-head opportunity to prove out, in real time, the relative superiority of their respective value systems and legislative choices, with real and immediate consequences not only for the partisan legislators involved, but for the legitimacy of a Party's entire ideological underpinnings.

An opt-out system will allow Republicans to use their own psychotic, sociopathic momentum to carry them to their doom. With apologies to the long-suffering citizens of those states who may have to wait a few more years for needed help on healthcare, I say let each state do as it pleases, and let the chips fall where they may.

And within a decade, the writing on the wall will be so clear even in Alabama and Mississippi that not only will we have a national public plan, but we might even see some deep South red states turn blue as a result.

As usual with the DNC Swamp, the article leaves out several crucial facts in its rush to help ObamaCare.

"The casual observer might wonder exactly what Bob Dole and Tom Daschle have been doing lately to earn a living. The answer, as most people in DC know, is that they have been paid lobbyists at the firm of Alston + Bird. Alston + Bird, of course, is deeply involved in lobbying on behalf of the health care industry. Thus, whether the clients Daschle and Dole are paid to lobby on behalf of are actually supporters of Obamacare is irrelevant, as they stand to benefit from Dole and Daschle ingratiating themselves to the Administration and powerful Democrat members of Congress by engaging on this crusade.

Put more simply, the real story here is that powerful paid lobbyists are doing the job for which they are well-paid to do. And it’s dishonest for the news media to paint Dole and Daschle as disinterested observers or party statesmen here without disclosing their obvious financial self-interest in increasing their own influence in the healthcare debate." (NRO)

Hey, Jimmy Olsen, that's yesterday's news !! Shall bring up some more of yesterday's news, like the Boondoggle in Baghdad, or "Mission Accomplished", or how about "Those Weasels on Wall Street" !!
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