Medicare for All, Not LieberCare
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Bob FertikWant to meet our members? Click 'Join' above!
Democratic leaders - including President Obama - are telling progressives we must accept LieberCare or give up on healthcare reform for a generation.
They're wrong.
We ended up with LieberCare because Joe Lieberman is the 60th vote to end a 40-vote Republican filibuster.
If there were 39 Republicans, and Lieberman was the 61st vote, he'd be irrelevant. So the real choice for progressives is whether to accept LieberCare or make Lieberman irrelevant.
How do we make Lieberman the 61st "Democrat"? Simply by adding one more Democrat to the Senate in November 2010.
This is hardly impossible. We gained 5 seats in 2006. We gained 8 more seats in 2008, and Arlen Specter switched to join us.
So let's just add one more!
Five Republicans are retiring: Kit Bond (MO), Jim Bunning (KY), Judd Gregg (NH), Mel Martinez (FL), and George Voinovich (OH). If we mobilized voters effectively, Democrats could win all of these states. That would make the rest of the Gang of Four - Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu - irrelevant too!
(Better yet, we could replace Blanche Lincoln in a primary with a better Democrat like Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.)
Eight more Republicans would be beatable if we ran great candidates: Richard Burr (NC), Tom Coburn (OK), Jim DeMint (SC), Charles Grassley (IA), John McCain (AZ), Lisa Murkowsky (AK), John Thune (SD), and David Vitter (LA). If we ran the table, we'd have 73 Democrats!
But even if we won just one seat and made Lieberman irrelevant, progressives could adopt a completely different strategy.
We could tell progressive Senators like Bernie Sanders, Tom Harkin, and Sherrod Brown to start over with the change we really want - Medicare for All. And we could tell them to adopt Joe Lieberman's strategy of refusing to compromise - ever.
So what's the rub?
We have to tell Congressional Democrats to let Lieberman kill healthcare reform for this Congress. They hate that idea because they believe it would alienate Democratic voters and cause a massive defeat like 1994.
But they're wrong. If all Congressional Democrats (except the Senate Gang of Four and the House BlueDogs) ran on a platform of Medicare For All, Democratic voters would be thrilled and would work their hearts out to send even more Democrats to Washington.
There is no law of politics (or physics) that says Democrats can never have more than 60 Senators. We had 61 seats after the 1976 election in the wake of Watergate. We had 76 seats after the 1936 election during the Great Depression. So let's aim for 65 in 2010 - it's entirely within reach.
Why settle for LieberCare when we could have Medicare for All?
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Comments
The current healthcare plan is the worst thing ever!
I'm in total agreement with your idea. The stripped down thing they have now for a healthcare plan is disgusting and unAmerican. I would rather have NO new plans, keep all the problems like they are for right now, and vote for more Democrats in 2010.
Now I understand why I heard Howard Dean announce this on tv yesterday. President Obama has got to veto this bill! He has to do it! If he does anything else it could cost him a re-election. There is NO way that I like a plan that fines people for not buying into these health plans! There is no way I want anyone deciding women's rights to choose issues.
I've been wondering for days why President Obama does not call them on the phone and threaten their jobs himself. Instead, he has chosen this compromising way that is turning the situation into a fiasco by the Far Rights. Obama's way of wining and dining them has not worked has it? President Obama NEEDS to VETO this bill!
This bill will never make it to Obama
This bill will never get accepted, as it is, by the house and the house version of bill will never get accepted by the senate. Therefore Obama will never get the chance to veto it. I too would rather have no bill than anything discussed so far by the senate. Health care reform is all but dead for now. Remember women's right to vote and civil rights took numerous attempts to pass. Health-Care reform will be back, again and again until America wakes up and smells the coffee.
I Love America!....HA! HA! HA!
Yes, the good ol' USA. Where you're either smart enough to screw people over or you're dumb enough to be screwed over and actually enjoy it, i.e. Tea Party hooligans. My Country Just Proved It Sucks! The American People Just Got F****d! By Their Own Greedy Countrymen! Canada and Europe Showed Us Where, They Worked Together And Got National Health Care! But America Can't Be Compassionate And Share! So Guess Who Worships The Bucks!
Bye-Bye Insurance Companies and Obstructionists
It's amazing how this health care bill changes so quickly. I listened to Howard Dean this morning tell us the good and the bad about what is in this bill. So far, glad to see how the change is for the better in many ways. Unhappy there is no public option, no medicare for people over 55, and charging people more for just being older. Also unhappy about the idea the obstructionists are trying to use this health care bill as an anti-abortion vehicle.
My husband and I think the insurance industry should be non-profit all the way around. This insurance industry debate needs to be extended even after this health care bill is passed. The insurance industry sounds corrupt and greedy and needs some regulating or at least change in some way. Howard Dean mentioned an idea of making the insurance industry a utility... a grea idea. We need more thinking how this can be achieved.
This health care debate has made the cockroaches crawl out from behind the walls where we can see them! Now we need to get the exterminator ready to get rid of them!
Listening to this for the last six months has made me cringe so many times. I've had to turn off the t.v. because it becomes so disgusting. How can anyone with any common sense go along with these obstructionists. I support President Obama all the way. Sometimes I wonder what is going on in his mind, but then I start to see what he's saying and doing and why.
I remember when the insurance industry started to get more involved with health care and announced all their plans to have the doctors report directly to them instead of the patient. It hasn't really been that long ago, maybe 30 years ago. Doctors were upset about it at the time. We need to change it back again and this time go even farther. Maybe get rid of insurance companies all together!
Insurance companies have succeeded in putting themselves in center stage. Now we need to focus on them for the right reason. Of course, in the meantime, we also need to get rid of the obstructionists in Congress.