I get the feeling that many here already had their reactions to any health plan carefully prepared, regardless of how the plan ending up working.

You can only correct someone on an error so many times before you realize that the person just doesn't care about being correct.

7/23/2009 10:06:41 AM

^Everything coming from the democrats has amounted to maintaining the status quo of expanding coverage while doing nothing to address the underlying causes of rising health-care expenditures, so it is not hard to be skeptical.

7/23/2009 12:28:39 PM

Wasting more time...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4351936

7/23/2009 6:29:50 PM

OMG, he could have solved healthcare in the 90 seconds it took him to call that guy

7/23/2009 6:57:04 PM

^^that's awesome.

7/23/2009 7:13:38 PM

Quote :

"Today, the Obama administration delivered one of the more remarkable presidential power grabs seen in recent memory (the transmittal letter is here (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/legislative_letters/Pelosi_071709.pdf), and a section-by-section description of the proposal is available here (http://issuu.com/thenewrepublic/docs/section-by-section_analysis)). The president has decided — just days before the deadline he himself set for passage of health care bills in both chambers of Congress — that he wants to create a new and very powerful executive branch agency, the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), which would be accountable only to him and have the authority to re-write the Medicare program from top to bottom by executive memo. Now that’s audacious. The council would be made up of five members, all selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The president could fire any one of them for cause. They would have two jobs. First, each year, the council would make recommendations to the president regarding inflation updates to Medicare’s payment rates for hospitals, doctors, and other suppliers of services. Those recommendations, if approved by the president, would automatically go into effect in thirty days unless Congress passed a resolution disapproving them — which the president would also have to sign into law. Of course, if the president approved the council’s original package of recommendations, it is unlikely he would sign a congressional disapproval resolution overturning them. So, as a practical matter, the proposal would force Congress to find a two-thirds supermajority to stop presidentially-approved IMAC recommendations from going into effect. That would be a remarkable shift of power on its own, but the president’s proposal doesn’t stop there. Not only would the council make recommendations on payment updates, it would also have the authority to propose other “Medicare reforms” which would go into effect unless Congress could muster veto override majorities in opposition. What are “Medicare reforms”? From the write-up, it seems they could be just about anything. Changes in beneficiary cost-sharing. New rules for establishing qualified hospitals and doctors. Penalties for physicians who don’t follow government guidelines. Pretty much anything except for the payroll tax and premium structure. The only parameters are that the “reforms” must improve the quality of medical care and the efficiency of Medicare operations. The administration is touting this as a belated cost-control idea. It’s not. By itself, it doesn’t change anything, as there are no hard targets that must be hit. So it doesn’t answer the Elmendorf critique that the bills now moving in Congress, even if such a provision were added to them, don’t bend the cost-curve of governmental health spending. Still, the fact that the administration is pushing this bill at all speaks volumes. Here’s a Democratic president telling a Democratic Congress that it can’t be trusted to run Medicare anymore. That’s stunning, especially so because Democrats, including the president, are working feverishly to exert additional governmental control over health insurance for working age Americans. If Congress can’t run Medicare well, what possible rationale is there for standing up another government-run insurance plan?"

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/blog/diagnosis/on-the-fly-audacity

7/23/2009 7:23:06 PM

Quote :

"the Obama administration delivered one of the more remarkable presidential power grabs seen in recent memory "

Quote :

"The president has decided that he wants to create a new and very powerful executive branch agency"

yeah, um, deciding that you want to do something isn't exactly a power grab.

7/23/2009 7:29:42 PM

Quote :

"OMG, he could have solved healthcare in the 90 seconds it took him to call that guy "

FYI, I was being facetious... also, that video on that link looks like the same caliber as the worst amateur porn you can find...

7/23/2009 7:34:48 PM

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/670730
Goodwill towards America surging, according to recent polls

Quote :

"The surge of enthusiasm is most profound in Western Europe, where Obama is now more popular than the leaders of France and Germany among their own populations. German support for the new U.S. leader stands at 64 per cent, more than double the 31 per cent measured last year. In France, Obama is favoured by 75 per cent, compared to 42 per cent for Bush one year ago. Israel was alone among the 25 nations surveyed to show rising mistrust for Obama, who has pledged a serious renewal of U.S. involvement in Mideast peacemaking efforts. Obama has a favourable view among 71 per cent of Israelis, compared to the 78 per cent who favoured Bush one year ago. "Americans don't have to say they are from Canada anymore," former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, co-chair of the Pew project, told the Toronto Star today as the survey's findings were released in Washington. "This is tremendously encouraging. For those of us who believe that the way we fought terrorism in the past only created more terrorists, it shows we are on a better glide-path today.""

Quote :

"[b]Obama proved more popular than Osama bin Laden in Muslim countries — a status that eluded predecessor Bush in every Pew survey since the project began seven years ago."

7/23/2009 8:16:16 PM

Quote :

"yeah, um, deciding that you want to do something isn't exactly a power grab."

It is when that something insulates you to such an extent that it takes a veto override to derail your actions.

7/23/2009 9:00:03 PM

considering europe is overwhelmingly liberal and mostly socialist, what do you expect their opinions to be

he better start appeasing his own constituents, or run for office in europe in 2012

btw who gives a shit what europe thinks, when it comes down to it, they need us a lot more than we need them

7/23/2009 9:38:08 PM

Quote :

"btw who gives a shit what europe thinks, when it comes down to it, they need us a lot more than we need them"

its this kind of git r done attitude that we are still digging ourselves out of

7/23/2009 9:42:03 PM

git r done attitude?

7/23/2009 9:44:40 PM

holy shit, a halfway decent post by dnl

7/23/2009 9:55:02 PM

Quote :

""Americans don't have to say they are from Canada anymore," former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, co-chair of the Pew project, told the Toronto Star today as the survey's findings were released in Washington."

Did they ever? If some European twit gave anyone grief from being American, who does that reflect poorly on? Not the American.

7/23/2009 10:00:49 PM

so then..... who does it reflect poorly on when you (or others) deride "European twits", simply for being European?

7/23/2009 10:17:23 PM

^^ that is a figure of speech... it wasn't meant to be taken literally.

But I think this was the most important part of that article, but I screwed up my tags:

Quote :

" Obama proved more popular than Osama bin Laden in Muslim countries — a status that eluded predecessor Bush in every Pew survey since the project began seven years ago."

7/24/2009 12:03:28 PM

Quote :

"he better start appeasing his own constituents, or run for office in europe in 2012"

Exactly!

7/24/2009 12:36:34 PM

Quote :

"run for office in europe in 2012""

Obama will have to scratch off "Hawaii" on his birth certificate and write in "France"

7/24/2009 6:03:14 PM

maybe his credibility can be inversely connected to the stock market...

usually...in the past...whenever his administration came out and said anything about the economy, the DOW tanked

now the DOW is going up and Obama's cred is tanking

(which IMHO is the best this country, the constitution, and the economy can hope for)

flame on!

7/24/2009 6:08:55 PM

what happened to blaming obama for the stock market losses in his first months?

7/24/2009 6:10:29 PM

yeah, i remember, like one day before the March lows, Hannity declared it "Obama's recession".
I doubt Hannity has much to say about the stock market recently.

7/24/2009 6:30:58 PM

*claps for obama*?

7/24/2009 7:40:35 PM

not necessarily.

But if you're going to blame him, usually unjustly, for every downturn, you might as well give him credit for the upturns.

7/24/2009 7:41:43 PM

^very true

7/24/2009 7:44:16 PM

at least he knows how to play the race card when his friend gets arrested?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/24/officer.gates.arrest/index.html

[Edited on July 24, 2009 at 10:34 PM. Reason : ]

7/24/2009 10:31:00 PM

7/24/2009 10:40:31 PM

using only strongly approve and strongly disapprove is pretty disingenuous. but you know that.

7/24/2009 11:06:50 PM

i strongly disapprove of your last post

7/25/2009 6:35:25 AM

^^
Obama is tanking... but you know that.

7/25/2009 10:34:10 PM

tanking is a bit strong I think. But it is trending south.

7/25/2009 10:39:26 PM

tanking?

His approval figures are still 15 points above his disapproval ratings.

http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx


How's the GOP doing, btw?

7/26/2009 12:26:25 AM

If i've learned anything from the right the past 8 years, it's that poll numbers, like the popular vote, don't matter.

[Edited on July 26, 2009 at 12:43 AM. Reason : ]

7/26/2009 12:43:31 AM

Quote :

"How's the GOP doing, btw?"

Just like the democrats in 2008..it doesn't really matter.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al are shifting voters to the GOP every day. Not that I am any fan of the repubs, but we need some deadlock..and we need it now!

7/26/2009 10:53:21 AM

Quote :

"Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al are shifting voters to the GOP every day."

The GOP approval rates are going down, too. Wouldn't they be going up if what you said were true?

7/26/2009 7:12:09 PM

yeah. they're not shifting people to the republicans. just away from being self-identified democrats. there are more self-identified independents than republicans or democrats these days.

7/26/2009 7:29:13 PM

2010 midterms, GOP picks up 8 House seats, Dems pick up 3 Senate seats.

7/26/2009 8:51:54 PM

Quote :

"considering europe is overwhelmingly liberal and mostly socialist, what do you expect their opinions to be he better start appeasing his own constituents, or run for office in europe in 2012 btw who gives a shit what europe thinks, when it comes down to it, they need us a lot more than we need them"

I couldn't agree more.

I mean, what did you think would happen when he started traveling around kissing everyone's ass?

7/27/2009 11:27:11 AM

^ what ass-kissing has he been doing?

And you don't see it as beneficial for muslims to like Obama more than Bin Laden, and why this is a much better situation that under Bush?

7/29/2009 2:20:46 AM

Quote :

"Obama proved more popular than Osama bin Laden in Muslim countries"

Thats because they know O'Bama can fuck up America more than osama.

7/29/2009 7:44:37 AM

Apparently, Obama called the head of the CBO on the White House carpet.

WH Pushes back against CBO meeting criticism

Quote :

"In an act that officials from previous administrations call 'highly unusual', President Obama met with the head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Douglas Elmendorf and others for about an hour in the Oval Office on Monday.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, CBO Director during President George W. Bush's administration, tells Fox he never met with Mr. Bush to discuss any CBO policies or estimates. Holtz-Eakin says the Obama White House didn't consider the ramifications of the meeting, 'They didn't think about the position they're putting the CBO in, and as a result, they ended up with a little bit of a snafu in the public relations and that's not helpful in an already contentious process.'"

Quote :

"House Minority Leader John Boehner didn't fault Elmendorf for attending the meeting, but did say, 'I do wonder why the President invited him to the White House. He has a big job. He is the non-partisan director of the Congressional Budget Office charged with providing fair and neutral analysis of what legislation would cost and what impact it would have.'"

Quote :

"Although Elmendorf is a Democratic appointee, some say he has done extensive political damage to President Obama and Congressional Democrats leading the charge on health care reform. It was Elmendorf who wrote that one House proposal does little to cut health care costs and it will have a negative $239 billion impact on the federal deficit."

http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/07/22/wh-pushes-back-against-cbo-meeting-criticism/

7/30/2009 3:04:44 PM

So... I'll admit, I haven't read much of this last page of the thread, but was interested in the health care bill discussion on the previous page. My question to all is this: Has anyone here read the entire health care bill? Isn't it like one thousand pages? The ones who are doing the actual voting on this massive and fundamental change to our health care system have gone on the record and stated they have not read it. It seems this bill would affect all of the US population and I'm willing to bet less 1% of the population really have no fucking clue about the sweeping changes that are supposedly in this bill. I'll also admit that I'm in that 99.x% percentile as I have not read the bill.

Not sure if any of you caught the Broughton High School town hall meeting yestreday, but there was a question for Obama asking him what the hurry was in getting his bill passed when a lot of our representatives have confirmed they haven't even read the bill. Obama's had two responses in defense of this:

#1) We've been talking about this for 40 years.

#2) We need to get this passed as soon as possible before the opposition (he used the term "special interest" iirc) to the bill gains momentum.

To address the first response, we may have been talking about health care reform, but we have not been talking about this bill for 40 years. I'm not sure when it was authored, but I'd guess it hasn't been around and discussed since before he became president 6 mos. ago.

The second response he had was nothing less than mind boggling (at least for me). Deliberation of a bill and whether or not it is the right thing for the American people is one of the main responsibilities of congress. I would expect even more scrutiny over a bill that seems to contain such sweeping changes. I would not expect them to just ram this sucker on through as fast as possible without careful deliberation of the bill. How can this happen when nobody knows what's in the bill?

Just an observation. I don't think I'm really "soap box material" but I do hope that my semantics will not be ripped to shreds without the main points being taken into account.



[Edited on July 30, 2009 at 7:47 PM. Reason : []

7/30/2009 7:40:56 PM

your points made too much sense to be soap box material. i agree with you in that the people voting on this need to read it. i know 1,000 pages is a lot, and they're so busy but i think some of those guys can sit down at their beach houses and at least look it over.

i'm honestly not surprised at all by obama's answers. it's not right to push a bill like that without allowing anyone to disagree, but i know plenty will be foaming at the mouth to defend his actions. his arrogance goes far enough to even blatantly say that it's what he's doing.

[Edited on July 30, 2009 at 10:56 PM. Reason : ]

7/30/2009 10:54:59 PM

^^the specific combination of programs in the bill as it stands has not been around forty years. but the individual components are nothing new at all. they have been talked about for decades. these are not new concepts.

7/30/2009 10:59:08 PM

Quote :

"WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul. As the White House sought to balance campaign rhetoric with governing, officials appeared willing to extend unemployment benefits. With former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saying he is "pretty sure we've already seen the bottom" of the recession, Obama aides sought to defend the economic stimulus and calm a jittery public. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers both sidestepped questions on Obama's intentions about taxes. Geithner said the White House was not ready to rule out a tax hike to lower the federal deficit; Summers said Obama's proposed health care overhaul needs funding from somewhere. "There is a lot that can happen over time," Summers said, adding that the administration believes "it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what." During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime." But the simple reality remains that his ambitious overhaul of how Americans receive health care — promised without increasing the federal deficit — must be paid for."

Oh here it comes. Same old thing that Clinton Pulled.

"I'm giving everyone a middle-class tax cut!"

"Oh wait, the economy is worse than I thought. I'm FORCED to raise taxes now"

And then everyone got hit with a huge tax increase. The accompanying voter anger swept the democrat majority from congress after the '94 midterm election. So at least we can look forward to that.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090803/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_economy

8/3/2009 1:13:53 AM

do you have any better ideas to decrease this budget deficit?

or are you just enjoying finding something else to complain about?

8/3/2009 2:01:11 AM

change we can believe in

8/3/2009 4:45:17 AM

seems like the big change is the president's tune....on just about everything

8/3/2009 6:16:32 AM

Quote :

"do you have any better ideas to decrease this budget deficit? or are you just enjoying finding something else to complain about?"

If you're voting in these big spending statists, then look in the mirror. These deficits wouln't be happening if we elected officials who upheld the Constitution, and not just for whoever is going to get us the most goodies.

Liberty isn't always easy, it comes with responsibility.

8/3/2009 10:47:26 AM

Quote :

"Oh here it comes. Same old thing that Clinton Pulled. "I'm giving everyone a middle-class tax cut!" "Oh wait, the economy is worse better than I thought. I'm FORCED to raise taxes now implement a balanced budget requirement" And then everyone the wealthiest 1% got hit with a huge relatively small tax increase. "

I de-fictioned your statement for you.

8/3/2009 1:46:23 PM