The Senate passed its health care bill "by standing up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now" -- Barack Obama, December 21, 2009."'Healthcare shares rose on Monday as a bill to reform healthcare passed the first critical test in the Senate . . . Shares of Cigna rose 5.3 percent to $37.69. Shares of Aetna Inc rose 5.84 percent to $34.41. Humana Inc rose 3.79 percent to $45.17 and United Health Group Inc rose 5 percent to $33.14. Shares of Wellpoint Inc rose 3.8 percent to $60.51" -- Reuters, yesterday
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"Investors are seeing the Senate's version of health care reform as a massive public subsidy for insurance companies -- and as a result, are sending the sector's stock prices shooting up, up, up...
A consistent narrative is emerging from various sides of the health care debate: the White House is largely responsible for the removal of the popular public option from the reform legislation.[...]
Howard Dean and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) -- have essentially agreed with Sen. Russ Feingold's (D-WI) declaration on Sunday that "the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle."
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"When [Obama] came to the caucus he said, 'Just try to work this out as you get to the end here.' And I said, 'OK,'" Lieberman added. "Most of the negotiation I had on that was with Senator Reid."
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
I think it's been part of presidential style, not just Obama's, to turn complex issues things over to other branches of government, 'to work out'. In Obama's case, its particularly egregious in light of the tone of his campaign to see him turn health care reform over to Congress. And that's not to mention turning over foreign policy to the Pentagon which, I am sure you agree, is also a branch of government.
ReplyDeleteyeah, it only makes sense that the president cannot be an expert on every issue - maybe not even one - and i appreciate that he SHOULD let others more versed in the issue help make the decisions. yet it is highly unlikely that a man as intelligent as obama did not have enough understanding of the issue to realize what was happening - so yes, i agree - particularly egregious. sadly, nothing new - campaigning and presidenting are two different things. why do we always think we are voting to get what we want?
ReplyDeletehow long do you think the pentagon has been a branch of the govt? probably before i became aware that it was.
i have the feeling that mr. obama's main aim is to make his presidency acceptable to the greatest number of people so that history will show america's first black president in a good light. it's not a BAD goal. but it's not the one we needed at this time.
well, let me rephrase that - because i'm pretty sure we always get what we NEED, whether we know it or not. it's not the one we were hoping for.
thanks much for your comments. i appreciate them.
having said that, i just read this from krugman:
ReplyDelete"There’s a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn’t the man progressives thought they were voting for.
But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself. If you actually paid attention to the substance of what he was saying during the primary, you realized that
(a) There wasn’t a lot of difference among the major Democratic contenders
(b) To the extent that there was a difference, Obama was the least progressive"
that's what i always said - he never suggested he was progressive, and in fact his record showed he wasn't. that bs about him being the most liberal senator in washington was just scaremongering from the right. and where did these reporters and commentators get the idea that progressives thought they were getting a progressive president?
we didn't. i don't think we did. i sure didn't. but that doesn't excuse obama from making big talk about the abuses of the bush administration and then carrying on those same abuses. and it doesn't excuse him for saying whatever he thought people wanted to hear. in fact, he didn't HAVE to. people were so fed up with bush, and their pockets were getting so thin that the democrats were going to win no matter. obama's real opponent wasn't george bush. it was hillary clinton.
that's one of the bad things about the two party system. we're constantly popping back and forth according to the pain in our bank accounts, which probably has less to do with who is president than we think.