Quote:
Originally Posted by mcsluggo
no, really you haven't at all... you have thrown out platitudes that would've applied to ANY bill that passed.
what happened was that the Obama admin thought they were learning the lesson from the clinton health-care reform probelems, and backed off to let the legislature take full ownership of the process. When congressmen got hold of it horsetrading (trying to get ANY republican votes/blue dog votes PLUS extreme left votes ... AND just the greedy bastages that see ANY major legislation as a pigs trough to be exploited) ate away at many of the difficult (but useful) aspects of the legislation... and you end up with something that is designed to irritate as few as possible, and by thus by definition SATISFIES almost nobody.
Obama should've just taken control of the process from the start. He is actually a helluva lot more pragmatic and centrist in most areas than ANYBODY on this board gives him credit for, i am sure that the NSC could've crafted a vastly superior bill. No question. Instead it ended up as milquetoast... and this whole debate will have to happen AGAIN in 5 or 10 years.
(btw... the day the republicans jumped en-mass and with unity onto the "death panels" ship... was the day it became clear that there was ZERO interest from the GOP in actually influencing the legislation. it was pure political posturing from that point on.. BOTH GOP and DEMS in congress showed truly sucky form on this issue... it would be nice if BOTH could be punished appropriately in November)
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This bills sets the stage for the debate which you say will happen again in 5-10 years. And it virtually guarantees that the next step is to single payer. If you think Obama cares that he had to take this step so that the frog wouldn't jump out of the pot, I'll just agree to disagree.