Some perspective on the Health Care Reform Bill

[languagevirus]

I've been as upset as most of my other progressive friends about the changes that have been imposed on the health care reform bill in the senate, and over how the most important measures seem to keep getting stripped out in order to please "moderates", insurance & pharmaceutical industry shills, abortion opponents and, of course, Joe "Look-At-Me-I

Comments

[sensen]

>>But, one the precedent has been set and a framework is in place, then the programs can get better and more comprehensive with subsequent revisions and expansions

it's going to take some reconciliation votes down the line for that to happen
mind numbing processes we just witnessed in recent month
and final result is not guaranteed, at best

this is hugely compromised bill
with additional abortion provisions for restrictions,
women from southern states will be totally fucked
assuming their states will legislate accordingly, as they always do

Obama’s White House played ball with the establishment
they were passive and compliant every turn of this despicable saga.

You see him as greatest president since FDR. Sorry, I don’t see it.
Perhaps you’re more of a visionary, than I.

[languagevirus]

I don't think I'm more visionary, perhaps just more cynical. ;-)

My sense of Obama is that he is an idealist at heart, but is also a supremely realistic technocrat. This is the quality that I feel he shares with FDR and LBJ that can be so infuriating to his supporters. If he were a more pure idealist (like Howard Dean) there would be no health care reform at all, and he would now have a crippled presidency, like Bill Clinton did, because the republicans would have shown that they can obstruct and defeat him on his signature issue. If he weren't an idealist at heart, he would never have tried to reform health care in the first place. Instead, my sense is he pushed very hard for the best bill that could be gotten under the circumstances. I could very well be wrong, but I just don't see how anything else could have been accomplished given the current hyper-polarized state of congress.

[sensen]

i will agree with you on one thing
40 years of deep shit, starting with reaganomics
is tremendously hard to work through
framework is set and established
i just don't want to see Obama become part of good old club

i don't like this bill - it's a compromise with a capital C
i understand it is better for Obama presidency to pass it in any form, than to kill it.
i just don't believe that it's better for us in current form.

[languagevirus]

My real worry is that we'll have a repeat of the Reagan-Clinton-Bush dynamic where Clinton had to spend 8 years trying to undo the damage of the Reagan years, and just as things were getting a bit better (the economy was actually running a surplus when he left office), people forget the past and again elect a republican who promises feel-good policies that again trash the economy, and so on, and so on ...