Congrats to those supporting the legislation. You won a round in a long and difficult heavyweight fight.

My fear is that the repercussions will be severe on all fronts.

But, we will have to wait to see what this all looks like a year or two down the road.

 

Thank you, and I quite agree.

For most of us, though, our support for this legislation was not unequivocal. I don't think anybody has deluded themselves that the problem has been solved. I certainly don't feel that way.

My main source of pleasure today is the spectacle of the doomstruck opponents of health care reform writhing in agony and predicting the end of the world as we know it.

 

Old white men?

Also, not sure if you guys heard about this, but the teabaggers were throwing things and insulting a man with Parkinson's. Also they stormed into the congress building and went around calling people niggers and such.

 

Yes, that DOES seem to characterize them, now that you mention it.

 

It really has been one of the most contentious and ground breaking issues in about 50 years.

And the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi can also thank people like you who flew into the fray. 63 pages and more than 3,000 posts on this thread alone. Good job Kid.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to go back through this thread and dig up all the false predictions.

 

I don't support the legislation, personally.

But I have to comment on how cynical and short-sighted the Republicans were. Of the 338 that voted for Medicare, I'm sure 150 of those would have been quite happy to vote the other way if the political momentum hadn't been behind them.

I was amazed that the Republicans fought for two votes and then voted the same way both times. I was 100% convinced they were fighting for two votes so they could vote against the Senate Bill and then vote for the Amendments to the bill. Every Republican has now put themselves in the position of defending the Cornhusker Kickback, the Gatoraid, etc. This is just bad politics.

As per the bill itself, I really thought a few of their members would have buckled once crunch time came. The guys who run the Republican party aren't stupid (although, in light of the Reconciliation vote, they might be...), but why force a completely partisan vote on this issue? Once the smoke clears and the ad money dries up, every mother with a sick child is going to vote Democrat. Every young guy who works contract - b/c salary and benefits don't exist anymore - and pays for health insurance in the private market is going to vote Democrat. Why aren't the Rethug bosses looking 5 years down the road?

I see incredible cynicism - even by Beltway standards - that they were forcing a partisan vote on a major issue this year. Maybe they think they can keep this alive until November and pick up some state legislature seats across the country to gerrymander themselves for a decade. This is a census year.

There's no objective political watcher that says the Rethugs have ANY chance of even picking up one chamber this year, much less both and a supermajority in the Senate. Even if by a fluke of God they pick up the House this fall, they'll have a House vote to repeal the law and two days worth of new coverage and it'll never even get a committee hearing in the Senate.

Do they think they can keep this going until 2012? I love to facepalm myself at the stupidity of individual Rethug members - but why are individual members willing to sacrifice themselves for a potential GOP president or for "mystery seats" somewhere else in the country?

 

Don't count the chickens yet. The Reconciliation bill still has to make it through the Senate. There's lots of doom and gloom to come. We've got another month of this!!!! (LOVE IT!!!)

 

No, I'm saying this is stupid legislation which is only going to get exploited by lobbyists and their fellows, and that it sets a bad precedent for government power. Its one thing for the government to provide a service, and require taxes for it. Its a much worse situation when the government tells you that you have to go buy a specific set of products, and that if you don't they'll tax you for the money anyway!

We've had far more corrupt politicians in power than good and honest ones, and the only way to prevent them from doing too much damage is by preventing them from first having too much power. I use Bush as a benchmark in this cases. Would you be happy if George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had the ability to dictate who you get insurance and your health care from?

 

Wrong King Nothing. President Obama has scheduled a televised signing ceremony tomorrow.

 

The Senate bill has to be signed into law before budget reconciliation can used to pass the amendments with a majority vote in the Senate.

The President is signing H.R. 3962 into law. H.R. 4872 still has to pass the Senate.

 

That's why we have to keep the right people in power(including Obama) until 2016, then find a person who would be as good as or better than him. We need to keep the right people in office because it's going to take awhile to shift the power from the corporations and the privileged.

 

This is true and I'm sorry for adding to the confusion. But my prediction is the reform will sail through the senate. The republicans can try to obstruct it but the democrats have the votes and are also beginning to gain more public confidence and support.

According to Rasmussen President Obama has gained nine points in his approval rating in the past two days.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/pu...a_administration/obama_approval_index_history

 

You're very probably right. But, you know what: If I was a Senator - my bill just became law. If the Rethugs pull out some antibellum Senate rule that hasn't been used in a century and manage a fight, I don't know how hard I would fight back, you know? You're probably right, but I wouldn't be surprised if we were wrong. And the House would be left with their dick hanging in the wind.

 

Keep Obama in office until 2016? How, exactly, do you propose to do this? Are term limits officially the next agenda for the current administration?

And why just 2016? Is there supposed to be some radical shift in how the country is run that requires us to stop voting for the people running the show? This law is going to exist looooong past 2016, and I'd be more than willing to wager that for every year it continues to exist, more and more people figure out how to rip it off at tax payer's expense. And I'm not talking about individual medicare cheats who are breaking the law, but lobbyists, insurance companies, and their bought congresscritters all legally funneling money into their own pockets.

At this point, the only way Obama would be able to make me happy with this bill would be to publicly tear it up at his signing event and order the idiots to get back to work on a real health care reform bill.

 

Looking at the Medicaid payment bubble, I think someone in Dem leadership is planning about 6-8 years down the road having this fight again, hoping that by bankrupting the states they'll force popular support for a real federal public option. I just don't want to walk the road we have to walk down to get there...

 

The core of people who voted him in in 2008 will vote him in in 2012, and there will be more kids coming of voting age between now and then who will vote for him. He'll continue to get the working class behind him because they've seen how full of shit the "conservatives" are. He got voted in for a reason. There might've been a whole bunch of bandwagons but Obama has a whole lot of unwavering supporters who matter.

2016 is 8 years from 2008, that's why 2016. Of course it's not going to only take 8 years for the power to shift to people who don't need to screw others in order to keep their business going. 2016 is because Obama is the best man for the job right now, probably will be again in 2012, and if he could run for more than two terms, he'd probably be the best man for the job in 2016.

 

It won't take 6-8 years to bankrupt states, many are teetering on the brink right now. However, you could be right on it bankrupting the country before then.

 

Yeah, that's my bad, I was reading it as "Re-elect Obama in 2016". I'm gonna go get food now so that my brain works better.

 

Ah, I gotcha. Happens to all of us sometimes.

 

It would not be the first time. The House, and especially House Republicans ended up exactly like that over the impeachment of Bill Clinton and it hurt them. The House passed impeachment because of senate insistence and then when they sent the charges to the Senate, President Clinton's public approval rating in the polls had been increasing ever sense the impeachment proceedings started and by then exceeded 75%. So the Senate chickened out and didn't convict Clinton.

But the thing we have an opportunity to judge now is whether or not the Senate Republicans have any real political savvy or are simply the blind fool obstructionists they appear to be.

The GOP has hung most of their objections on the Public opinion polls that say 60% of Americans are opposed to this. But the problem with public opinion is it is easily manipulated. And I expect that to happen concerning Health Care Reform, now that the bill is actually out.

And the reality is Republicans have made good gains over their scare tactics, lies, misrepresentations, and anger over health care reform, But support for the GOP was in the cellar and if they end up looking stupid here they end up right back there.