They’ve got to go out there and disappear some history such that they can retain the co-ops as the conventional wisdom “compromise”–compromise with whom!??–

bingo, per jane hamshire;

the compromise IS the public option

now, if Obama was HALF the poker player, ONE THIRTY SECOND the “32 dimensional chess player” some people have made him out to be, then he would have had single payer ON the table and allowed the republicans to offer a public option

to which we would have given pressure but acquiesced in the end

but Obama pulled a “pellosi” and showed his hand…took single payer off the table the same way pellosi told bush there would be no impeachment…bing, Obama lost the momentum

now, if Obama wanted to “re-compromise” then he would counter offer a government run co-opt (which is very similar to Medicare I might add)

as jane said so eloquent, the public option IS the compromise

What do we do when there is a monopoly? We regulate it heavily or break it up. One could argue that the so called public option is a step toward breaking it up, however we could go the other direction.

If we limit the profit of healthcare companies to some reasonable percentage oh say 10% which is a nice rate of return, any excess profits are refunded back to policy holders. If refunding back to holders is too much perhaps a portion is refunded and a portion is held in reserve for potential outsize losses.

We limit profits on utility companies, how is healthcare not like utilities if they are in a monopoly or near monopoly oligopoly situation?

It is in the public interest that people have access to affordable care.

We have no friends in the White House, including Obama. All of them march to a different drummer and all of them have no respect for progressives. Like it or not, they are our enemies.

We need to outsmart and defeat them, not waste time and effort attempting to reform or work with them.

this post filled in a lot of the back story out for me:

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/…..ort_si.php

also, nyceve’s posts last summer were awesome:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..75316/4802

The highly restricted offerings during the primary campaign, the buy-in of even semi-trusted left-progressive institutions like Max Sawicky and EPI up to a year before, brought it home: Some insurer-friendly weak tea would be the “health care reform” Democrats seemed sure they had to pass in the first year of the new administration or face electoral death forevermore. I was never under any illusion that single payer would be seriously considered by anyone in a position of power once Dems had the White House and Congressional majorities.

I was deeply skeptical of the assurances of the Health Care for America Now crowd that their “public option” pre-compromise would be a possible path to single payer in the future, and viewed the pundits who were touting it that way as collaborators who’d been paid off to keep us relatively quiet as we were led in to the shearing shed. Well before election day I predicted what was strategically and tactically wrong with shutting down single-payer advocacy, even if one accepted the political necessity to ultimately settle for some incrementalist half-reform. The role of CAP/CAF in the Obama transition did nothing to increase my confidence that this would turn out well.

And lo, as early as March the masks were being allowed to slip. Does this passage remind you at all of the Rahmonymous “senior White House advisor”’s mystification? It’s Ezra Klein responding to Howard Dean’s launch of the DFA campaign for a public option.

“That’s a bit of a weird line to draw. … I strongly favor a public insurance option. But it’s hardly the main determinant of real reform.”

I just lost it in the comments to Ezra’s post, because it was exactly the same kind of infuriating, gobsmacking me-or-your-lying-eyes-ism as the quote in the Connolly story:

Wow. Considering EK was one of the main people making the case that public pool was the way to preserve a path to single payer in a crappy, insurer-friendly “reform”, the willingness to abandon the position because of a desire to distance himself from DFH Howard Dean is an impressive package of arrogance, sellout, and political cluelessness all wrapped up with a ribbon of self-satisfied centrism.

As one of the tens of millions of uninsured, I just could not afford to get my hopes up. As an activist of thirty years, I couldn’t bring myself to take an active part in a doomed strategy that in the very best case would win something that was about a third of a loaf. As someone who’d felt something inside her just click shut in the middle of 2007, after the Iraq-war-funding kabuki show and the FISA sellout, I wasn’t prepared to be led around by the nose on behalf of supposedly “better Democrats” and their valiant, principled fight for that third of a loaf, getting outraged at the inevitable, blatant signals that the White House had never been on our side in this, suffering through many more rounds of “are they incompetent or just bought off?”

Given that the public option had been set up as the leftward edge of what was possible, I respect the ability of people like Jane Hamsher to see a way through to keep it from being ground away entirely. But even if we “win” this fight, what we end up with substantively sucks. Politically, the win might be a bit bigger. But it will still have been a huge effort for little ground made necessary by the pre-compromised, brain-dead, Obama’s-with-us approach of our “allies” at HCAN, and the willingness to settle more generally.

I’m assuming if mandated insurance is passed that’ll it’ll come from our taxes directly.

This is where the rubber hits the road because, without a strong public option (i.e., with the power and membership to negotiate successfully for significantly lower prices for health care and prescription drugs), there is no way to reduce the cost of health insurance. Some percentage of the 53 million uninsured can afford insurance, but choose not to buy it because they are single, young, and healthy. I doubt more than 10% fall in this category, but even if it’s 20%, or 10.6 million people, that means 42.4 million can’t afford health insurance. Subtract the number of people who earn up to 300% of the poverty level (because they will be covered through government subsidies) and you arrive at the group I like to call “The Sacrificial Lambs.” They will have to pay full price and there is no way in hell they will be able to do that for more than a month or two, if that.

If their mandated payment is withheld from their paychecks, along with federal, state, local, and social security, they won’t have enough to pay for their necessities. They will starve, lose their homes, go bankrupt, and end up homeless. They will soon figure out that they are better off if they persuade their employers to lower their salaries to less than 300% of the poverty level, right?

Y’all see where this is going don’t you? Not a pretty picture is it?

We must pound this point home:

THOU SHALT NOT CRUCIFY THE MIDDLE CLASS UPON A CROSS OF CORPORATE SOCIALISM.

I got the slogan from William Jennings Bryan. Pick others, if you prefer. My advice: Keep it simple (KIS)