Howard Dean calls for defeating the healthcare reform bill and starting over. He says it is a meaningless gift to big insurance and pharma. Evidence leaks out that the current senate health "reform" bill has the conditions ironed out months ago by Obama in his secret meetings with Big Pharma and insurance companies. I am afraid this is change you can really believe in: bigger profits for insurance companies and Pharma.
So far: No single payer; no public option; no Medicare buy-in, no imported drugs (defeated yesterday), no price controls, and probably an upcoming defeat on the 90% payout requirement by insurance companies. AND, the insurance companies get 41,000,000 new customers.
What else: No bank reform, no meaningful Wall Street reform, business as usual, an expanded war in Afganistan.
We are betrayed. Time to do a little party purification like the Republicans are doing. The Democratic majority is a myth, just labels and words. In fact, we still have a big business majority running Congress and the White House.
I wouldn't be surprised if Lieberman were merely the fall guy to take the heat for the failure of the Dems and Obama to get real reform in healthcare, or real banking reform, or ....
Dozens of posts on Huffington Post and other progressive decry White House's failure to push real reform anywhere including banks, healthcare, Wallstreet and racism. Does Obama have any friends left except pharma, insurance and Wall Street?
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
"The president keeps listening to Rahm Emanuel," said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). "No public option, no extending Medicare to 55, no nothing, an excise tax, God!" he exclaimed about the Senate health care bill to Roll Call. "The insurance lobby is taking over."
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) similarly suggested that blaming Lieberman was ignoring the real culprit -- Obama."This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don't think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
President Obama and the Senate leadership can't whip up the votes necessary to pass a public option or even a Medicare buy-in compromise, but they didn't have any trouble persuading 30 Democrats to vote against prescription drug reimportation Tuesday night -- thus preserving the deal cut between the Senate Finance Committee, the White House and Big Pharma.
Glen Greenwald:
Dozens of posts on Huffington Post and other progressive decry White House's failure to push real reform anywhere including banks, healthcare, Wallstreet and racism. Does Obama have any friends left except pharma, insurance and Wall Street?
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
"The president keeps listening to Rahm Emanuel," said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). "No public option, no extending Medicare to 55, no nothing, an excise tax, God!" he exclaimed about the Senate health care bill to Roll Call. "The insurance lobby is taking over."
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) similarly suggested that blaming Lieberman was ignoring the real culprit -- Obama."This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don't think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold
As Politico's Craig Gordon noted about the president's health care maneuvering, "Time and again, [Obama] rebuffed Democrats' requests to speak up more forcefully about what he wanted -- a strategy that allowed Obama to preserve maximum flexibility to declare victory at the end of the process, no matter what the final bill looked like."
President Obama and the Senate leadership can't whip up the votes necessary to pass a public option or even a Medicare buy-in compromise, but they didn't have any trouble persuading 30 Democrats to vote against prescription drug reimportation Tuesday night -- thus preserving the deal cut between the Senate Finance Committee, the White House and Big Pharma.
Glen Greenwald:
Of all the posts I wrote this year, the one that produced the most vociferious email backlash -- easily -- was this one from August, which examined substantial evidence showing that, contrary to Obama's occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it. From the start, assuaging the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries was a central preoccupation of the White House -- hence the deal negotiated in strict secrecy with Pharma to ban bulk price negotiations and drug reimportation, a blatant violation of both Obama's campaign positions on those issues and his promise to conduct all negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN). Indeed, Democrats led the way yesterday in killing drug re-importation, which they endlessly claimed to support back when they couldn't pass it. The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party -- rather than the GOP -- will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse.
As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage. Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this -- the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional "centrists." Right. The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives. The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start -- the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry.
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