Thursday, December 17, 2009
Please read Howard Dean’s op-ed piece today in the Washington Post titled, “Health-care bill wouldn’t bring real reform.” It begins:
If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Oh, and the Robert Gibbs response? He calls Dr. Dean “irrational.” Nice, Robert.
From the Left 
Howard Dean brings up many valid and salient points about the current mess the Obama administration is pointing to as healthcare reform.
But to hurl shit like this at Howard Dean, who is a physician and a former governor, doesn’t demean Dean — it demeans the Obama Administration and reveals their desperation
BTW. Glenn Greenwald of Salon reminds us that Robert Gibbs was the spokesman for a group that ran anti-Dean ads before the 2004 election.
Consider the source.
The phase in for this bill is 2014. So, for at least the next 3 years, Americans lacking insurance and with pre-existing conditions will be struggling and dying. The bill still manages to leave 18 million without any coverage. Only in America can we call this progress.
Attack the messenger. Classy. It’s embarrassing to see how low the Obama White House has fallen during the healthcare debate. It’s almost like Bush never left.
Rahm owns the White House. Nothing, it seems, is going to really turn into “change you can believe in.”
It’s interesting to me that Howard Dean wasn’t asked to serve in the Obama administration.
His talents and experience would make him a superior choice to head up Health and Human Services, as opposed to the clueless Kathleen Sebelius.
The animus between Howard Dean and Barack Obama is palatable.
I’m really glad Doctor Howard Dean is speaking out about this bill. Not only is he a long term high ranking Dem, but he’s a physician– an insider, if you will in the (so-called) medical system.
He knows first-hand how for profit insurance effects patient care, or lack thereof.
All the known perils of what is off the table for this bill are the items that MUST be questioned & addressed.
I get the sense Obama wants to pass anything just to have a check mark as having made an accomplishment.
There is too much at stake to screw up health care reform.
I have a question?
What is the “federal poverty” threshold for subsidy of premiums under this bill? I ask because if you make let’s say, $50K in New York City or Los Angeles, you’re not middle class. If you make $50K in Little Rock or Gulfport, you’re above middle class.
Every region in the country has a different cost of living ranking. Have any of these peckerheads taken this into account when they wrote this bill?
I want Schumer and Gillibrand to vote against this piece of crap unless a strong public option is added back in.
Gibbs should be added to the list of Obama administration oficials who deserve to be fired.
So help me out here? According to the Obama White House, Howard Dean is “irrational” but, Lieberman is “voting his conscious and instructive on passing the healthcare bill?” I have never dropped LSD but I am beginning to thing I know what an “acid high” must be like. Who the f**k is advising Obama? If it’s Rahm Emanual and David Axelrod, I’m starting to think they want him to go down in flames.
Howard Dean has been talking about meaningful health care reform for quite some time now. He knows of what he speaks. Unlike the White House which I am getting more and more fed up with. Dean is right, until you break up the monopolies, there will be no hope for average Americans.