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Is It Possible The Insurance Companies Stepped On Their Wangers?
Hmmmmm. It appears that the worm may be turning...Seriously, did the insurance companies step on their wangers?
A few days ago the public option was on life supports, seemingly just days, or moments away from time of death being called.
Then the insurance companies produced a quick "study" that turned out to be cooked, threatened to raise everyone's health care premiums if the public option passed, and now all of a sudden I'm hearing optimism about the public option surviving everywhere I turn.
Even my husband, who hasn't been paying much attention to all of this, came in tonight and asked if I heard about the insurance companies pooping in their mess kits, and asked me for an update...
Is it possible? Did they over play their hand and start a bit of a backlash?
Nate Silver at 538.com did a little "10 reasons" thing on the 20th on why the public option is probably gaining momentum...#1 being :
1. The tireless, and occasionally tiresome, advocacy on behalf of liberal bloggers and interest groups for the public option. Whatever you think of their tactics -- I haven't always agreed with them -- the sheer amount of focus and energy expended on their behalf has been very important, keeping the issue alive in the public debate.
Woohoo! That's us, huh???
I was home most of the day yesterday with the t.v. on MSNBC in the background and it seemed like there were many guests on talking about how close they are to getting the votes, and more optimism than I have seen in months.
Then as I sat down to write this post, I stumbled on the full speech the President gave from New York on the Organizing For America Webcast...the one the "mop" clip came from. Well, hell...if I had seen the whole speech before I did my whiny post yesterday, you wouldn't have had to prop me up. It is almost half an hour long, but if you haven't heard it, please take the time. It will remind you why we voted for him, and reassure you that he DOES know what he is doing.
We have an amazing President, and I can't believe I keep forgetting that.
Speaking about health care reform he said, "You Democrats...y'all are an opinionated bunch, and I like that about y'all...But now it's time to come together and get this done." He pointed out that of the five plans that have passed committee, pick the one you like least...it has provisions to stop people from being refused insurance because of pre-existing conditions, from having your insurance canceled because you get sick, and creates exchanges so you have bargaining power. That's the one you like least!
Broadening his scope he went on to say that we have a long way to go, but we've only been here for nine months. and "I'm not tired...I'm just getting started...I'm energized!" Me, too!
What a difference a day makes...24 little hours.
I'm like a new person.
A few days ago the public option was on life supports, seemingly just days, or moments away from time of death being called.
Then the insurance companies produced a quick "study" that turned out to be cooked, threatened to raise everyone's health care premiums if the public option passed, and now all of a sudden I'm hearing optimism about the public option surviving everywhere I turn.
Even my husband, who hasn't been paying much attention to all of this, came in tonight and asked if I heard about the insurance companies pooping in their mess kits, and asked me for an update...
Is it possible? Did they over play their hand and start a bit of a backlash?
Nate Silver at 538.com did a little "10 reasons" thing on the 20th on why the public option is probably gaining momentum...#1 being :
1. The tireless, and occasionally tiresome, advocacy on behalf of liberal bloggers and interest groups for the public option. Whatever you think of their tactics -- I haven't always agreed with them -- the sheer amount of focus and energy expended on their behalf has been very important, keeping the issue alive in the public debate.
Woohoo! That's us, huh???
I was home most of the day yesterday with the t.v. on MSNBC in the background and it seemed like there were many guests on talking about how close they are to getting the votes, and more optimism than I have seen in months.
Then as I sat down to write this post, I stumbled on the full speech the President gave from New York on the Organizing For America Webcast...the one the "mop" clip came from. Well, hell...if I had seen the whole speech before I did my whiny post yesterday, you wouldn't have had to prop me up. It is almost half an hour long, but if you haven't heard it, please take the time. It will remind you why we voted for him, and reassure you that he DOES know what he is doing.
We have an amazing President, and I can't believe I keep forgetting that.
Speaking about health care reform he said, "You Democrats...y'all are an opinionated bunch, and I like that about y'all...But now it's time to come together and get this done." He pointed out that of the five plans that have passed committee, pick the one you like least...it has provisions to stop people from being refused insurance because of pre-existing conditions, from having your insurance canceled because you get sick, and creates exchanges so you have bargaining power. That's the one you like least!
Broadening his scope he went on to say that we have a long way to go, but we've only been here for nine months. and "I'm not tired...I'm just getting started...I'm energized!" Me, too!
What a difference a day makes...24 little hours.
I'm like a new person.
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October 22, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
We will get significant HCR. We will get a decent Public Option. Lobbyists will burn in hell.
It is written. :o)
But, I repeat myself.
hahahahaha
October 22, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ya know, Flower? I'm just beginning to think we might!
October 22, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it possible...
Such stepping as you refer has become the probabilistic norm.
But keep in mind that who steps is ever so crucial.
October 22, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the main reason for the upswing in popularity for the public option is that the republicans, with the help of the industry and the astro-turfers, threw everything in their arsenal at it in August...and I mean everything!. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, they shot their wad and didn't keep any to fall back on. September saw the public option getting back on it's feet again and and gaining strength in October so the industry used their time tested fall back strategy...doomsday scenario. But this time it blew up in their face! What's especially ironic is they set themselves adrift just as the storm is building in strength. By the time the debate is over, the industry will have only two choices...either follow the rules in the legislation passed that will dratically cut into their profits or fold up their business.
October 22, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
First of all, no, there wangers just aren't long enough.
And second, well, I'm not cool with the least of the bills because I won't accept a 'mandate' without a true public option and I don't think there is any reason that I or we should.
No mandate without a true public option that cuts costs and is available to 'all' Americans. I believe 'we' should be very firm about this. Congress has pretty much ignored the willingness of the public to accept their mandate for less...
I love the president but when he says we need to unite... I think a majority of us are united and it's he and congress that needs to get united with us:) (tough love!)
October 22, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
But, synch, are you willing to scrap it and start over if the votes just aren't there? I am all for pressuring big time, but if, after all is said and done, we don't have the votes, is no change better than some progress?
I think we are going this alone. I do not believe we will get a single repub vote. Worse yet, there are some gutless moderate dems who care more about getting re-elected than doing what is right for the country. Their cowardice needs to be punished by taking them out in the primaries...every last one of them. Even if it means giving up the seat to a repub...what really would we have lost? They are dems in name only.
October 22, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the reason I am willing to scrap it.
Mandates.
If I am going to be forced to buy insurance from the very corporations that brought us the f'd up situation we are in, YES, they can shove their mandate. I am not okay with the price Stilli. I am NOT okay with the price and the fact is WE should not settle for the BS. Congress needs to hear from us that we will not be accepting a mandate without a public option, period.
If they want to leave out the mandate... then I guess it won't matter to me so much if they pass a crappy bill.
It's the mandate, I won't accept it without a true public option.
I don't want any tricks or gimmicks that pushes the fight off into each and every state and makes health insurance/care reform a political football for all time to come. No triggers and other BS which is an insult to our intelligence.
No true public option, No Mandate!
October 22, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
But it isn't about whether a company makes money or not, or whether one person or one group's particular way of doing it makes it or not. What matters is that we get the uninsured covered. What matters is that individuals no longer go bankrupt for medical reasons or don't go to the doctor because they feel they can't afford it.
We are trying to make the future better than now for individuals, not draw lines in the sand and go nowhere. To do that, to me, is damn selfish and fucking counterproductive.
October 22, 2009 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Without a public option, costs are not going to go down... call me selfish if you wish but throwing money at this problem and expecting these corporations to seriously improve the situation... is foolish and unacceptable to me.
October 22, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd rather have single payer than public option, rather have a strong public option than a weak one (or triggers, opt outs, or co-ops). But I'm not willing to derail the whole thing because we aren't getting single payer. This is about progress.
I didn't mean to imply that you are selfish. I'm attacking the all-or-nothing mindset as being that.
October 22, 2009 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
well it's like this... I'm not willing for us to pay new car price for a used beat up car with no warranty.
I would prefer single payer too. I think it is telling that the CBO scoring of the strong version of the public option came out well!
So, yes, I am being stubborn about this. I don't want the beat up, used car with no warranty for the new car price and that's pretty much what would happen if we get a mandate without a true public option.
No reduction of costs a few new benefits to be sure but HUGE new profits and 40 million new customers to the same insurance companies that brought us to where we are now. That's just not intelligent in my book!
October 22, 2009 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed.
Just keep in mind that a used car is better than walking--especially when you've broken your leg.
(I'm not sure how a Segue fits into this analogy, btw.)
October 22, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
an excerpt from KO show last night Margaret Carlson of Bloomber News discusses how little the insurance companies would give in return for 40 million new customers being forced to buy from them:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/33423005#33423005
The point is really that
'acceptance of the mandate' is our leverage to fight for the best possible health insurance/care reform we can get. I am not willing to settle for the least.
October 22, 2009 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I liked the video. Sorry for my overexuberant first response to you above.
October 22, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
No problem. I just happen to think it's precisely fighting for it and being tough that will get us something more along the lines of what we really want and need. We need to elevate our worthiness and what we're willing to 'put up with' when it comes to getting our money's worth:)
October 22, 2009 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am totally with you! I think that the whole mandate thing is immoral! It's one thing for the govt to force us to pay taxes and it's quite another thing for the govt to force us to buy things from private companies! And Fred, if you read this, IT IS NOT ABOUT THE PROFITS-it is the principle of forcing people to buy a product (ANY product) from a private company. If the govt said that they were going to use some of my tax money to provide health care benefits i would be fine with that, but I am not fine with a mandate.
Furthermore. the public option should be available to anyone who wants it. I would bag my employer-provided benefits in favor of a public option in a heartbeat.
October 22, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am totally with you! I think that the whole mandate thing is immoral! It's one thing for the govt to force us to pay taxes and it's quite another thing for the govt to force us to buy things from private companies! And Fred, if you read this, IT IS NOT ABOUT THE PROFITS-it is the principle of forcing people to buy a product (ANY product) from a private company. If the govt said that they were going to use some of my tax money to provide health care benefits i would be fine with that, but I am not fine with a mandate.
Furthermore. the public option should be available to anyone who wants it. I would bag my employer-provided benefits in favor of a public option in a heartbeat.
October 22, 2009 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote, it may have seemed premature, some weeks ago now (okay, September 25), that it was winding up this way:
The Dems have given the right wingers every chance to make their non-case. Every leading country has universal health care except ours, and why is that?
The right put speakers on podiums who said that's not the issue but the real thing is that Obama is like Pol Pot. And we listened to why giving people affordable health care like all the other big countries and a lot of struggling countries too is just like genocide. But why exactly shouldn't we have health care?
Answer: It was just something that maybe other bad countries could achieve but we just couldn't and it was fine that the insurance CEOs had so many millions from denying coverage they could afford exotic zoos in their backyards. That's our free enterprise system, we love it (and a lot of *really* uneducated people who you'd otherwise *never* take advice from *loved* it), and it simply was too much of stretch for us to have health care. Trust them, they know nothing of business or economics or civics or who is funding them and they couldn't find Southeast Asia on a map but believe you me, they know Pol Pot when they seem him alright, and they know that more educated voters are just Hitlerian.
And they SURE know when to say that the more educated wishes' ideas are outright excessive.
They were heard out, made no sense at all to put it mildly, and patience ran thin, and the electorate eventually retorted, "Overreach THIS!" And that's the momentum.
October 22, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is truly disappointing that we have become so numb to being outright deceived we did not raise more of a shout about the contrived report. We even tolerated the GOP referencing the study after it was debunked by the very people who performed it! These lawmakers ought to be brought up on charges before the ethics committee for referencing an outright lie. Their behavior is intolerable, and yet we let them continue in the Senate after they have so thoroughly discredited themselves.
October 22, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Doesn't seem like we have much choice. Their constituents apparently like them just fine... But why should they get rid if theirs, when we keep ours? Any moderate dem who supports a bill w/o a public option seriously needs to be targeted for replacement. Do the people in those districts have guts enough to do it? I'd love to be proven wrong, but I seriously doubt it.
October 22, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of the insidious propositions to which we are subjected is the notion our past dictates our future. We are rewriting the future as we have time and again. First, we had a civil war, then the civil rights movement, then Obama. We are changing and I will believe we can change even more. I just hpoe it is sooner rather then later, and we replace those DINOs.
October 22, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh my, does health insurance cover injuries from stepping on your wanger?
October 22, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
THAT is a very good question...wolf needs to use it as the basis for one of his posts!
October 22, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
{from the letter to the man with the smashed wanger}
A wanger that can be stepped on is too big and is not be covered. This massive wanger voids the policy and was evident when the application for coverage was first received. It is a pre-existing condition. We would have denied coverage then, but we did not read the full application, so we are denying coverage now. We are not refunding any of the monies paid to us for coverage, even though, de facto, there never was any coverage, i.e. the prexisting condition has been present the entire time. We appreciate your loyalty to our company and the years of premiums you have generously forwarded to our organization. Please feel free to recommend this great company to your friends and family.
PS - That huge wanger really should be covered. It's just not right to be flopping around exposed and all.
October 22, 2009 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, like that!!! LOL!
October 22, 2009 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fantastic. :)
October 22, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hereby render unto Stilli the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here TPMCafe Site; given to all of you from all of me, for this gem:
hahahah. And this from a Christian Girl. hahahaha
October 22, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seconded, with distinction
(yeah I know I don't have the, um, wanger to give daily awards, but I'm grabbing for the power to second, OK?)
October 22, 2009 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
What? I thought wanger was a pretty tame way to word it, dick!
Hahahahahahahahaha! I crack myself up!
October 22, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
ummm, yes!
October 22, 2009 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dang, stilli, you are getting downright socialistic with talk like that!
October 22, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, well, maybe we need just a bit of socialism to help balance out the over-the-top capitalism. Maybe somewhere in the middle there, we can find a uniquely American solution to our problems. We can't keep going like this, or America is going to be a wonderful experiment that failed. I don't want to see that, nor is it the legacy I want to leave my grandchildren.
October 22, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad I was born during a time where we knew freedom meant I can live as I please, and you can live as you please. Now, the Right is demanding that I can live as they please and that's just not American, as I understand that to mean. But I believe there are those who believe I am wrong, and that is truly a sad State of affairs.
October 23, 2009 2:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Too big to flail? That's when they all step on it.
October 22, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a good one, too! Y'all are just so clever!
Was just watching John Boehner on Hardball...what an arse. Just seeing his smug, slimy face makes me want to kick the t.v. I wouldn't buy a used car from him. "Chicago style politics..." When you can't win, just throw around the talking point insults. I guess that is the talking point insult for the day...we'll be hearing it all night ad nauseum.
October 22, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
He is repulsive, Stilli, that's for sure.
October 22, 2009 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oy, recently hearing about the candidate in NY being questioned repeatedly by a reporter as to whether she would support Boehner for Speaker of the House should the republicans regain the majority... set my hair on fire. Over my dead body is that ignoramus going to run the House of Representatives. That man is an equivalent of GW in my book... a pure idiot and he would be used as a puppet by more powerful people. Perish the thought!
October 22, 2009 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Synch, if that isn't a good enough reason to work tirelessly to get out the democratic vote in 2010, I don't know what is. I am literally sick to my stomach at the very thought.
October 22, 2009 11:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Only 9 months?
Some of us have been working on reforming healthcare for years... Mind you, I did not expect much to happen during the Bush years. :)
October 22, 2009 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good for you!
October 22, 2009 11:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was wondering ... Connecticut Man . . .
Have you been involved in the national health care coverage issue since the 60s?
I took it up then for my Mother who began in the early 50s who took it up from her mother from the days of FDR...
There is that saying that patience is a true virtue . . .
And I've been called nuts for being so virtuous...
~OGD~
October 23, 2009 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink