House passes health care bill on 219-212 vote

[Beryana]

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

As for Beryana...If I am the reason you don't go to doctors, you are a fool.

Umm...I don't go to doctors because I'm typically not sick. . . I just don't like your attitude that people can't know their own bodies or do their own research and bring some intelligence to the table. I also don't put doctors up on a pedestal as you are also human and don't necessarily know everything about everything.

I've had bad experiences with Family Practitioners as well as specialists. Not spending more than a few minutes with a patient missed a MAJOR diagnosis (a STROKE!!). Why bother going in to see a doctor if they don't care about a patient?

And I really don't care what you think about me because I'll never be coming to see you or your husband in any capacity, professional or otherwise.

[moe.ron]

David Frum's take on the political fall out:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

[Kappamd]

Originally Posted by Beryana

Umm...I don't go to doctors because I'm typically not sick. . . I just don't like your attitude that people can't know their own bodies or do their own research and bring some intelligence to the table. I also don't put doctors up on a pedestal as you are also human and don't necessarily know everything about everything.

I've had bad experiences with Family Practitioners as well as specialists. Not spending more than a few minutes with a patient missed a MAJOR diagnosis (a STROKE!!). Why bother going in to see a doctor if they don't care about a patient?

And I really don't care what you think about me because I'll never be coming to see you or your husband in any capacity, professional or otherwise.

You have no clue.

And your responses to AOII Angel are getting a little out of hand considering how cordial she has been to you.


Anyways, I am super happy to see the tanning tax included in the bill. Disappointed about a lot more (lack of tort reform, medicare spending, etc.) There are a lot of major problems that are not being addressed with this bill.

[Beryana]

Originally Posted by Kappamd

And your responses to AOII Angel are getting a little out of hand considering how cordial she has been to you.

And since when is calling someone a fool 'cordial'?

And I do know plenty about what is going on in the insurance industry as well as with healthcare (from a patient perspective as I am not and do not want to be in the medical profession). Oh, and I also understand socialized medical care from a political perspective as well as the Constitution, etc - where is it that I have no clue?

[Kappamd]

Originally Posted by Beryana

And since when is calling someone a fool 'cordial'?

And I do know plenty about what is going on in the insurance industry as well as with healthcare (from a patient perspective as I am not and do not want to be in the medical profession). Oh, and I also understand socialized medical care from a political perspective as well as the Constitution, etc - where is it that I have no clue?

Her calling you a fool was generous considering some of the disparaging remarks you have made.

And your having no clue refers to some of the completely naive comments you have made about healthcare delivery.