Time to put it out of its misery

Today I'm going to be contacting the offices of my two Democratic Senators and telling their staffs that I favor voting against the health care reform bill in its current form and going back to the drawing board. Because what the Democrats in the Senate have done is allow a few Senators who rake in insurance company cash to bastardize health care "reform" to the point where it consists of nothing but a mandate for every American to buy "insurance" that offers no guarantee of payment of claims, and no cap on premiums. The only way this differs from the current disastrous setup is that insurance companies can't deny "coverage" to those with pre-existing conditions, but instead can take claims money from such people and then deny to pay claims on those conditions.

Even Howard Dean says it's time to abandon this botch job and start again:

So where is the President on this? He's up there kissing Joe Lieberman's ass for saying "I'm going to do what I think is right and the hell with the people I'm supposed to represent." This supposedly great orator is reduced to saying, essentially "Pass this bill or I'll kill this dog", with the inane remark that if this particular bill is not passed, premiums will go up, and that "we are on the precipice" of health care changes, seemingly unaware that "on the precipice" means a dangerous situation where the next step means falling off a cliff. Don't you mean "threshhold" there, chief? And how does this differ from what we have now, except you're going to force a whole bunch of people who can't afford it to buy worthless insurance that doesn't pay claims from these racketeers?

I realize that John Heilemann was up there on The Tweety Hour of Incoherent Babbling last Sunday saying that if Obama doesn't get health care now, his administration is in ruins. I'll tell you this: If he gets health care in the form of this bill, his administration will be in ruins. Because even those who still support him are not going to have any faith in him after his lack of leadership on this issue has led to nothing but a mandate for more of the same crap we have now.

As Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago (subscription required) in the context of Sarah Palin's claims about "death panels":

When death is on the table, to be left declaring "I am not in favor of it" is to be catastrophically outmaneuvered.

At this point, I have absolutely no faith in Barack Obama to accomplish much of anything now that he's shown his weak underbelly to the voracious Republican wolves. It seems that now we know why he was allowed by Diebold and ES&S to win. The money guys didn't trust John McCain, they knew that George W. Bush was leaving a clusterfuck, and they knew that Barack Obama was all about trying to keep everybody happy. It isn't so much that I'm disillusioned, because I really didn't have any about this guy. I'm just saddened that this intelligent man who has so much potential has decided to squander it trying to play nice with people who would just as soon see him disgraced while he's thrown the people who elected him in the trash. You can say all you want to that this isn't Barack Obama, it's Rahm Emanuel's handiwork, but Obama is the guy who made him chief of staff. The buck stops there.

More opinions from:

Jon Walker

aimai

Blue Girl, with whom I respectfully and with great affection disagree, because THIS bunch of Democrats is too far in the pockets of the insurance industry to do what she wisely proposes

Susie Madrak

DCap