I applaud his actions. It seems clear that the forces pushing from the Right are just fantastic, and incredibly well funded. My guess is that Obama played connect-the-dots with Kucinich, showing him how several different aspects of the bill, combined with existing options, will make it possible to move toward single payer or a Medicare buy-in --if they play their cards carefully. If you look at the absolute foaming venom on the Right, it is clear they are extraordinarily unhappy with what is happening here. If you believe it is all theater...
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Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Dennis Kucinich Flips On Health Care Reform: Will Support The Bill
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3 comments:
Me? I'm a long-time progressive. Sometimes Wellstone seemed too right on things for me. :) I think it's sad that Kucinich flipped. Too few remain on the Left that stick to their principles or promises.
Maybe you're right Steve. Maybe Obama has some plan that's not in the bill and that he's only sharing with certain members of Congress. But maybe not. You and I only have our guesses and our prayers that good things might yet come of it.
But honestly, I'm no longer sure that we can count on our gov't to do the right thing.
We absolutely cannot count on our government one iota more than we can count on ourselves. I don't want a free ride on Healthcare. I want to buy into the largest possible pool of insured, and I'm not at all interested in paying for someone's summer house in the Hamptons as a hedge against death. Give me those two things: buy into Medicate at cost plus 10%. Almost every other country in the world has it. We deserve as much.
There are a number of reasons why one might oppose the current health bill without, necessarily, being a mindless supporter of things as they now are.
For instance, one might think, like Keith Hennessy, that we are already going to have trouble paying for the past social programs we've already got, and that Obamacare will simply compound our near-future problems.
Or one might, like Megan McArdle, expect price controls on drugmaking in the U.S. to have a disproportionely large and negative effect on invention of future drugs.
Or one might think, like Mark Steyn, that nationalizing medical care is likely to make the U.S. much more like the sclerotic social democracies of the E.U.
It'd be great if all those concerns were wrong, but if even one of them were correct, it'd be a rational basis for rejecting the current health legislation as it stands. If all of them were correct, the case for rejection would seem overpowering to me.
Yes, rational people can and do disagree about whether those worries are correct; my point is that it is not irrational to see them as significantly likely. There are reasons to oppose Obamacare other than some blind worship or obedience to "the status quo".
--Erich Schwarz
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