Reading the Wall Street Journal comments section just depresses me. There's so much virulent hatred out there for Obama. Even among liberals, people are extremely upset that the President didn't push for a single-payer option.
I'm trying to understand what's happening now. So, the administration had a list of policies it wanted to see in the health care bill. They probably didn't expect to get everything they wanted, but as long as Congress included enough of what the President had, Obama would be satisfied. The problem is that it's really hard to push for health reform when there isn't a specific bill yet. Yeah, there are a lot of suggestions out there. But, Obama has to wait for the House and Senate committees to structure everything. Nothing has been finalized yet. So, in that sense, maybe the press conference on Wednesday was a bit premature. Politico has a really good analysis of the situation here.
It's scary how much power Max Baucus has. Like Gail Collins said the other day, he represents three-tenths of 1 percent of the population. And apparently, he gets millions in donations from insurance lobbyists. That's even more frightening. It's looking like Senate Finance won't include a public option in their version. Margaret Carlson has a scary prediction for what will happen in that case. Millions more are covered, sure, but there's no pressure on insurance companies to keep premiums low.
I'd like to think that the Blue Dogs are truly worried about cost, but my suspicion is that they're probably just spineless. Too worried about reelection. The complaint over the payment discrepancy between rural and urban doctors seems more about pleasing constituents than anything else. No wonder the stimulus got so messy. Congress can't be trusted with anything.
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