This is touching:
The political odyssey of health care reform in many ways is the story of Ted Kennedy, and as President Obama signed the historic bill into law Tuesday, Kennedy’s gravesite was a place of quiet celebration and poignant reflection.
The late senator’s widow, Vicki Reggie Kennedy, spent hours on Sunday at the simple white cross at Arlington National Cemetery marking where her husband was laid to rest only seven months ago. Ted Kennedy’s youngest son, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.), visited on Monday morning and left a hand-written note that read: “Dad, the unfinished business is done.”
Of course, the business is never done. But it’s a good day.
Next up, the Republicans will go to court to challenge the mandate. They’ll lose, of course, but they’ll score political points like crazy because no one wants to be compelled to buy insurance from a private corporation. The answer, which should be repeated like a mantra, is, “I agree with you, so let’s create a publicly-administered alternative. If you don’t want to pay for CEO bonuses, cut out the middle man and buy the public option.”
The more unpopular the Republicans make the mandate, the more we can re-channel that unpopularity to support for a public alternative. It’s a trap that we must set.
Wish I were as confident as you re: the Courts. I can easily see the Lower Courts ruling in our favor, but the SCOTUS…they’re a somewhat different animal.
the Rehnquist Court might have gone our way, but the Roberts Court, after the Citizens United case, I’m not so sure…..
That went through my mind. Free speech for things is as important as free speech for people. This court is capable of anything.
Yeah, I could see them ruling on some totally trivial detail that’s enough to derail or delay the whole thing. OTOH, I can also see them avoiding the whole issue like a third rail.
it would certainly amuse me to see a Senatorial ‘misconduct review’ of a Supreme Court Justice (per Constitutional guidelines, such as they are)….but there’s very little to limit/constrain a SCOTUS justice’s behaviour or decisions. If the man were completely senile, but did no illegal activity, he could continue to serve (I leave Justice Ginsberg out of this, as she’s intelligent enough to know when she’s incapacitated), although I’d love to read the writeup of his decision(s).
What I’d really hate to see is a Jacksonian-style ignoring of the Court….the chaos that might foster is worse than any nightmare of a ‘bathtub-drowned government’…but if the Court gets much more activist-Conservative, steps may be necessary to minimize its impact on the other 2 branches of the Government….
I’ve been thinking there could be a case for impeachment of Roberts. He was clearly lying his ass off when he claimed to be guided by precedent. The corporate ad decision overturned many decades of established precedent and was decided on the basis of pure ideology. People get canned for lying on their job applications, and left to die for lying on their insurance applications. Why should the SC be any different?
that would be so great!
Congress could just limit Judicial Review of Health Care Reform. SCOTUS would be unable to make a decision.
Some cooler GOP heads are asking just exactly what it is that they want to repeal? And if they succeed how it will fly with the voters?
I believe that very soon we can say that on healthcare, the beaches of Normandy are secure but we are still miles from Berlin.
…and how many of those ‘cooler GOP heads’ are up for re-election this year? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that only the Senators not up for re-election are the ones decrying the TeaBaggers and other extremists, while the Congresspersons and those Senators up for re-election are courting the Far Right with open arms, purses, flys (oops), you get the picture.
re: your WWII analogy…I just hope we’re not prepping our x-mas dinner in Bastogne…..
Zero, of course.
Bastogne comes later, much later.
if the President had seen fit to fight for the public option fourteen months ago instead of hiding under the bed.
What’s the relative positive/negative reaction to the words “public option” as opposed to the policy? My guess is that “universal healthcare” and maybe even “non-profit option” would poll better.
But “public” might provoke “bureaucracy”, “incompetence”, and “expensive” whereas “private” doesn’t seem to have many negative connotations by itself. It needs to be distinguished from a “robust” public option. If the general public who gets there news from the TV can’t say what the “public option” means, I don’t see how the public will demand it.
paging Frank Luntz….
If you tell them a “public option, much like Medicare,” it polls very well.
If “public option” needs to be qualified by “much like Medicare,” then it doesn’t sound like it’s the best phrasing. The qualification may be necessary on a policy as well as a framing point of view. I just think that progressives need to do at least 2 things to maximize our chances of success: come to a consensus about which plan to advocate for and rethink the phrase “public option”.
I think the difficulty with the name reflects the vagueness of the concept. “Public option” was just kind of a placeholder that meant almost anything. Even among its advocates you’ll get very different definitions. The real debate will be between holding out for single-payer or Medicare for all, or defining and embracing some form of public option.
You’re right that “public” is at best a two-edged sword. “Public housing” is a negative for most Americans, “public transportation” less so, and “public highways” just dandy. If we can’t just get straight Medicare for all, I’m thinking we could call a public option something like Medishare.
Add the Medicare buy-in. This is very popular where I work, even with Republicans and Libertarians, as long as they have the private option too. It’s only the insurance companies and their marionette Congresspeople who oppose the Medicare buy-in.
“medicare” is a brand that has not been tarnished … yet.
I’m not surprised. I think this is a situation where the more radical plan will have better odds of succeeeding than a compromised but more complicated plan. I think the easiest plan to explain wins. People need to be able to say “That makes sense.”
KISS strikes again!
“You can choose Medicare as your insurer.”
Great slogan!
If our side gets it right, the next great healthcare debate should be, not is there a right to healthcare, but single-payer vs public-option vs Medicare-buy in. Aside from all the immediate insurance reforms, I think that is the real historic significance of the legislation.
I’m torn about the rhetoric I’ve been hearing the last couple of days. I don’t think the legislation does anything like giving Americans the right to health care, but if repeating that exaggeration and others creates an expectation among the public that we have that right, then I agree that’ll be a tremendously historic and surprisingly progressive outcome.
ho hum.
There’s one question I’d really like to know the answer to: What exactly was the agreement that Obama made with the health care industry regarding keeping the public option off the table (as reported in the NYTimes)? How does that agreement limit what happens from this point forward?
Obama seems to not be at all proactive about seeing a public option implemented, but will he actively discourage or even prevent it from happening?
yes, he’s already destroyed his presidency via what he didn’t have for breakfast this morning
Looking back on it, what Obama did was hold a summit to ferret out where the opposition was likely coming from and the issues they would raise. Then he went to key stakeholders (“special interests”) and made a series of deals to buy off opposition as much as possible and to extract as much reform voluntarily–which then made it into the legislation. AHIP apparently brushed him off, having direct lines into the Senate Finance Committee and through Mike Ross into the House. So he had no deal with AHIP. The public option deal reputedly was with the American Hospital Association. There was a number of items in the deal with PhRMA. There was probably a deal on Medicare rates with AMA.
What Obama got was avoiding the massive media war that stopped Hillarycare in its tracks. PhRMA hired Harry and Louise to cut some generic healthcare reform support ads.
My suspicions is that both sides now feel that the deals have been fulfilled. Obama probably is no longer under the obligation to block a public option. But in terms of appearances, he must receive the legislation from Congress instead of proactively pushing for it. If a public option or single-payer plan makes it through Congress, he will not veto it.
It is instructive in this that when Al Franken reportedly went ballistic on Axelrod, Ax’s response was “Do you have a list of the 218 House members in your pocket?”
So the political issue was as much in the House as it was in the Senate.
Thanks. That’s the kind of info I was looking for.
thanks, very helpful summary
Has anybody noticed what’s going on in the state of Washington with the attorney general filing suit against HCR? It’s unbelievable. The GOP is going fringe even faster than I thought possible. Now I know which recent jurist has exerted the most influence on Republican legal theory — Orly Taitz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Ng5lYw3kE&feature=youtu.be
Then you’ve got to remember that they are doing this in a whole bunch of other states too. Good luck with that, guys.
Don’t know the theory of that suit. Some states are suing (or threatening too) under a “states rights” theory that they can preempt the federal government. That’s going nowhere, like Chicago’s claim that the bill of rights only applies to the federal government, not the states or localities.
Other suits mentioned on the news center on the appropriateness of using the commerce clause as a basis of this legislation. It does seem a stretch to extend interstate commerce to transaction entirely within a state and regulated by that state. Ironically, it might have been better to go alone with the Republicans and allow selling insurance across state lines. That would clearly have been interstate commerce.
Some yahoo birther Southern state (Alabama?) is making noise about suing that the law is illegal because Obama is not the legitimate President because he wasn’t a native born citizen. Whoever files that should be disbarred. But, come to think about it, the Roberts Court might rule on precedent of the SCOTUS Dred Scott decision that Obama cannot be President because he’s property not a human being. I think that’s really at the core of the birthers.
Sounds like Roberts- Dred Scott, the sequel.
“It does seem a stretch to extend interstate commerce to transaction entirely within a state and regulated by that state.”
It only seems that way according to the way the issue is framed (falsely) in the plaintiff’s briefs. The real issue is that uninsured people who need medical care, whatever state of the union they live in, have to be paid for by the federal government, i.e. the American taxpayers. This is precisely why HCR was necessary. Do you want to make a federal issue out of it? Yes, it is certainly a federal concern and an interstate commerce issue and from what I understand, precedent overwhelmingly supports that interpretation, which has been made in many, many areas of commerce since the early days of the republic.
Also, it has been pointed out that if (for the sake of argument) a state did strike down the mandate, then the insurance companies would lobby for it to be passed under some other legal theory anyway, because otherwise they would lose a lot of money. (Again, interstate commerce.)
The Public Option would solve this problem, by the way, although not to the benefit of the insurance companies.