Logos57: A Caring Community

The news around the web late Saturday/early Sunday seems to be all about capitulating – let’s not mince words – to the three or four “moderate” Democratic and Independent Senators who hold health care reform hostage. First, a couple articles from the New York Times:

Obama Backs Senate on Health Bills’ Disparities, The New York Times, November 25, 2009, by David M. Herszenhorn — I guess this is an older one… but it provides good information on what the public stance of Obama is: he’s still pretending there would be a choice as to which version he would pick. Well the Senate version as such is dead in the water. We’ll get to that in a minute.

WASHINGTON — Two of President Obama’s senior health care advisers said Wednesday that a proposed tax on high-cost insurance plans and a new commission to control Medicare spending were among “four pillars” essential to major health care legislation.

The second Times article is their Health home page, which always has the links to all their other articles about this subject, with summaries.

The rest of the news all seems to be about the Trigger for the health reform bill. “We need to accept the trigger.” “Be reasonable and accept the trigger.” “The trigger would actually be a better way to go than the opt-out public option.”

Bullsh*t, pure bullsh*t, and a good case of the emperor’s new clothes. Fact is, we just cant get Liebermann, Nelson et. al., to go along with the opt-out option. So apparently the word has gone out, and on Politico, which is a pretty good indicator of what the administration is running up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes, we have Paper: Trigger best option for reform, (this one goes back to the 25th, as well, by David Rogers).

Well, what the Trigger would do is delay any possible public option kicking in until 2013 or now they’re talking about 2014. A lot of fine Americans will be DEAD by then. Two more examples from Daily Kos:

New Report: A Trigger of a “Strong” Public Option better than the Existing Public Option Daily Kos, November 28, 2009, by mcjoan:

Igor Volsky writes (Think Progress) about on a new report from the Urban Institute, which concludes that a trigger of a “strong” public option would work better than the current public option provisions in either bill.

Mcjoan has always been one of the fiercest crusaders for the robust public option, and she concludes that:

The Urban Institute might be right on the policy question here, but they are seriously misreading the politics of it. If there was the political will for a triggered robust public option, the robust public option would have survived in the House.

This is what we were all afraid of, and it looks like the blogosphere which is blindly loyal to the Democratic Party is preparing the ground for it to look good to capitulate and accept the trigger. And as Evans Politics and others have noted, it might not even be a triggered public option, it might be a triggered co-op.

Daily Kos diarist Larry Krebbs says we should all be grateful for healthcare reform with a trigger in Democrats should support a triggered public option, Daily Kos, November 28, 2009.

See The Devastating Consequences of a Corporate Health Care Bill, OpEdNews, November 28, 2009, by Shamus Cooke.

What should the position of the Congressional Progressive Caucus be about this massive cave-in? Do you think they might stand and fight, or choose to sink so-called health care reform which is in fact a give-away to the health care industry? They’ve had no new press release since November 20th, but they sure caved on the House health care reform bill, didn’t they?

For the inside story, listen to Glenn Ford on Black Agenda Report’s Black Agenda radio to get a glimse of what we can expect. Click the Evans Politics logo to listen.

	Representative John Conyers, the “Dean of the Congressional black caucus” says he’s “tired of saving Obama’s can.” Black Agenda radio expects, though, that he will again. And so it appears to Evans Politics that it’s just a matter of time before any true public option becomes history.