C-SPAN: Health Care Talks Should Be Televised

Given the nature of this current Congress to operate behind closed doors on weekends and to pass fly-by-night legislation I'd be surprised if it is televised.

While the President promised transparency, he doesn't control Congress and they will do whatever they want to do.

He DID promise not to sign a bill for 5 days so that it can be posted on the internet for everyone to see before he signs it. Don't expect that to happen, either; my guess is this will all be passed something like the day before the State of the Union speech, and he'll be in a hurry to sign it so that he can crow about it in his speech. Congress never seems to do anything early.

Sounds like just another day on the Potomac to me. Wish more people had voted for Ralph.

Maybe I'm getting to be a conspiracy theorist, but it seems like a lot of broken campaign promises can be blamed on someone else. The whole stimulus not containing pork? Well, it was Congress that came up with the bill; he just signed it. The crackdown on pork in general? Well, Congress took too long to get him the Budget Bill, so he had to sign it immediately so the government could keep functioning. The Health Care that he promised? Well, Congress came up with that bill too!

HE has not presented Congress with one bill to work from. Not one. Not even on his biggest campaign promise - health care. Let's face it - if he had it would not only actually be "Obamacare" but it would have been passed with very few additions or deletions by this Congress who think the sun rises and sets on Obama's...(use your imagination ). (BTW, that is not as assessment of HIM, but of Pelosi and Reid's opinion of him.) I have not seen a President in recent memory who did not give draft bills to Congress to work from which set forth HIS agenda. Why didn't Obama do this on his most pressing campaign promise? Could it be so he has someone to "blame" if it does't come out right within 4 years? Interesting proposition, since it would (potentially) be throwing his own party under the bus.

Naa, it's just another day. The massive dam building projects and the national highway projects of the early 1900's would have cost far more in today's dollars, and they were stuffed full of deals, both under-the-table and dirty type. This has been happening for at least a century.

I wonder if Ralph will run again?

Did the projects listed above amount to 16% of the GDP on an annual basis? Or were they one-time building projects?

Did anyone see Pelosi's reaction when confronted with the question, "Will you open up your closed door meetings to C-Span like Barack Promised. Barack Obama said, EIGHT separate times. He made speechs ALL over this country promising, the health care debate would be on C-Span so "you can see who is making deals with the drug companies and who is making deals with the insurance companies." His exact freaking words.

And who ends up making the deals? Barack with all of them and buying off Senator's for their "Yes" vote on the HC Bill.

We have a Chicago style thug in the White House and that is where we are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNdV0PSRy4
At 1:00 into the video, this is one of EIGHT speeches with the same, exact words.

If taking 58 years to complete is your idea of a "one time building project", then yes, I suppose they were.

Senators have been bought for as long as they have existed, right along with every other position of influence in every walk of life. Sad and wrong, yes. Unusual, no.

Every generation has had it's "wreck this nation" scenario, all of which thus far are now business as usual. This generation is no different than any other.

Actually, I don't think I am. I realize what it is projected to cost, but it's only money. I just think that the health and wellness of citizens is exactly the type of thing that a nation's money should be spent on.

And, I do indeed feel that the naysayers of the dam building, highway building, canal building, chicken-in-every-pot generations felt they too were seeing the fiscal end of the country as they knew it. In a way, they probably were...but it doesn't appear to be too much the worse for wear over it.

These representatives work for us and they should make their hearings public. Whats the big freakin secret? They make a mockery out of all of us.

C-SPAN's CEO is a bit more than perturbed about this whole fiasco.

He said, on MSNBC, that Obama used his network as "a political football" during the campaign. Ouch.

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You can say that the New Deal is over, but it isn't. There are a lot of programs that started under that program that continue on to this day. So it will be if this health care agenda passes. And don't forget that in the Senate's bill (I think) there is a statute that says that future Congresses can't undo what they did (at least in that statute, but I honestly don't recall which one).

Mike, you say "it's only money" and that's fine if you're spending your own money. But they aren't spending their own money. They aren't even spending money they have. Even if the bill is "deficit neutral" (which I don't believe, not for the life of the bill which is forever), they are spending our money and future generations' money without even considering what we want, or frankly what is really best for us. They want to get something passed so they can say they did it. But both of the bills now are half-assed, and a compromise will be even worse, IMO.

He's a lawyer, so is going to look at precedents. What happened when Clinton's White House presented Congress with a health care bill?

Several presidents tried to get national health insurance, going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt's campaign in 1912. FDR wanted it, but made do with Social Security. Harry Truman couldn't convince Congress. Johnson got Medicare (Kennedy's plan) through, but both he and Nixon failed to get broader coverage.

I agree - even the huge amounts of the costs are going to be far cheaper than letting insurance continue the way it has been. People will be getting end-care instead of preventative care and costs will continue to skyrocket.
As a small business person, I would love to see a manageable plan that would allow our worker to get health insurance. I don't care how much the insurance companies threaten and spew -they remind me too much of the railroad barons and the auto maker and mine owners who fought the unions. They are like the abusive men explaining why a wife can "have it coming". The insurance companies want the status quo, which is that health insurance for our employee(s) is unaffordable - it is cheaper to offer to pay her medical bills for the year as she is only 26yo and in good health with a great lifestyle.
It's even cheaper for me, too, at 53yo. I havent even met my $500/year deductible, but my monthly ins. rate is now raised to $375.00/mo

Amen to that!!!!!!!

Skippy, FYI, I once voted for Ralph. I have a really nice green and white Tshirt to prove it. But then I had to decide whether my vote for a candidate who could not win would influence an election for better or worse. Since then, I vote for the lessor of two evils even if neither was my first choice. Hope that made sense.

Thomas Jefferson said...
I believe this.

He also said...
Ditto.

The crap we are dealing with now didn't start under Obama, it's been coming on for awhile now, but it's growing worse and worse and worse.... It's time to take government back. We need to make a statement in the next election. Lie to us and we're going to make you pay for it. So, to quote Jefferson again...
The government needs to start fearing US, the people.

Right now I can't afford 375.00 a month insurance. There is NO excuse why any person in this country should go hungry and be without a home on the streets. There are people who drain the system but there are also those in need. When a private hospital turns away somebody who has been shot because he doesn't have insurance that is a tragedy and against a DR's oath. It's easy for you to say it's not a constitutional right, no it's not, but there is a moral issue here. I'm sick of paying taxes for wars and salaries to a bunch of incompetant politicians. My taxes that I pay could go to my health and put food on my table. Health insurance and prescriptions are way out of control and unless you are rich, or have a really good job that covers you for major health issues, you can kiss your butt goodbye if anything major happens.

I couldn't agree more with your entire post! We, the People, need to start actually looking at what the Founding Fathers said outside of the Constitution as well as in it to see what they envisioned for our great nation. They were incredibly wise men, almost soothsaying the predicaments we have gotten ourselves into. Like Cinder, I'm not just talking about Obama. We've been allowing the government to grow and grow with the promise of "taking care" of us. It's a false promise.

Anyway...to get the thread back on track and not just another thread on the healthcare debate.

Even the mainstream media is getting MAD about this whole transparency business.

Here's the clip from C-SPAN's CEO's interview on MSNBC (note: the most liberal leaning, and proud of it, channel out there):

http://www.breitbart.tv/c-span-ceo-w...care-coverage/

Robert Gibb's disastrous daily briefing today, being hammered by the press (not Major Garrett from Fox News, either) about the "transparency" or lack of it of the Health Care Negotiations. The best he can come up with is "He wants a bill on his desk as soon as possible" and "I didn't get the letter" to answer the questions. BTW, from what everyone can see there wasn't a much clearer answer given at "yesterday's" Brief either. (This has been posted at a few other news sites, and sad to say YouTube has the most family friendly comments of all of them. Granted, they are also the most out-there right wing freaks too...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfxTDZ_hU-w

And my personal favorite - commentary on CNN from Jack Cafferty that rips Obama's actions on transparency especially with the health care bill. And this guy is not conservative in any way, shape or form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pO1oJPps1I

Actually, this country has been spending money it doesn't have on everything from wars to medicare for decades. People speak of "the deficit". The deficit is simply an annual number that indicates how much spending will exceed the annual budget. The national debt, however; what the US actually owes, is mind numbing. Spending money we don't have has never been the least bit of a deterrent before.

And, whether we like it or not, money we pay in taxes becomes the nation's money, and our elected officials are the elected stewards of said money. So, even though it isn't "their's", they have the task of spending it...or not.

I'm not sure I understand. A rule of economics is, if you don't attract enough business to make enough money, you go out of business. Are you wanting to bail out small business now too?

If I may be so bold, why CAN'T you afford $375.00 a month for health insurance? That is less than $100.00 a week.
Do you not make enough money? Do you not live within your means?

Health insurance is a priority that many people give no thought to, even though they DO have the money. They would much rather buy big screen TV's, fancy cell phones, etc etc, big cars.

I live a simple life and health insurance is a priority. I know there are many people that cannot afford health insurance, there are many MORE than can afford it but don't think they should have to buy it because the government OWES them free HC.

Also, I do NOT BELIEVE there are hospitals that turn aways gun shot victims.

I'll tell you all something that just happened today. A coworker of mine got a phone call that his brother just had a heart attack. His brother has no insurance, he does work but at a low paying job. He is an alcoholic so he DOES have money for alcohol. Did the ambulance refuse to transport him to the hospital when told by the man's GF that he had no insurance? NO!
Did the hospital refuse to treat him? NO! He was treated, he had two stints inserted into the one out of three arteries that are blocked. (They put the stints into the artery that caused the heart attack) This was done at a hospital here that is not the county hospital. He will require open heart surgery. It will be interesting to see if he will be able to obtain open heart surgery. Right now the man is in Intensive Care.

There are many small businesses in this country that are barely hanging on by a thread in this depressed economy. They can't take any more taxes.

No, I would like to see some tax breaks for small businesses. We bailed out all the biggies while they gave their CEO's huge bonus' and we can't give small business some tax breaks? Small businesses are the backbone of this country.

I agree Cinder. From the looks of the Democratic politicians retiring before November, I think many are starting to get the picture.

Your really stepping out of line here asking how I live my life and spend my money. We have a duel income in my household and I happen to live in a very small community where jobs are limited. Large cities are 250 miles away from me. I live in rural nebraska. Monroe shock is getting ready to close their factory in a town of approx 3,000 leaving 500 without work. That is a very big impact on a little community. I work at a job that is 40 miles away and they have not been busy due to the economy and they only schedule as needed. I don't have a cell phone nor do I have an alcohol or drug problem and I don't smoke either. I have required prescriptions I have to take and pay for out of MY pocket. Your living in a fantasy world if you think the working poor can afford 350.00 a month on insurance. You may be able to sit in your glass house and throw stones but don't get to comfortable because the economy may catch up to you too. Karma is a funny thing when people judge others, thats why I don't judge the person who is temporarly down and out. My husbands work cut every ones pay by 300.00 a month because of slow economy, and they shutdown the plant for 10 days at the holiday. We have been literally eating pinto beans and rice. No I didn't live beyond my means but the unforseen happened and we are in tight position right now.

*looks around at economy* Yeah, that's going well.

Granted, the economic clusterfrack we're in has more to do with individual and family runaway spending than government, but the government sets the example by not running a balanced budget itself, and in the case of the housing bubble, the government probably (I recognize that we'll be arguing the details for years) facilitated people getting in over their heads by encouraging banks to offer subprime mortgages. The government also creates a situation in which a shortage of jobs is all but inevitable, by the combination of taxing and regulating businesses operated here and setting low fees of assorted kinds on imports, so that it becomes a much better deal for manufacturing to take place elsewhere*, paying their people, so now China pretty much owns us and we "can't" pull out of that (we could, if the government were to have the stones to say "damn the consequences" while we still have military superiority by a wide enough margin, but that window's temporary too).

This isn't political; it's pragmatic. Anyone who's played those historical SimCity-like games (Caesar, Pharaoh, etc.) can tell you that running a city at anything like full employment with very little export manufacturing or gold mining is not a viable long-term strategy (and for those who haven't played, that empties the treasury, which means you can't pay tribute to the applicable ruler, which eventually brings the ruler's armies to your city to trash it). Senators and congressmen are capable of being completely pragmatic when the goal at hand is their own political influence, so it's not that they can't do the same thing to make a decent fiscally and otherwise sustainable country for the rest of us to live in, it's that they won't. That's shameful, because theoretically they work for us, but then, it's not as if we've insisted on anything better.

* This also ties in to the perennial global warming issue, because the carbon impact of large shipping boats is freaking insane and not really regulated. It would probably be better for the environment overall if we loosened the laws on manufacturing in order to put the factories closer to the end users and put the worst-polluting shippers out of business.