Sen. Russ Feingold, a strong proponent of the public option throughout the duration of the health care reform debate, blasted the White House for a “lack of support” for the inclusion of a public option in health care reform legislation:
“I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down,” Feingold said Sunday in a statement. “Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle.”
Despite his criticisms of the White House’s handling of health care reform, Sen. Feingold said he would vote in favor of the Senate’s healthcare bill, adding, “while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high.”
Feingold is a pragmatist. He has always advocated for a robust public option, but understands that while a public option was never really offered, it’s important to do the reform that is achievable.
Jason, I’m a pragmatist, but I’m wondering when we’ll have a better opportunity than now to get a public option. I’m betting we lost our best chance.
What’s another sixty years between friends?
Yeah, good point. Maybe my unborn grandkids will get to have universal health care by the time they’re adults.
Spoken like a true liberal… daydreaming about what government benefits your unborn grandchildren will be ‘entitled’ to instead of desiring that they make something of themselves. I suppose someone else’s unborn grandkids will have to pay for it.
Yeah, people get sick and die because they’re too lazy to get a job and get insurance.
No one will ever get sick and die again with the government in charge! Just ask anyone on Medicare.
Medicare…you mean the people that are overwhelmingly happy with their government run insurance?
Don’t suppose you saw the report on 60 Minutes showing Medicare and Medicaid fraudsters are beating U.S. taxpayers out of an stimated $90 billion a year using a billing scam that is urprisingly easy to execute. You can watch it here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5419844n
Then tell me it is a great program and the government should get even more involved in running health care.
So whats your suggestion to prevent thousands of elderly people from being sick and dying in the streets? Let them be sick and die in the streets?
Yeah, and no one gets sick and dies without insurance, right?
The fact that you’re defending a system in which tens of millions of Americans don’t have health insurance speaks volumes.
When did I say I was defending the current system? Just because I don’t like your solution? There’s more than one way to make it better than just put it all on the government tab and make every single health care decision a political issue.
If you watched the link I posted, the government is all to willing to write the check no questions asked and barely bother to investigate later. You honestly think that would change when it takes on MORE responsibility?
Look, I guess this all boils down to a difference in philosophy. You seem to think government is the great and powerful Oz (granting wishes and creating rainbows) and I think it is more often than not inefficent, unresponsive, and illogical when up against basic human nature. But instead you pose the argument that if I disagree with your one and only solution, somehow I’m laughing all the way to the bank while people die in the streets. Please.
I, like many many people in this country, lost my job last year. While searching for another, I’ve gotten by on unemployment, food stamps, and Medicaid, and all three programs work great.
Conservatives forget that we’ve already tried things their way, and it was really miserable. Would you prefer to go back to the way things were in 1900? or 1930?
The only way to pass a public option (which has been clear for some time now) is through reconciliation. But Feingold opposes doing health care through reconciliation. So I don’t want to hear from him about who’s standing in the way of the public option, when he’s one of the major obstacles.
Greg, there are very valid arguments against the use of reconciliation as a means of passing health care reform, and I’d disagree with you regarding your assertion that Sen. Feingold has been a major obstacle to health care reform.
There are valid excuses for not doing health care reform through reconciliation. I agree with that. A lot of crucial provisions have no impact on the deficit and so couldn’t pass through reconciliation. However, the public option is not one of them. Maybe his position on the matter is more nuanced than his staff let on when I talked to them, but they were unequivocal about his opposition to reconciliation.
I also didn’t say he was a major obstacle to health care reform. I said he was a major obstacle to the public option, because he’s not willing to use reconciliation. Reconciliation is the only way to do it. He opposes reconciliation. Therefore, he’s an obstacle, not an ally, to the public option.
Greg, I don’t think it’s fair to say Sen. Feingold is an obstacle to the public option simply because he doesn’t believe reconciliation is a viable means for bring about a public option.
It’s not as if he thinks it would be a good idea, but it just won’t work. He’s against it in principle. He doesn’t think reconciliation should be used that way. Preserving a Senate procedure is more important to him than the public option.