Discussion for article #245044
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Summary: he worked really hard not as a core author but to push the bill in a more progressive direction.
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Man. Another biased headline/article. Please come out and say you’re a Hillary supporter. You quote a Harvard professor who wrote a book on the reform effort:
"“Was he involved in the creation? He was deeply involved in a variety of ways. He got some important things in there,” said John McDonough, a Harvard public health professor who wrote the 2011 book “Inside National Health Reform.”
“If you take it more narrowly, were his staff people in the room writing what the exchange provisions looked like and so forth? The answer to that is, in a stricter sense, no. So it’s subject to interpretation and not worth contesting, because he was highly involved in it and was part of the creation process,” McDonough told TPM."
“I helped write it” Have you no idea how creating legislation works? If he got his ideas in, that’s helping write it. You’re parsing semantics, sort of like what “is” is.
TPM should endorse Hillary so everyone can honestly assess the content on your site. Otherwise, the lofty ideals with which TPM began, and made me such an avid reader, have become seriously compromised.
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Thank you for a well-researched, extremely informative article. Ignore the previous commenter. I’m a Sanders supporter and the headline’s fine.
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I’ll stick to my guns on this one. The issue of whether he helped write it isn’t even in question. Lots of people helped write it. If he led the charge on community health centers, as is reported, the answer is definitive. The headline at the top of this page is “Was Sanders a friend or Foe During the Crafting of the ACA?”
Why is this question being asked? How could he possible be a “foe” of the ACA. It’s absurd on its face.
How about “What Influence Did Sanders Have in Making the ACA More Progressive?” Seems to fit the reporting a lot better than this headline.
To use a literal interpretation of the word “write” is ridiculous. Senators don’t “write” legislation. Staffers do.
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The headline at the top of this page is “Was Sanders a friend or Foe During the Crafting of the ACA?”
The headline on the article is “How Much Credit Does Bernie Sanders Deserve For Obamacare?” Interesting that the discussion page has a different hed.
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ROFLAO! Does TPM have another site? I’ve been here since the Al Franken recount started, the only reason they have any sizable audience is because of a core group of commenters. Now, even many of those are more laughable with their predictable, stale, attention seeking comments. Like elementary level children, they will go to the Prime site and basically participate in playground tactics against someone they have an issue with. Seriously, I lost respect for most of those who spend every single day of the year at TPM, and have done so for years. What kind of a sad social life they must have. I paid for my best friend’s Prime membership back in 2013, we have a good time predicting responses to crafted posts by yours truly.
Since early last Summer, 75% of TPM stories concerned Trump. Tabloid style Trump coverage at that. Oh, and another story to die for exclusively at TPM: Jeb Bush thinks the new Supergirl is hot. Cutting edge journalism! I’m off to Brazil a little early for the Rio carnival. I did very well in the market on Friday. Celebration is deserved. Ciao!
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Originally designed as a hit piece until the facts got in the way?
+1000 up-votes from me!!! I’ve been having the same issues with the site’s obvious pro HRC bias for several weeks now. Inside the Hive I even called out Josh to his face for his lack of Sanders coverage. His response? He flat out said to my face that he didn’t believe the study that concluded the 81-1 Trump/Sanders discrepancy. I then challenged him to come up with his own stats, and then crickets. And just yesterday, for the second time in 2 weeks, a pro-Sanders article with 300 comments was taken down within a couple hours of being posted. I found TPM 12 years ago when I was an expat living in Austria. TPM gave me my English and hometown news fix all in one. I’ve been a great fan of Josh’s ever since. But over the last 3 years or so, something’s changed in here, and not in a good way. It’s becoming hard to distinguish TPM from the worst parts of Huffpo. And if they keep shutting Sanders out…
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Close the door on your way out since we’ll never see you again.
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I think the reason you’re getting “crickets” is because Josh has much more pressing issues at hand than getting caught up in a continual challenge loop from you. That’s a waste of time. You and others also seem to have NOT read the very beginning of the article. To wit,
"As Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Bernie Sander’s health care proposals
continue, one of his defenses is that he “helped write” the Affordable
Care Act. It’s a claim he made during a Democratic debate earlier this month, and one he has reiterated on the campaign trail.”
The reason this is coming up is because SANDERS made the claim that he helped write the law. OK, he did help craft the law. But because he tried to force a provision into the bill which made things harder (single payer), he’s being questioned on whether he helped or hurt the bill itself. I don’t see why that’s a bad question.
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Sanders’s place in health clinic history will be remembered for his forceful role in the winter of the health reform debate. In December 2009, tensions ran high as Congress inched closer to a final health reform deal. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., tapped Sanders to help win support from liberals who thought the bill was too weak as well as from Democrats from rural states who were facing mounting pressure. More funding for community health centers, Sanders argued, was a win-win solution for both camps, since the program would ensure access to health care for even the most remote areas of the country while also helping those without insurance. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., among others, held out to the very last moment.
Two days before the Senate voted to break a Republican filibuster of the bill, Reid called on Sanders to make his case on the Senate floor. Sanders, in typical fashion, said the legislation was far from perfect, but thundered about the common-sense need for health centers, citing the acute demand for more primary care doctors, the cost-savings from patients who would otherwise use the emergency room for the common cold, the patient-centered model of clinics, and so on. Senate Democrats rallied and overcame the Republican filibuster.
Another turning point came several weeks later, when Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a special election in an upset victory, ending the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. Brown’s election brought Democrats close to despair, because lawmakers could only use a procedure called reconciliation to pass the law. Such a move would keep chances for passage alive while foreclosing any chance of enacting the much stronger legislation that originated in the House of Representatives through a conference committee. For progressives, it was a painful blow that not only sealed the defeat of the Public Option insurance program but also removed many robust provisions they had worked hard to include. Again called upon to work out a solution with House liberals, with whom Sanders enjoys a strong working relationship, the Vermont senator forged a deal to build support for the bill by focusing on health clinics.
Daniel Hawkins, vice president of the National Association of Community Health Centers, recalls that in the end Sanders was able to negotiate with Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., to increase health clinic funding through a special technical amendment that could modify the reconciliation Senate bill through a simple majority vote. The technical amendment passed, with $9.5 billion targeted for health center operations and $1.5 billion for construction and renovation projects. The House passed the final Senate bill, and President Obama signed the legislation with $11 billion in health clinic funding into law on March 23, 2010.
“There was no one who played a more important role than Senator Sanders,” Hawkins says, remembering Sanders’s constant lobbying of other lawmakers to support the funding.
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Bullshit. This is a wonk blog. Josh is SUPPOSED to be up on the type of stuff mentioned to him. It’s the REASON WHY TPM EXISTS FFS! I quoted a recent and widely read study, not some obscure 17th Century philosopher. He didn’t even try to respond on the merits of the study, he just said he didn’t believe it. Sorry, but after nearly 15 years of faithful reading in here, I expect more from Josh, and better. Way better. And the venue btw, was a “ask me anything” Hive section opened by Josh himself. If he can’t take that little thing I offered, then maybe it’s time for Josh to reconsider his basic principles.
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But when he was forced to give up on that front, he settled for the influence he could pragmatically wield.
Which is what he would almost certainly have to do as president, given our peculiar political system and the intractability of GOP dominated rural states that dominate the house and the senate and will almost certainly continue to do so for some time into the future. Reality bites and pragmatism is more often than not the only way forward, or even just the only way of maintaining the status quo. And Bernie will succumb to it too – he already has.
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There are other blogs out there for you to go to which suit your needs. You can write ALL the diaries you want on them.
OR, better still, start your own blog which supports your analyses. You will never get your 15 faithful years back.
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How about TPM helping out Hillary? Centrism Uber Alles !!!
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Let me see if I get this straight. You are calling out people who are regulars on this site but you actually bought someone a membership so the two of you could troll people on this site. I guess you and I have a different definition of what makes for a pathetic person.
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If you are going to answer your own question why ask me?
I hate, can not stand a headline that in ends in a question mark. I am looking for news that I can not get on my own not speculation, false, questionable headlines.
I can read this kind of crap on any network news and can still be just as misinformed.
I really do not understand why anyone would construe this article as hostile to Sanders. It shows he was deeply involved in the ACA’s design and conception and played an important role in getting it passed. But legislation is always a compromise – and Sanders, like his fellow senators and house colleagues , didn’t get exactly what they wanted. The program surely has need for improvement – and I expect that both Sanders or Clinton will have their work cut out for them to get even the slightest positive modifications – and it will be a grand effort just to keep it funded against such virulent relentless opposition from the GOP.
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Jesse Francis “Jeff” Bingaman, Jr. is a former United States Senator from New Mexico, serving from 1983 to 2013.