“I could give you the names of people, of senators, of Republican senators today who say, ‘Regardless of what I think of her positions on the issues, the one thing I will say, is that she was incredibly good at working with people across the aisle,’” said former Sen. Tom Daschle (R-SD) at the Americans United for Change event.
Daschle is a Democrat, (although there were many liberals who never believed that when he was in Congress)
Trump followers won’t be listening I’m afraid. Too dug in and full of hate thoughts. See below:.
I don’t doubt Hillary, but I’ll believe it when I see Paul Ryan stand up to the Freedom caucus…on anything.
The GOP will, by it’s very nature, oppose anything that doesn’t help the 0.1% get even richer.
That’s why King Donnie the Orange, and all the down-ticket GOP slots, must be swamped in an electoral tsunami.
Register now, and vote early, and vote often.
Well, the guy who said Tim Kaine spoke like a “maid” because he spoke Spanish is a poor excuse for a human being.
If Hillary and Company truly believes Conservatives will just give-up on their opposition to Obamacare, then- to use my grandpa’s old expression- “they are just whistling Dixie!” The only person wingers hate, detest and despise more than Obama is anyone named Clinton. Wingers are still, STILL trying to cripple or kill Social Security - even after 80 years. Does anyone really believe they will suddenly allow any Democrat have a victory on anything? Reaching out to Wingers is futile. It’s against their theology.
Only if we democrats get off our asses in Nov.
Oh hell, here we go again.
Eight years ago, lots of people were saying, “when we elect Obama president, campaigning on a platform of compromise and ending the gridlock, the Republicans will finally see that the world has changed and behave like reasonable human beings.” And I sat back and wondered why anyone thought that electing a black man, especially one with a name that could be used to dog whistle supporters by associating him with the two big “villains” of the previous presidency, was going to in any way cause the modern Republican party to behave like reasonable people. And we then proceeded to lose six years to Obama opening negotiations with proposals that might have been reasonable final compromises, and spent the last two with him finally taking decent progressive positions but having lost any sort of leverage he ever had.
And now it starts again. “Privately, Republicans respect her and her willingness to compromise. They’ll admit they’ve finally lost the health care battle and work with us!”
The naivete is simply astonishing, both on the part of those advancing the theory, and those reporting it.
They have spent every day since he announced the ACA using it as the symbol of everything that’s wrong with the progressive agenda. They have spent the last QUARTER CENTURY demonizing Hillary Clinton by name. Seriously, if you polled Republicans on the question “Who would you rather have as President, Hillary Clinton or the Antichrist” the vast majority of them would say they’re the same entity, and those left over would probably overwhelmingly pick the Antichrist.
Even if the attitudes ascribed to key Republicans in this article are common enough to make a difference, actually following through on them in any sort of public fashion would be career seppuku.
You will not bring the Republican party to the table with peace offerings, compromises, and an insistence that they’re just behind the times. You will do it by fighting them tooth and nail, and making sure they pay bigger costs in public opinion than you do, until enough of their supporters change sides that you get a majority in the midterms.
I think Clinton might be able to do it. But she will have to do it Margaret Thatcher cast-iron-bitch style. Another 4-8 years of sitting around hoping and believing in change that will never come is a waste of everyone’s time.
There will be other things for them to flame out about. And the numbers are coming in for the non-medicaid states and the big-donor insurance companies.
The Democratic Party had been trying to get health care passed for over sixty years. President Obama was the one who finally did it. What a waste of everyone’s time.
What we got was half-assed health insurance reform, that gave away at least as much as we got. Don’t get me wrong, my wife has a chronic health condition and I am very very glad for the pre-existing condition rule changes right now as I look for a new job. But we’re still waiting for health care reform.
I would be interested in hearing how you differentiate the two. I sit on the Board of a small rural public-health district. I am well aware of the key issues in the field, and if you have a way to disentangle health-care from the ways of paying for that care, I would, as I said, be interested in hearing about them. Because everything I have seen over the years shows that the the ways of paying for health care are what determines the quality and quantity of that health care.
After what the late Voinovich had to say about McConnell’s marching orders after Obama was elected, I’m not holding my breath.
I agree they will be become even more delusional and bitter losing to Hillary Clinton. If the election of President Obama pushed them over the deep end Hillary’s will be the recurring nightmare. We all know
how much obstruction the president has faced but he handled it well he once summed up his situation by telling the american people “it does not matter what it is, if I am for it the republican are against it”. Hillary will have many of her own “what difference does it make” moments.
The hard racial edge will be gone but nothing else will change. You can’t vote against something 50+ times then change direction … this is not fluid guerilla war it’s trench war and the positions are set.
Actually, I never thought of him as being that bad, and I’m as liberal as anyone. There were and still are far, far worse “conservadems” than him.
oh, my gosh. what a comment! That is laughable ignorance. I hope this person’s toilet backs up today.
As I mentioned, my wife has set of complex chronic conditions, that we have been spending 10 years trying to figure out and control, with varying levels of success. Between that and having her gall bladder out the first week of the year, I hit out of pocket max for her in May.
When I found out I was being laid off, I looked at options on the ACA website. There is no option for a Platinum level plan in my area. The insurance companies simply don’t offer them here. The plans they do offer, from what I could see, would require me to pay the first 6k of non-prescription costs out of my pocket. There are no PPO or even HMO options.
While my area is definitely on the sub side of suburban, I live near Akron, OH. The actual Cleveland Clinic is in driving distance as are a few other well regarded university medical facilities. But because of where I live, and the services I need, I have to have six thousand dollars on hand to pay that first batch of her bills before insurance kicks in. My options for care are based on my ability to pay and where I live.
Right now, We’re still on my previous employer’s insurance. I have to write the first COBRA check next week, because in the short term that’s almost certainly going to be cheaper than going on an ACA plan, and then changing plans again when I hopefully get a job and go on the employer’s plan, and reset that annual deductible for the third time in a year. Assuming of course that my employer offers insurance competitive with my old plan, or the “best” ACA plans in this area. Maybe they’ll have one of the shitty local plans where most of my wife’s doctors are out of network and I’ll be forced to stick with COBRA or find a whole new set of doctors.
If I’m writing that check for only one or two months, I probably save money. If I’m out of work for three, it’s break even. If I don’t find anything before the end of the year, or my employer doesn’t offer a competitive plan, I’m losing money.
Those are an awful lot of unknowns to deal with when deciding to write a check for over $2000 each month.
Right now we’re fighting with the insurance company over a specific test. They don’t want to pay for it because there’s not sufficient evidence, in their opinion, that her symptoms are neurological. They want a series of simple, basic evaluations. But since her problems are largely not with basic functions, but rather with quality of life, in her doctor’s opinion she will “pass” these basic tests and that will be another reason to deny the test. The insurance company is blocking a test the doctor says would, at a bare minimum rule out a particular condition and allow us to focus on other options, because they don’t think it’s justified. I realize that this is not an effect of the ACA. But the ACA didn’t fix it, either.
Ultimately, the answer single payer, in a system that commits to comprehensive treatment and controls the costs of medical care. In the short term, changes to how insurance companies offer insurance and manage care are urgently needed.
I sympathize greatly with your situation as described. But I feel it reinforces, not contradicts, my remark that the quality and quantity of health care always comes back to how much is spent on it and on how that spending is done.
What I mean by the latter is that while the amount spent in total is, obviously, important, how it allocated is almost equally important. Right now, medical care is paid for on the FFS system (“fee for services”); as someone put it, that’s like funding a fire department based on fires fought. There are many investigations going on into better ways to allocate payment (I am going to yet another seminar on the subject in a week), but one thing stands out clearly: you are not going to get good plans when those plans are designed by the payors. And CMS (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), the biggest payor, is the one currently charged with reworking the health-care-payment system.
There are groups of health-care providers trying to wrestle with designing a fairer, more effective system. Surprisingly, with a little care systems can be designed that are better for all three stakeholders: patients, providers, and payors. But the devil is in the details.
(Those interested in such ideas can look in on the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform web site for an introduction.)