Republicans declare Healthcare Summit victory
A day after President Barack Obama’s nationally televised healthcare summit, Republicans are out declaring victory.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn said the summit was good for the American public. Good, that is, for the public to hear the Republican argument and see Obama lose his usual cool, particularly during the highly publicized exchange with his former presidential election adversary, Sen. John McCain.
“It was good for the American people see him kind of become a bit agitated,” the Tennessee Republican told MSNBC. “There were a couple of times that maybe he did get a little bit frustrated, and that’s good for the American people to see.”
The public also got to see how Democrats dominated two-thirds of the air time. And that bit of drama when Obama told McCain that the 2008 election was over? ”Really inappropriate,” Blackburn said.
Not that McCain himself minded. He’d welcome another summit.
“It was good to have that conversation. I think it was good for the American people, people all over the world that watched,” the Arizona Republican told ABC’s Good Morning America. “I think it helps the American people make a judgment. I’d be glad to go over again.”
Pelosi tells Harvard students she read every page of healthcare bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told students at Harvard University on Friday that she had indeed done her reading.
Taking questions during the 90-minute event, Pelosi assured one skeptical undergraduate that she, and many other House members, had read “every page” of the roughly 1,900-page healthcare bill passed by the House.
She expounded on leadership qualities, healthcare reform, the impact of more women in Congress, troops to Afghanistan — oh, and healthcare reform.
Participating in the healthcare debate, so long a signature issue of the late Massachusetts political titan Ted Kennedy, was “humbling,” she said.
Pelosi said she would have had a hard time cobbling together enough votes for a healthcare bill without a public option to balance the influence of insurance companies.
And she sympathized with women’s groups fearful of the Stupak-Pitts anti-abortion amendment contained in the House bill.
But of all the heavy legislative lifting in Congress this year, passing supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan was the hardest, Pelosi said.
It’s criminal what congress is doing against the wishes of the American people.
House healthcare bill doesn’t boost public support – Poll
The big presentation — that’s 1,990 pages — of healthcare reform legislation by Democrats in the House of Representatives last week didn’t boost public support, with more voters still opposed to the effort, according to a new Rasmussen Reports opinion poll.
Just to recap where things stand: House Democratic leaders are hoping to move their bill to the floor for debate by late this week, it includes a government-run public insurance option. In the Senate, Democratic leaders are waiting for cost estimates on their legislation, which also includes a version of the “public option.”
The latest Rasmussen poll found that 42 percent of those surveyed favored the healthcare plan proposed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. That was down from 45 percent a week ago and unchanged from two weeks ago.
Looking at the Rasmussen historical chart, support for healthcare reform has hovered between 41 percent and 46 percent since mid-September.
In the latest poll, conducted after House Democrats unveiled their legislation last week, 54 percent opposed the legislative effort on healthcare reform. That was up three points from the previous week and unchanged from two weeks earlier.
Opposition to healthcare reform has hovered between 50 percent and 56 percent since mid-September.
“Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the numbers is how stable they have been through months of debate, town hall protests, presidential speeches, congressional wrangling and more,” Rasmussen Reports says.
I feel that I fully support this bill at this point, because the need for change in general is greater than our specific individual needs or wants. The entire health care industry from provider, practitioner, to pharmaceutical, has been allowed to dictate how it will care for the people and has lost sight of its primary focus, to provide quality care.
There are so many aspects of this plan that the politicians keep overlooking though. The medical industry is wrought with overspending and has gone for too long without any regulation or oversight. Insurance premiums have gone up 138% for a reason and it isn’t simply corporate greed.
Private insurance companies are a part of the problem, yes. When regarding health, private insurance never should have been allowed to be profitable business in the first place. For-profit insurance means requires a need to make money and inevitably that is going to affect the quality of the insurance that people are getting from the company. Companies don’t want to spend money on an individual so they will take whatever measures necessary to ensure they don’t have to. But the medical industry has been profiting all along as well. Procedural costs, visits, even x-rays cost varying amounts state to state, city to city and practitioners are being bounced around by pharmaceutical companies to try and make money while waiting a year or more for the insurance companies to pay up.
This may be why the US was ranked #37 according to the World Health Organization. http://www.ourblook.com/component/option ,com_sectionex/Itemid,200076/id,...
It is time for the entire industry to work as a single unit and break down the privatized barriers. Every doctor takes the Hippocratic Oath before receiving certification so when will the industry as a whole step forward and honor that oath?
All I said was that you were a whiny little boy. You have proven the point for me with your whiny post.