“It speaks to what makes so many of us proud to be Democrats,” he said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “It speaks to a vision that goes back to a New Deal understanding of what working people deserve,” referencing the era of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the label given his domestic policies.
“And I’ll tell you that for too long that kind of politics, you can only find it in history books, and we need to bring it back to the present day.”
Wow, that’s a bit of not understanding things there.
One, it wasn’t just that independent asshole Joe Liberman, though he was a major problem, that tanked the public option. You had Democrats like short conservative Democrats like Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln that simply did not like a public option and refused to vote for healthcare reform with a public option in it. And honestly the public option wasn’t even ideal, M4A would have been better but conservative Democrats would openly bitch and revolt when that’s even mentioned and Obama couldn’t even get something as paltry as the public option passed within his party is not exactly what is be bragging about.
Two, the public option that was proposed by the ACA was significantly different from the German system. The public option proposed by the ACA was going to be funded by the premiums alone, just run by the government to hopefully offer a better deal to help keep other health insurers in check with a larger base and negotiating power and it wasn’t mandatory like the German GKV and based on income. To say the public option in the ACA was identical to the GKV is completely ridiculous and stupid to even say.
Man, get your facts straight there buddy.
According to HuffPost:
So you fell for a hit piece.
As for Lincoln, her own website declared she was pro-public-option, but she made public statements otherwise and she had been acting very conservative in her last year in congress so it’s difficult to say how she would have voted if the original bill ever came to vote.
But we will never know because of Leiberman being a guaranteed “No” not beholden to the party for his attempt at reelection.
Regardless, it’s easy to see the GOP are the enemy even if 1 or 2 out of 60 DNC are only better 97 out of 100 votes.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-lincoln-won-t-support-public-option
We know exactly how she would have voted when she was publicly saying she stood with Liberman even with the already watered down public option proposed by the ACA.
As for Conrad, you literally quoted him saying he won’t vote for a government run plan but supports a government run plan. You’ve got to be as dense as a fruitcake to think that this guy supported a public government run option especially when his actions show the direct opposite of supporting it. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/conrad-settles-into-familiar-role-hard-to-see-how-a-public-option-gets-the-votes
That’s not falling for a hit piece, that’s called a shitty conservative taking out both sides of their mouths while killing a moderate proposal of a public option.
Also, let’s get back to your ludicrous claim that the original public option was just like Germany current plan.
The word preclude means “to make impossible” meaning Conrad’s spokesperson’s statement “previous comments do not rule out Public Option”.
I can’t tell if you’re misleading others or misled yourself.
And as for that quote of Lincoln, her campaign website still said otherwise. Keep in mind that during all of this there was a large organized campaign to change her mind including billboards and calls to action wherein people were urged to contact her office, she actually changed her stance multiple times throughout. Her major complaints were about deficit which were easily dismissed as the bill did not increase deficit at all.