Key Points
- President Joe Biden said the federal Medicare program should negotiate prices for at least 50 prescription drugs each year, up from the current target of 20 medicines.
- That proposal is one of several new health-care policy plans Biden will outline during his State of the Union address Thursday.
- But the fate of his new proposals will be in the hands of a divided Congress, making it highly uncertain whether they will pass into law.
Healthcare reform is passed by Congress, not the president. So first you need 50, or better yet 60, Senators who are interested in getting it done.
We had that. They squandered it.
No, we never had 50 who would kill the filibuster
From 2007 to 2011 Democrats controlled both the house and the senate. Obama was president from 2008-2012.
Democrats squandered it.
Democrats only had a Senate supermajority for 72 days.
Furthermore, a supermajority of exactly 60 votes only allows Democrats to pass something that 100% of them support. And Lieberman did not support anything more far reaching than the ACA, such as a public option.
Don’t let facts ruin their narrative.
What’s your narrative? Democrats had control of both the Senate and the house with a Democrat president for years and somehow it’s still Republicans fault they did basically fuck all with it?
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Doesn’t change the fact. Democrats had control of both the Senate and the house. They squandered it.
On the contrary, they squeezed everything they could out of that majority.
And if that’s not sufficient evidence to believe either our Democracy is completely broken or Democrats are corrupt or incompetent then you must be someone who’s continuing to benefit from all of this while quality of life deteriorates for the rest of us.
No, it’s evidence that Democrats are diverse. Not all of them agree with me or with you.
And in a democracy, legislation requires building a consensus. That means nobody will get everything they wanted.
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… And a majority in the House.
They had that. They squandered it.
They had that? When did we have a progressive president for 2 terms, a Congress and a Senate that was all progressive. It hasn’t happened in my life
Democrats had a majority in the Senate and the house for four years. If you’re acknowledging that establishment Democrats are corrupt pieces of shit then I agree with you but it seems like you’re trying to avoid acknowledging that fact.