PUBLIC OPTION: Howard Dean Won’t Go Away

12:05 pm EST August 19th, 2009 | News | 16 Comments

And we’re better off for it.

“The worst thing that could happen is to pass a bill without a public option,” Dean told an assembly of Democratic activists in a fiery speech at a pep rally and picnic here last weekend. “Then we’d put 60 billion new dollars a year into the health insurance industry that is busy taking away your health insurance when you need it most, stopping you from getting health insurance, taking it away if you lose a job and not giving it back to you if you get it back.”

(Please send your public option links, data, video, images, etc. to publicoption@oliverwillis.com)

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16 Responses to “PUBLIC OPTION: Howard Dean Won’t Go Away”

  1. El Cid says:
    August 19, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    Rasmussen: “Without Public Option, Enthusiasm for Health Care Reform, Especially Among Democrats, Collapses”

    Just 34% of voters nationwide support the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats if the so-called “public option” is removed. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 57% oppose the plan if it doesn’t include a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

  2. El Cid says:
    August 19, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Crap. Forgot the next paragraphs, perhaps the crucial ones.

    <blockquote.

    Without the public option, just 50% of Democrats support the legislation. That’s down from 69% support measured a week ago. But here the enthusiasm gap is especially strong. A week ago, polling found that 44% of Democrats Strongly favored the reform plan. Without the public option, just 12% of Democrats Strongly support it.

    Minus the government insurance option, 68% of Republicans remain opposed to the plan, down from 79%.

  3. buma says:
    August 19, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    I think all the blue dogs need to be taken to the woodshed. The GOP-ers are voting against reform no matter what specifics are in the bill. All further discussion should be amongst Democrats, period. Republicans have nothing to offer, as has been demonstrated.

  4. jr says:
    August 19, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    “Why don’t you go live in Cuba?”-Kent Conrad to Howard Dean

  5. anotherbozo says:
    August 19, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    Congressman Anthony Wiener (D,NY) making talk show rounds hasn’t hurt, either. Joe Scarborough had no response to Wiener’s straighforward reasoning except to say, “Well, I have ideological differences…” which, of course, is no reasoning at all.

  6. Dave in SoCal says:
    August 19, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Howard Dean:

    The Republicans, they have no interest in this Bill. They’re using the 1994 playbook. Let’s kill the bill and kill the president…… or, kill the president’s term. Although there are sort of angry people out there I get very nervous about this stuff. I don’t like it at all.

    Yes, folks, this the kind of clear and level-headed thinking that represents the Democratic party today.

    And before you start with the bogus “see, he clarified it to show that he meant killing the president’s term, not killing the president himself” argument, please note that the very next sentence (“there are sort of angry people out there I get very nervous about this stuff”) makes it crystal clear that yes, he WAS talking about those crazy Republicans wanting to kill the president.

  7. Indeed says:
    August 19, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    Let’s hope that Wendell Potter won’t go away either:

    http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html

    http://www.prwatch.org/node/8422

    and elsewhere; look him up. He’s got it going on.

    Is Wendell Potter crazy too? Sounds like he may know that the fuck he’s talking about. Unlike, say, the frothing wingnutz shrieking about Hitler, “death panels,” and not illegal immigrants getting Free Health Care (it all comes down the The Southern Strategy with Team Wingnutz, don’t it?).

  8. Jody says:
    August 19, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    I agree. Dean is completely unhinged to think that people bringing semi-automatic weapons to townhalls, and their enablers both in public office and in the media, might wish genuine physical ill upon the president. Truly, that’s the bigger point here, not reforming health care in any genuine capacity.

    The left thinks the right are a bunch of meanies. That’s the real issue here. I expect written apologies from Obama post haste.

  9. Indeed says:
    August 19, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    makes it crystal clear that yes, he WAS talking about those crazy Republicans wanting to kill the president.

    Indeed. Like when that big liar Al Gore said he invented the Internet.

    You done yet? Care to discuss Health Care Reform?

  10. Jody says:
    August 19, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    You know Indeed, Obama said he invented Health Care Reform.

    Along with Hitler.

    It’s true.

    He did it so gay guys can get uteruses implanted from the women killed via death panel, and get impregnated with fetuses painstakingly crafted from stem cells.

    Which they could then abort.

    That’s right. Obama’s master plan for inventing health care reform is gay abortions.

  11. Indeed says:
    August 19, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    Jody gets it:

    One of the reasons why it has become tougher is due to misperceptions about the president’s plans for reform.

    Majorities in the poll believe the plans would give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants; would lead to a government takeover of the health system; and would use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions — all claims that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue about the legislation that has emerged so far from Congress.

    Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.

    more:
    http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/politics-of-policy-destruction-by-digby.html

    A far more comprehensive health care system failed in 1947 because conservative right wing Southern congress-critters (Strom Thurmond style DixieCrats) fretted that they might have to integrate the hospitals. Since then, Big Insurance and Big Pharma have ruled the day. Now it’s fear of The Brown People (and Nazis!). What an awful lot the modern Republican party, the party of Rush Limbaugh, is.

    I heard that John Kerry shot himself to get some hero hardware. Well, he could have, anyway.

  12. freD says:
    August 19, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    I also agree with Jody. The corporate backed conservative think tankers were very good at capturing most of the “our end justifies our means” crowd. After capture, all this large voting block ever needed was to be told what to think and what to do by their sanctioned authority. The sanctioned BS has gotten so bizzare that I cannot believe that ‘conservative authority’ isn’t giggling to themselves about all the resulting self-parody.

  13. Indeed says:
    August 19, 2009 at 4:38 pm

    More of what Team Reality Based is up against:

    Public Policy Polling has a new poll out on the national ‘birther’ movement. And it turns out to be another fascinating look at the mystic overlap between ideological and simple ignorance.

    Of the 24% of the population in the ‘birther’ category, one interesting thing to note is that more Americans seem to think Obama was born in Indonesia (10%) than Kenya (7%), which suggests not only that a frighteningly large number of Americans are birthers but that they have a shockingly low level of basic ‘birther’ literacy. As you know, according to orthodox ‘birther’ theory, Obama was born in Kenya.

    Even better, 6% fully concede that Obama was born in Hawaii. They just don’t believe Hawaii is part of the United States.

    http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/beneath_the_birther_toplines.php

  14. Mike says:
    August 19, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Dave in SoCal, Dr. Dean is right, and you’re an idiot.

  15. El Cid says:
    August 19, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    How many think he was born in both Kenya and Indonesia? And how many think Kenya is a state?

  16. Indeed says:
    August 19, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    More misinformation:

    Here’s another way to look at the misinformation: In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly. But it would be incorrect to suggest that this is ONLY coming from conservative viewers who tune in to FOX. In fact, 41% of CNN/MSNBC viewers believe the misinformation about illegal immigrants, 39% believe the government takeover stuff, 40% believe the abortion misperception, and 30% believe the stuff about pulling the plug on grandma. What’s more, a good chunk of folks who get their news from broadcast TV (NBC, ABC, CBS) believe these things, too.

    and go figure:

    Fox is the most consistently significant predictor of misperceptions [about the rationale and immediate aftermath of the Iraq War]. Those who primarily watched Fox were 2.0 times more likely to believe that close links to al Qaeda have been found, 1.6 times more likely to believe that WMD had been found, 1.7 times more likely to believe that world public opinion was favorable to the war, and 2.1 times more likely to have at least one misperception.

    No one could have predicted…

    http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-surprise.html