3 ms·
I agree on Obama. Biden played a large part as well. Remember that they got rid of a public option in negotiations to win Republicans over. And got zero Republ
by tyre 6y ago
I agree on Obama. Biden played a large part as well.
Remember that they got rid of a public option in negotiations to win Republicans over. And got zero Republican votes.
Obama was many things, but he was not good at congressional politics. He saw himself as about the fray, and it showed.
- chris11 6y agoJoe Lieberman killed the public option in Obamacare. He threatened to vote against the bill if a public option was included.
- StanislavPetrov 6y agoYou mean Joe Lieberman, who was Al Gore's choice for Vice President when he won the Democratic nomination for president in 2000, and went on to endorse Republican John McCain for president only 8 years later? The facts are that Democratic Senator Max Baucus, Chairmen of the Senate Finance Committee and Obama's pointman in the Senate who was responsible for writing the language of Obamacare (Romneycare) invited a cabal of insurance industry lobbyists into the negotiating room to write the bill and specifically excluded all single-payer advocates from the negotiating table. Its pure revisionist history to suggest that Obama and his minions did everything they could to push a public option (let alone single-payer or even a Medicare-for-all type provision). The facts are that Obama and the Democratic leadership caucus were determined to pass a bill that enshrined the predominance of the for-profit, employer-based health insurance industry. Obamacare (Romneycare) was designed from the beginning as an effort to preclude real, substantive change and improvements to our healthcare system by implementing some very minor improvements (such as the pre-existing conditions clause) and some cosmetic changes. This was abundantly clear to everyone who was paying close attention at the time and not getting their information from corporate news outlets. https://pnhp.org/news/max-baucus-should-not-be-deciding-health-care-for-america/ https://pnhp.org/news/max-baucus-should-not-be-deciding-heal...