If putting additional billions of dollars into the bank accounts of insurance companies is going in the "right direction", Joe Lieberman is leading the way. I wonder what it's like to go to bed at night knowing that you have personally fucked millions of citizens.
There is little new I can add to the outpouring of anger and disgust being directed at Joe Lieberman. Democrats who a year ago exulted over a 60 seat majority in the Senate didn't envision seeing the country held hostage by this execrable horse's ass.
When President Obama spoke in Oslo about evil existing in the world, I wonder if it occurred to him that its most visible embodiment here in America was caucusing with his party in the Senate. For surely there is no better example of evil at work in the world than one power-hungry senator promoting the continued misery of millions for personal gain and the for continued enrichment of the few.
After Lieberman's intervention in the health care reform bill, what exactly is left?
According to the National Review:
"In essence, it’s a requirement that all Americans pay health-insurance premiums to secure qualified coverage. And if there is no government-run option, the public will have no choice but to pay their premiums to private insurers. Yes, that’s right. The Democratic party is on the verge of enacting a requirement, enforced with federal tax penalties, which would effectively require hard-working Americans to hand over even more of their wages to profit-hungry, private insurance companies...And now [the Democrats] are being told they have no choice but to vote for a bill that would hand over to those greedy insurers a captured marketplace of guaranteed insurance purchasers."
Not only that, those who can't afford the ever-rising premiums will receive government subsidies to help pay the cost. Who ends up with that money? The insurance companies. If Joe Lieberman is opposed to "government intrusion" in the health care industry, why is he supporting government money going directly to for-profit insurance companies via the subsidies?
Maybe this is one explanation. Lieberman: GOP bid a "possibility."
Moving in the right direction, indeed.
Still, I disagree that it's time to junk the whole bill. There are some measures in it that may end up benefiting the public and the nation in the long run. And sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences works in mysterious ways. It may well be that, despite the abhorrent compromises and the handouts to insurance companies, Obama's bill has pointed the nation - however shakily - in a new direction.
And NOT the one Joe Lieberman is working for.
More from this writer at http://bareleft.blogspot.com