we may get fined for buying overpriced health insurance. I understand that Obama showed grit tonight and he delivered a great speech, but substantively we are still where we were. I just watched two members of the progressive caucus say he hit a home run. He chastized the progressives about the public option. Not explicitely, but you had to understand that this was what he was talking about. How is that a home run? The aesthetics were great, but substantively I did not see what I wanted.
I watched another pundit just tell his audience that the ban on watering down coverage when you get sick and excluding pre-existing conditions was huge. No it wasn't. Those blatant abuses where the starting point. To say that was a real accomplishment is a demonstration that you just don't get it. They won't drive down the cost of premiums or copayments. And they are so obvious that even some Republicans agree with them. That is not an real accomplishment. That is cherry picking.
How do you break up some of these monopolies with this plan. He recognized them and the fact that the public option is a way to combat them, but what do you do without the public option? That is how important the public option is. There is no mechanism, absent anti-trust enforcement which has not been done in years.
Four years? People need relief now. The economic crisis is now!
He came in and looked presidential. He looked like a fighter and probably got some people in line. The problem is that I think getting in line means progressives in the House have to give up the Public Option. If they give it up and then mandate coverage, the insurers have one! After the excitement fades, that is the bottom line. The current situation is better than that scenerio.