Arianna Discusses Whether Obama Will Forgo Support From The GOP In Order To Pass Health Care Reform (VIDEO)

Arianna appeared on "Countdown" tonight to discuss the prospects for health care reform, and whether or not President Obama will forgo Republican support in order to pass meaningful reform.

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Comments

[Billl]

The goals of health care reform should be to assure high quality health care while inflicting the least financial harm on consumers, employers, and taxpayers.

Finding a solution that will prevent the bankrupting of the US Government because of already mandated Medicare and Medicaid obligations is also critical.

Government needs to become the basic necessities no frills provider of health care in a new dual public/private choice system.

President Obama should allow what he calls, “governments’ unfair advantages”, to be used to benefit the large population of US consumers.

Current reform proposals use “governments’ unfair advantages” to force us to purchase insurance, to pay for care delivered by private systems with bloated costs, which will increase health industry profits at a terrible expense to consumers, employers and taxpayers.

Nobody can collect the money to pay health care as cheaply as the government can through a national sales tax, and nobody can deliver high quality care and medications as cost effectively as the VA has for years.

Paying for public health care using sales tax revenues instead of insurance and delivering all government funded care only through civilian government hospitals using the VAs high quality low cost delivery systems would save hundreds of billions annually.

Everyone choosing sales tax funded public care, including employers, would receive it free.

Going back and forth between free public, and user purchased private care, would allow unlimited choices, ultimate freedom, and always free public care would be available.

[rad21]

Please bear with me while I offer the following solution once again. We can compare this with what the senate puts forward. White House should negotiate with the Insurance companies. Insure all, no denial of coverage and permit portability. Immediate 30% reduction in premiums and another 20% reduction over next two years. Half the savings to come from Insurance and the other half from the delivery of care. This will reduce healthcare cost from 17% GDP to 11%; making American business competitive in the world. With such a deal, all sides should be on board to sign off on a bill. If the insurance companies do not deliver, the Public Option will deliver by 2012.

For insurance companies, the immediate reduction in premiums will be offset by the new 47 million getting insured with govt / taxpayer help. The reduction in premium costs will help American business and reduce govt subsidies to those who need help. The immediate benefit to working Americans will be a bird-in-hand, if the insurance companies renege on bringing down healthcare costs.

The 47 million presently uninsured are already covered by those with insurance who pay an effective 17% surcharge on their insurance. The important issue to be alert is that the insurance companies with the blessing (payback) from politicians do not keep the 17% charge for "uncompensated care" while we, the tax payers again pays to subsidize the new beneficiaries.

[blackjedi47]

For those here who are really lefties--in real life--let's try not to be so fickle--BE­CAUSE-Pols are ruthlessly pragmatic--they are not saints--if we can't be counted on to vote loyally and be a loyal voting bloc--which we aren't then we get the treatment--NOT because Obama has sold out to anyone--but because left of center voters ARE a fickle lot and Right voters support their Polls no matter what and vote--no matter what. That might not be good in any way but its real as bricks.

[Pema]

she hit the nail on the head..... try to make everyone happy and you make no one happy. keep speaking out for us arianna!

[rollingdivision]

Intense anti government option feedback is why the Democrats are backing down on the pre-socialized medicine option. Not any desire for bipartisenship. Democratic politicians want to remain in office.

[blackjedi47]

It would be threatening if any of that were ACTUALLY true. All that really matters is that we DEms control all sectors of elected government---the Presidency-- and the moment---the you Cons have the right to speak--so talk away--but U don't have the right to govern. SAd but true. ANYWAY, CONS why don't U guys host a rally and harass your reps and demand that they do something to earn their pay--anything would be better than the BIG NOTHING they are presently doing in DC. U want THAT back in power?

[OkieMon]

you would think the repu*gs would lo*ve the public option...h­ere obama is handing a 1.5 trillion dollars and 50 million new customers to the health insurance who*res...­....oh you are going to get this money from the ri*ch???? no way....get if from the middle class like we have always done......

[OkieMon]

you would think the repu*gs would love the public option...h­ere obama is handing a 1.5 trillion dollars and 50 million new customers to the health insurance who*res...­....oh you are going to get this money from the rich???? no way....get if from the middle class like we have always done......

[Marlyn]

I hate Feinstein.

[Crowhaul]

It's difficult to balance the Dems continual interest in bipartisanship with the GOP's outright disgust with our President.

And, realizing this, it's difficult to watch this administration and this congress continually seek ways to work with the enemy (and, yes, the GOP is the enemy).

At some point, Obama needs to recognize that the value of compromise is overated. http://www.leftista.com/index.php/2009/09/the-value-of-compromise-is-overated/

[spinns17]

yep he tried hard to work with them.so now he has to forget about being the partisen president and grab them by the ba@@s.end of the nice guy dems.

[aspelling]

Can we have POTUS Arianna in 2016?

[OswegoKayaker]

No, unfortunately, she wasn't born here. But she would make a great cabinet member in almost any position.

[1jdgriff]

You are correct, until there is a law against lobbying and companies buying votes, nothing will be different. Money is killing any chance of change. The money is filling pockets on both the right and the left.

[simplify]

I have no problem with Arianna calling out and criticizing the President. Thats all good, but how every once in a while directing some of that criticism to the right and the nutjobs that came to Washington DC last Saturday.
Take a page from Jon Stewart and cut the President some slack.

[blackjedi47]

Absolutely GDM right!! Well said.

[OswegoKayaker]

I think everyone is upset that he had so much support before he let this thing go to the teabaggers all summer. I am still proud & glad he is my president, I was waiting for he him to stand up and give the guidance this kind of social change needs am I hoping it isn't too late. I wanted him to twist the arms of the Blue Dog Democrats and forget the Republicans. They had already told him that they were not going to vote for any bill no matter how much he gutted it to please them. We all hope for bipartisanship in government, but it doesn't happen very often -- usually in times of crisis. That is why we have elections. But this president seems to be trying a little too hard to win over hearts and votes from those that have no hearts for the middle and lower classes and wouldn't give our President a vote if their lives depended on it -- and maybe their political lives do depend on not voting with him because the teabaggers were left to spill their venom with no one to stop them until Barney and Franken stood up. But I heard that the President's speech in Ohio was a rousing success so maybe he is back!

[soothwriter]

The way I see it Democrats used bi-partisanship and the so-called public option to give the insurance companies what they wanted and got a ton of money for their efforts.

[simplify]

Stop reacting to the headlines and try reading the story

[Marlyn]

I agree.

Obama's plan seems to be:
1. in 4 years there will be a co-op that includes a public option.
2. Insurance companies must cover everyone.
3. Everyone must buy insurance.

If you remove the public option from this plan, then it is clearly throwing the American people under the corporation bus, just to get the insurance companies to stop cheating their customers.

[Austintatious]

People, it ain't the Republicans who are blocking real healthcare reform. Yes, they're despicable. Yes, their sole intent is to cause the Obama Administration to fail, regardless of cost to country.

That said, real reform is failing because the Democrats are allowing it to fail. In the Senate, you have your blue dogs and other righties, the totally corrupt, like Baucus and Conrad, and the spineless, like Reid and Durbin. In the House, you have the Speaker and the so called progressive caucus. "Any bill is better than no bill.", Brother Emanuel will tell them, and they will cave on the public option.

However, the lion's share of blame for this abject failure, to date, is best laid at the feet of our President, having failed to lead on healthcare, from the very start. Once Obama decided to sit back, play it safe, and allow the Congress to put healthcare reform together, it was already doomed. The very suggestion that this Congress, the single most corrupt political institution on Earth, should be left to its own devices on something so important to the American people is laughable, an absurdity, on its face.

Folks, let's be clear. This President has wasted the best opportunity for genuine healthcare reform that our nation has ever seen or may ever see. It wasn't going to happen without Obama out front, taking charge from the very start. To fight and lose would be forgiveable but failure to lead, especially on this one, is not.

[DEJM]

Well said!

[stop the politics]

Pres. Obama seems very reluctant to lead on the major issues. When it came time for the stimulus he let congress do the work instead of telling them this is what he wants and this is how he wants it done. He has done the same thing with healthcare. Congress is like a group of little kids, they need to be told what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. Then they can bicker and play politics on the little issues. Pres. Obama needs to take the lead on the issues because Congress is incapable.

[Austintatious]

And that is why we elected him, to lead. Unfortunately, it seems that leading was not what he had in mind. In fact, I can't figue out what he had in mind.

Lot's of grand talk, but nothing of substance. It depresses me to think that all those folks saying that of Barack Obama, back during the campaign, were right. I didn't believe it then, wouldn't have it. I was wrong.

[blackjedi47]

Unfortunately I think his o so pragmatic Clintonite advisers said--hey U can't count on any voting bloc left of center--stray across this line and no one looking to get re-elected will cross it with U--in simple terms his advisers said to him-- U cant count on Liberals to get anyone re-elected. That's what's behind the reach right strategy--it's prevailing wisdom--the DEm Congress buys it and given how fickle left of center is--MAYBE THEY ARE RIGHT--to our loss. Maybe we are so fickle that Pols figure THEY CANT count on us to get RE-elected so ???

[lpbj]

The Clintons tried it your way and look what happened. At least trying it this way we're a little further along. Ex-President Clinton and wife tried dictating to Congress about healthcare, and the whole thing died.

[mystic]

Obama doesn't care why you elected him. When Arriana says that he "sacrificed" a public option, he never sacrificed anything because he never intended to have it in the first place. Remember when he "sacrificed" a universal health care plan right from the start?
Obama, fraudulently made promises during the campaign in order to get elected so that he could continue the Bush third term. That was the deal he made. We've been snookered. Again. Doesn't anyone get it? Throughout history, dictatorships never ever forego their power by democratic means.

[CaScientist]

There are two polical parties in this country, and they are not republicans and democrats. Our two-party system is now a choice between two arms of the same global corporate body. Until the parasitism and depredatation get bad enough, the voters are going to bounce back and forth between the two in cycle after cycle. When things get bad enough, people again will start paying attention to what Jefferson said in the very beginning of both our revolution and that of the French, and there will be enough force of numbers into alternative parties to make a change. In the meantime, those of us with a few brain cells still working will move over to third-part­ies....and wait for everybody else to get fed up enough to join us.

[blackjedi47]

until that grand day I suppose we should just lay down and die then? Right. . .