Lieberman Throws up Potential Roadblock for Reid

Lieberman is bought and paid for by the insurance industry that is a big player in his state. No news here.

Why are the Dems continuing to play with Mr. Lieberman….can you imagine he was Al Gore’s running mate for the Democratic Nomination…….

Yes, he’s in the NO party – he’s a democrat!

Yes we (GOP/Conservatives/Repubs) are the “Party of NO” as in “we told you so” but would you listen? “But NOOOOOOO!”

You don’t have to be a conservative to know Harry Reid is an ###.

jhw539, i gather from your “bought and paid for by the insurance industry” lamentations that you’re a democrat? so, was he in the pocket of the evil insurance companies when democrats wanted him second in line for leader of the free world 9 years ago, or did he only become evil after he swore off allegiance to the pure-as-the-driven snow democratic party? get real…he should at least be given credit for having the guts to call b.s. on the two party fiasco that masquerades as open politics these days.

hybridhealthcare: You’re right about doing NOTHING is not an option, but why are you supporting the government expanding on the problem they caused? The President loves to talk about everyone needing health insurance just like they need car insurance (assuming everyone owns a car…which we know is not true); so why is it that we can purchase any car insurance we want (and they keep the rates low through “competition”) but we can’t purchase any health insurance of our choice? What is wrong with this picture? Are you a thinker, or just a kool-aid drinker?

To those CT Dems who voted for Lieberman in the general election in 2006 – shame on you. Don’t let this weasel slime his way into another term. In 2012 he is out!

Thank you Joe Lieberman. Thank you America. America does not want Marxism!!!!

Obama’s whole health care “reform” is a joke. First of all, while we’re supposedly in a “crisis” on health care, the bills make you wait at least 3 and 1/2 years before you get any benefits(in the meantime you pay taxes and have your Medicare benefits cut—while receiving nothing in return). Secondly, the idea this “reform” is deficit neutral is comical. There is no way this massive expansion of a government entitlement program will not cost a fortune(perhaps moreover if Obama hadn’t wasted 787 billion on nonpriority pork projects the funding of a program of coverage for the uninsured could already have been accomplished). Thirdly, the “reform” is laden with so many taxes, mandates and fees(on things such as pacemakers and medical devices—and making it harder for one to deduct medical expenses on one’s tax returns), the middle class and poor will clearly be hit hard by this “reform”. Not to mention the fact the “public option” will lead to single payer(where you will have no choice whatsoever with respect to your coverage–you’ll be stuck with whatever politician in charge at the time—GOP or Democrat—decides to give you). Our system can be improved, but the more Obama and Reid and Pelosi try to “reform” the health care system, the worse their proposals get and the further away they get from real reforms that would actually improve the system.

Vote him out

Why does everyone ignore the obvious? Go after corruption in billing with a vengeance and that will free up alot of $$$, when the govt. is not paying for multiple tests, fraudulent claims etc. Then lo and behold, medicare will be solvent and something like it can be extended to people with no coverage. Follow the REAL money – a safe bet everyone talking about fighting this bill and streamlining and computerization of records is makeing a bundle from duplicative test and (oh my heavens) “mistaken” charges and (who would ever??) billing errors…. but – thats just my take on it.

we wish for our money to go into the public option fund. you and your 1/3 of a cent tax contribution can designate your pittance towards the pot for bombs and bullets and death penalties. see how they tax pie is divided up. people that state that they do not want their taxes going for a public option… just how far do you think your 20,000 in yearly taxes goes, perhaps your drop in the bucket 20 grand just pays for one days service on a military aircraft. americans have the largest mouths and the smallest brains on the planet. P.S. Lieberman is a Judas, plain and simple.

Oh for pete’s sake! If you don’t like the bill, vote against it, but don’t threaten to vote to prevent it from coming up for a vote. You were elected to legislate, not to grandstand.

Send “Roadblock Joe” some dead fish. – Rahm

ONce a trator, always a traitor

Chances are that Leiberman will lose a substantial number of democrat voters if he fight cloture.

Connecticut should not even have two Senators! There are 3.5 million people. Many cities are bigger than that! Joe should join the Knesset instead. It’s where his heart and votes are.

ALL THESE NEGATIVE SENATORS THAT ARE AGAINST THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL WITH PUBLIC OPTION.
THEY ARE DOING THERE BEST TO KEEP IT FROM PASSING THIS TIME. THEY NEED TO BE HUNG UPSIDE DOWN BY THERE ANKLES IN A TREE ON CAPITAL HILL AND LEFT THERE FOR DAYS !
“NO WORRIES THEY HAVE HEALTH CARE”!

Thank God someone in Washington is listening to the people. Americans have made it very clear that they don’t want washington running their healthcare, and yet the socialists in power keep trying to ram it down our throats. Hopefully 2010 will be payback for all of this and all of these elitists in washington are thrown out.

The people of America are finally going to have REAL health coverage with better quality. No more insurance company death panels, not more bankruptsies due to health care needs, and now individuals and small companies can now afford to start up new business and stay in business as they can now compete without the super high costs of the present robber barons of the present health insurance industry.
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1. Real health insurance: by definition, we have had health insurance for many, many years. Health insurance is when premiums are paid to a plan so that plan will help pay medical bills.
And the public option will be no different. Premiums will be paid and at least some part of medical bills will be paid by the ‘public option’ plan.
2. Those ridiculous death panels. Stupid when Palin and her ilk said and equally stupid here.
Private insurance companies have medical policies that govern what they cover and how much they will be.
Medicare and Medicaid do it now and the PO will be no different.
3. No more bankruptcies. Let me refer you back to #1. The PO will not pay the total of the medical bill. And except for the very poor, will not pay the premiums either. There will be costs to the consumer.
Of course, there may be bankruptcies for folks like…me….my EGHP will be dropped; I will have to pay more for less coverage; pay more out-of-pocket for health care; and I doubt if my househead income will get me any assistance.
4. Small business: they may actually benefit. All companies will drop EGHP. The big ones because the penalty is pittance compare to EGHP cost. The little ones won’t have to provide it.
My opinion.

Every body needs to suffer so the worthless republican created insurance companies can have a job and loot the country.

Any idiot that would trust “Vote for sale to highest bidder” Lieberman should have their head examined!

I guess these guys didn’t get the email about not donating money or time to candidates who don’t sign onto the public option. I have probably gotten fifty of those emails from different organizations urging me not to work on any primaries or donate until the public option is a reality. That is candidates at ALL levels…..

Did anyone see the 60 Mintes piece on Medicare fraud last Sunday? How many millions of fraud in 1 city in 1 year? Its no wonder their unfunded liabilities are ~$74 trillion. And what are they going to do for healthcare? and healthcare administration?

dlboggin: You might want to apologize to Stanley. I just read his note; it was sarcasm. He’s on your side.

“And finally, if you hadn’t noticed, the most efficient and appreciated health system in this country is Medicare. It is run by the Federal Government. It is insane that we treat health care as just another business. ”
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Actually, Medicare is predominately managed by private companies. Most of them are either health insurance companies or totally-owned subsidiaries of insurance companies.
It is true that CMS provides a great deal of oversight, but the day-to-day operation is done by private companies who hold contracts with the Feds.
I know this because I spent 17.5 years working for one of those companies. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of a little company called Anthem.
Those 17.5 years were spent in positions such as fraud prevention and investigations, medical policy development, and data analysis.
And there is a lot of overhead because instead of paying federal employees to do what folks like me did, the feds pay private companies to do it. And those companies do not do it for charity. They make profits.
I currently work for a private company that holds contracts with several states to administer their Medicaid programs.

Malcat: Exactly right. A nurse was just remembering to me the days when Medicaid was run by the government. Now, its run by private companies and well, its so much according to her. (Sadly, she still does not support reform) The premium for this “service” is 13% whereas the cost of federal employees doing it is 3% and then the freakin conservatives complain about the freakin COSTS of running the program.
Folks in red, this is what happens when you get what you want: an increase in administrative costs of 10% and malcat is right: they aren’t doing this as a personal favor to you! These are companies out to make money!

The users at the VA system actually rate their system most favorably…and that’s across the board, public and private. Its entirely socialist too! (lol)

This health care bill is nothing more than a control-stick to whittle down the population and kill off the elderly and weak. The sensible politicians are seeing it for what it is. Legalized Genocide disguised as “Help” for the American people…

Lovebugs: Actually, I’m a very conservative Republican living in a state so red it makes the others look pink.
I believe there is no way that a public option will be administered by federal employees. It will be put out for contract.
Even if the health insurance reform bill (refuse to call it health care reform) were to pass tonight, the feds simply could not get it up and running by 2013. I’ve been involved in those start-ups. To put it bluntly: they are ghastly, hideous, mind-wracking nightmares to do.
The feds will HAVE to turn to the companies who already have the systems, processes and trained staff in place.
I’m for health insurance reform. I’m even willing to pay a few extra bucks in taxes, though I don’t know where I will come up with them.
But I’m tired of being lied to…by the Democrats, the Republicans, health insurance companies and everyone else out to get theirs.
Don’t be blind to reality. None of the bills nor the admendments I’ve read are going to come close to providing maximum access to health insurance without devastating the US economy along with the personal finances of her citizens.

Bravo Sen Lieberman!!!!!
A Lemming for Obama you are NOT!
This is Socialism…a goverment run health-care system will work as well as the DMV, Post Office,etc.
Pay for your own health care you losers and don’t ask me to pay for it!!!!

But health insurance and health care are both businesses. This country runs on businesses.
They provide services or things that we pay for. They have the right to make a profit. Do any of you posting here work for nothing, or even just to cover your cost to get to work?
There is nothing wrong with profits. Excessive profits, yes. But without making profits, we would have no businesses. How many of you could work for yourself? Wait, that would make you a business!

I am not surprised that Joe Lieberman has decided to engage in his par-for-the-course back-stabbing. I looked up the following facts from Center for Responsive Politics.
According to that site, Joe Lieberman has gotten $2 million from the health care sector, which includes health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. He gets $ l million from lobbyists. Lieberman’s top 20 political donors include Aetna Health Insurance and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, which stole $ 1 billion from Medicare and which recently paid a $ 2.3 billion settlement with the FDA. (This settlement only occurred because Obama was president, I might add.)
For Joe Lieberman, it’s OK for his sponsors to defraud Medicare. Right now, according to a report by the Harvard University Medical School, 44,000 Americans die each year because of inadequate Medical Care. That’s a 9/11 every month. Joe Lieberman doesn’t give a rat.
According to the 2009 CIA Fact book, our infant mortality rate is twice as high as Sweden or France. It’s also higher than the infant mortality rate of Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Cuba – whose health care systems are consistently demonized by CNN. Joe Lieberman does not care because babies cannot make political campaign contributions.
Joe Lieberman gives me a new degree of respect for the play-for-pay, and sometimes, gay-for-pay Party Boys in West Hollywood. Those guys are for sale and they’ll tell you their price up front. As for Joe Lieberman??? He’s just a Greedy Old Puto (AKA male prostitute.)

Joe Lieberman did not create the roadblock, it is Harry Reid who created roadblock by proposing a plan that will bankrupt us.
Joe Lieberman is trying to save us from these dumb and mad people like Reid and Pelosy. Our grandchildren will thank him for that.

Senator Lieberman,
Save us from these Marxist monsters.

This guy is nothing but a prostitute, sold and paid for by the insurance industry who line his pockets with money. This is the payback from this lowlife to the Democrats who allowed this piece of dog waste back into their circle. This traitor make Judas look like the Easter Bunny. The Connecticut voters should never have voted this clown in after losing the Democratic Primary. This whole BS scare tactic from the insurance industry and nonsense from some here about “Markism and Socialism” is hogwash. Get this into your thick skulls, THERE IS NO COMPETITION IN THE HEALTH CARE INSURANCE INDUSTRY. They lobby as a group, belong to the same clubs, same association, and trade groups, and spend hundreds of millions against health care reform. They know exactly what each are doing and they tweak this or that to give an appearance of “competition”. All you have to be is dropped by one of them or given the storyline of “pre-existing condition, and all of them will know about it. Try getting health insurance then. It is a con game they are feeding the American people and that is why they are opposed to the public option. How many horror stories do we need to hear about people losing everything when a devestating illness strikes. Nobody should become a pauper when this happens, but it happens to thousands of Americans every year. They too thought that this happens to other people, not them. It can just as easily happen to YOU too. In this country of immense wealth, here we are debating who deserves to live or die based on their ability to afford health care coverage. No man, woman, or child should ever be put in this situation. We are either a great nation that is just, fair, and caring, or we are just a bunch of selfish small minded nation in moral decay that would rather side with the interest of the insurance industry who only care about profits. If that’s the case, God have mercy on where this country is going.

“How many horror stories do we need to hear about people losing everything when a devestating illness strikes.”
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First, let me restate: I am FOR health insurance reform. I believe all Americans should have decent health insurance.
But I have to ask. “Do you honestly think that with the very best bill that can be passed that ALL medical bills will be paid with no copays, no coinsurance, no deductible? Just go get medical care and pay NOTHING out of pocket? Do you realize that most if not all states require a small co-pay for many services?
We are not talking about socialized medicine. We are talking about increasing access to health insurance. Which increases the number of people who can pay for health care with help from the health insurance.
Of course, since Congress and this administration refuse to talk about the down-and-dirty details, I can’t say 100% that there will be out-of-pocket for the patient, but I’ll be shocked and amazed beyond all imagination if that’s not what will be.

@malcat
I must add that although it is true that health care is a for profit business in the US, I do not agree that it should be.

“Do you think such a system is not possible here? Do you have any arguments for or against it?”
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Anything is possible. You know that saying, “The devil is in the details”?
I would not personally be adverse to the single-payer system. I don’t know a lot about Canada’s system; would like to know more.
From my personal observations over the past 20+ years, I just can’t see it in the US anytime in the near future. The changes in processes, mindsets, economical makeup, all would be a massive undertaking.
The turmoil for the employees of all the insurance companies and third-party payers would be close to devastating. Some people forget when calling for the abolishment of insurance companies, they are calling for the elimination of jobs for many of their hard-working fellow citizens.
And right now, with our economy and that of the whole world, I would be terrified if we were to try it right now.
Here is the link to CMS’ website if you would like to check it out. You can learn alot about Medicare and Medicaid there.
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If interested in Medicaid, you might check out your state's official website. Most have a link to their Medicaid site.
And I hate to do it, but I'm going to have to sign off. I just got a phone call requiring me to run a quick errand.
It's been a pleasure talking to you. I'll look for you again.
God bless!

Leiberman = shameless sellout. Nothing new. He’s shown his true colors before. He is 100% of the party of NO. Ugly inside and out.

Pssst… Hey Joe, in case you didn’t know, Israel has a totally public, socialized health system. Talk about irony.

Stanley Jones-Umberger – You said “Connecticut should not even have two Senators! There are 3.5 million people.”
The members of the Senate are set by the Constitution at two (2) per state thus giving each state equal footing in that side of the Legislative branch. The members of the House of Representatives are set by the population of the states thus giving a more populace state more power than a sparsely populated one. Thus you argument for only one Senator from Connecticut fails but there are several states which have more Representatives than Connecticut in the House.
davidfrat21 – You said “we should have a house based on population and a senate based on population. I guess the founding fathers really goofed with article one of the constitution”
Do you realize the impact of your remark? The Constitution does not fix the size of the House of Representatives; instead, this clause empowers Congress to determine the size of the House as part of the apportionment process, so long as the size of the House does not exceed 1 member for every 30,000 of the country’s total population. Public Law 62-5, passed by the United States Congress on August 8, 1911, set the number of members of the United States House of Representatives at 435 effective with the 63rd Congress in 1913. It also included a provision for the addition of one seat each for Arizona and New Mexico when they became states. The number of members increased temporarily to 437 when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states during the 86th Congress (seating one member from each of those states without changing the apportionment of the other seats), but after the 1960 census and the 1962 election, that number went back to 435. If the original 1 member for every 30,000 people in this country was still used then the number of members in the House of Representatives would be in excess of 10,100 (based on the US Census Bureau’s 2008 population estimate for the United States of 304,059,724). If they have problems with 435 folks getting together could you imagine the chaos of over 10,000 trying to agree on anything, the government would be in total gridlock.

Wall Street
Art students
9/11 snow job
Chicken hawks
Moving company
Propaganda media
DNC stealth neocons
Anti-semitism accusers
The chosen the superior
2-3% of the US population
Extortion blackmail bribery
By deception ye shall wage war
AIPAC’s Israel-first dual-nationals
For profit NotFederal NoReserve scam
~ Words are plentiful deeds are precious

Stanley Jones-Umberger…..I think you really should study the Constitution a bit more before you make comments about the framework of our nation. EVERY state, regardless of size or population, gets two senators. The more populated states have a number of representatives based on their populations. It was planned that way, and has been that way for much longer than you’ve been around. Just because you disagree with a particular state’s senator does not give you (or Obama) the right to change the Constitution. Perhaps Obama can appoint a Setator Czar to limit the number of senators from the more conservative states?? Would THAT make you happy? And by the way….what is all this “bought and paid for by the (fill in the blank here) industry” that you liberals like to banter around so much? As illustrated by the first comment in here….every time a congressman or woman gets out of lockstep with Obama and dares think for his constituents instead of for his party, you guys come up with that same old witty charge: “He’s bought and paid for by…”. It’s quite silly, since you have no evidence of any such pandering, and IF you bothered to look it up, you’d find that the Ins Companies donate a lot to both parties, and actually MORE to the Democratic party….

If the Dems would wake up and stop being so arrogant, they’d realize the problems they face getting any healthcare bill or reform to pass is their attempt here in basically changing the entire healthcare system in one extremely expensive swoop. All of America wants healthcare reform, but in smaller doses that are known to be effective and that can win bipartisan support. Simply start out with a one-page bill making it unlawful for insurers to deny coverage for folks with pre-existing conditions and dropping coverage for no reason. Jeez…that’s a great start and so flipping simple! Another one-page bill capping malpractice suites would be helpful in driving down cost! A third bill to bring down the boundaries that prevent people from obtaining a better policy in another State would be a great start as well. Instead, the Dems are trying to seize the moment and ramrod a bill that basically changes our entire healthcare system at a very expensive price. What if it doesn’t work as advertised people!

Maybe this can slow things down to take a look at this problem. The problem is the whole industry, the health care providers, pharmaceutical cos. medical supply cos. along with a number of individuals, who sit there abusing themselves, and their families at everyone elses expense. We can stomp out the insurance companies, using the middle class tax dollar, but where does that leave us? A broke insurance industry who can’t pay the exhorbitant money demanded by all the other parts of the problem, and a broken economy due to breaking the middle class. What part of this do I not understand.

@malcat
It was nice talking to you as well.
I understand your points about not doing harm with reform. You’re right, going to a single-payer system in this country could not possibly be done overnight. Health care is 16-17% of GDP in the US. It is enormous economically. We simply can’t terminate and re-employ the hundreds of thousands of people working in the health insurance industry overnight. There is also the problem of restructuring compensation for millions of people whose health insurance is provided by employers.
So this thing has to be done right and it has to be done gradually — but we have to get the ball rolling. I honestly think Obama understands this. And, personally, I believe the public option is an essential component not only because it is necessary in order to provide insurance to the uninsured at reasonable rates and to put cost pressures on private insurers, but also to provide an experiment in health care funding that will show the way to gradually converting our system to some kind of single payer system. A great deal of tweaking will be required.