Bipartisan Agreement Outside Blair House: We Don’t Like This Bill
EmailAcross the street from the White House, there is bipartisan agreement.
Unfortunately for President Obama, the bipartisan agreement is outside Blair House where today's health care summit is taking place, and the agreement is among liberal and conservative protestors arguing for different reason that the Democrats' current health care reform proposal isn't the correct prescription. Conservatives argue that it’s too much government intrusion and socialism. Liberals argue that the various leading Democratic proposals don't go far enough.
Most of the roughly one hundred protestors standing at the corner of 17th and Pennsylvania Ave, NW, are conservative.
Among some of the signs, from the Right: “This Summit Is a Sham,” “No! No! No More Secret Deals That Steal! No Obamacare No Unconstitutional Takeover Health Trap!.” “Slowbama Down,” and “No No No Hell No.”
Many chanted: “Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill!”
From the Left: “Medicare for All” and “Support HR 676 National Health Care Act.”
A group advocating single payer has unfurled a large poster claiming to be the “Private Health Insurers’ Quilt of Shame,” with stories of various individuals who have struggled with insurance companies.
“Medicare for all! Medicare for all!” chanted one dark-haired woman, standing with another woman holding a sign advocating health insurance for immigrants.
“Why don’t you shut up!” yelled Susan Winton of Wykoff, NJ, a retired importer who said she’s part of the tea party movement.
“Medicare for all!” continued the woman.
“Are you a citizen?” Wykoff asked the woman.
“Medicare for all!” she continued, ignoring Wykoff.
“She knows three words of English,” Wykoff said to a fellow tea partier, Donald Woodbridge, a laid-off mechanical engineer from Amenia, NY.
Woodbridge, in Spanish, asked the woman if she speaks Spanish.
The Medicare-for-all protestor, Dr. Zunaira Khalid, continued to ignore them. She speaks plenty of English and isn’t Latina, it turns out. She’s an anesthesiologist and US citizen from Fairfax County, VA, the daughter of an Afghani mother and a Pakistani father. She told ABC News she’s with the group HealthCare Now, which advocates for a single-payer system.
Wykoff said she opposes President Obama’s bill because it’s “too much government. Medicare is broken. Medicaid is broken. Social Security is broken.”
“It’s unconstitutional,” said Woodbridge.
Roughly two dozen antiabortion protestors, with red tape saying “LIFE” on their mouths, staged a silent protest as close to the Blair House doors as they could get.
On the other side of the scrum, Joan Stallard, an activist with Code Pink, stood on the corner with a hospital gown over her winter clothes, holding a sign reading “Don’t Leave Us Uncovered.”
-jpt
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Well, Good! America is alive and well OUTSIDE the halls of the tyrants that currently run our country.
This bill needs to die.
Had this 3-headed administration(Obama-Pelosi-Reid) been willing to trust the rules of open deliberation and consensus rather than game them, we might have had real reform by now. Shame on them.
Start all over.
Posted by: Carol | February 25, 2010, 11:48 am 11:48 am
Carol…they (Republicans and conservatives) had 13 months to “start over” and instead they “pandered and “preened”. It is the day of reckoning today, or should I say “reconciliation”?
Posted by: CND FOX | February 25, 2010, 11:59 am 11:59 am
seem to me th republicans had tons of good ideas because its already adopted in the bill. eliminate fraud first then move on.tort reform is a must. the rpublicans are right over night we could save 15 to 20 pct in costs with minor changes.do that then work on the rest. health care wopuld be affordable if the democrats would get out of the way.
Posted by: catman | February 25, 2010, 12:01 pm 12:01 pm
cnd fox,,if its reconcilliation it is the day of reckoning for the u.s. it will be recked.
Posted by: catman | February 25, 2010, 12:08 pm 12:08 pm
Lamar Alexander nailed BHO. Yes, we need reform, everybody agrees, but do it steps. Increments, see what works and what doesn’t and keep adding to it until its right. For the Dem’s to stand up and say it needs to be done RIGHT NOW and it doesn’t start for 4 years is a real joke.
Posted by: carol in Alabama | February 25, 2010, 12:12 pm 12:12 pm
Obama refuses to listen to the citizens. They are after all, just the people, and what they think, doesn’t really matter to him.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | February 25, 2010, 12:23 pm 12:23 pm
CND FOX, Hahaha, oh yes, the eeeevil Republicans and conservatives that have wielded such enormous power the last 13 months, it is their fault that this monstrous bill is sooooo awful.
Look in the mirror, friend, and think. If this kind of autocratic governance is actually what you thought you wanted when you voted for it, you deserve the America it will create for you.
Posted by: Carol | February 25, 2010, 12:28 pm 12:28 pm
This is too funny Obama is now looking like the idiot that he is…..
Pelosi in a monster lie….400,000 job created immediately fro this bill LMAO
Harry Reid looks aways as his talking points are read back to him
OBama;;I AM THE PRESIDENT
Posted by: another crisis-another photo op | February 25, 2010, 12:40 pm 12:40 pm
‘I don’t count my time because I’m the President’ — Obama on why Dems have controlled more speaking time…
CLOCK… Democrats: 74 minutes; Republicans: 37 minutes…
Obama and the party of RUIN…
OBAMA VS AMERICA
Posted by: another crisis-another photo op | February 25, 2010, 12:41 pm 12:41 pm
CNN Poll: Only 25% want Dems to pass their health bills….
OBAMA vs America
Posted by: another crisis-another photo op | February 25, 2010, 12:43 pm 12:43 pm
I like the Medicare Jr. concept.. it already has rules and is widely accepted.. (I agree, it’s unfunded and doesn’t always work so well .. or equally).. If we could get some difficult to insure and underemployed to pay some sort of premium for Jr. .. why not?
Posted by: DontGet818OnMeNow | February 25, 2010, 3:23 pm 3:23 pm
How do they intend to get 50 billion a year in Medicare fraud and abuse per year?
Nothing I have found says there is this amount of faurd and abuse in Medicare in the first place.
Law enforcement says total fraud and abuse in all health care is estimated at 60-100 billion per year. That is all health care, including insurance, private pulbic and all. Total.
GAO said they found $17 billion with billing problems, but that is not all fraud, as GAO also said.
Even wiping out medicare advantage tottally would only save about a small portion of the medicare advantage costs, since the great majority of it is just costs they take on from Medicare.
Posted by: wyn | February 25, 2010, 3:37 pm 3:37 pm
Not to mention that the additional spending of further fraud prevention measures will offset some of the lowered costs.
Posted by: wyn | February 25, 2010, 3:40 pm 3:40 pm
Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), as in the “Byrd Rule” on reconciliation:
“Reconciliation was intended to adjust revenue and spending levels in order to reduce deficits…it was not designed to…restructure the entire health care system. Using reconciliation for health care would violate the intent and spirit of the budget process, and do serious injury to the Constitutional role of the Senate.”
Yes,
Posted by: Woody | February 25, 2010, 4:32 pm 4:32 pm
… yelled Susan Winton of Wykoff, NJ, …“Medicare for all!” continued the woman….“Are you a citizen?” Wykoff asked the woman….
.
So which is it Jake? Wykoff from Winton, or Winton from Wykoff.
.
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“It’s unconstitutional,” said Woodbridge.”
.
Seems to be a critical element that our great news media doesn’t want to pursue. Could Jake or someone ask these “freedom loving” DEMOCRATS about where they get the authority to force me to purchase only a DEMOCRAT approved policy under penalty of a fine or even jail time?
Posted by: gk | February 25, 2010, 9:06 pm 9:06 pm
Tapper says, “Unfortunately for President Obama, the bipartisan agreement is… among liberal and conservative protestors” who oppose the bill.
This is just asinine. When we use the word “bipartisan,” we mean it to describe the middle ground, a moderate consensus over how to move forward in addressing problems we all agree about. Examples include education reform under Bush, welfare reform under Clinton, and tax reforms under Reagan.
Of course there is “bipartisan” opposition to the health bill, if you mean that the extremes of the political spectrum oppose it. But that’s just a trivial (and, frankly, irritating) definition of the word. For any given moderate proposal, there will always be opposition from the far right and far left. But this sense of “bipartisanship” reduces to exactly what what Americans detest about our politics — petty ideological bickering.
There may be a number of legitimate objections to the bill. But the mere fact that radicals on both sides oppose it should count in its favor, not against it.
Posted by: David M | February 27, 2010, 3:34 pm 3:34 pm
So how do you (the fact cats in D.C.) get people to forget about astronomical debt, selling our future to China, increasing unemployment and ecomomic decline?
Easy – just get them to bicker about health care…
Posted by: Loren Lloyd | February 28, 2010, 8:14 pm 8:14 pm