Apparently the completely and total party purge, will have to wait.
MR. GREGORY: You described him as a transformational figure, to have the potential. Has he lived up to that or do you find yourself disappointed?
GEN. POWELL: I think he has--is a transformational figure. Some people don't like what he's done in transformation, and it's caused him some difficulty. But the fact of the matter is, he did put together a health care reform. It's not perfect, and I think it'll have to be fixed over time, and a lot of people are not happy with that health care reform, but he did it. We still have millions of our fellow citizens who have no insurance, especially children. And so I think he has done transformational work with respect to education, and I think he should get credit for that. But in other aspects, I think he has to focus on now governing, not worrying about the daily, the daily campaign problem or reacting to everything that comes across the cable news channel. I think he needs to sort of get above all of that. Yes, Mr. President, they will kick you like a dog, treat you like a dog, but hey, that's the nature of our system. America's a great country, and this is the way we do our politics.
Powell's defense of the Health Care Bill as Transformative, if imperfect, is something I haven't even seen Congressional Democrats saying on the campaign trail.
Probably because they can essentially expect to get this kind of response from the Left.
Believe it or not Conservative (Paid) Pundit Armstrong Williams actually defends Obama and the Health Care Bill from Jane Hamsher.
I'm sure that even watching this will bring up a lot of anger over the long lost Public Option... but I have to tell everyone This Has to STOP! It's good to see a Democrat get Mad, now if they could just direct some of that anger - AT REPUBLICANS - that would be swell, mm kay?
I don't care what NYCEve says, there ARE price controls in the Health Care Bill, in fact those controls are why Newt Gingrich accused HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of "Soviet Tyranny" because she began pushing back on the bogus claim that current insurance premiums are rising because of "Obamacare".
I discussed this issue in my rec'd diary yesterday on O'Donnell and Gingrich.
Sebelius: It has come to my attention that several insurance carriers have sent out letters to their enrollees falsely blaming premium increases for 2011 on the (Health Care Bill)
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According to our analysis and some academic and industry experts, any potential premium impact from consumer protections and increased quality improvements should be minimal. We estimate that the effect will be no more than one or two percent.
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Already my department has provided 46 states with information to strengthen the review and transparency of proposed premiums. Later this fall we will issue a regulation requiring state or federal review of all unreasonable rate increases.
Insurance providers who jack up their rates, the way we saw Anthem Blue Cross in California attempt to raise rates 39% even before Health Reform Passed, can be barred from access to the customers available in the Exchanges and denied Hundreds of $Millions in Grants and subsidies.
They have the freedom to charge what they want to charge, but not to expect customers to be forced to pay them for it.
As a point of fact Jane, Obama didn't say the Public Option was the "Bedrock" of his plan - he said that was the Exchange which would allow the public to the same type of Health Insurance that Federal Employees have was.
The plans you are discussing embody my core belief that Americans should have better choices for health insurance, building on the principle that if they like the coverage they have now, they can keep it, while seeing their costs lowered as our reforms take hold. But for those who don't have such options, I agree that we should create a health insurance exchange -- a market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that's best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can.
The Exchange was his Holy Grail, not the Public Option.
What we actually received in the final Health Care Bill included a Replacement for the Public Option, which scored better under the CBO (a $1.5 Trillion improvement over 20 years) and gives the head of the Office of Personnel Management the ability to specifically negotiate the premiums, medical loss ratio, and profit margins of a National/Multi-State Non-Profit Health Care Option to be made available through the Exchanges in 2014.
All-in-all those provisions are far better, and potentially far more cost effective, than each state managing it's own "Public Option" to be made available in their individual Exchanges.
Democrats need to start speaking like Powell and Williams have, they need to start getting Behind the good things that Obama has done and arguing that we need to KEEP going rather than let the howling crazies on the right, pied pipered by Palin and Gingrich take control of Congress and our national agenda.
Vyan
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