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If the aftermath of the historic health care vote in the House of Representatives on Saturday – the first time the House has every passed a comprehensive health care bill – the voting Members of Congress can be broken down into three distinct groups.
For those who did the right thing, who voted for health care for all on Saturday, today is a day filled with praise.
When Representative Chellie Pingree stepped off her plane in Portland, Maine this morning, dozens of supporters were there to greet her and thank her for her vote. Hundreds of similar meetings and greetings are planned today by constituents to make sure the Members of Congress who came down on the YES side of the ledger on Saturday know that their historic vote was noted and appreciated.
(For those House members who voted to deny some women what most insurance coverage has now, the right to abortion services, the message must be tempered with the reminder that when we say health care for all, we also mean preserving the reproductive health care coverage women currently have.)
For those Democrats who voted to deny health reform for America, today is a day of disappointment.
The bill before the House on Saturday would provide tax credits needed so that everyone can finally afford health care. The bill would outlaw insurance industry bad practices such as denial of care for pre-existing conditions. And the bill would finally take on the insurance industry’s monopoly by increasing competition with the choice of a national public health insurance option.
The reasons for their NO votes are likely numerous, but no reason, however important, is enough to vote against this country’s top priority. Fortunately for these Representatives, they’ll get another chance. After health care passes the Senate and the two bills are merged in conference, the House of Representatives will again consider a health care bill. These 39 Democrats will have a final choice to make – side with us or with the insurance industry.
And finally, for those Republicans who voted against health reform, and who stood up and brazenly lied for hours on the House floor about this bill, today is a day of outrage.
The falsehoods, exaggerations, and misdirections in Republican health care speeches on Saturday are legion. Media Matters Action Network has covered them in detail. Some of the most egregious were Representative Camp’s insistence that the bill would send people to jail, and Representative Boehner’s insistence that the GOP "alternative" would solve any of our health care problems, a falsehood defly dispatched by Representative Tierney. But perhaps the biggest outrage was the Republican attempt to stop Democratic women from even speaking on the House floor. Click and watch that video, it clearly makes the point.
Voting against America and for the insurance companies won’t be tolerated, especially given that Republicans utterly failed to come up with a credible alternative solution. History, and the country’s electorate, will judge them for it.
Now, in which of these categories does your Representative fit? Click here to look up your Representative and find out how they voted. You can send them a message about their vote with your thoughts as well.
On Saturday, history took another step forward. All eyes are now on the Senate.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
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19 Comments
From Sam Stein at HuffPost, no position from WH on anti-choice amendment.
Cowards!
Gibbs:
Hillary Clinton would be going to bat for us on this issue.
Though, Members of the House say they got a personal commitment from Obama to remove it, FWIW:
http://www.openleft.com/diary/15913/health-care-debate-and-vote-open-thread
I’ve never really believed Obama’s rhetoric on this issue. He always says it’s a decision for a woman, her husband and her pastor and doctor. Three against one by my count.
Certainly, a woman is going to want to consult her doctor, and discuss it with her husband or partner, assuming there is one in the picture, but it is still her decision, and no one else’s. I don’t think that Obama really believes that.
Except for that one strange case, I haven’t heard of any men having to put their own bodies through anything like what women go through with a pregnancy, although I have heard way too many men complain about the results on a woman’s body after the fact. Bearing a child is a significant burden on a woman’s body, and even more so if she is no longer in her 20′s.
You have to have some kids, but you’d better not lose your figure, or your looks, or your energy, or your libido, or your standards of housekeeping.
And we wonder why young women starve themselves… mixed messages, maybe?
But for most women, I don’t really think these choices are about vanity, but about whether they are physically up to the challenge, first, of a pregnancy, and then, of raising a child or several. Let’s face it, women still bear the brunt of child-rearing and the limitations that it puts on one’s life, career, earning ability. In fact, having children is the possibly worst thing that can happen to a woman’s earning power. Mothers are discriminated against in hiring decisions, salary decisions, raises… all of it.
You mean like the personal commitment from Pelosi that Weiner got guaranteeing a floor vote for single-payer. Commitments from these high-level Democrats aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
Yes on a bill that sucks is good?
Somehow, I don’t think all the Americans who have died in this country’s wars fought and died for that principle.
Or maybe they were just suckers.
I am sorry you felt it necessary to place parentheses around the discussion of those betrayers of women’s rights. They are the ‘critters who should be getting a greeting as they arrive home today, a greeting of rotten vegetables and coathangers.
Don’t worry, they’ll hear from folks.
there was NO vote on healthcare for all. and i’m way over tired of the propaganda that there was. for crying out loud it wasn’t even health insurance for all.
100%, stop this nonsense!
Can we all AGREE THIS THING SUCKS? Okay, it sucks. Turn the page and let’s go to the next problem. Which is instructing the Senate IF Jacob Hacker’s Public Option is not adopted or S703 is the new Senate Bill the, blow it up and start over after 2010.
Also MEMO to The Ed Show – Stop having these boneheaded Righties on your show we don’t need lips service from these morons!
I’m calling on ALL of US to get on buses and and support Sanders with NUMBERS and lay down what we want.
Or as Sam Stein said “We’ll get pushed over”. As I asked in my diary, IS THE LEFT WEAK? -
If we’re not weak, then let’s support S703 and Dennis Kuinich’s Amendment!
“Propaganda” is exactly right. These hack Orwellian spiels are just offensive.
The bill is a corporatist bailout for the insurance racket (with a de facto overturning of Roe v. Wade thrown in).
It definitely will not reduce costs or extend coverage. It’s cute that some people seem to think “regulation” of feudal rackets can ever work. It’s as if the evidence of how well bank regulation has worked just doesn’t exist.
One thing’s for sure – those people are either impervious to reality-based evidence, or they’re being disingenuous, and their only interest is the corporate party line.
Meanwhile, the bill has no public option, which itself was supposed to be the big compromse for all sincere reformers. The phony “public option” tacked onto this bill includes none of the Hacker substance except for the nominal requirement that there be no rejection of applicants for pre-existing conditions by the private racket. We know that this will never actually be enforced. It will just be evaded, as the insurers simply render such policies unaffordable and worthless. They’ll definitely still be able to exclude anyone they like. The government will let them.
We now know for an empirical fact reformers should have stuck with single-payer-or-nothing. Instead, we compromised and still got nothing. Worse than nothing – insult added to injury.
So here we have an overwhelming Democratic vote against reform and for not only preserving the status quo but entrenching it further, rendering it yet more unaccountable, profitable, and murderous.
i am also offended.
What a travesty. I feel pure rage at how things have worked, including rage at the progressive “smart asses” who thought they were so clever when they went along with the Administration to take HR 676 off the table.
And now, when it’s plain as the nose on your face that their strategy produced nothing but grief for progressivism, they are incapable of admitting error and moving on to something else. It’s still “we know best,” as far as they’re concerned.
selise, 108,000 additional fatalities in the first 3.5 years after passage of this bill. An additional 110,000 in the succeeding decade and that’s if the bill works as advertised. The idea that this bill provides “universal, affordable, and comprehensive” coverage for the American people is a damn like that the Democrats will live to regret.
yes, a damn lie. which brings us back, i think, to our previous discussion regarding how destructive political dishonesty is to democracy.
Thanks for catching my typo.
i had no doubt about your meaning, and am very used to reading my own typing (many many typos and misspellings). *g*
Btw, did anyone notice my lengthy comment on the Kucinich thread?
thanks, will go read it….
Voting against America and for the insurance companies won’t be tolerated
I’m not sure voting for the House Bill was the vote you think it was. A conservative PO that the CBO says will be more expensive than other policies.
A public option that is not open to everyone.
evergreening of drugs
no regulation of the insurance industry, as far as premiums, when the insurance industry has all ready produced three bogus reports which they’ll use as an excuse to raise premiums because of HCR.
many americans living paycheck to paycheck, who are contractors or temps will become more poor due to this legislation. many will find themselves with insurance they can not afford to use.
It’s disappointing to see the progressive blogs decide it is time to shut up and get behind the “win one for obama” crowd.
You should be raising money for Kucinich for doing the right thing!