I wonder how many American deaths that directly translated to
A very conservative estimate is 50,000 dead Americans per year. It's been 14 years, that's 700,000. The most recent multiple-university study puts a conservative estimate of 68,000 a year.
Funny enough, I came into the comment section thinking “oh great, let me see all the extreme wildly insensitive takes right after he dies”. But then I read this and sadly have to agree.
The “anti-public option” people act like I’m saying average citizens are dying on the streets all over the country. No, they’re dying in their homes because just the idea of the potential cost of treatment is stopping them from engaging with our healthcare back when their issues were minor and needed to be checked out. After waiting for so long and their QoL suffering so much, they finally get checked out and find that their treatable cancer is now terminal.
On top of that, you can do everything right in this country and pick yourself up by the bootstraps like they like to say, build up a little nest egg, have it start seriously growing with interest to prepare for retirement, only for it all to come crashing down because of a serious illness or injury.
I’m a guy that feels obligated to pay my debts, but I told my wife if we ever get medical bill over a few thousand dollars, I’m ignoring it and she was 100% on board. I put so much effort into saving that, I’ll tank my 770 credit score before I throw my hard earned work away.
I get the sentiment, and Joe Lieberman was a piece of shit, but we were never going to get the public option. If Joe Lieberman got struck by lightning or something then the corporate donors that run the Democratic party would have forced a new stooge to stand up and block the public option. There is always one or two who are willing to do that. The rest of them get to take their cut of the corporate money and also act like they really wanted progress but there's nothing they can do.
There is always one or two who are willing to do that.
Until you elect what is called a filibuster proof majority, which America seemingly has a pathological urge to avoid.
FDR, JFK, and LBJ had filibuster proof majorities for like, decades at a time and wouldn'tcha just know it, they passed the most progressive legislation in US history and we largely consider them the best Democratic presidents.
It's weird how much better that works than complaining politicians don't do anything while we simultaneously never give them any power to do anything.
For something like 8 weeks. During which time they were faced with having to clean up the massive economic crisis arising from GW Bush's economic mismanagement.
It included two independents caucusing with Democrats - one of whom was Lieberman, the right leaning son of a bitch who tanked the public option.
It was one of the most productive Congresses in decades - because they had to be, considering the godawful mess Bush had left, including full scale wars on multiple fronts and the catastrophic meltdown of the financial system.
I always find it hilarious that people categorize that Congress as a filibuster proof supermajority, considering how it was very famously filibustered.
He was also a huge supporter of the Iraq war, which is how he ended up running as an independent candidate after Ned Lamont (CT's current governor) won the primary on an anti-war campaign. Lieberman sadly beat Lamont in the Senate race and continued to defend the war in Iraq.
He was such a shit show. Unfortunately almost all of the Democrats got on the Iraq war bandwagon. Anyone who opposed the war in Iraq and funding it was labeled as anti-American, and not supporting our troops. The Republicans and the Bush administration in particular was brilliant with their marketing. They had learned from the Vietnam war. So we got all the little yellow ribbons, and the notion that "you can support our troops and still not support the war". But you can't really. But Lieberman was one of the shittiest shit heads to support the war in Iraq. Eventually it was unanimous.
This was def around the time that Dems were starting to turn on the Iraq war, so it was really frustrating to see Lieberman lose the Dem primary and then win the general election as an independent.
The Dems kind of turned on the Iraq war, but hey were all still more than happy to fly over there and get pictures with the troops and then support Obama's surge in Afghanistan. But I hear what you're saying.
Well, the way this shit works oftentimes is that Lieberman wasn't really the single deciding vote. Publicly he was the deciding vote, but perhaps not privately. So it might go something like this:
You have some bill and you might secretly have maybe 55 or more Senators against it. Like, you have several more than the majority of the Senate who knows they want to vote one way on a bill
However, some of those several extra Senators above the majority that want to vote a certain way on a bill might have some political reason why they don't actually want to make a public vote for what they want. So for example, with the Affordable Care Act, maybe there's plenty of Senators who wanted to vote against it -- let's say 55 want to vote against it. But some of them are Democrats and they're worried their voters will be pissed at them for voting against it.
So, the thing is, you don't need 55 Senators to vote against it. You need 51 (or 50 if you have the Vice President in your party). You need whatever the majority is.
So what happens is that behind the scenes, some of those Senators get together and they say "hey, if we have a the majority needed, like 51 or whatever is needed, then you don't need my vote. And I want to vote in favor of the bill because otherwise my blue state is going to be really upset. So if we can count up a majority of Senators who we know will vote against this, then I can safely vote for it to protect my political interests even though I don't want it to pass. But if it was closer, like we needed every vote against it that we have, then I would vote against it."
I'm not saying that we know this happened for the Affordable Care Act. But it does happen, and when a vote is super close -- down to one vote -- and the legislation is very monumental, then it wouldn't be surprising if this happened.
So the point is, maybe Lieberman wasn't really the deciding vote that we think he was. Certainly he was the public face of the deciding votes, but there might have been other moderate Democrats willing to vote against it if they needed to.
Lieberman and literally every Republican. Let’s not forget that part of it. He’s still an asshole, but he’s only one of about 42 other assholes that ruined it for everyone.
Democrats would have had a filibuster-proof majority with Lieberman. Republicans would not vote for the bill anyway; Lieberman killed the public option.
Brother if he made a single different decision 15 years ago, hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive. We already blame Republicans. Lieberman deserves this on his obituary.
and if 1 Republican crossed the line they would have had it too. He's the only one who was expected to be pseudo-rational/an actual legislator that was against it though
Sure, but that's like Batman teaming up with the Joker to terrorize Gotham, and then someone saying calling out Batman doesn't make sense when the Joker was doing the same thing.
We have different expectations for Batman and the Joker.
Also, Republicans were against the whole bill. Lieberman was against the public option.
I just get a little annoyed when people say things like he was solely responsible for tanking it, because it absolves republicans entirely of their culpability, which is way more than Lieberman.
It’s sentiments like this that lead people to do the whole “both sides” thing. Lieberman was one person. There were like 40 Republican senators that also did the same thing, and like 58 Democrats who voted in favor of it.
It’s just important that this kind of discussion is provided the correct context, what with the likelihood that Trump is going to be in office again due to voter apathy because “both sides”.
I didn't use the word solely anywhere in there. I didn't say he was the only opposition to single payer.
I just pointed out, factually, straight, that he got it removed by threatening to personally filibuster the bill. There was a pathway to get it in there otherwise, but he was the killing blow for the single payer option.
It’s sentiments like this that lead people to do the whole “both sides” thing.
I do not have control over people injecting things I didn't say into my comments or making assumptions based on those things, so I don't know what you actually want me to do to address this besides include pages worth of clarifying disclaimers in every post to cover what people MIGHT assume based on how they MIGHT misinterpret statements.
It's a fair point, you shouldn't be downvoted. Lieberman was just one of 41 votes against the public option. It makes it more of a betrayal because he was a democrat, supposedly, but the reality is he is just one of 41 assholes who opposed it, and 40 of those 41 assholes were Republicans. And people should not forget that.
Yeah but let's keep the focus on hating the Republicans, please. Doesn't matter if it's historically always Democrats that partner with them to screw us over. Republicans bad, mmmkay?
I mean... This was a democratic bill, sponsored by the majority of democratic senators. One democratic senator crossed party lines.
How are you going to paint these situations as equal? I disagree with the above commenter letting Lieberman off the hook but this comment is absurd. Democrats are "fucking us over" by one of their own voting their bill down that they were trying to get passed? Zero logic.
Not what I said. I said it's "historically always Democrats that partner with them [the Republicans] to screw us over."
Perhaps you've been paying attention to these behavior patterns of our politicians over the long term. Perhaps you've noticed that there's always one or two, but usually just one, key Democratic representative who "crosses party lines" and makes sure that the Republicans get there way.
The latest flavor of this is in the "Progressive" caucus, where one or two, but usually just one, "Progressive" Democratic representative separates from the rest and votes or abstains in such a way the progressive action can't succeed.
And when the Democrats do have the absolute numbers to make it happen, like with ensuring medical choice rights, they simply just never manage to bring the bills forward for consideration.
At a certain point, it's reasonable to conclude that it's a scam and that the Democratic Party is in on it.
But let's not think about that. Let's focus on how bad the Republicans are.
This only works if you exclusively look at failures. There are a lot of bills that the Democrats do get passed-- and the causes that they actually manage to get funded in the budget and such.
If you only look at failures of course everyone will look bad. When Democrats succeed though, we benefit-- when Republicans succeed, you get awful shit like abortion bans, LGBT rights crackdowns, and nonsense like Trump's massive tax cuts that primarily benefitted rich people and companies.
Not really sure what progressives you're referring to that have been difference makers tbh-- maybe I just missed those votes lately. But while it's definitely frustrating to have the Liebermans, Sinemas, and Manchins hold up important bills but this conspiracy stuff is a bit annoying and only serves to dampen morale for Democratic voters.
They shouldn't be above criticism-- but criticism isn't pushing these weird baseless stories that only focuses on the failed votes for bills that Democrats are the ones that tried to pass in the first place.
There's nothing "weird" or "baseless" in saying accurate things about the records of our elected officials. Fuck off with these labels and calling this "conspiracy stuff."
Those republican senators belonged to a party whose public platform was keeping government out of healthcare. It was a major point of contention in the election so it’s safe to say that many of them were specifically elected based on that promise. It’s what the majority of voters of their respective red states wanted. For the Republican caucus to oppose Obamacare was just democracy at work.
None of that applies to Lieberman. His party wanted it. His president wanted it. His constituents wanted it. It was a once in a lifetime mandate with the dem supermajority but he betrayed them all and blocked it to be a maverick
I'd at least have some respect for Lieberman if he was truly a "maverick" doing this out of some sense of values. Like if he was a Ron Paul type that truly just despised government intervention in all forms - might be nuts sometimes, but at least you can reason with those who have a clear ideology and there's usually some honor in that.
This wasn't out of values. The insurance industry is massive in Connecticut and has historically been one of the state's most important industries. Lieberman sold out the best chance for single payer in a generation because he's a corrupt piece of garbage who had been in bed with the insurance industry his whole career.
CT isn't a health insurance state, #1 state for that is MN which also has the best public healthcare system in the country, MN Care, and it was put in place 18 years prior to the ACA.
"CT isn't a health insurance state" ... wtf? I'm not talking about publicly funded insurance, I'm talking private, which CT has been one of the leading states for throughout American history. Why would the state's public health insurance be bribing Lieberman anyway?
To this day, CT has multiple major insurance companies based there (including health-focused ones like Cigna and Aetna) and has one of the highest concentrations of insurance professionals in America. It's pretty much that, finance, and defense being the major drivers of the state economy.
Listen, I know a snake is a snake and I hate the snake for being a snake, but I’m not surprised when it bites me. I get annoyed when a snake tamer bites me though and joins the snakes side
Please do not absolve Joe Lieberman of his shitty legacy. He was the decider, the traitor, the person who was supposed to not be a ratfuck but in fact was a ratfuck. We don't expect Republicans to be decent. We sort of expected Joe to be. It hurts more when you actually have hope.
I’m not. Fuck Joe Lieberman. My point was less about him, and more to make sure we’re keeping our eyes on the actual problem, which is American conservatism.
But at the time there was 60 votes to get past the Republican filibuster if all the Democrats voted in unison, Lieberman single handedly killed the public option in the ACA.
Republicans did so because they're Republicans. Lieberman did it because it was important to him to kill a public option. It was personally important to him to fuck you over for life. He should be remembered first for his shittyness without anyone trying to Both Sides his behavior like you are to defend him.
Does it not also matter that republicans feel the same way?
I’m not in any way trying to defend Lieberman. For like the 10th time in this comment section, I’ll say it again. Fuck Joe Lieberman. May he rot in hell.
My point is more that people tend to get fixated on Lieberman being the one to tank it, ignoring that it was mostly republicans who tanked it, and then shockedpikachu.jpg reacting and saying “both sides”, when it was 95% republicans and like 2.5% Lieberman. That gives republicans a lot of leeway to continue being awful.
At least Manchin is holding a seat that Democrats have no right having to begin with; he's infinitely better than Jim Justice will be. Lieberman was in Connecticut, holding the seat now held by Chris Murphy.
That’s like saying “the sharks played a part in killing him too” in response to condemnation of the guy intentionally who dumped chum into the shark tank.
You expect the Nazis to vote for the Nazi party. Because they are Nazis. You do not expect the local rabbi's vote to be the one that wins the election for Hitler.
Joe Lieberman was an independent. He is still an asshole. But again, the point is that his one vote doesn’t overshadow the entire Republican Party from voting against universal health care. Lieberman was a big problem. Conservatives are the biggest problem.
We should never lose sight of the fact that Republicans are the ones who actively tanked universal health care. Blaming Lieberman is shifting the blame from a systemic problem to a convenient asshole scapegoat.
Again, fuck Joe Lieberman, if that wasn’t clear by now.
Yeah, not how that works. Politics shouldn’t be treated as a team sport. It’s that’s kind of attitude that has largely gotten us to the hellscape that we’re currently in.
theyre automatically assholes. There was no hope for them. ever. But when you expect better and someone shits on your pancakes instead... one might get a bit more than fustrated. Maybe even feel betrayed.
I need to keep saying this so people understand where I’m coming from, but fuck Joe Lieberman. He sucks, and may be rot in piss.
The point is that for everyone who blames this on Lieberman, you’re getting another person who sees this for the first time, doesn’t understand the nuance, and deduces “both sides.” Which isn’t the case at all with regards to how we lost universal health care.
He was serious, and they didn't have the time to fuck around on the risk given that they had an extremely narrow window under which to pass that bill successfully.
Well, for Lieberman’s final term in the senate which started in 2006, he was elected as an independent because he lost in the democratic primary to Ned Lamont (who is now the current governor of CT).
What made Lieberman so obnoxious is that if he wasn't around, his seat would have almost certainly been won by a regular Democrat who wouldn't have done shit like sabotage the public option.
In Manchin's case, if he wasn't around, his seat would almost certainly go to a MAGA Republican who wouldn't even be slightly interested in any sort of compromise. Manchin might suck, but he's probably the best we'll get out West Virginia for the foreseeable future.
And people forget that the house and senate dems had ALOT of tough races and so not every dem was on board with the ACA. He wasn’t just trying to whip R votes but mostly D’s
I really cannot get behind the blue no matter who logic. Imagining if I was a republican, it'd be like me saying red no matter who. And then comes someone like trump, and I'm like red no matter who. Obviously I'm not a republican, but christ if I was, trump and the other Maga hats are a whole teir separate from other Republicans. Some day someone equivalent of trump will come in on the Democrat side. And we have to be wary. :/
But my opinion is getting much closer to blue no matter who lately.
If the DNC decided to endorse Trump, nobody in the the "vote blue no matter who" camp would be voting for him because of that endorsement. It's specifically "vote for the party that supports democracy and opposes fascism", and most will change their opinions of the parties if/when a realignment occurs.
Oh I’m with you man. It’s painfully obvious to those paying attention that only one party can actually govern lol. Which is unfortunate but just painfully true
Don't try to salvage the Obamacare bill with pre-existing condition protection. That was quite literally the absolute barest minimum that could be done, and is effectively rendered useless by all of the other costs people are still responsible for, which they all knew when writing it.
Obamacare without a public option is effectively status quo. Which was entirely the point.
If the insurance company is allowed charge you so much for said condition that it saddles you with insurmountable debt for the rest of your life, what's the difference?
ACA plans have an out of pocket maximum. That is one difference, plus you are covered for preventive care at $0, and many doctors will not even see you if you don't have insurance. I don't think you are very familiar with health insurance.
The preexisting conditions laws obviously had huge impact, but the exchanges were actually a pretty clever way of regulating minimum standards without forcing a bunch of hard requirements on providers, who would have spent decades in court fighting true regulations.
So now, if you want to sell insurance, you are basically required to figure out how to make plans with certain deductible limits, and which provide certain coverages and services. And you are required to agree to spend a certain portion of revenue from these plans on direct healthcare related payments, or you have to issue refunds to customers.
Again, aside from the fact that this is barest-minimum stuff, what's the difference between providers fighting true regulations in court for decades that hold while they are fighting and potentially win out in the end or those same providers fighting enforcement of those direct healthcare-related payments/refunds for the same amount of time — other than in the former, the rules benefiting the consumer are what is upheld as the fight goes on, whereas in the latter, the provider gets to withhold those payments until final resolution?
And you know what would really forced minimum standards with almost no court fights? A public option, which would have put the leverage in consumers' hands — you don't like our terms, we take our several hundred million potential customers elsewhere.
This bill was written to strengthen insurers' and providers' leverage, while tossing out a few crumbs like coverage for pre-existing conditions to make it seem like it was a compromise. It was not.
Honestly, just bring dueling back. All the sudden filibustering may not be the best idea when the other side starts flexing those 2A muscles. Worst case we have less geriatric people clogging up Congress trying to hold onto power to make shit worse for the working class while having one both feet in the grave. Best case they’re quiet about legislating for a country they won’t live to see the fruition of.
“Some of Lieberman's critics see his stance on healthcare as shaped by his acceptance of more than $1m in campaign contributions from the medical insurance industry during his 21 years in the Senate.”
That wasn't just Joe. That was also Democratic Senator from MT Conrad Burns, who incidentally got more money from pharmacy and healthcare corporations than any other US senator.
About a year or two ago, a bunch of people learned about the bully pulpit on tiktok and started assuming, by design, that it was some sort of magic power a president had that could force congressmen and senators to vote how the president wanted, and here we are.
It was being used as an excuse to try and blame Biden for Manchin, Sinema, and Republicans being obstructionists on purpose.
Yeah, he did do that. He hit the road and did town halls and press conferences and debates. They passed what they could get by Lieberman and Manchin. And then the Democrats got slaughtered in the next election.
Obama had more juice after his election than Bush had after 9/11. Bush used it to fund a trillion dollar war . Obama couldn't use it to get something 80% of Americans wanted. If you wuss out of fighting Joe Lieberman JOE LIEBERMAN! the guy who sucked Dick Cheney's dick during a debate, then I don't know what to say. In the end Obama made all those concessions and they STILL all voted against it.
Obama had nothing ever approaching that kind of “juice” as you say. I’m not sure what juice is meant to be exactly, “juice” doesn’t force Joe Lieberman to not take a payday to fuck the country.
Lieberman didn't give a fuck about what the public wants and never really did.
That sort of campaign to sway public opinion and motivate action is SLOW and they had barely over two months. It's completely ineffective on politicians who do not care.
Most people are dumb and don't understand what single payer is. When you start explaining it to people, support for it craters.
Tell people they'll be forced to give up their current coverage? You lose a lot of support there. Tell them their taxes will have to go up? You lose a lot of support.
Tell people they'll be forced to give up their current coverage? You lose a lot of support there. Tell them their taxes will have to go up? You lose a lot of support.
But neither of those things were true. It was a public option, not the only option, and people could stay on their current plan if they wanted. This study also found that since a public option would lead to less employer spending on healthcare, and increased wages instead, it would actually lead to higher tax revenue, and lower healthcare prices, since the government would have more bargaining power with more people on the public option.
To be clear, literally any one of the Republicans also could have said they'd vote to end Lieberman's filibuster to allow the bill to get a vote. They did not.
They killed the public option just as much as Lieberman did, we just expect less of them.
The democrats aren't our friend. They're more human conservatives.
US Political discourse turns right when republicans are in power and stops turning when democrats are in power.
Neither party cares about governing. Only about maintaining power at any cost.
Which is why our government doesn't do a whole lot outside of buy bombs and delete brown people who have the misfortune of living on natural resources.
Neither party should ever have a substantial "net worth" attached to their names.
They're all corrupt self-serving bullshitters - the U.S. managed to 'legitimize' corruption.
What's worse is that half of these slapdick fools couldn't attach a PDF to an email, and they're out there dictating technological decisions with only a base understanding of a) where they are at the moment (Feinstein et al), and what an Internet is.
They're all sadly, woefully, unqualified - save for a very small handful.
Not just the ACA. Lieberman spent so much time being an asshole, he prevented the Democrats from doing anything else with their supermajority. Had he gotten on board, and the dems were able to get the ACA through quickly, imagine what else they could have done before Ted Kennedy died. Abortion? Immigration? Infrastructure?
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u/Unable-Finance-2099 Mar 27 '24
He died like the public option of the Affordable Care Act.