Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (10308)	10/8/2009 6:35:57 PM
From: John Koligman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Dole: Health care reform coming late this year or next; "you lost" when Clinton-era reform failed Former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole says "there will be a signing ceremony" for a health care reform bill either late this year or early next. But the former presidential candidate says he isn't sure what the bill will say. Dole, 86, spoke with reporters after an hour-long speech at a health care reform summit sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. He told the group that he and former Sens. Tom Daschle, Howard Baker, and George Mitchell will issue a statement later today urging Congress to enact health care reform as soon as possible. - - - UPDATE, 4:43: The statement is just from Dole and Daschle, and it's attached below. An excerpt: "...Congress could be close to passing comprehensive health reform. The American people have waited decades and if this moment passes us by, it may be decades more before there is another opportunity. The current approaches suggested by the Congress are far from perfect, but they do provide some basis on which Congress can move forward and we urge the joint leadership to get together for America’s sake." - - - And he repeatedly blamed "partisanship" for the failure to produce a bill so far. "Sometimes people fight you just to fight you," he said. "They don't want Reagan to get it, they don't want Obama to get it, so we've got to kill it... "Health care is one of those things...Now we've got to do something." Dole's speech, as is usually the case, wandered over various subjects -- presidential humor, his own career, Social Security reform, and Monica Lewinski, who was Dole's neighbor for a time in the Watergate complex in the 1990s. "If I'd had little wiretap there, I could've been president," Dole said, adding: "I never had..... a conversation with that lady." Dole also talked about the failure to get a health care reform bill through Congress in 1993 and 1994 when President Bill Clinton proposed it. He blamed himself -- and Hillary Clinton -- and finally politics. "Politics took over," he said. "And you lost." Dole repeated his opposition to a public option for health insurance, which he said would drive private companies out of business. And he said he's also worried about paying for the cost of health care reform, which is estimated at $800 billion to $1 trillion over ten years. But, he said, "I believe we can do it." He urged President Obama to meet privately with members of Congress and not to set a deadline for a bill. Dole also said he had been approached by Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and asked not to issue a statement calling for passage of a health care reform bill, a request he said he declined. Dole walked slowly and spoke in a high but clear voice. He underwent surgery earlier this year and told reporters he's thinking about another operation on his knee.

To: Lane3 who wrote (10308)	10/8/2009 6:47:24 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Praise be: Bob Dole now backs health care reform By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist Fifteen years ago, Bob Dole decided it was better to kill health care reform than to hand a Democratic president a historic victory. Since then, praise be, he’s reformed his thinking. In Kansas City this week, the former Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate added his voice — still strong at age 86 — to the push to help all Americans afford good health care. “This is one of the most important measures members of Congress will vote on in their lifetimes,” Dole told an audience at the Liberty Memorial auditorium. Dole and Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate leader, have been collaborating for months on a set of health care principles they think can achieve bipartisan consensus. Their efforts have earned him a rebuke from Senate Republicans, Dole said. “We’re already hearing from some high-ranking Republicans that we shouldn’t do that (because) ‘That’s helping the president,’?” he said. Later, Dole identified one critic as a “very prominent Republican, who happens to be the Republican leader of the Senate.” That would be Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Dole, to his credit, is tuning out the interference. “I don’t want the Republicans putting up a ‘no’ sign and saying, ‘we’re not open for business,’?” he said. Good for him. But if McConnell is myopic enough to lean on an elder statesman, one can imagine the pressure on members of the caucus. In their statement, Dole and Daschle said they had each “worked for years to reform the health care system and watched with frustration as efforts failed time and time again.” That claim is misleading in Dole’s case. As Senate majority leader, he worked to achieve a compromise health care bill during Bill Clinton’s first term and then abruptly reversed course. “There is no health care crisis,” Dole asserted, and declared the GOP caucus off-limits to White House proposals. Clinton pegs the change of heart to a memo written by Republican strategist Bill Kristol, who warned party leaders that a health care victory would empower Democrats “for a generation.” Dole, asked recently by reporters about Clinton’s contention, doesn’t deny it. He obliquely blames “politics” for the failure of health care reform in 1994. Today, Dole is promoting the bill up for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee as the most promising vehicle to achieve reform. “I want this to pass,” he told the Kansas City audience. “I don’t agree with everything President Obama is proposing, but we’ve got to do something.” His good advice to Congress today: Get something done. Give more Americans affordable access to better care. Change the incentives in health care to reward value, not volume. If you can’t fix everything in one bill, get 70 percent done and take on the rest later. Since 1994, when Dole and others allowed politics to derail reform, the amount the average American spends on health care has risen an average of 5.5 percent a year — more than twice the rate of inflation over those 15 years. The ranks of the uninsured have increased. Health care spending now takes up more than 17 percent of the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S. If we go another 15 years without reform, the Congressional Budget Office predicts we’ll be spending a whopping 25 percent of our gross domestic product on health care. Which aging senator will step to the podium then to express regret for letting “politics” ruin a historic opportunity in Barack Obama’s first term? Mitch McConnell maybe? Spare us. Americans have paid dearly for Washington’s folly of 15 years ago. Refusal to act now would be a tragic repeat, at an even greater cost. Editorial board member?Barbara Shelly can be reached at bshelly@kcstar.com or ?816-234-4595. She blogs at voices.kansascity.com