Hoyer Finally Admits the Obvious: Health Care Bill Killed the Dems in 2010 - FDL

[davidthegnome]

30. We did not have the votes for a public option

During Obama's time campaigning for HCR, it quickly became clear that any attempt for a public option would be defeated by the Republicans and their democrat-lite allies. Now at first, I was angry as I thought it was given up on too quickly, I thought more could have been attempted. After all, had it been put to a vote to the American people in general, we'd have been in favor. Unfortunately, one thing made clear by that particular issue and many others was that our desires or needs are not as significant to our elected officials as they should be.

As for what we did get, there are good things about it. It may accomplish a great many things and lead us to a point where we can reconsider re-examining the public option, perhaps with a more democratic majority. I'm not crazy about the idea of having to buy insurance from private companies - I'm not sure I have faith in the vouchers that are supposed to become available to those with low/no income. As a young man with a part time job and no health insurance, I'd learned to take a lot of this with a grain of salt.

Time will tell - provided that the Supreme Court and the republicans do not actually destroy HCR. Should that happen, it could really set us back... or, it just might provide an opportunity to try to push through something better. Who knows.

That said, the failure of any public option or the single payer option was really not the fault of the Obama administration or the "real" dems who were in office at the time. Took me some time to get over it, but I think Obama did the best he could with what he had.