President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 22, 2009 09:29 PM UTC
34 Comments
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I vote “YES.”
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We can cut our national healthcare spend (pay the EU average), give everyone “free” healthcare (you know free 😉 😉 ), and redistribute the savings to a coalition of the formerly underinsured and ACORN!
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one which even the supporters of the Missile Defense Program can support. Bring back the Resolution Trust Corporation and Silverado Savings.
Most important, we need to plant more money trees.
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Just government getting in the way again. I will fight for my right to have my private insurer increase premiums on me every year and then deny the very coverage I pay for, all the while stuffing their pockets with millions provided by the “free market”.
The injustice.
Call Congress and demand that they stop their socialistic health care benefits and free themselves to utilize corporate health insurance like the rest of America.
to keep these insurers strong. They are too big to fail.
Only through strength will they retain their ability to keep
1) Tom Daschle in multi million dollar consulting agreements and
2) A stock strong enough bring 10’s of millions in exercisable value to Tom Strickland when he goes to cash out.
There are a lot of pols on both sides on the take from health care insurers, and they will do their level best to subvert any real reform.
If I pay more tax for a public option at least I have a chance of actually being covered when I need it. Maybe I’ll pay more in taxes but I’ll pay $ 4000 per year less in health insurance, and I’ll have a little better peace of mind.
The current system with private health insurers is unsustainable, and broken. Throw the bums out !
On one hand any changes will need to be integrated effectively. As with any big policy change, businesses, unions, governments, etc need stability to plan for 2-5-10 years. Ya shock the system the sytem will shock back.
On another hand those who have insurance should not count on their employer coughing up the $500-1,000 cost of their healthcare as an automatic raise (aka money to pay their taxes for this national health plan).
Today employers are given tax advantages to provide healthcare coverage, insurers employ thousands, and providers have billions in systems built around this economic model.
Change will not be easy.
Does this make cohesive sense to anyone?
Can someone please wipe the spittle off this hydrocephalic’s chin?
Of course that huge majority that wants a public option understands that the public option won’t be free. Many even want to keep the insurance they already have but still think the option should be out there since, right now, private for profit insurers and employers can cut us off at the knees whenever they want.
People want this option because having for profit insurers in charge of the rationing when they are the only game in town ensures that we will keep being charged more while getting less.
We want a public option because we are tired of spending hours on the phone, while at our sickest and most stressed, playing the game where our companies initially deny coverage to which they know we are entitled but give it to us only if we know enough to pursue it while making even more money on those who don’t or are too sick to make the effort.
Three quarters of us, including 50% of the Republican minority with only a bit over 30% of them opposed in the latest poll, aren’t stupid. We don’t need Senators to tell us what’s good for us. We need Senators who will give us what the overwhelming majority of American citizens is asking for. That goes for both sides of the aisle.
This isn’t about government run health care for all but a public option for health insurance so that we have real choice, are not at the mercy of companies who have no interest in our health, just our money, and so we don’t have to make career decisions based on health coverage.
There are parents who would like to stay at home with their kids but take jobs that leave little left over after child care expenses but do provide insurance because their spouses are self employed and they couldn’t possibly afford private healthcare coverage for their families. Some people with sick children have to stick with lousy jobs just to keep the insurance.
The righties can make fun all they want but they are the ones who aren’t making any sense here. There is nothing stupid or greedy about wanting a solid affordable health care coverage option that can’t be taken away from us. Nothing wrong with private companies looking only at the bottom line. Insane to have them be in sole charge of our health care decisions with no place else for us to go, take it or leave it.
Conservatives are always carrying on about how we know better what’s good for us than the government does. They also have spent the last eight years blathering about spreading democracy. Well a landslide near three quarter majority has decided that a public option is what’s good for us. It’s the government, or at least the legislative branch of the government, telling us they know better.
Conservatives should either be all for letting ordinary Americans decide what’s good for us or admit they are the true elitists who don’t trust the “little people” as far as they can throw them and care about them even less than they trust them.
doesn’t donate millions of dollars to its favorite Senators.
Senator Max Baucus, D-MT, who is on the critical path to any real reform, has received more than $2 million from Health Industry sources since 2005 according to opensecrets.org.
How much are you worth to Baucus? Me? Not so much.
I’m starting to think that regular people aren’t going to get shit from health care reform, no matter what we want or how bad we want it.
Money talks. The needs or wishes of real people tend to get lost in the noise of all that money.
Sad to say, Ralphie is probably correct. Look, Obama may want change and he certainly appropriated it as an effective logo against senile McCain; but can anyone see anything more than one or two baby steps actually taking place on this issue when there are so many sycophants sucking the blood from so many working class somnabulists?
Anyone in politics will tell you (when drunk) that money talks and the rest walks, and the will of the people is no more than a catch-phrase used to obfuscate and dilute that same will for ameliorative action. If you want political change, in this care massive healthcare reform, it will come from nothing short of revolt. The American public has been pleading and literally dying for health care reform since “Tricky” Dick Nixon cut his deal of a lifetime with Kaiser, with no luck and no advancement.
It’s to Obama’s credit as an individual that he’s at least making the attempt, but anyone who’s ever tried to get help on a social cause or unjust local situation from their elected official knows this thing has about as much chance of going through as a NARC does of surviving at a biker rally.
Conventional wisdom would be that Colorado’s numbers would be significantly different than those national numbers.
I’m not worried about our two Senators, but I do worry about Betsy Markey and John Salazar, both Blue Dogs. If they think the NRCC will hit them over the head with voting for a public option, they’re much more likely to flee without the cover of strong public support within their districts.
enough votes in the House to pass a public option. It’s the Senate that’s the problem. Of course Ralphie is right about the relative importance of voters vs big money health and insurance industry lobbies to our elected officials.
Dems no doubt think progressives are stuck with them since we obviously aren’t going to vote for the wacko right instead. But they should also remember how important turn out is. In the next election, a plague on both your houses attitude from Dems as well as progressive leaning indies could depress turnout among those groups and make the difference in a lot of races. Much of what Dems have gained so recently could be lost as quickly to apathy and disgust.
Avaritia facit bardus.
The Republican Party does not have enough votes to block healthcare reform. The roadblock is Baucus and other conservative Democrats. Here’s Paul Krugman today:
In other words, these conservative Democrats are really protecting monopolies that are powerful in their home states.
If even half of Republicans supported public health care, we would already have it, right? So, to pick out a minority of Democrats and blame them isn’t really correct.
Well, only the extreme right. This isn’t the first poll to show that half of Republicans VOTERS support a quality affordable public health insurance option. In fact, most polls consistently show widespread support for a quality affordable public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance – which any honest American would admit has a done a pretty terrible job. It’s time to improve our health care system which DENIES 47 MILLION AMERICANS COVERAGE; not send it back to the age of robber barons who make record profits year after year denying coverage to the sick and poor as the the leaders of the Party of No like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Ginrich would have us do.
The ONLY reason these fools are opposing health care reform is power; this is a political game to them. Let me repeat that. THIS IS A FUCKING GAME TO THEM. 47 Million Americans without health insurance, another 35 Million are under covered and go without insurance throughout the year, causing countless number of bankruptcies, mortgage foreclosures and worse, yet these fools are playing a game.
The “free market” has failed. You got that? It’s not providing for all as promised over the last several decades. In fact, it’s ripping you off.
But hey, if you want to keep lining the pockets of health insurance CEO’s, be my guest but don’t TAKE AWAY MY FREEDOM TO CHOOSE a quality affordable public health insurance option that will provide fair market premiums, prescription drugs and not deny coverage because a fine print bullshit reason like a “pre-existing” condition – that’s what’s best for my family so don’t even try to get in between me, my family and our doctor.
I’ll be back in a few months to follow up on this.
do not want to be labled in attack ads as socialists/communists.
First and primary, politicians think about getting reelected.
We already have a govt insurance company (AIG), Govt banks, and Government Motors (GM).
I should note that I support single payer healthcare.
to call it a ‘govt insurance company is BS.’ Where’s my policy?
Bill Maher had a great chart up the other day, that showed the .whatever percent of the economy that is govt owned.
Over 99% is privately owned. So don’t wet your pants there Ray.
As Go Blue pointed out–its just a political game to the Party of No, and sadly it appears enough Dems beholden to their fat-cat cash constituents to put meaningful reform in real jeopardy.
The GOP is shameful–they have no concern about good governance, no concern about caring for the nation, no patriotism, no morals. All they want is to return to power so they can get back on that K Street high…and they imagine the only way to do that is to tear Obama and everything he supports down, even if it brings the nation with it. It is a pitiful display of self-serving nonsense and the polls show it. Only about 1 in 5 Americans now identify themselves as GOP.
just pointing out the obvious……Politicians worry about getting reelected and little else.
AIG is a black hole money pit , though.
Credit Default Swaps…….
go ask the IRS for a personal bailout.
I could use one, but I’m not too big to fail.
…re: the pants wetting
My post was accurate , and you know it.
the part about being afraid of being labeled a socialist by doing something most Americans want and thereby being un-elected, not so much.
Enough pols are more afraid of their political funders and corporate sponsors than of their human constituents that meaningful reform remain tenuous. But the myth of this great fear of Socialism (because its coming! its coming!) is a thing of wingnut (and bed-wetter)fantasy .
I don’t write attack ads…ask Marilyn Musgrave who writes her’s. They are plenty vicious.
I’d agree that the 2nd thing on their minds is raising money to get reelected. So perhaps that comes before attack ad fear.
Vicious perhaps, effective no.
It might matter in certain districts–this charge of Socialism certainly in some more than others, but I don’ think its the major factor in Dem congressional opposition.
I don’t think ‘how it plays back home’ is what the primary force behind the opposition is, even in the hearts of congress.
I think–more than anything–they are dancing to corporate strings, to put it plainly. The opposition is wholly funded by companies that oppose meaningful health care reform. Its not just coincidence or talk radio fear that is driving–or enabling–opposition strategy.
so I agree with you.
I’m glad you support single payer, Ray.
Have we heard anything about Obama giving the money back? Have we heard anyone suggest that Obama is the reason drug prices are high? Have we heard about how he must be in bed with them and that he is responsible for the problems of the middle class and working poor who just want reasonably priced medication? No we have not and we likely never will. Political donations from big business are only evil when they go to Republicans. Democrats accept the money to do God’s work.It’s a reform that will make prescription drugs more affordable for millions of seniors and restore a measure of fairness. Its a help to people’s financial crisis if the
drug price will be discounted 50 % of the the price.
This is all going to come down to Frank Luntz’s messaging versus the Democratic Party’s lack of unified messaging. There’s a good piece in the HuffPo about Diane Sawyer essentially reading off a list of Luntz’s questions to the Obama administration and watching them not only take the questions seriously but tripping over them. Not good.