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Why Mike Capuano decided to vote yes on Obama's health-care plan
By adamg on Sat, 03/20/2010 - 9:55pm
Capuano explains:
Although I am not happy with every aspect of this bill, I have come to the conclusion that the benefits for Massachusetts and the country outweigh the problems.
During the last week we have been able to significantly increase the amounts coming to Massachusetts and to secure other funds that had been in jeopardy. In total, during this last week, roughly $4 billion has been protected for the Commonwealth as this bill has been readied for a vote. From a more general view, this bill also extends coverage to millions more Americans, prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions and creates health insurance exchanges for people to purchase affordable coverage. It also increases funding for Community Health Centers, and makes key investments in training doctors, nurses and other health care providers. And it does all this without harming the interests of Massachusetts.
From the other side, Sissy Willis reports from today's anti-HCR rally in front of Faneuil Hall.
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Comments
Attaboy Capuano
I wish Stephen Lynch was as good making decisions as Mike Capuano.
Stephen Lynch has things correct.
I wish that I was in Mike Capuano's district, then I could vote against him!!!!
Why should we get rid of our first world health care and end up with a third world system like England has!
Let's keep track of anybody that votes for this mess and vote them out!
-Jason
Let's keep track
That'd be a good trick. You'll have to register in a lot of MA Congressional districts to vote against each congressman that votes YES for HCR.
Who did you vote for when Kennedy and Kerry were Senators?
Jason - MA has ten congressional districts currently
Nine MA Congressmen voted in favor of health care bill. One did not. Are you going to see to it that none of the nine congressmen get re-elected? Now I've kept track of it for you. You'll have to do the rest.
Capuano will be voted out,
Capuano will be voted out,
I'll take that bet
and give you odds.
Second that. Where to we
Second that. Where to we place?
Capuano reports 6000 people
Capuano reports 6000 people from his district called his office to be heard on the health care bill. That amounts to about 1% of his constituents. He said callers favored a YES vote on health bill by more than 4:1.
Jason, wake up
Name one way in which the English health care system is "third world".
I want specifics and I want a source.
Don't bother, you won't find it.
Clearly you've never needed
Clearly you've never needed medical care in the United Kingdom. I'd love to have the NHS here.
where did you hear that jason?
actually the UK is ranked 18th and we are ranked 37th... according to the world health organization.
please stop being ignorant.
Mike found his spine
eventually.
There's a difference between being right and being brave
There's a difference between doing the right thing and being brave. You can be brave while doing something horrible and wrong, and you can be a coward and end up doing the right thing despite yourself. And it's not like lobbyists have a gun to their heads or anything. There are a lot of things for members of Congress to be afraid of.
A member of Congress in a liberal leaning district (which even in a post-Brown world Capuano's district is) will piss off a lot of people by voting against health care reform. That's something to be afraid of. Maybe Capuano "found his spine" and decided to do what he wanted to do deep down all along, but maybe it was losing his spine that made him decide to vote for it.
What on earth
are you talking about? Make sense, for the love o' Pete!
which even in a post-Brown
what, we're you sleeping?!?
!
The Commonwealth turned into Texas overnight! Duuuuurhhhhaa!
/yeah, back to reality.
"the possible, not perfect"
"the possible, not perfect"
I'm fine for fighting tooth and nail for more progressive legislation, but when the cards are on the table, something is better then nothing. There's a time to fight, and there's a time to legislate. The bill is better off because of the fight that was put up.
Politics is not a zero sum game. Not for a party that actually prides itself on governing and helping people.
Dirty fraking hippies need to realizable that. Otherwise, you're no better then the teabaggers. Still, though, keep fighting. But know when to play what you're dealt instead of over drawing your hand, right?
I wholeheartedly agree that
I wholeheartedly agree that getting something is better than nothing. It's a start, and as long as the door's been opened, we can go from there with further reform.
Why do GOP'ers lie..
about everything.
Printed on Sissys blog, in case she deletes it because it doesn't jive with her reality.
Funny how an easily countable 30 becomes 100.
Stay in school teabagger. I now understand the whole 3:1 math. It's bullshit. It's always bullshit adam.
Mike Capuano, too, lost his nerve:
There's only one thing that these politicians are out for and care about; themselves. Mike Capuano and, more recently, Dennis Kucinich proved to be no exceptions when they both backed down and voted for this trainwreck of a healthcare "reform" bill. Like all the other politicians, they ate crow.
Please don't associate
Please don't associate Capuano with Dennis Kucinich. Take a look at all three of Kucinich's legislative "victories" and you'll see why. He talks big in a very liberal district to his base, but ultimately hasn't done a damn thing for the country or the party except bring back pork now and then to his constituents. He's a joke.
He's exactly the kind of liberal that the GOP might just be right about. You can't talk a mean talk then stomp your feet when you don't get it you way in congress [well you can, but the bill will go nowhere]. We all can see an entire party doing that now.
To further my point, compare
To further my point, compare him to Teddy. A unblushingly liberal champion with the list of accomplishments to back it up.
Teddy would have voted for this bill, even all the while working to improve it.
Voting how his constituents asked him to vote
Perhaps Mike voted the way a majority of his constituents requested he vote. I know that he received at least one email asking him to vote yes.
Our health care system can't even be called a system. That implies order. We have health care chaos. The chaos works somewhat for many people who are employed in large organizations where the costs are widely shared and in areas where there are plenty of doctors. Even for those folks enjoying those advantages (myself included) health care is expensive. I pay a fraction of the insurance, still pay co-pays for visits and prescriptions. Add to that the amounts that insurance doesn't cover but I still have to pay.
What boggles me is that the evidence is clear: health care in our nation is expensive and second best. The need and disaster of HMOs proves that point. So the problems have stood in front of us for decades yet many in the nation would still choose to hide their heads in the sand and just continue doing the same thing expecting different pretending to expect different results every year.
A definition of insanity. Where health care is concerned is part of our nation simply insane?
At least last night a little bit of sanity prevailed. Was it a perfect bill? Absolutely not. But sticking our heads in the sand, whining and complaining about how bad things are, but doing nothing is consciously chosen insanity.
Healthcare
How well is Gov't health working in Mass. Pretty good, everyone is covered; except for the Billions required from the Fed to balance the budget and the double digit increases in health care premiums. Who is going to bail out the feds when they come up Billions or Trillion short on the budget and It didn't lower our premiums (just the opposite) so how will it lower premiums on the fed level?