Liberal Democrats led by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva and California Rep. Lynn Woolsey sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirming their commitment to a single payer health care system.

From the Politico

Liberal Democrats in the House are holding their ground on a key issue in health reform, reiterating their opposition to any health care bill that would require government-sponsored coverage plans to negotiate payments with doctors or other health care providers. 

In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leaders of the 82-member Congressional Progressive Caucus reaffirmed their stand against a deal cut with four conservative Blue Dog Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee. 

These liberal lawmakers are particularly concerned with comments the speaker made to a small group of reporters Friday that were included in a Monday Washington Post story about lingering divisions in her caucus after last week’s fractious Energy and Commerce vote. 

“Are you asking me, ‘Are the progressives going to take down universal, quality, affordable health care for all Americans?’ I don’t think so,” Pelosi said with a laugh. 

In the letter, the two co-chairs of the caucus — Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva and California Rep. Lynn Woolsey — say their members are prepared to vote against any bill that doesn’t require government-sponsored public health care plans to pay providers some multiple of Medicare costs. 

The two Democrats also ask the speaker to reinstate subsidies to help middle-income families pay for mandated insurance coverage, but most of that money was supposed to be restored in a last-minute deal between the four Blue Dogs and liberals on Energy and Commerce. 

In the House, liberals are at odds with conservative Democrats over the size and strength of these public health care plans — all while the Senate looks like it might bypass the public plans altogether in favor of co-ops organized by doctors, businesses and individuals on the national, state and local level. 

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About the author

Don Irvine
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.

2 Comments for Liberal House Dems Stand Firm on Single Payer

TK

Now, we have intramural partisanship!  Left-winger, centrist, and right-winger DEMs fighting with each other!

Political partisanship – at any level – is why effective governance in this county is going down the tubes.

white tiger

Why not a one liner, “As of this date all legal residents of the US are entitled to the same health care as are members of Congress; and on the same terms”?

For The Great Pretender to claim that he can provide health care to fifty million additional persons without increasing present costs is ridiculous. He wants to ration it, eliminating presently available services from Medicaid and Medicare. One of the Rothschild goals is to kill off the old and the disabled, allegedly “unproductive”, “for the good of the many”.And he is their Tool of the moment.
The philosophy is atheistic; the methodology communistic. To such people are but “units of production”, not persons, composite of soul and body, with an eternal mission. And because they see people as chance collocations of subatomic particles, they hold mankind in contempt. For them, all that exists is matter in motion; right here, right now. Ergo, they claim the freedom to do as they wish, and dare us to defy them.

They control the socalled Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and, in effect, the economies of the world. Shortly their House Boy will succeed in destroying the US economy and use that fact as an excuse to surrender US sovereignty to his New World Order, by whatever name.

Failing Divine Intervention, we are doomed. And His intervention is conditioned on national repentance. Will the 63 million moral morons who gave power to the Reprobate Hypocrite in the White House do so? We shall see.