Brown Bemoans "Entire Year Gone to Waste"

GOP Senator Blames Obama, Democrats for "Bitter, Destructive and Endless" Push to Pass Health Reform

(AP)  Newly arrived Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts accused President Barack Obama and Democrats on Saturday of a "bitter, destructive and endless" drive to pass health overhaul legislation that Brown warned would be disastrous.

"An entire year has gone to waste," Brown said in the weekly GOP radio and Internet address. "Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and many more jobs are in danger. Even now, the president still hasn't gotten the message.

"Somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway."

Brown himself can claim responsibility for the Democrats' failure to pass health overhaul legislation to date. They were on the verge of doing so before Brown claimed the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat in a special election upset in January, depriving Democrats of their filibuster-proof supermajority and throwing the health care effort into limbo.

CBSNews.com Special Report: Health Care
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It has been gradually revived, and Democrats are now pushing for final passage before Easter under complex Senate rules that would allow them to sidestep a Republican filibuster. Republicans in the House and Senate are unanimously opposed to the sweeping legislation, which would extend coverage to some 30 million uninsured Americans with a new mandate for nearly everyone to carry insurance.

The House minority leader, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in an interview for broadcast Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that if House Democrats had the votes to pass the health care bill they would have acted by now.

"They don't have the votes," Boehner said.

Brown, as a state senator in Massachusetts, voted in favor of the universal-coverage law in that state. The bill he supported in Massachusetts has a number of features in common with the Democrats' legislation, including a mandate for nearly everyone to be covered.

But he campaigned on a promise to be the Republicans' crucial 41st vote against Mr. Obama's health plan, and said Saturday that his victory amounted to a message from voters that Washington should "get its priorities right."

"We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt," Brown said.

[wheresmycountry]

Bush's first year, in comparison, was an epic success: The DC Sniper, 9/11, the Antrhax attacks, and Richard Reid. I remember that 9/11 was blamed completely on Clinton. Bush's bad start was Clinton's fault. Obama's bad start is his own fault. People who believe an invisible man is in charge of everything are willing to believe anything. They put their children in front of TV's with a talking tomato and cucumber to learn to turn their brains off.

[starving1968-3]

by tsigili March 15, 2010 9:21 AM EDT
Totally agree with that. An entire year has been wasted on health care, while job number one for Congress, should have been jobs creation.

Of course the Dems couldn't care less about jobs.






6 million manufacturing jobs left the country at the URGING of the Bush regime, while (then presidential candidate) John Kerry called those policies harmful and destructive.

http://news.cnet.com/Bush-official-defends-outsourcing/2110-1022_3-5182175.html

Bush was re-elected and the bleeding of American jobs continued, to the current 10% rate that it's at today.

You were saying?

[rocketjl]

I seem to remember that the WH reported that even when the 'health bill' is passed, some 7 to 10 million people will still not be covered by health insurance. Somebody get their act together on this and keep all the lies straight. We must have the worst politicians in the world, if they all can't lie the same.

[tsigili]

Totally agree with that. An entire year has been wasted on health care, while job number one for Congress, should have been jobs creation.

Of course the Dems couldn't care less about jobs.

[nearl451]

I guess that the word "bemoan"now means "thanks his lucky stars"....because he this to thank for his election.

Very disengenuous.

[steeepe]

Wake up, Brown! Bush and the GOP laid waste to the country for eight years!!!!!

[wjksea]

Speaking of Mitt Romney...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/
mar/03/mitt-romney/romney-says-
americans-pay-more-health-care-die-soo/

"In his new book, No Apology, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney devotes a chapter to health care policy -- a topic that animated his tenure as governor of Massachusetts.

Romney, working with a Democratic-dominated legislature, passed a health care overhaul that was designed to get his state as close to universal coverage as possible. Romney is now often discussed as a presidential candidate for 2012, which has forced him into an uncomfortable balancing act: He seeks to lead a party intent on blocking President Barack Obama's health care proposal, even though he himself enacted a plan that, according to many sources we interviewed earlier this year, shares much in common with what Obama is proposing.

We looked through the health care chapter of Romney's book as well as transcripts of his recent media appearances, but we were unable to locate a clear, fact-checkable statement addressing the similarities and differences between the two bills. (He broached the issue on a number of occasions, but in each case he phrased his statements in such a way that made it difficult for us to subject them to the Truth-O-Meter.)

So while Romney did not compare the Massachusetts plan with Obama's proposal, in his book he compared the U.S. system with other nations'.

"The lifespan of the average American is less than that of people in nations that spend far less" on health care, Romney wrote, adding, "To put it bluntly, we spend more and die sooner."

The first place we looked was the statistical archive of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group that represents 30 advanced, industrialized nations, mostly in Europe, Asia and North America. Scholars consider OECD figures to be among the most reliable for international comparisons on health care.

First, we'll look at life expectancy -- the number of years someone born in a certain year can expect to live. The OECD's most recent figures, for either 2005 or 2006 (the year varies by country), show that the United States ranks 24th -- well under the average level for the 30 nations studied.

Specifically, life expectancy in the United States was 77.8 years. That put it behind the following nations, in descending order: Japan (at 82.4 years in 2006), Switzerland, Iceland, Spain, Australia, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Portugal and Denmark.

Meanwhile, health and population economists at the World Health Organization devised another measure to gauge life expectancy -- disability-adjusted life expectancy, or how many years one can expect to live before becoming disabled by old-age illnesses. WHO did its last full-blown international comparison of DALE, as it is abberviated, in 2000, and the results are much the same.

The United States ranked 24th on the WHO list with exactly 70 years of DALE. It trailed Japan (with 74.5), Australia, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Iceland, Finland, Malta, Germany and Israel.

Now, we'll look at health care expenditures. There are two ways to measure this -- by expenditures per capita, or by expenditures as a percentage of GDP. However you measure it, we're No. 1 -- by a mile.

Using the first measure, the OECD reports that the United States spent $7,290 on health care per capita in 2007. The only two other countries where per capita health care expenditures exceeded even $4,000 were Norway and Switzerland.

Using the second measure, the United States spent more than 15 percent of GDP on health care in 2006, according to the OECD. Only Switzerland and France exceeded 11 percent.

To take one extreme case, South Korea spends less than a quarter per capita of what the United States spends on health care -- yet its people, on average, live past 79 years of age, which is more than one full year longer than Americans do.

Ali Mokdad, a professor in global health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, attributes the United States' poor showing in part to a lack of emphasis on preventive care.

"We have fallen behind other countries in tackling the root causes of mortality and disease," Mokdad said. "We know, for example, that just reducing salt in people?s diets can save more than 100,000 lives a year, but there is much more discussion in this country about health insurance, which would save, at best, about half as many people."

Whatever the reason, and however you measure it, Americans "spend more and die sooner," as Romney so bluntly put it. We rate his statement True."

[wjksea]

dragontek March 14, 2010 11:51 AM EDT
Brown needs to look at what he supported in Massachusetts- it is nearly the same bill now coming up for vote. The vast majority of those in MA like their almost universal coverage- but a huge majority would prefer single payer.

Brown seems to think that other Americans do not deserve the same benefits of those in his home state? As for 'wasting a year' on health care- we have been wasting over 60 years trying to reform a system that is unfair, out of balance and too costly for many- What does Brown think we should do- give his rich friends in the toney suburb of Boston where he lives more tax cuts?
------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine Brown in the land of right wingdom once upon a time for doing nekkid spread for money. Would have been scandal. Over the course of time, the true consistent values of the right wing come out loud and clear. Do unto others then split.

This is politics. Pure politics. Ugly dysfunctional sport politics that does not serve the best interests of this nation. Orrin Hatch summed it up very well in the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSrH3UE7YEY

[fiberglass3]

Most of us elected Barack Obama in the 2008 election on a campaign to reform health care.

If our elected representatives in Washington can't get this done, then let's leave it up to the voters in November.

We are tired of having our insurance premiums being spent on special intrest groups and lobbyiest's.

Include the "public option" !

[wjksea]

Great...lets just turn it over to the republican party so that the bankers, insurance companies and other predatory blood sucking enterprises who operate as wealth extractors for a few beneficiaries can drive the final nails into the coffin.

[noloyalisti]

Does everyone else think like I do that we have one of the most corrupt political system in the world? It is just so blatant, the bribery, threats and protection money used and people getting ruined and knocked off by The Corporation.

Just like the Mafia, only completely legal (and actually condoned by the majority of Americans).

[wjksea]

Though risky and the dreaded suffering of the innocent, perhaps the best education for the tea bagger mentality of this nation would have been a severe depression that some economists claim would have been much worse than 30s. It would have been an honest fall. The corrupt institutions would have been rightly disbanded and a generation of pay check to pay check right wingers would have faced the ruthlessness behind the rhetoric they have bought lock, stock and barrel just in time for their retirement years. The boomer generation let the nation down. Not single handedly but to a large degree.