More Like This Please! — David Shuster Asks Sen Carper Tough Questions
….on the health insurance bills in Congress. He specifically tossed the amount of money Carper has taken from the various health care and pharm industries at Senator Carper to ask him how it effects his vote. All told, Carper answered very little of Shuster’s questions. Take a look:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEPMP0e0Hss[/youtube]
h/t Bob Cesca
Tags: Health Care Reform, Tom Carper
There’s just no other way to say it. Carper is really full of shit.
There’s a reason why he rarely gives interviews like this, and you just saw it.
He is and always has been nothing but a shill for the banking and insurance corporate interests who have bankrolled his entire political career.
There came a point in this interview where he went into auto-pilot filibuster mode. Has RoboCandidate morphed into RoboSenator?
It is clear that the only way he will vote for a real public option is for the public to hold his feet to the fire. Anything anyone can do to help this go viral and to get people to call his office would be a public service. Anyone on a Democratic committee would especially do well to e-mail it out to their committee lists, and ask people to call his office.
I remember attending one of his town meetings when he was Rep about 20 years ago and the issue of health care came up and his response was to get a job that offered health benefits.
Yep, he is a person totally devoid of genuine empathy. But he has learned to fake it pretty well.
I’m not sure what he means by the backup plan for Medicare Part D in case the private sector didn’t step up. Medicare Part D was hugely expensive, stupidly designed and its private sector portion — the one where you could get private drug coverage was heavily subsidized.
Carper is a fan of this trigger mechanism that would launch the public option if the private insurers didn’t get off of the dime. They haven’t gotten off of the dime so far, and apparently Carper doesn’t get what competition means. Part of what I think that some of these Senators are waiting to get is some subsidy for the insurance companies themselves — like the Medicare Part D business.
Hey Jason, how is our fund raising going to buy back Carper?
Yeah – you could see Carper getting pissed at his staffer that set this up. He probably ripped their head off when he got back in the office.
I am glad that someone is finally challenging him on his ties to the healthcare/insurance lobby.
And I’m with you Cassandra, having a “plan on the shelf” is the dumbest f’ing thing he has ever said. This is hard. there are no easy solutions and if you are going to have a plan on the shelf, it will either be a piece of shit that will suck ass or it will be a ton of work that might never get used.
I am starting to agree with Chris Matthews. Make the commitment. Just say, we are going to get this done. When John Kennedy said that we were going to go to the moon, there was a ton of crap that hadn’t been invented yet, problems that hadn’t been solved and details that had to be developed. But without that push and the change in approach, it never would have happened.
Yeah, but it took 7 years of planning, innovation, and testing to get to the moon. They want to change it all at a record pace.
If they took 7 years of economists and health industry professionals working on the plans, I would be inclined to seeing their point of view.
I agree with Phil and Tom C. Why the rush? They want to push through a plan for political not economic reasons. They need to slow it down and have the economics of this studied and scored as opposed to secret bills and amendments they plan to spring 24 hours before the vote.
This is not the way to run a government let alone take over responsibility for 1/6 of the economy.
Carper kills air time with the best of them….that ability is a modern prerequisite for political ‘service,’ which is one reason why I have nothing but contempt for the political class. Generally, they are self-serving parasites.
If you would like to vent at Carper (or at least his office), there is a rally on Thursday organized by Tom and Alice Davis:
http://pol.moveon.org/event/healthcareaction/94316
*Here are the details:
Robust Rally for Robust Public Option
Sen. Thomas Carper’s District Office
1 Christina Center, 301 North Walnut Street, Suite 102L-1
Wilmington, DE 19801
Thursday, 9 Jul 2009, 12:00 PM*
“a public option, in case private sector…in case market forces don’t do the job”
He conveniently ignores that it’s already demonstrated that “private sector … market forces don’t do the job.”
Oh, but the ‘stimulus’ did? Yeah…..riiiiiight.