The Left Starts To Turn On Obamacare: “Kill-The-Bill” Quotes

Conservatives were shut out of giving input on Obamacare from the beginning, so there has never been any support for it from the Right. Independents have also long since turned on the bill. Now that the stealth road to a single payer system appears to have been ripped out of the bill, even a significant chunk of the far Left seems to be starting to turn on it.

Yesterday the very moderate Howard Dean, a lifelong physician, said it’s time to scrap the current bill and resort to parliamentary tricks to pass a new and better bill. He’s absolutely right for several reasons…The current bill is a conservative’s dream: wasteful, nothing for the middle class, with extra profits going only to the corporations that turned our medical care system into a permanent snafu. …Abandon the Senate’s Titanic health care bill before it hits the iceberg. — Kevin Hayden, American Street

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.” — Howard Dean

On MSNBC, I was asked what I thought about Howard Dean’s call to kill the Senate bill. I agree with him. From what we know about the bill, it is worse than passing nothing. — Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake

The first rule of medicine is, “Do no harm.” The post-Joe Lieberman version of the Senate health care bill fails that basic criterion. Unless Democratic leadership steps up to fix this misguided proposal, our only recourse will be to kill it. — Darcy Burner, The Huffington Post

Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate. — Kos

Without a public option, it’s just a giveaway to the insurance companies, and it does nothing to control costs. — Patrick Robinson, spokesman for MoveOn

I made it clear that I think that no bill is better than a bad bill and the bill just keeps getting worse. The oligarchy will make sure there is no real reform until the entire system collapses. I can’t support any bill that forces people to buy insurance from the sociopaths of the private insurance industry.

For the first time in my life I find myself to the left of Thom Hartmann. He thinks Obama needs this “victory” no matter how shallow it might be. At this point I don’t give a damn about Obama. If he’s going to govern like Clinton or a Republican we might as well have a Republican. — Ron Beasley, Newshoggers

Maybe we don’t have the ability to recall the junior senator from the state of Aetna, but Congress can do the following:

1. Kill the bill.
2. Start the reconciliation process.

3. Forget about the filibuster proof majority (b.s.) and strip Lieberman of his chairmanship once and for all. — ctblogger, My Left Nutmeg

Given that the opinion of the bill on the Left now seems to mostly range between “It’s a mediocre bill, but let’s pass it to help Obama” and “Kill the bill!,” you have to wonder whether it’s worth it for the Dems to slam through a wildly unpopular bill that starts producing pain immediately, but has few benefits before 2014? All it will do is cost the Democrats more seats and give the GOP a rallying cry for the next two elections: “Put us back in power and we’ll kill Obamacare before it wrecks the health care system!” Meanwhile, after all that, liberals aren’t going to be happy either — and moreover, contrary to what you’ve been hearing, Joe Lieberman seems to be on board the health care trainwreck express and yet, they still don’t have 60 votes. At a minimum, they still need to please Ben Nelson — and there may be several other Democrats waiting in the wings with a list of demands.

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