Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:05 pm
On his MSNBC program Countdown, host Keith Olbermann delivered a special comment about the compromise healthcare reform bill. Olbermann said, “The Senate bill with mandate must be defeated, if not in the Senate then in the House.” If the bill passes, Olbermann called on his viewers to not buy insurance.
Here is the video:
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Olbermann described the compromise bill as, “Seeking the least common denominator, Sen. Reid has found it, especially the least part. This is not health. This is not care. This is certainly not reform…The men of the current moment have lost to the mice of history. They must now not make the defeat worse by passing a hollow shell of a bill just for the sake of a big stage signing ceremony.”
He discusses the people who made this defeat possible, Chuck Grassley, Ben Nelson, Jim DeMint, and Max Baucus. Some of his harshest words were saved for Sen. Joe Lieberman and President Obama. On Lieberman Olbermann said, “He has been bought and sold by the insurance lobby. He has become a senatorial prostitute.”
Olbermann addressed Obama directly, “Sir, your hands off approach while noblely intended and perhaps someday applicable to the reality of an improved version of our nation enabled the nation humiliation that was the town halls, and the insufferable neanderthalian stupidity of Congressman Wilson, and the streetwalking of Mr. Lieberman.”
Olbermann said that the insurance mandate must stripped out. He called it immoral and a betrayal to the people who put Obama in office. He concluded by urging people not to buy government mandated health insurance requirement without a buy in or a public option becomes law.
He said, “I call on all those whose conscience urges them to fight to use the only weapon that will be left to us if this bill as currently constituted becomes law. We must not buy federally mandated insurance if this cheesy counterfeit of reform is all we can buy. No single payer, no sale. No public option, no sell. No Medicare buy in, no sale. I am one of the self insured all be it by choice, and I hereby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of healthcare reform…I will not buy this insurance. Brand me a lawbreaker if you choose. Fine me, if you will. Jail me if you must.”
If this bill does get killed, it will likely happen in the House. Olbermann’s anger is representative of many on the left who can’t understand how a bill that started out as healthcare reform became an individual mandate with no regulation on the insurance companies. In the end though, Democrats seem hell bent on passing a bill, even if it is a bad one, so this bill will likely pass and be signed by President Obama.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
