Howard Dean: I Rate This Health Care Bill A Good, Solid B+, By Which I Mean It's a "Ticking Time Bomb" and a "Disaster" and "Toxic"

He's said this before, but I suppose it's a particularly inconvenient moment now for him to be saying it again.

He attacks the bill, as before, from the left, claiming it's a right-wing gift to the insurance companies.

"You will be forced to buy insurance. If you don't, you'll pay a fine," said Dean, a physician. "It's an insurance company bailout." Interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," he said the bill has some good provisions, "but there has to be a line beyond which you think the bill is bad for the country."

"This is an insurance company's dream," the former Democratic presidential candidate said. "This is the Washington scramble, and it's a shame."
Dean argued that the Senate's health care bill would not prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions and he also said it would allow the industry to charge older people far more than others for premiums.

Now for the spin. As Ann Coulter noted with ample delight, last campaign season Hillary Clinton (and all of her supporters) got to finally understand what it was like to be a Republican, or at least an Enemy of the Liberal Hive-Mind.

And so Dean becomes left-wing Republican for a Day now.

Robert Gibbs thinks Dean is insane:

"I don't think any rational person would say killing a bill makes any sense at this point,” Gibbs said today.

Asked why he thought Dean was making the arguments he’s making, Gibbs said, “I can’t tell what his motives are.” He said the Senate legislation was essentially what Dean “campaigned for in 2004” but better.

Before the media swooned for Obama, they swooned for Dean in 2004 as the Liberal One True Hope. Do they have any remaining loyalty for him?

Nah. You see, he's just opposing this because he's a bitter, angry man upset about a trivial slight:

Recall that Dean was not invited to the handover of power to new chairman Tim Kaine, and Dean’s friends felt it was mean-spirited.

At the time, one of them noted it might have been smarter to keep Dean in the fold, considering Dean’s ability to generate headlines and controversy. From our Jan. 9 post:

“What is this guy gonna do in six months?” asked a Dean supporter, guessing that the departing Dem chairman might find irresistible any real opportunities to criticize Team Obama. “He could be like a heat seeking missile out there.”

MSNBC loves them some "snubbing" narrative too:

Here's something else to think about: In retrospect, was Barack Obama's conspicuous snub of Howard Dean a big mistake, given the former DNC chairman's opposition to the Senate health-care bill moving through Congress?

Remember that when Tim Kaine was tapped to be the new DNC chairman, Dean wasn't at the Obama-Kaine press conference announcing the move. Instead, he was in American Samoa, but his allies maintained he would have canceled that trip had he been given a heads up about the press conference.

What's more, Dean never got a plum position in the Obama administration. Possibly adding insult to injury, few DNC aides who worked for Dean initially got top jobs in the Obama administration.

It all raised this question in Washington: Why did Obama opponents like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman receive better treatment from Team Obama than Dean received?

And it now raises this question: Had Dean been treated better would he -- like other Senate progressives right now -- be urging liberals to accept the half a loaf on health care.

So, then, either mental, or extremely petty and spiteful and putting his anger over a penny-ante snubbing over the wellness of the citizens he once sought to lead.

I don't see much appetite among the liberal press corps for entertaining the possibility that Dean is right. The only two possibilities seem 1, lunatic, 2, bitch. Same options offered to Hillary, pretty much, except she didn't get offered the lunatic option.

(Not to bring up a sore spot with PUMAs or anything...)

More: "Ticking time bomb:"

The new version of the Senate health care bill is “a political disaster for Democrats — a ticking time-bomb for years to come.”

So warns Democracy for America, the organization founded by Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and headed by his brother, Jim.

...

Democracy for America... says that without a public option, mandating that people buy private insurance amounts to “almost a trillion-dollar taxpayer giveaway to insurance companies.”

“The mandate is toxic,” the organization warns, “and Democrats will own it.”

&bodytext=He's said this before, but I suppose it's a particularly inconvenient moment now for him to be saying it again. He attacks the bill, as before, from the left, claiming it's a right-wing gift to the insurance companies. "You will...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 01:35 AM

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