Health Care Reform Watch: Senator Joe Lieberman Humiliates Himself Yet Again...
Wow! Just wow!
Greg Sargent FTW, who writes:
VIDEO: Watch Lieberman Endorse Medicare Buy-In Three Months Ago: Here’s some video of Joe Lieberman only three months ago.... Lieberman discussed the Medicare buy-in a meeting with the Connecticut Post in September, according to an article in the paper at the time, as TPM noted today. But the article only paraphrased Lieberman. I asked the paper to send over the video, and it’s worth watching, because it gives you Lieberman’s actual quotes... at odds with the Lieberman camp’s claim today.... Lieberman appeared to go further than the current Senate deal, which would expand Medicare to those aged 55-64, saying he supported the idea of expanding it to people aged 50 and over. Lieberman referenced his proposal along these lines during the 2006 campaign, and added:
My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid.... When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare. What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money...
Lieberman['s]... tone is clearly positive and approving... yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement.
