Eric Massa on HR3962
On a conference call, today, Congressman Massa has said that he will vote “No” on the new House Health Care Reform Bill because it will(paraphrased)
“…enshrine monopolistic powers of health insurance industry into law while failing to address,
- How do we control costs?
- Interstate portability
- Waste and fraud (the inefficiency of, costing $700 billion dollars/year)
When asked about a vote on HR676, Eric stated that it would not come to the floor of the House for a vote.
Eric ended his statement by saying:
“It is exceptionally painful to me to not be able to bring common sense health care reform for my district”
Related posts:
This comes as no surprise. Eric promised that he would not vote for a bad bill.
Too bad the rest of the local delegation is unwilling to protect us from preditory legislation.
Guess we’ll have to do that ourselves next November.
I hope that Eric Massa is not trying to have it all ways on health care reform — declining to vote for anything less than his ideal, maybe satisfying single payer advocates, and then preserving the ability to tell Death Panel types that he voted against the House’s health care reform proposal.
Eric has not changed his stance on health care reform. I watched his expression at the Mendon Town Hall when he stated that he would not vote in favor of HR3200 as written. He actually rolled his eyes when he got a thunderous round of applause from the “Death Panel” types knowing that they are unaware of why he was voting against it, while understanding that trying to explain it to them was like Barney Frank’s dining room table analogy.
Comments from Conservapedia on the Fort Hood shooting:
“Hours before the Fort Hood massacre, “Democratic liberals” who lead the House Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to weaken the USA Patriot Act as a tool for combating terrorism.”
How is there a link? How exactly would monitoring someone’s phones have prevented something like this?
“Liberal headlines downplay the facts about the Fort Hood massacre, but details are emerging through quotes by fellow soldiers.”
“Tragic Shooting At Fort Hood kills 13″. How many facts do you want in a newspaper headline?
And of course, the fact he is MUSLIM is so critical to this investigation!
If Massa is the deciding vote I doubt he would vote against the bill and if he did that would be very disappointing.
The House bill isn’t perfect, its not even great, but its good and its a huge step forward. He should vote for it.
Massa said early on that he would only vote for single payer. He changed that shortly after he took the initial position, but I believe he’s resuming his prior stance.
I also want Massa to vote in favor of it.
I prefer that Eric vote against this bill for the simple reason that I need an elected official I can believe in. If he caves in on an issue as important as this, I’ll have no one to believe in. Like Eric, I seem to be an idealist.
I love the idea of idealism, but it’s not going to cover my friend’s daughter’s health care - she’s got a pre-existing condition. And it won’t get my father the care he needs. Sorry - I think we’ve got to live in the here and now on this. The status quo continues to hurt people. Some reform helps lots of people. Maybe someday we get the gold standard, but idealism doesn’t pay the bills or get the medical care so many need right now.
We shouldn’t have to accept bad legislation because it is the only legislation available.
From dailykos.com:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/7/801912/-Today-I-yelled-at-a-Rep:-My-talk-w-Cong.-Massa-about-HCR
Haven’t seen the roll call yet (it’s not up) but here’s the link:
http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2009&rollnumber=887
I’m assuming he voted against the bill.