Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

[ProSense]

WHAT A SCALED-BACK BILL MIGHT LOOK LIKE....

The entire health care reform debate could end with a successful resolution if the House were to pass the Senate bill. But the House doesn't want to, at least not yet.

But all of the relevant players still want to avoid complete failure, so competing options continue to be mulled over. The easiest, most direct, and most effective approach -- the House passes the Senate bill, then approves improvements through reconciliation -- is still struggling, for reasons that defy comprehension. Some House Dems want to break reform into parts and pace it piecemeal, which still doesn't make sense.

And then there's the possibility of a smaller, "scaled-back" reform plan that would bring health coverage to maybe 12 million to 15 million people, instead of the 30 million in the bills already approved by the House and Senate. What would the pared-back approach look like? The NYT report offered the most details:

Lawmakers, Congressional aides and health policy experts said the package might plausibly include these elements:

* Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

* Insurers would have to offer policyholders an opportunity to continue coverage for children through age 25 or 26.

* The federal government would offer financial incentives to states to expand Medicaid to cover childless adults and parents.

* The federal government would offer grants to states to establish regulated markets known as insurance exchanges, where consumers and small businesses could buy coverage.

* The federal government would offer tax credits to small businesses to help them defray the cost of providing health benefits to workers.

* If a health plan provided care through a network of doctors and hospitals, it could not charge patients more for going outside the network in an emergency. Co-payments for emergency care would have to be the same, regardless of whether a hospital was in the insurer's network of preferred providers.

There are at least three obvious reasons why this is a bad idea. First, the scaled-back plan is considerably worse than the Senate bill, and would help far fewer Americans. This may seem like a radical concept, but if House Dems have a choice between two approaches, and one is superior to the other, they should probably support the better one.

Second, working on the scaled-back plan -- in effect, writing a whole new, weaker bill -- would take quite a bit of time. Indeed, it could add months to the process. Nothing is to be gained from dragging this out even further.

And third, if the House passed a weaker bill, it would then go to the Senate, where no one wants to even think about health care reform anymore, and where it would almost certainly be blocked by Republican obstructionism anyway.

As for the bigger picture, health care reform isn't quite dead. It's hanging by a thread -- a weak, tattered, struggling thread -- but there's still a chance. Jonathan Cohn noted that "the key players -- congressional leadership, labor leaders, and so on -- keep leaving open the option of the Senate bill plus amendments via reconciliation, which remains the most viable path forward. Interest groups are starting to rally, too. The American Cancer Society Action Network, for example, just put out a statement urging Congress to move forward."

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

[DrDan]

1. nope - we are not going to rush into this - it's only been a year - and we need to seat brown

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. Jesus said to get on with it

[timeforpeace]

22. Nancy Pelosi says no way.

[Sebastian Doyle]

31. Jesus said to pass ACTUAL health care reform

But who listens to Him inside the beltway?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. Gut the Senate bill and pass it next week

so what needs to be done is to pass something that benefits people especially the poor directly.
Cut prescription costs.
Reduce and cap hospital charges and costs of medical equipment and drugs.
Cap health insurance premiums and subject health insurance companies to a windfall tax (so they can't raise premiums to compensate).
Insurance companies have to allow pre-existing conditions
etc etc

Then we can get on to the states having their own health systems like Sakatchewan Canada with Fed government start up money. Start pilot schemes.

(don't tell me we can't afford it when we are spending billions on futile wars and lining the pockets of Wall Street!

psst... http://www.health.gov.sk.ca/health-system

[Phx_Dem]

5. How? The GOP will fillibuster any new bill and we don't have the

votes to stop it. They need to pass the Senate bill and then have the Senate pass fixes separtely through reconcillation.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. surely the GOP will support the poor in an emergency?

much could be made of that

[Phx_Dem]

33. The GOP doesn't give a rat's ass about poor people.

If you don't have big bucks to donate to their campaign, they don't care about you.

[jacksonian]

10. +1

[DrDan]

7. c'mon -- we need to focus on the real issues

lets put together a REAL REFORM bill to maximize health insurance provider profits.

That's what would unite our legislators.

[Teaser]

4. pass the damn bill indeed

.

[PHIMG]

8. Bring Medicare for All to a vote; let the ones who vote against it suffer.

MEDICARE FOR ALL is the solution, it's time for the party to grow a pair of gonads and fight for what's right. Let the Republicans and the sold out democrats expose themselves by voting against Medicare.

EXPAND MEDICARE TO SAVE MEDICARE.
MEDICARE - GOOD ENOUGH FOR GRANDMA GOOD ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE.
MEDICARE FOR ALL SAVES 300 billion a year in reduce admin waste.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

23. And if it doesn't pas?

Who suffers then?

[PHIMG]

24. Nobody suffers.

You have a list of who you need to target. Put the jokers on record. Make them vote against expanding the part of our healthcare system that works the best and is popular.

Who suffers when they pass a corporate-friendly bill that forces middle class people to buy a defective financial product from the private insurance companies that everyone HATES.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

32. Nobody Suffers? Really?

Thirty million people without access to health care and NOT ONE OF THEM IS SUFFERING?

According to a study released last year, more than 40,000 Americans die every year because they don't have access to basic health care. But none of them are suffering?

You're trying to score political points and you're using other peoples' lives and game tokens.

[Tailormyst]

9. Trash the bill- start over- Give us REAL reform

[jacksonian]

11. meanwhile...

there is no starting over. It won't go. Anywhere. Consensus was worked on, for better or worse, this is it. It's better than nothing, people will be helped.

Pass and fix the funding in reconcilliation. No other way.

[Tailormyst]

25. If the bill passes as is, we are in massive trouble come November

I might be wrong, but I think if this bill passes as it is now, November will make this week like a mosquito bite.

[ShortnFiery]

13. Yes! A voice of reason instead of that ENDORSED by the Insurance Cartel.

:thumbsup:

[jenmito]

12. Call your congressmen. Tell them you want them to pass the Senate bill with the "patch"

to fix the things they now find unacceptable. What a WASTE of a whole year it would be if this went down.

[ShortnFiery]

14. Our congress critters can't wipe their own asses without corporate funding.

As bad as it is now - it would be WORSE with insurance cartel MANDATES.

[grytpype]

15. NNOOOOOO!!!! Free health care for all!!!! Smash the mean corporations!!!!!!!!

Vote Republican until they give us all free health care and smash the corporations!!!!

:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

[jeanmarc]

16. Agreed. It's common sense. Pass the Damned Bill.

I can't believe the pouting that's going on in the House.

I'm embarrassed to be a Democrat right now.

[ShortnFiery]

17. "common sense" = give the upper 1% with the last vestiges of the Middle Class's wealth.

Gut the Middle Class = Common Sense. :eyes:

[last1standing]

18. It's always the same bullshit.

The cry is always: DO IT NOW AND PUSH HIM/FIX IT LATER!!!!

And afterward it's always: What'd you expect when you voted for him/supported it?

Fix it first (yes, it is possible) then Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

[andym]

19. Use the indeterminate status of the bill as leverage to

open up a Medicare buy in to all immediately using reconciliation. Keep the Medicare program as is for 65+. Then, charge everyone 5% over cost and use the funds to make Medicare solvent. It is not ideal, because it is not cheap, something like 500/month, but it will still be popular and helpful.

In return for Medicare expansion, then pass the bill and make some amendments if possible using reconciliation-- national exchange, etc.

[nsd]

20. +1

[golfguru]

21. Still no limits on what they can charge for premiums?

With no public option to compete with, the private insurers will hike
the premiums for all until their profits still remain juicy.

No bill without public option!

[subterranean]

27. They already tried that.

The public option didn't have the votes in the Senate.

What will prevent us from adding a public option down the road? I believe that a system that combines mandatory for-profit insurance, few cost controls, and government subsidies for a large chunk of the middle class will be fiscally unsustainable over the long term. If indeed the insurance companies hike premiums to unaffordable levels (which seems likely), it will put pressure on future governments to come up with a solution to control costs. That solution could be a non-profit public insurance plan.

Of course, it would be much better to pass a public option now. But as we've seen, that idea, which is supported by a majority of Americans, was killed by four or five members of the Senate.

[golfguru]

34. All valid points ...eom

[ibegurpard]

37. so you're seriously suggesting that we pass an unsustainable system

in the hopes that we can fix it later
seriously listen to yourselves...your desperation to try to pass healthcare reform has blinded you to what it is you're actually going to end up passing.

[last1standing]

26. Stop. The. Damn. Spam.

Stop. The. Damn. Spam.

Stop. The. Damn. Spam.

Stop. The. Damn. Spam.

[ProSense]

29. Stop. The. Damn. Denial. n/t

[ShortnFiery]

30. You got that right!

These INDIVIDUAL post threads are like what we'd call in the military "Artillery Bracketing."

THREAD POST COUNT =

1) "Adjust POPULIST for Paul Krugman. OVER! Fire for effect. OUT!"
2)"Adjust EXECUTIVE BRANCH for Robert Gibbs. OVER! Fire for effect. OUT!"
3) "Adjust INVECTIVES for righteous indignation. OVER! Fire for effect. OUT!;"

and

4) "Adjust PLEADING + INVECTIVES for an Hail Mary Instance Over! Fire for effect. OUT!"

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

[Teaser]

35. nah, keep it up

I like it.

[TheKentuckian]

28. I'm astounded that ANYONE is still shilling for corporate welfare at this stage

it's just national suicide to transfer money to these vampires.

Nor can I discern exactly what people think gets fixed with this patch, as far as I can tell it is just to honor the labor deal on bad policy.

This patch won't create national exchanges, it won't kill the rescission loophole, it will not make coverage affordable for people with pre-existing conditions, it won't make care affordable, it will not remove the anti-trust exemption, it will not create any enforcement mechanisms for the insurance cartel, it will not provide competition, it will not give the majority of people mandated into buying private for profit health care any choice in coverage, it in fact resolves none of the real systemic flaws and so it is a bunch of bullshit, a carrot.

[ibegurpard]

36. indeed