Do you think the health care reform bill will pass the Senate?

I think due to extreme cowardice, bad planning and the power of great wealth, even if it does pass it won’t be worth having. I hope Joe Lieberman suffers from a long, painful, disfiguring incurable disease.

The latest is that Howard Dean is calling for it to be shitcanned so that they can start over under a reconciliation process which only requires 51 votes instead of 60.

Yeah, but only parts of it can be passed in reconciliation, and the Republicans will be challenging every sentence.

@pdworkin
I would add barring him from any kind of public insurance (medicare, medicaid, what members of congress have, etc) and then make him try getting private insurance with his preexisting condition. Oh, and his disease should require frequent and expensive surgery.

@ragingloli I knew if I waited long enough you and I would agree on something.

If it passes with the public-option-like nationwide utility nonprofit, I think it would be significantly better than nothing. Near-universal health coverage plus regulation barring rescision and other unsavory insurance practices is huge.

But if the bill doesn’t provide people with a non-profit, nationally competitive option—especially with the mandates—it could be a shitstorm.

Also Lieberman is such a goddamn piece of shit.

I’m so disgusted I almost don’t think it matters any more. If anything passes it will be so watered down as to be virtually meaningless. This may be a separate question, but how come the Republicans, when in power, can get all their members to vote in lockstep and we have a few schmucks who gum up the whole process?

@janbb, I think you are exaggerating.

I agree, the bill should be much better. But the reality of the situation is we don’t actually have 60 Democratic senators actually dedicated to the values of the party. We have like 55, plus 5 basically immoral tools—Lieberman, Nelson, Baucus, Landrieu, and Bayh. Actually, I may be forgetting someone. They are “moderates” not out of principle but because it allows them to wield power and affords them a convenient excuse to go along with the dictates of the insurance companies that fund them.

I suppose we could do a purity test and purges of these people like the Republicans do to their caucuses; I agree that Lieberman should be stripped of all his committees. But the result of the bill would still be the same.

Also, you are overstating how much the Republicans were able to accomplish. They failed to privatize social security, for example.

Finally, there are a lot of good things in the bill. I think it’s a mistake to make the public option this white whale. The reason we want a public option is because it’s (1) nonprofit, and (2) is broad enough that it will force competition on for-profit insurance companies. If a private utility-like national organization has those same qualities (like in Reid’s rumored compromise bill) then I am perfectly fine with it. I don’t really care if the government runs it, so long as it’s nonprofit.

I would much prefer single-payer, but that was always a pipe dream. And it’s depressing that a watered down bill is probably going to depress Democratic turnout in the 2010 elections… so that it will be even harder to elect true progressives to counterbalance the moderates ruining our party.

@Qingu Much better thought out than my emotional response. I just was so full of hope at the beginning of this year and have been feeling very down about the political situation that has ensued. I, too, would prefer single payer but have never expected that we could get there from here – however, provisions that have been given up, like public funding for abortions and the public option, have made me very disheartened. I would love to be proven wrong.

I think it will pass but the bill coming from the senate is not worth the effort they put into it, its just a present to the insurance companies.

I hope it doesnt it needs to be rewritten by some one other then obama’s cronies before it should be passed I have a feeling there is 10n’s of billions of private spending in there

Oh, right. Obama is trying to enrich his friends! Ahahahahaha!

Yes, I think the bill will pass and more than that, I think it will be a very good thing if it does.

Imagine if I told you four years ago (when the President was George W. Bush, the Speaker of the House was Denny Hastert, and the Senate Majority Leader was Bill Frist, Republicans all) that in December 2009, we would be on the verge of:

* extending health coverage to 30 million people
* preventing insurance companies from denying you coverage based on “preexisting conditions” or dropping you once you get sick
* making it mandatory to charge similar people the same amount for health coverage
* providing large subsidies for low and moderate income people to purchase health coverage
* instituting a cap on out-of-pocket health expenses
* ...and doing all of this without having to borrow to pay for it.

What would you have said to that? I think most people (certainly most liberals) would have said that was impossible. And yet that’s exactly where we are.

Is the bill perfect? No. But passing this bill will still be the biggest progressive legislative accomplishment in at least three decades.

@Michael What I hear from people who have actually read the bill is that Big Health Care will easily find loopholes and continue to exclude the least healthy people, and continue to deny reimbursement whenever they can.

@pdworkin Of course, they will probably try to do that, but isn’t far better to pass a law enshrining the principle that people can’t be denied coverage and then go back and close loopholes as they are found then to not pass the law at all and let insurance companies continue to drop people openly.

Also, the prohibition on recissions and denying coverage based on preexisting conditions is only one part of the bill. There are many other very valuable provisions in the bill as well. Don’t forget the fundamental outcome of this bill is that 30 million more people will get health coverage.

What I can’t forget is that Big Health Care and Big Pharma love this bill. The Congress are whores, and they are now squabbling over the price.

@pdworkin, “Big Health Care” maybe likes the bill because they’re guaranteed to get millions more new customers, many of them very healthy youngsters (and so cheaper to insure).

This would have been mitigated by a public option, and could still be mitigated in the exact same way by the nonprofit utility Reid floated. Also, the fact that health care companies stand to benefit is not in and of itself a bad thing, beyond emotional feelings of spite for these companies.

It sounds reasonable when you say it, but I have no faith that anything good will come of this, save that perhaps Obama may finally grow a pair of balls.

So they cap out of pocket expenses. Great. Know what the insurers will do? Raise premiums even more. Then the gov. has to jump in and subsidise it. Which will end up costing the taxpayer a lot more money than simply going with a public option that would create competition and actually lower premiums as a result of that.
The reps are willing to pay much more just to not have that cheaper “evil socialist” public option. They scream about free market and competition but when they actually get the chance to enforce competition they suddenly side with the monopolists.

I basically agree with Nate Silver’s position at 538.

Obama has always been a pragmatist. “Better than the status quo” is still worth voting for—even if you think we could have negotiated more effectively, even if you think many Senators involved are evil and/or acting in bad faith.

Thank God this horrific piece of legislation is failing, this was just another power grab by the Democrats just a vehicle to get to socialism, we have defeated Obama on this one and we will destroy the Dems in 2010 and 2012 and save this country from this socialist President.Now what we need is someone to step up to the plate and really try to fix health care!

Do you even know what socialism is? Because from what you write, I would strongly doubt that.

He knows that it’s very, very bad.

And even that isn’t true.

*is reminded of this:
some say that if he caught fire,he would burn for athousand days,...and that he only knows two facts about ducks and they’re both wrong…..........
All we know is he’s called The Stig!

But he’s been told that since he was a little boy! Weren’t the Russkies some kind o’ Socialist? Wasn’t Hitler some kind o’ Socialist? Come on, you can’t fool @Mandomike.

Sounds like sore losers to me, move to Canada if you like that kind of system but leave America Please!

Whenever someone disagrees with you you either impugn their patriotism or suggest they leave the country. It’s your view that’s the minority view, so maybe you should consider getting the fuck out. You might like Austria. They have a long history of your type running the show.

@Mandomike
And again you show how little attention you pay to what people write. In another thread I was pretty explicit in stating that I live in Germany. And that we have a very successful public insurance system since 1883 that did not drive private insurance out of business. In fact, the Allianz, a German private insurance company, is the 2nd largest insurance company in the world.
And instead of addressing your comprehensive lack of understanding of political reality you instead choose to divert attention by resorting to ad hominem attacks, which, if you do not mind, I will interpret as an admission of the correctness of my original assessment of your political knowledge.
I do not feel like I lost anything, I just feel sorry for your country and all those people who will continue to go bankrupt or even lose their lives because of your degenerate health insurance system.
I do not even know why I waste my time writing this, because I could as well argue with a creationist and get the same results.

@pdworkin , What the hell do you think you do all day long on here,,you trash Republicans plain and simple, I have followed many of your comments and that is litterally all you do so to accuse me of being a little touchy about what you have to say is a little disingenuous. I know your a left wing whack job but I don’t hold that against you.

You do though. First you expressed a public doubt that I love my country, and just now you suggested I leave. Now you are shocked that I can play that too? Make up your mind. Either we both belong here and there is such a thing as civilized debate, or STFU. You can’t have it both ways.

@pdworkin ,Never said you don’t love your country and this is what I am talking about you can’t even understand a simple paragraph,,yes you are seriously misguided but show me where I said you you don’t love your country. And by the way the STFU comment is followed by SIIYA!

First,we need to see what’s in it!Anytime the government wants to wrest control of 20% of the GNP,means it can’t be a good thing.They don’t manage anything correctly.Why would we give them control of 1/5 of the economy,and allow them that much control over our daily lives and freedoms?They would regulate us to death.This is incrementalism.It’s all about control.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables, thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet—which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration—and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

Sorry Lucille but sometimes these people drive me crazy but you are correct in your analysis.

@lucillelucillelucille, the fact that you think the bill entails the govenment “wresting control” of 1/5 of the GNP means you clearly don’t understand what it is.

Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the actual bill before you form an opinion about it. Or comment about it on the internet.

@Qingu , unless you are able to elaborate more than that you shouldn’t throw stones.

@Qingu-How are you familiar with this “bill”???There IS no actual bill yet!It hasn’t even gone to committee to be written yet!All we get are proposals in the form of trial balloons.You will be lucky to see a bill even after it’s been voted on.LOL!

The proposed legislation is like a fog in the morning by noon it is all burn offed and no longer what it once appeared to be. This is the single biggest hoax…sham…bend over and grab your ankles FUBAR in the history of our nation. There is not one Senator who is not shaking in their boots over this and any vote cast in favor is political suicide but just watch the lemmings jump off the cliff because their party said so.

@lucillelucillelucille Actually, there absolutely is a bill. In fact, there are several. First, there is the bill that was already passed by the House of Representatives (HR 3962). That bill was a combination of three different bills that were all passed out of relevant House committees. Second, there are the bills that were passed out of the Senate Finance committee and Senate HELP committee which were then combined into the current bill being debated on the Senate floor (HR 3590).

Your contention that the bill “hasn’t even gone to committee to be written yet” is, unfortunately, flat out wrong. That doesn’t mean your opinions are invalid, but it does call into question your familiarity with the actual provisions of the bill. I understand that there has been a lot of misinformation swirling around about this bill, and I also understand how hard it is to fully comprehend something as complicated as health reform and the seemingly intractable process that has taken place so far. Nevertheless, we all owe it to each other to try and come to this discussion with some basic facts that we can all agree on (like, for instance, that there is indeed a real bill to discuss).

There’s a house bill and many parts of the Senate bill have gone through several committees and are basically set in stone. The only major parts in contention right now revolve around the public option, the Medicare buy-in, and whatever Reid’s nonprofit proposal was to take the place of the public option.

If you are still “in a fog,” I suggest you read Politifact’s excellent write-up here. It’s half a year old, which is unfortunate, but actually not much has changed. The House bill is finished and has a (somewhat weak) public option and a controversial amendment limiting abortion funding. The Senate bill, see above.

Another good, more recent overview from the New York Times.

@Qingu
@Michael
Not wrong ,just that there is no Senate bill and that’s the point. We all know there is a house bill but that isn’t the question is it? We are talking about a Senate bill and that, if actually as a Senate resolution, will look nothing like the House bill and I defy you to present a Senate bill or actual language,that anyone has read or understands, that past committee and is ready for vote. There is none. Only proposals and trial balloons couched as amendments based on the House resolution. Sure, there will be a billl ,only we will never be allowed to see the specific language before it has been voted on. At this point all we are getting is debate in the Senate on a resolution from a House bill to amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to modify first time home buyers credit in the case of members of the armed forces and certain other federal employees, and for other purposes, “hr3590” this hr bill is being used as a vehicle to pass so called “health care reform”
hr3962 is not being voted on in the senate
afterward both houses must get thier respective committees together to draft an actual bill both houses can sign. s.1679, s1769, samdt2786 as to hr3590 all sponsored by only Baucus, Dodd and Harkin and are jokes and certainly not Senate resolutions.
hugs and kisses ;)

@lucillelucillelucille Wow. I’m impressed by how wrong your understanding of Congressional procedure is.

OK, I was going to just leave it at that, but upon further reflection, I decided to actually give you a real response. First of all, there is a bill on the floor of the Senate right now. That bill is HR 3590. Yes, that bill will still change (either by amendment or by substitution) but the vast majority of the bill is likely to stay the same. Once the bill passes the Senate (and, as I said, I think it will), then one of two things will happen. Either the House will simply pass the Senate version of the bill and then it goes to the President for his signature, or there will be a conference, in which the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill get hammered out. After that, there would be new votes in both the House and Senate.

There is no “going back to committee.” All of the relevant committees have already passed bills. The process is nearing the homestretch.

@lucillelucillelucille,

First, I’m not sure what you’re complaining about exactly. Are you complaining that the Senate has not put together a final bill fast enough?

Second, there is a lot in the Senate bill coming together that is for all intents and purposes set in stone. I’ll summarize:

• New regulations for insurance companies prohibiting rescision (dropping you when you get sick) and denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

• Mandates for almost all Americans to get health insurance. (There are several reasons why this is necessary, which I’ll be happy to explain if you want.)

• Subsidies to help poor and sick Americans pay for it (who would rightly be pissed off about the mandates if they couldn’t afford them).

• A national insurance exchange to help increase competition and transparency.

Those parts of the bill are almost certainly going to be in the final deal. The contentious stuff revolves around the public option. I think we need something like a public option—or else, a nonprofit utility like what Reid proposed—to help increase competition against for-profit insurance companies. But really, this is a small part of the bill.

So seriously, I am more than happy to explain what’s in the Senate bill, what’s contentious, etc. Just ask.

@Michael (1917)
As I stated earlier, hr3590 sponsored by Charles Rangel is not the health care reform bill passed by the House. The health care reform bill hr3962 sponsored by John Dingel. The Senate is using hr3590 ,which is an amendment to the 1986 internal revenue code as it relates to first time home buyers, as a vehicle to amend the reform bill being debated in the Senate. Attempting a civics lesson here only lends a tone of contensiousness toward my answer which informs of your disagreement with my “opinion of the proposed legislation”, which was the original question.
Try reading the tiltles of the bills of which you speak. The Library of Congress is a good place to start ;)

@Qingu
The Senate is amending hr3962 through hr3590. At present there are, at last count, 458 amendments to hr3590. The purposes and language for all of these amendments will not be revealed until they are proposed for consideration. All we get are cliff notes to certain aspects of these amendments, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SP2786: I do not trust politicians who only serve platitudes and talking points while guarding their true intent in the details which we are heretofore not privy to.
I certainly don’t need anyone trying to explain something this important to me when their opinions have been derived from “cliff notes”.

Wow, thanks for the lively discussion, everyone!

@lucillelucillelucille, if you’re unwilling or unable to communicate what your issues are with the bill—beyond the fact that you don’t understand what’s in it (which I’ve offered to help explain)—I don’t really know what to tell you.

@lucillelucillelucille I am sorry for the tone of contentiousness, and some of what you are writing does contain a kernel of truth. It is true that many of the proposals being discussed in the media are not currently in the bill, but you continue to be wrong about the mechanics of Senate procedure specifically and Congressional procedure more generally.

The senate is not “amending hr3962 through hr3590.” It is amending HR 3590, the title of which is “the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” by the way. Yes, HR 3590 started out as a bill to amend the homebuyers credit, but the Senate took out all of that language and substituted its health reform bill (they did this for technical reasons – all legislation that deals with taxation has to ‘originate’ in the House).

Once the Senate passes some version of HR 3590, then the House will have to either adopt that bill, or there will be a conference. The hundreds of amendments that have been filed in the Senate will not directly affect the House-passed bill (HR 3962). Those amendments that you linked to have been proposed, not adopted. The language of the bill itself is posted in its entirety online.

Finally, I would just echo what @Qingu has said. There is a very detailed bill before the Senate for consideration. If you have questions about what is in it, you should ask, instead of contending that it is impossible to know.

—I siding with Lucille here…This so called health care bill is being shoved down our throats for a vote and no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen it. The secrecy and the rush to vote on this bill is inexcusable when we have till 2014 to do it right! WTF is up with this circus??

Yeah the rush. We’ve been rushing since 1936 on this issue.

How is the bill being “shoved down your throat” ... are you a Congressman or something? Also, they’ve had months to familiarize themselves with the legislation in all its stages of development. That’s kind of their job, by the way.

@lucillelucillelucille ,Your comment was perfect at the least but these folks are not looking for the truth, they are looking for a hand out.

Perfect nonsense. Right up your alley.

You talk about “Truth”, but yet you give nothing, not one single shred of evidence, not one iota of proof, that what you claim to be the “Truth” is actually true. And when people expose the emptiness of your words, you accuse them of lying and you throw around ad hominem attacks to divert from the reality that you supporting a baseless selfish position. You must be really proud of yourself.

@Mandomike Do you believe that the veterans of our great armed forces deserve outstanding medical care? I assume the answer is yes. I mean, who wouldn’t. Then it might surprise you to know that the Veteran’s Administration funds medical care for our esteemed vets at a cost far below what occurs in the private sector. Moreover, there is no “billing”, no excess procedures because doctors are paid a salary, a computerized medical record from enlistment to grave, outstanding preventive care, and better outcomes on almost all measures than the private sector. I know because I’m a doctor, and I’ve worked at both private hospitals and the VA. Why would a public option similar to the VA be so bad? Indeed, it wouldn’t, and this is precisely what the country needs.

@shilolo ,OK so I will let you ask my father in law what he thinks of the VA,,he served in world war two, you won’t like the answer.

@Qingu
I certainly know that I didn’t ask you to “tell” me anything. Nor did I solicit your brand of understanding. That would be for those who’ve asked questions which you’ll find I never did. You can “offer to help explain” to those who are actively seeking your tutelage.
Please do not place your soap box upon my toes, thank you. “To offer a man unsolicited advice is to presume that he doesn’t know what to do or that he can’t do it on his own”.

@Michael
That is exactly right and is why I say there is no Senate bill. Realize that what comes out of the Senate is a completely different animal than what the House passed(hr3962) and those amendments are what make it unique. The senate debates the bill as reported out of Committee. During final debate, the Senators may further amend the bill before they bring it to a vote. So hr3590, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:4:./temp/~c111KCgrgO:: will look completely different if these amendments are adopted and nobody knows what they are so nobody can say that that they really know what this bill actually says. All we are allowed to see are “cliff notes” which I believe at this point consists of 2074 pages. I can remember the president stating that he was unfamiliar with aspects of the house bill and other representatives admitting they didn’t know what was in the bill they were voting on and went so far as to hire speed readers to read the bill and amendments allowed on the House floor. We also had to pass it right away, before the August recess, or we would face more economic crisis The devil is in these details and we won’t see those until it is passed back to the House.
You are right that I have never understood, in this case, why the Senate isn’t marking up hr3962. This being the actual bill passed by the house. Gutting hr3590 and writing it anew from the senate has always appeared unconstitutional (being that all legislation that deals with taxation must originate in the house) and have wondered when someone would point that out.

“This bill is terrible!”

“Why?”

“Because! We don’t know what’s in it!”

“Well, here’s what’s in it now, here’s what’s probably going to be in it….”

“I didn’t ask for you to tell me anything! I just want to believe that this bill is scary!”

@Mandomike Sure. An anecdote is perfect for this. Who cares about general statistics when I can ask one person? Way to dodge the issue.

@shilolo: I work in the VA as well, and most of my patients also have nothing but good things to say. Where are you located?

@Mandomike Both my grandfather and his brother (my great-uncle) served in WWII. Before my great-uncle passed away, he praised the VA to anyone who would listen. Obviously, there are good and bad doctors in the VA, but there are good and bad doctors anywhere.