Okay, one more question about the Senate Bill: is the idea of opposing it that we should (a) scrap it and start over, (b) fight like hell to improve it in reconciliation conference, (c) threaten to walk away if Nelson waters it down more in order to keep Nelson from watering it down more, or (d) all of the above? I’m for b and c (I don’t think threatening to walk away helps with Lieberman, but I think it may with Nelson).
For those who favor (a), a musical salute from one of the original hippies:
MikeJ
I’ve been up to Villiers Terrace
To see what’s a-happening
There’s people rolling ’round on the carpet
Mixing up the medicine
Hunter Gathers
I think you mean in conference, when the 2 bills are merged.
Zifnab
That’s generally where I’m at, too.
Honestly, there’s a core of this bill that needs to be passed. But the two big polarizing components – outside of the dozens of regulatory tweaks – were a public plan and an insurance mandate.
Now we’ve got the latter without the former. All stick and no carrot. So what people are really objecting to isn’t the host of secondary rules and reforms, but the core mandate requiring everyone to buy insurance.
Strip that out and I think you’ll see a lot more progressives and moderates get back on board. But you’ll also lose any support the bill gets from the insurance companies (because now they’re seeing all-stick, no-carrot).
Progressives want to see the public option and the insurance mandate bundled together.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
(b) is where this old timer DFH is at.
Let the howling commence! ;)
Linda Featheringill
It is not over until the reconciliation/conference is done.
I always assumed that the Senate bill would be pretty bad. It is difficult to determine just how bad the final bill will be. The public option has been declared dead more often than the Highlander.
However, if there is no public option [or a way to opt into Medicare or something], the whole thing is pretty useless.
Osprey
B obviously.
I know we’ve seen a few, but who here is in a situation where the passage/non-passage of this bill will (directly) affect them in any way? For those who don’t have any coverage, what are your thoughts, and how much will you have to pay? Because that’s what this is really about. Most of us yammering away probably have insurance in some form. Or how about anybody with a pre-existing condition that won’t get shut out of health-care?
Robin G.
B and C. Frankly, Nelson’s basically a wuss — he’s only doing this now because of Lieberman. He doesn’t want to be all alone out there on the branch. If we get Snowe or something, he’ll fold. Abd as far as conference goes, the House has bigger balls than the Senate.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but once it comes out of conference, we only need 50 + Biden in the Senate, right?
Sentient Puddle
Um…yeah, need a clarification on (b) as to whether it refers to budget reconciliation or the conference report. One is certainly worth trying for, while the other is essentially (a).
Max
Can anyone help me understand why it’s no longer “liberal” and now it’s “progressive”.
Liberal
Moderate
Conservative
Bat$hit
Those all go together, but
Progressive
… and then what?
I consider myself for progress, I just disagree with liberals on how to do it.
bayville
I have mixed feelings.
No doubt this bill should be demolished. As policy, it’s atrocious.
The American people need to elect a Democratic President, a Supermajority in the Senate and a 54-seat majority in the House and then we can revisit single-payer health care reform – but not until then.
But on the otherhand, my WellPoint and Aetna stock have only grown 13% combined over the past eight days, so I could use a little boost.. ya’ know with the holidays & all.
The Grand Panjandrum
I’m for (b). Once the bill is signed into law things can be added to CHR through reconciliation and tweaking whatever ends up being passed. The one thing that bothers me the most is the abortion language. Why the fuck should some limp dick twelve sandwich eating fuck face guy be able to have his little blue pills covered (and subsidized) by the government but a woman cannot have a LEGAL medical procedure covered? That pisses me off to no fucking end. But, the bill should be passed.
Noonan
@Max: I’ve been figuring that was an admission by liberals that the GOP had successfully poisoned the word “liberal.” So they went for a new moniker. Kind of like when Kobe got charged with rape and started calling himself Black Mamba. Okay, maybe that’s a bad example.
John S.
This is not an option, no matter what the manic progressives think.
This is going to happen anyway. Reconciliation is a terrible option given the procedural hurdles and sunset provisions. It should only be used to pass tweaks and modifications, not the main bill.
Using a threat for leverage or applying some sort of pressure to those recalcitrant assholes is definitely needed. Actually walking away is not an option.
Jennifer
Count me in as a vote for b, as well as c. B because I think we can get something done when this gets into committee, c because it makes me happy to give Nelson every bit of shit he deserves and call his bluff.
Droopy Dog would just get off on the confontation. He’s enjoying the hell out of this. It’s his swan song.
For those of you in his state, is there anyone there in the Democratic party who can take him on in the next election and give him the beating he so richly deserves?
Robin G.
@Osprey: I’m bipolar, and need $800+ a month in medication, or I’ll slit my wrists (no hyperbole). I am pre-existing under any definition. I don’t have insurance through my employer — I have it through my husband’s employer. It’s fantastic insurance, really is, but my husband cannot ever, ever lose his job, not if he wants me to stay alive. You can’t just go to an ER to get your treatment, the way you can if you’re uninsured and in a car crash. And we don’t have a spare $800 a month. We don’t.
So, yes, the pre-existing clause matters a LOT in this household.
Onihanzo
Droopy’s good until 2012, as I recall.
American in Exile
@ Robin G: My understanding is that whatever comes out of the conference committee IS subject to filibuster — again — when it goes back to the Senate.
PeakVT
Using a threat for leverage or applying some sort of pressure to those recalcitrant assholes is definitely needed. Actually walking away is not an option.
The threat isn’t a threat unless somebody, you know, actually follows through at some point. Is the bill to do it on? Sportsfans, you make the call.
ETA: Conference committee bills can be filibustered but not amended.
justawriter
What I want is to see is Lieberman, Nelson, Conrad (my own Senator), Baucus and any other Demobstructionists slapped down hard so we don’t have to go through this sh*t on every issue for the forseeable future. We are going to see the same song, different verse on financial reform, social security and every other initiative we try to press home. If we keep empowering these assholes, they are just going get more obnoxious.
John S.
And in mine, too.
Someone asked yesterday what would be a deal-breaker for someone like me who is advocating eating the shit sandwich. Removing the protection for people with pre-existing conditions is it.
But that alone is enough to make me support whatever bill comes out of conference, because that will give healthcare access to millions of people that currently have NONE.
Zifnab
Also, breaking with Ben Nelson:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/18/816105/-Ben-Nelson:-Bill-covers-too-many-uninsured-people,-must-be-scaled-back
So, thank you Lieberman capitulators. Now that any one Senator can grab the majority leader by the balls and drag him around the Senate floor, how long until we get Blanche Lincoln or Mary Landrieu out in front demanding a more conservative bill?
Lieberman hasn’t even confirmed his vote is secure! We can round-robin this thing through Easter and there’s always one Senator who won’t be happy.
When you have 60 Senators and 2 of them absolutely, positively 100% refuse to budge for any reason whatsoever… what do you do?
John S.
WE do not empower these assholes, the rules of the Senate do. And sadly, that is a feature – not a bug. It’s just that the feature has been abused in an unprecedented way recently, and something needs to be done about it one way or another.
cyntax
I’m very much about b) and c) but those are enabled by people (like the WH) believing that a) is possible if the bill isn’t improved.
John S.
KILL THE BILL! That will show the bastards. Because the best way to overcome a couple of obstinate Senators without capitulating to them is to take everything off the table and give them exactly what they want.
Seriously, what’s YOUR bright idea for how to deal with these miscreants given the current dysfunctional nature of the Senate? And please, practical solutions please — no pony wishes allowed.
Shalimar
I assume you meant conference, but I still favor B as written. Let them pass the bill however they want, and then start pushing for a public option or expanded medicare through reconciliation to correct the biggest flaws in what will pass. I don’t think reconciliation has a chance in hell of actually happening, they are lying to us about that, but that chance is still greater than the chances positive health care reform is going to pass in the next decade if Dems fail with this piece of crap.
The biggest negative consequences I see from it passing are political (from losing disaffected youth voters), and if Dems screw themselves over that’s their problem. I’m very unhappy with the White House and think they have put themselves in a position with no good options, but again, that is their problem. Let them have their bill and we will see what happens from there.
cyntax
@Jennifer:
Depends how you mean “swan song.” Lieberman’s been hinting he might run as a Republican.
Shalimar
@John S.:
Waterboarding?
Violet
I’m voting for b and c. I am for passing the bill. Krugman is for it. Broder is against it. Sounds like a win to me. Plus, I don’t think we’ll get another chance for a long while. Republicans have no interest in doing anything that doesn’t help their rich friends in the insurance industry.
This bill isn’t perfect but it’ll give us a starting point. I hope.
Califlander
Let’s go with option (e) blame the whiny liberals for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about the bill no matter how much it’s compromised.
Or was that option only available here yesterday?
Bill H
What makes you so sure that conference will improve it? What if, instead of keeping the best features of both bills, they keep the worst features? It might not be that bad, but conferencing is done in secret, and not by the legislators themselves, but by staffers. Some atrocious things have been slipped into bills in conference, and the legislators have all been shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn of them when they became public later.
Shalimar
@cyntax: Like the teabaggers would have Lieberman’s whiny ass. He thinks we don’t like him, wait until he gets a taste of what it’s like to be a Republican with moderate views on issues like global warming.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Option B. Why? Speaker Pelosi actually has balls and I mean that in the best possible way. The House passed something that we as Dems could live with, easily. I think the House is emboldened actually based on a) their leadership and b) watching the Sen Dems self destruct.
What I don’t know is how a reconsiled bill is then voted on in the Senate. If we’re back to this 60 vote bullshit, then nothing will happen. But if they come out of conference with a bill and it’s an up or down vote, then yeah, go into conference and let the House take over.
Fucking Senate.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Violet:
So, Broder and Markos are in agreement!
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! I’m sure Markos’s head is exploding in irony right about now.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
How about (e) pass a watered down crappy bill now, and come back in 2 years or so to do a better job?
Can’t be done you say? Too big a piece of the economy? Too many entrenched interests? Senate too corrupt?
Hmmm, lookee here at what I found: Elkins Act, passed in Feb 1904. Hepburn Act, passed 28 months later, in June 1906.
Of course it was so much easier back then. The railroads were a small part of the economy, there were no entrenched interests to fight, the Senate was chock full of progressives, and nobody in Congress was on the take.
Punchy
And have it filly’d on the final vote by our own peeps?
You cant “improve” it because that will guarentee a filly from Liebs or Nelly. Unless you know sumpin I dont.
Kirk Spencer
@Robin G.:
Nope, sorry. It requires cloture before the final vote.
Califlander
@John S.:
Agreed — but if, as seems increasingly likely, the real goal of the Lieberman/Nelson/Landreau team isn’t to change the bill but to kill it, it’s the only way to get anything passed.
Query: at what point do you finally throw in the towel and say “f— this, they’re not negotiating in good faith. It’s reconciliation or nothing?” As you may have gathered, I’m already there.
Lolis
People should be arguing pass the bill. Then use the momentum to pass a public option through budget reconciliation. If no bill passes exactly what momentum do we have to do anything? What is the motivation?
The Senate is like a child. You aim for the stars but when they inevitably only reach a NY skyscraper, you don’t push them all the way down to the ground again and tell em to start over. You let em try again from where they are. It does not make sense to kill progress for more progress. I really want to bang my head here. This is not difficult stuff.
Also, what people will be forced to buy is not “junk insurance” DougJ. Show me who backs that claim up with actual evidence and not Hamscher-like know-it-all-ism.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
So ….
Does this thread cancel the previous one?
Does this question have to be answered before Christmas?
Are the ProgressiveWATB commenters going to filibuster?
How many votes does it take on the thread to bring cloture?
Is a crappy thread better than no thread at all?
Just asking.
TIA.
Have a nice alfalfa day.
cyntax
@Shalimar:
I dunno. Wasn’t Lieberman supposed to be with us on everything but the war?
I imagine he’ll have no trouble breaking right on pretty much every big piece of legislation between now and 2012 (think of all Sunday morning appearences at which he’ll be clucking his tongue at the unreasonable Dems) and then he gets welcomed into the Repub party just in time for reelection.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Fantastic point. The modern GOP has wanted to take us back to the Gilded Age and they have in more ways than one. People seem to think that the current state of politics is sooooooo unique in this country’s history. It ain’t. For most of the post-Civil War era leading up to the Great Deperession, our elected federal officials were owned by….corporations.
rachel
People keep talking about what a “shit sandwich” this bill is. What they keep forgetting is that when you have shit, you at least have something you can use–if only for fertilizer for your garden.
You are pitiful indeed if you don’t even have a shit sandwich and are not likely to get a crack at another shit sandwich for the next 15~20 years.
Put me down for (b).
Edit: Wait! I’ll take ThatLeftTurnInABQ’s option (e) instead!
dadanarchist
Agreed – but they could institute a public option through reconciliation. Yes, it would expire after 10 years, but that would require the future Congress to allow an entitlement to lapse and be liquidated. Which is hard to do, politically.
That said, it’s academic since even the Dem caucus (incorrectly) opposes this tactic.
cfaller96
B and C. I’m not aware of anyone seriously suggesting starting over. Holy God I don’t think anyone except Republicans wants to draw this out any further. Even the centrists want this off their plate.
C is a little nebulous, it’s going to be impossible to tell if that’s actually going on. But it’s really the only rational course for liberals at this point, so you have to advocate for that.
And one more time- YOU DON’T HELP ACCOMPLISH C BY YELLING AT THE “KILL THE BILL” CROWD AND YOU’LL PROBABLY JUST MAKE IT WORSE BY KNEECAPPING THEM. Killing the bill has to be a credible threat, otherwise it won’t affect Nelson and Lieberman and anyone else lining up to slap Harry Reid around.
Tsulagi
Holiday message from the Democrats to their voters: “Sign this long-term contract you and I both know is fucked up or your neighbor gets it. Merry Xmas.”
John S.
@Califlander:
I am not a Congressional scholar, but I do know that very often when bills are blended in conference there is additional compromising that is done betwixt the two chambers that often can stand on its own from what goes down in each individual chamber. I also know that sometimes this makes the bill a little better — but often it makes the bill WORSE.
I think the way forward is to pass the bill that can be passed and led the Drama Queens bitch and moan and have their way. And then you go back and ram through the fixes to the most heinous parts (which undoubtedly have budgetary impact) through reconciliation and bypass those fuckers.
At least the core remains intact, and even though the necessary fixes will sunset in 5 years, at least chances are high that the Drama Queens (most definitley Lieberman at the very least) won’t be around anymore. Of course, it is possible that the makeup of Congress is LESS favorable and not MORE, but that’s where us voters come into the picture.
@dadanarchist:
I largely agree with you here, but I can only hope that the “academic” path looks a lot more palpable after all is said and done. And frankly, I don’t mind if the Dems want to keep this strategy close to their vest.
dadanarchist
Funny you should cite two pieces of Teddy’s legislative accomplishments as he coined the term “bully pulpit” to describe the power of the office of president. Provides an interesting contrast, doesn’t it?
Further, as with almost every other commentator, you fail to distinguish between cultural and social progressivism. On cultural issues (god, gays, race, etc.), the Congress is arguably more liberal than it has ever been; on social issues (unions, welfare state, fiscal policy, trade policy, corporate regulation and governance), it is markedly more conservative than it was even in 1988.
Violet
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Yeah, it’s very much the same. What gets written in the history books is the result. Most of the back and forth, horse trading, bargaining, threats, etc. don’t get remembered. So in the end any Congress that passed something gets remembered as having accomplished something. Nevermind they may have watered it down, given away lots in negotiations, etc.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Well “shit sandwich” is a rhetorical device. Since it refers to a bill that gets taken apart and put back together in conference, it is purely in the hypothetical realm at best. But even if the bill that comes out of conference is deficient, it’s worth the effort.
Shit sandwich is also an inapt metaphor for the real effects of that less than ideal bill, whatever it turns out to be. I’m in real need of healthcare reform, due to age, health and employment concerns. If all I get is a little better access or affordability, or liberation from the dreaded preexisting condition limitation, I come out ahead. If all I get is the strong liklihood that the country is on a path to finally break the Pharma-HMO deathgrip on policy and on politics that currently exists, I come out ahead.
My idea of a shit sandwich is a coalition with pigheaded and unreasonable people. That’s a thing we used to ascribe to the GOP, but right now, it’s the Democratic Party that is in that very bad predicament, and I put those pigheaded lefties in the same category as the pigheaded righties who would rather fuck over the people than lose one of their precious and ooooh-so-important political battles.
Califlander
@John S.:
You’re assuming, John, that a bill can be gotten past the drama queens without using reconciliation. I don’t think that assumption is warranted.
Also, I think you’re referring to “reconciliation” in the sense of a blended bill coming out of a conference committee, as opposed to budget reconciliation (which is what I’m talking about). They each have their own drawbacks, but budget reconciliation allows you to sidestep Lieberman et. al. altogether. Conference reconciliation does not.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Thanks.
And note that I’m trying to make a finer grained point here too. Regulating health insurance is very much like the fight to regulate the railroads 100 years ago, because it involves problems of access, fairness, and cost control. The political fight over railroad regulation was won in two stages, not all at once. First the issue of preferential access and unfair rate scheming was dealt with, which leveled the playing field for the railroad customers. But the Elkins Act did nothing to control costs. It took the later Hepburn Act to put cost controls in place – which was an easier task politically once everybody who was contracting for shipment had an equal stake in bringing costs down. I think there is a lesson here for us.
mcd410x
Why can’t we get an up-or-down vote on health care?
Really, can we get 50 Senators on TV all saying this for a week? (Hint: Media strategy)
Ye who controls the message, controls the vote.
artem1s
At this point I am for getting the thing signed and let them fight it out in conference. Senators love to do their business in secret. They hate the light of day. Conference allows them to make concessions they would never want to do publicly. This may not get progressives everything they want but at least the incremental moves that take us closer to a universal public option have a chance.
Just a feeling, but when I heard Sherrod Brown taking about this the other day I got the feeling that the Medicaid buy-in was going to make it back in, once they got to conference. It seems that those who really want to start cracking the door open on universal and single payer are looking towards the buy-in as a way to get more and more people vested in government health care. It’s their foot-in-the-door.
There are so many things I thought I would never see in my life-time and this look so bleak and maybe it is just another 20 year delay, but ya never really know what tiny thing might completely change the game.
Time to get it done and move on to other business. You have to let the process take control sometime to see how the thing will work out in the end anyway.
dave
Pass the bill, the last reasonable chance at health reform was 15 years ago. How long do you think it will take before there will be a big enough push to try again if we fail? How many more will lose insurance, how many will die? This bill isn’t perfect but it isn’t a piece of crap either. It’s a good starting place. Just getting rid of recission is huge and to get rid of recission we need to mandate coverage to ensure healthy people get coverage and pay into the system to offset the costs of those previously unable to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, you know, the ones who are expensive to cover. I’d much rather have a single payor system, medicare buy in, medicare for all, or a strong public option, but this is a start. Passing this bill is the starting line of the race to reform healthcare NOT the finish line. So in the short term we enrich a few insurance companies and continue to work on reform improving what we can pass today.
eric
No one knows where this is going to end up three years from now….no one knows what will register with the general population when this is done. I have the kind of job where on some days i can sit at my computer and follow stories on blogs (while sitting through conference calls), yet on other days (more like most people) i know nothing about the process of the day and sometimes i do not get substance until the next day if at all. There is no way anyone can say with anything close to certainty what the political ramifications are going to be, as caused by the non-engaged or non-netroots voter. The netroots are disengaging from Obama because they are losing key battles about important things. They are not mad because they are losing to the GOP or even to Nelsen, but losing to Obama and a perceived indifference to progressive causes — a perception that has bases in reality.
from a political perspective, let me say that I view a win on health care the same way I view the Steelers recent superbowl win. as time goes by people forget how horrible Big Ben played in that game because, in the aggregate, he plays like a winner. So, the end result is a glorious Steelers victory and they are the champions. In health care, take the win and sell it and sell it hard and work like hell to make it better. that is all you can do given the way the senate is operating under gop control (of cloture).
Finally, Nelsen is not progressive. he never will be. In truth, he does not truly espouse what i want Democratic values to be. But for people to suggest that Reid or Obama should be able to punish or control him is absurd. Tom Delay controlled the GOP in the house, not the senate. Two completely different insitutions because each senator has substantial power because of the more limited volume of senators. I would prefer that Nelsen switched parties so that I did not have to consider him a fellow traveller, but kicking him out of the party is a WHOLE mess of problem, and stripping him of his committees would be constructive ejection.
I want universal coverage more than any other progressive program. Let’s pass the best we can get and sell it.
sorry for the ramble….eric
gwangung
BUT EVERYTHING’S DIFFERENT NOW! ! ! !
cyntax
It does suck having to deal with Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu and the rest.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
By the way, it might be worth considering that “kill the bill and start over” is exactly what the opponents of HCR want to happen. Delay is victory for them, and they know it.
Any bill that weakens the grip of the healthcare industries on our politics is a victory for reformers. That’s exactly why the opponents are fighting it with everything they have, every trick and every deceit and every demagoguery and every lie, all aimed at getting our side to “kill the bill” and start over.
cfaller96
dave, what bill are you referring to? You do realize that the Senate bill STILL does not have the support of Nelson and Lieberman, right?
Again- there is no bill right now that has the complete support of 60 senators. Therefore, there is no option to “pass the bill” right now. That theoretical bill doesn’t exist yet.
John S.
@Califlander
Yes, I’m assuming even a shit sandwich can pass, and every day makes that seem less likely. But I am optimistic.
And you read me incorrectly. I only refer to conference reconciliation insofar as it is necessary to pass the shit sandwich, which I realize goes right through the problem Senators. After that, it is time for budget reconciliation to fill the gaps left by the shit sandwich despite the cries of Lieberman et al.
Pass the main bill via normal means, plug the holes via reconciliation. That seems like the best option right now, and that still leaves a lot of room for failure.
mak
I’m with Zifnab@3: No public option, no mandate. Cut the mandate, point to the modest reforms remaining in the bill, declare victory and move on to the next thing. Maybe they’ll revisit it later, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They might even be able to rush that through before Pharma and Blue Cross are able to mobilize to kill what remains.
If Obama and the Senate leadership don’t have the stones to take bold action (via reconciliation), then continuing to dick around with it will only further weaken the eventual outcome.
geg6
Have your fucking POS bill. I hope you’re all just thrilled and happy with it and it gives you all you think it does. Honestly.
I’m done with this. It will be shit, but it’ll be a bill, I guess. I’m clapping as loudly as I can and waving the foam finger to help in the celebration.
Can’t wait for the entitlement fight that’s next on the agenda. Should be interesting to see the twists people will screw themselves up into to make whatever comes out of that palitible.
Sentient Puddle
@mcd410x:
The Republicans see your call and raise you a “this bill is unpopular with the public” talking point.
Zifnab
@John S.:
Put the damn bill up for a vote. Let Ben Nelson (and Joe Lieberman, and anyone else) go on record in opposition. Give the standard 30 extra hours of debate. Put it up for another vote. Let Nelson and Lieberman throw more hissy-fits.
While they’re being petulant little children, flood every cable news show and complain about how Lieberman and Nelson are such obstructionists. Run a few ads in their states, asking constituents to call and beg them to stop holding up the bill.
Put a bunch of public pressure on the recalcitrant Senators. Then spread a bunch of rumors that you’ve got some second tier Republican like Voinvich or – hell – Vitter who is willing to flip over and vote.
Oh, and start the process for stripping Lieberman of his committee seat.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@cyntax:
Funny, but I was talking about pigheaded progressives. I see them as a bigger obstacle. Howard Dean is a good example. He’s a guy who basically shrugged at the reaction to The Scream and acted like oh well, we’ll just start over, it’s not the end of the world. Endless fighting on his terms is better than grabbing a toehold on a win. Now he sounds like he’d rather do the same thing with HCR right now. All due respect to the good Doctor, fuck him. I don’t think he’d last a week in a legislative environment.
Nazgul35
B and C for me…
dave
cfaller96,
I realize we’re not there yet but even if there are more consessions made to get Nelson (DINO-SOB) as long as there is no recission and help for lower income, it is a start.
I also realize that there may be no pleasing Nelson and/or Lieberman and they may truely only want to kill the bill. I don’t know how to address that. If that is their aim then reconciliation may be the only recourse.
R. Johnston
If the Democrats pass “reform” with an individual mandate but without a public option, without meaningful cost control, and without regulations in place to make sure that the the mandated insurance is actually good insurance, then the political fallout will be every bit as bad for them, if not worse, as in the scenario where no bill gets passed at all. And the Senate version of the excise tax is worse than passing no bill; it cripples unions that have agreed to generous-but-hardly-gold-plated medical benefits in exchange for salary concessions and practically forces the working class into the arms of right wing populism.
Starting over isn’t an option, but neither is enacting the Senate version of “reform.” The public option and Medicare buy-in are probably dead because the Democratic leadership has shown no desire to fight for them, but if the excise tax can’t be stripped in conference and if meaningful cost control and quality regulations can’t be added in conference, then the whole thing has to die. Yes, the Senate bill as is does offer hope to people with preexisting conditions, but it does so by making insurance mandatory, more expensive, and crappier for everyone else, and that’s not a price worth paying.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@dadanarchist:
I’m not sure how to respond to this non-sequitur since I haven’t said anything here involving references to 1980s politics, and the accusation that I
m ignoring cultural/socioeconomic splits is a little weird since I’m one of the commentors here who keeps emphasizing cultural interpretations of US politics (aka Kevin Phillips’ “Cousin’s Wars” and David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed”) as an explanation for why progressives have difficulty getting traction on economic issues.
But if we want to dissect analogies here, it is worth noting that the politics of the progressive era in TR’s day also contained a stranger mixture of economic and cultural factors which defy easy categorization with a single term like “progressive”, given that the party which was based in the northeast (the GOP) was somewhat more progressive on some but not all social issues, while the more economically populist party (the Dems) which was opposed to the power of finance capital was highly regressive on some social issues (e.g. race), but the two parties were also beginning to exchange positions with each other on a variety of fronts as well as exchanging their regional and cultural identities, a transition which took place over the course of the next 80-100 years and has only reached completion today, so that now the red/blue politcal map of the US looks very much like it did in 1900, but with the colors reversed.
Oh and BTW, I agree with your point made in #44 about using the sunset aspect of a bill passed via reconcilation as a political tool to reinforce popular support for HCR.
WyldPiratd
I’m going to weigh in here as someone who is a.) eyeball deep in medical problems., b) hanging on to COBRA coverage by the skin of my teeth. thus ensuring that I will deal with the so-called HCR.
First off, I had a heart attack on Nov. 5, received two stents and was hospitalized 7 days (most of the time waiting for a surgery opening. Just the hospital bill #1? Just a bit north of $70,000. I had triple bypass surgery on Dec. 3 and was discharged Dec. 8. Total hospital bill for hospitalization #2? $68,800. These, I’m fairly sure, are the rates for the “uninsured”. I have approximately a year to stay on COBRA if I can’t find a job before then and I’m struggling to keep COBRA paid now even at the reduced rate.
In a perfect world, the entire bill should be SHITCANNED and we would have a President who would weigh-in on the side of the people and actually acted like he gave a shit about people having decent affordable healthcare. I digress, but all I’ll say about Obama is that I’m not voting for his lame, ineffectual ass in 2012 nor will the Democratic Party get a single dime from me in the forseeable future.
The bill the Senate has produced is an abomination. People with inadequate or no insurance due to “pre-existing conditions ” are going to be well and truly fucked. How on earth are they going to be able to afford five times the normal rate because the are older or have a pre-existing condition? Twenty-percent of your pretax income on shit insurance where you have to shell out thousands in co-pays and deductables will leave most of these folks bankrupt. The healthy people that are mandated to buy into the bullshit stockmarket casino fund of the insurers are going to be pissed as hell.
The Democrats, however, have to pass something now, even if it is the big pile of steaming shit that is the Senate bill. This is the least bad of the choices. Shit-canning the bill makes them appear incompetent. Signing the currant bill simply makes them appear as the weak-kneed, ineffectual bitches they are that got rolled from start to finish in the negotiations.
The Dems are going to richly deserve the ‘2010 electoral ass kicking that’s coming. I’ve never seen such spinelessness from Congress or the White House. Obama appears even more fucking wimpy than Carter did in his malaise and sweater days.
cyntax
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Of course you were, but it’s funny how it’s OK for the WH to twist arms in favor of giving Lieberman everything he wants, and it’s OK for Obama to tell guys like DeFazio that “he’s keeping track” of his opposition to this bill, but it’s not OK for progressives to fight like hell for something better. And the cornerstone of that fight is the certainty that they’ll shoot down a bill that isn’t good enough.
That seems quite a double standard.
As to your animus for Dean, that’s your opinion, but I like I said above, some pressure from the left to make this bill better seems entirely fair and if Dean can help provide that, then he deserves his say.
anie
I am one of those effected by the bill. I am self-employed, but a diabetic. I have tried and can’t buy insurance. So that pre-existing conditions clause is huge for me. I live in fear of something catastrophic happening – like getting cancer or something. If I fall and break something I can go to the ER. But I am pretty sure they don’t do chemo in the ER. SO far it is OK. And the amount per month I spend on my meds would probably cover my insurance premium if I could buy it. Contrary to the morans on the right, I don’t expect anyone to give me anything, I am willing to buy it.
And just for the record – I am beginning to hate that fucker Lieberman.
ellie
I’ll go with B and I like to let my conservative boss and co-worker that I am a Liberal, with a capital L. The repukes think they can co-opt the English language and I say no way! I am Leftist Liberal So*cial*ist! I am also pragmatic and will take my victories, however small, where I can get them.
Barry
I’m going to combine several replies in on comment:
1) As said above, a conference bill is subject to fillibuster. Either (a) the final bill differs from the Senate bill sent into the conference, in which case Nelson and L-maggot fillibuster it all over, because ‘they didn’t agree to [whatever]’, or (b) the final bill is the same as the Senate bill (i.e., the House capitulates 100%), in which case Nelson and L-maggot fillibuster it all over, because of something that they made up.
2) I keep saying this, but nobody’s listening: there is no Senate bill. Last I heard, (comment 21), Nelson is now revising his demands, where ‘revising’ means ‘make more’. They are going to keep doing this – it’s free for them (in fact, they’re certainly paid for doing so), their power is increasing since they’re backing down the president, and their egos have got to be in continual orgasm.
3) As justawriter said (“We are going to see the same song, different verse on financial reform, social security and every other initiative we try to press home. If we keep empowering these assholes, they are just going get more obnoxious.”): there is no reason for these guys not to keep doing what they’re doing, and every reason to keep doing it, and ramp it up. The financial industry’s pockets are deeping than the insurance industry’s; they’ve got at least as many friends in Congress to cover D&L’s flanks, delay profits them at least as much as the insurance companies, and they’d loooooooooooooooooooooove to see any Democratic president weakened. That sets the stage for a quicker GOP comeback, and guarantees that no real reforms will be passed.
4) I disagree with Johns (“This is going to happen anyway. Reconciliation is a terrible option given the procedural hurdles and sunset provisions. It should only be used to pass tweaks and modifications, not the main bill.”) – pass some good sh*t in reconcilation, which takes *immediate effect*. Give the American people some benefits, and ram home the point on a daily basis that this was done despite the GOP and D&L. Make it popular, and it’ll be harder to sunset. Also, pass more stuff next year, which extends the sunset date.
This has two advantages – first, the American people get benefits; second, it makes clear that if D,L and the GOP push things too far, there are costs.
In the end, as I’ve said before, do the freakin’ math, guys. The obstructionists are not paying costs; the administration (and the American people) are. That’s a game that the obstructionists can play forever.
What I want is to see is Lieberman, Nelson, Conrad (my own Senator), Baucus and any other Demobstructionists slapped down hard so we don’t have to go through this sh*t on every issue for the forseeable future.
The Raven
Robin G@15: on the other hand, the bill might ensure you could not afford insurance that would cover your medication, should your husband lose his job. It might also get your husband’s employer to reduce his insurance through the tax on better employer insurance, putting more of your drug expenses on your household. Which will it be? There is no way to tell.
And that’s what’s wrong with this bill.
Califlander
@John S.: Thanks for clarifying.
I wish I shared your optimism that an HCR bill, anybill, can be passed through normal means. I don’t.
I suppose if the bill simply transfered a hundred billion dollars directly to the insurance companies, allowed them to jack up their rates at will, left loopholes for them to deny coverage and to stonewall till the insured dies, and outlawed even the use of privately-paid insurance for abortions that it might …
Nah. That’s pretty much what they’ve got now, and Nelson still says he won’t let it past cloture.
fasteddie9318
Hack it out in conference, hopefully.
Of course, after Joe got rid of the cost containment parts of this “cost containment and coverage expansion” health care reform, Nelson is saying he’ll filibuster unless the coverage expansion part is taken out too. So they can conference with the House HCR bill and the Senate WTF bill and see what comes out of that.
Zifnab
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
“The Scream” wasn’t the end of the Dean campaign. What killed the campaign was the major party functionaries who decided to distance themselves from Dean because they were too scared that he’d been ruined by a right wing smear campaign.
And so we got John Kerry instead. And Kerry got his image ruined by a right wing smear campaign. Oh shock of shocks! And, btw, thank god we played it safe and went with Kerry or we never would have won the Presidential Election in ’04.
Howard Dean is taking the side of the liberal wing of a moderate party. He’s giving push back when Obama and Reid are more than happy to keep making concessions. And, frankly, that’s the way it needs to be. Reid needs to be able to go back to Nelson and say, “If we pick you up and lose Sanders or Brown or Wyden, and then we still can’t pass this bill, and you’ll suffer for it as much as any of us.”
But all that is a moot point, because Nelson is just going to keep demanding more and more and more. That’s been the game from the start. Make unreasonable demands until the bill is so shitty that no sane liberal would vote for it.
Howard Dean has to put the brakes on capitulation, and Reid and Obama need to find something outside of this bill to entice Nelson to vote for it.
TaosJohn
Turning people into criminals for not paying money they don’t have to a private corporation is obscene and fundamentally un-American. It’s a direct assault on my physical well-being, too, to wreck my meager finances in this way. Millions will fight and refuse to pay. You can’t imagine the mess. And yet, I just realized this may be what finally tips the system over the edge, so maybe there’s a higher wisdom at work here.
“Just say no” to the mandate fine will be the beginning. The IRS is supposed to collect those fines, so “just say no” to taxes, period, will come naturally. The government will lose legitimacy. “Just say no” will become the rallying cry of patriots. This is the issue, then, that can bring idiot right-wingers and the left together. If that finally happens, watch out.
The country will come apart like a rotten jack-o-lantern, and I will finally be a freaking genius for moving to where the population density is less than a dozen humans per square mile.
geg6
Here is what the latest news is from President Nelson (and I know this will be a blockquote FAIL):
So if he gets his way, all that love for the subsidies and expanded coverage that are supposed to make this bill something I, too, can love? As expected, gone and gone soon. Along with women’s reproductive choices. Love this bill! Pass it now!
ETA: Sorry, I forgot to attribute properly:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/18/816105/-Ben-Nelson:-Bill-covers-too-many-uninsured-people,-must-be-scaled-back
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@dave:
Even though reconciliation is a rotten option (since, if I understand the rules correctly, it just kicks the can down the road , at which time the law expires unless congress acts)*, I’d take it before I would let the McConnells and the Boehners and the Dick Armys win.
(asterisk) It is not clear to me whether the sunset provisions only apply to budget measures, such as the Bush Tax Cuts.
DanF
What I really want to know is why aren’t we seeing corporations coming out in favor of the public option? Is this some kind of “professional courtesy” that I don’t know about? You’d think Ford Motor Company would love to see health care costs effectively reigned in. Any large company that provides benefits should be all-in on single-payer or public option.
Rick Taylor
Assuming we can even pass a bill out of the senate, do it, and fight for the conference committee to make something closer to the house version than the senate. If what comes out of that is unacceptable, vote it down. If it’s an improvement, dare centrist Democrats to filibuster it then, and forever be known as the Democrats who killed healthcare and spiked the President’s most important legislation. If they do, we gave it our best; look at other avenues like reconciliation.
Robin G.
@The Raven: The likelihood that the required insurance + increased copays = >$800/mo is, frankly, pretty unlikely. I’ll risk it.
Being bound to a job by threat of a family member’s death is, frankly, a form of slavery — and I don’t make that comparison lightly.
fasteddie9318
@DanF
Because anything that chips away at corporate mastery in this country, regardless of which industry it’s in, is bad for every corporation.
cfaller96
dave, there you go and now you stand with the DFHs: right now, there’s nothing to pass and there’s no way to get to 60. Reconciliation is the only way to pass anything.
So…how does one get to reconciliation? Does one get there by bending over, repeatedly, and yelling at the liberals to STFU and give Nelson what he wants (and wants and wants), only to see that he’ll never stop making demands because he actually truly doesn’t want to see anything passed? Or does one say “no, enough, I’m done,” and thus force the hand of the people who really really really need this bill passed (Reid, Obama)?
If you think reconciliation is the way to go (and at this point I sadly agree), then logically a “kill the bill” stance is the best way to get there.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Wrong.
mike in dc
Well, they can try to improve it in conference, but that still gives the prima donnas in the Dem caucus another chance to be divas, and anything the industry doesn’t like(aside from maybe the no pre-existing condition clause) won’t make it past the Senate in round 2.
The one thing they do need to change is the tax on high-end plans, because the unions are revolting over this–the House will likely prevail on a wealth surtax to help finance this.
Best bet is to take up the Public Option/Medicare buy-in ideas in 2013, assuming Obama gets re-elected and we’ve recovered mostly from the 2010 debacle(maybe some of these d-bags will either be gone or have jumped parties)–then do it by straight vote if you’ve got 60+, and by reconciliation if you don’t–you can renew it 5 years later, once it proves popular, plus most of the provisions of this bill don’t kick in until 2014 anyway.
Jeff Fecke
@John S.:
Ayup. The other day, Digby — who I like and respect — argued the bill should be killed because so many of those without insurance have a good reason not to get it. The answer is yeah, I’ve got a good reason — I can’t get it. Nobody will take me. So ending pre-existing condition bans is pretty enormous for me and people like me.
As for the mandate, there’s no way you can have a bill that 1) forces companies to take people with pre-existing conditions, 2) does not allow recision, and 3) does not have a mandate.
The reasons for that should be too obvious to require elaboration, but since people don’t get this, understand that if I have no requirement to carry coverage, and can’t be denied if I get sick, then I have no incentive to buy insurance until I get sick. If you like the idea of tripling your health care premiums overnight, by all means, strip out the mandate.
Barry
To geg6 @ #80 – thanks for making my point – now Nelson is raising another set of objections, after months of negotiations.
There is and never will be a Senate bill.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Jeff Fecke:
I feel your pain. Without getting into TMI, I have a medical situation that essentially puts me on an insurance blacklist. This happened to me without my knowledge or approval, as the result of a certain treatment option that I agreed to. The treatment itself is a blacklist trigger, and one that cannot be removed by stopping the treatment.
When I signed on to the treatment, I had no idea that I was signing away, for life, my access to health insurance if my current insurance gets cancelled for any reason. I am literally a prisoner of my current coverage until I can get Medicare.
If I needed just one reason to know that the current healthcare system in this country is corrupt and does not operate in the interest of patients, this would be it. And there are a thousand other good reasons out there to know that, too.
This system is completely fucked in so many ways, and anything that moves it toward remediation is a good thing AFAIC.
Barry
DanF
“What I really want to know is why aren’t we seeing corporations coming out in favor of the public option? Is this some kind of “professional courtesy” that I don’t know about? You’d think Ford Motor Company would love to see health care costs effectively reigned in. Any large company that provides benefits should be all-in on single-payer or public option.”
As said above, corpocracy. Also, I have a feeling that the financial elites really, really want to castrate Obama. A Democratic president (particularly with a Democratic congress) always presents a threat of reform. And that threat is increased (from ‘unlikely’ to ‘just maybe’) after the Wall St meltdown. That always was a danger.
And now that the bailout’s been done, and juuuuuuust enough stimulus to keep us ‘merely’ in a very deep recession, it’s time to terminate Obama’s power. This is actually going quite well, and with a lot of cooperation from Obama.
If he plays this game, he’ll spend the rest of 2010 being b*tchslapped by right-wing Senators on any and all isues. Then he’ll go into the mid-terms with a pisspoor economy, a reputation for powerlessness (except for helping Wall St), a reputation for being an evil dictatory (in the eyes of half of the country), a thoroughly demoralized democratic base, and a corporate/media elite determined that the GOP should win as big as possible.
Even if the GOP takes neither House, they’ll have ~45 GOP votes in the Senate + Liberman + those few to several ‘centrist’ senators. More than enough to pull majorities on anything pleasing to the right, while claiming that the Democratic Party still controls the government.
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
Their only problem then would be levering an electable candidate for the presidency in 2012, and I’m sure that the elites can and will dispose of Palin, Huckabe, etc. as needed.
Citizen Alan
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
You won’t, you won’t, and you won’t, but please continue sticking your fingers in your ear and yelling “la-la-la-la-la.” The only thing I ask is that when all you folks who keep saying “pass the bill, we’ll at least get X out of it” discover that, no you will not get X out of it, you at least promise not to blame the Left for not “fighting harder” or something. That catastrophe that is coming is entirely the result of Obama’s failure of leadership and the petulance and venality of the center-left.
kindness
Start over. Create new bills that are specifically designed to pass using reconciliation.
Piss on the phaux democrats, remove Lieberman from all his posts (repbus won’t give him any) and fight like hell against Rahm.
TaosJohn
For the record, my wife and I had Blue Cross once. Even with a $2K deductible, it was too expensive and utterly useless for relatively healthy people. Paid for virtually nothing that we needed. Private, for-profit insurance is a joke, especially if you DO need help, and if you don’t, the premiums are a terrible hit.
That’s the kicker, though. Even if the government paid 100% of the premiums, we’d still be getting crap. I don’t WANT private insurance. I don’t want 30% of the premiums going to overhead and CEO salaries. I don’t want to be a slave to a private corporation that’s beholden to no one, not even the federal government. I don’t trust “market forces” one iota.
What the Senate bill (the one Obama wanted in the first place) represents is the final capitulation to corporate America on the part of our political system. At least it’s out in the open now, and we can have some fun. I already have a pitchfork…
strawmanmunny
Two questions I have about people wanting to kill the bill on the left are:
1. How many of these people have insurance now?
2. How many supported Hillary Clinton in the primary?
I make no inference with these questions, I would truly like to know and wonder if these two things have anything to do with the fight.
danimal
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I have decent health coverage through my employer, so a lot of folks seem to think I’m not personally affected by whether a bill passes. I’d like to punch them. I’m in the same “pre-existing condition” prison and it’s infuriating. To answer Barry’s question in 93, corporations have leverage over individual employees under the current system. I’m locked in to my job because of my pre-existing condition, so I have to take what they offer in terms of salary, working conditions, etc. My life depends on it.
Tsulagi
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Would agree with you there, but the turd currently on the table only strengthens the grip. It’s a mandated expansion of the current system.
The mandates. Good for big insurance and pharmaceuticals. Win/win. All those silly people who didn’t have their spending priorities right get them straightened out for them by Democrats who know better.
Pharma picks up a shitload of new mouths for their pills. The sweetheart deal they struck with the WH caps their contribution to HCR at $80B over 10 years for Medicare insureds. In exchange for no government negotiated pricing or drug re-importation. At a time when Medicare is going to expand greatly as the baby boomers enter. Our good friend CBO estimates Medicare costs to double within the next 10 years. But hey, let’s pay retail for their drugs and trust in the patriotism of Pharma to hold the line on their future prices. You can count on that.
BTW, liked the comedy on the Dorgan amendment. Look forward to McCain this weekend on the shows saying he and fellow Rs tried to lower drug costs for Americans but the WH and the Ds killed it. Plus, guess as a little extra holiday present to Pharma, the Senate bill gratuitously gives them extra patent protection. Can never do too much for your buds.
Really, just call this what it is. It’s not HCR, it’s the Healthcare Industry Stimulus Package.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Your argument would make sense to me if you acknowledged that the actual bill that would end up on the president’s desk will be a product whose actual form cannot be known in advance, or by looking at the Senate bill. The conference process must reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions, and that process is for all intents and purposes a secret process, behind locked doors, and that is where the real deals and blowjobs will occur.
That being the case, I don’t see how your assertion makes any sense. We can’t get to that final form of the bill, the contents of which we have no control over and cannot forsee, unless we pass a Senate bill first.
Martin
@rachel:
People are overlooking what a massively fucked situation we currently have. If congress was proposing our current system – only 47 million uninsured, insurers can charge as much as they want, cap benefits whenever they feel, deny anyone for any reason, and care providers can charge whatever the market will bear, refuse to treat Medicare patients, dump patients to other care providers to maximize their take of the payouts, and leave those 47 million people to the fate of the ER for all of their health care needs – and the cost for all of this great care would be the 8th largest economy on the planet.
People calling the proposed bill a shit sandwich need to get off their fucking sofas and see what a shit sandwich really looks like. In addition to my health care executive family members, spouses almost to a one volunteer in hospitals and other care facilities helping patients – usually helping them with the paperwork and working with the insurers or the hospital itself if they are uninsured. My mom does this 20 hrs a week. She helps the 80 year old widows with a busted hip get their paperwork in order, fight with insurance companies (often times having to go directly to family members to override the claims departments of companies they run, and yes, there is considerable shame levied on the offending party and this always gets pulled into arguments) and for some of them, try to figure out how to pay for treatment if there is no insurance. Medicare does what its supposed to do for the majority of patients, but there’s more than a fair share of 60 year old retired, lost their pension and benefits, too young for Medicare folks as well. Sometimes she has family members to work with. Sometimes they’re all alone. Sometimes she’s working with a lawyer who winds up doing bankruptcy paperwork (this is quite rare for critical care patients because hospitals are pretty good about working things out for admitted patients – bankruptcy tends to happen to patients at home when the cloud of other bills hits, unfortunately when people like my mom aren’t around to help.)
What my mom most commonly finds is that people *do* have coverage or the ability to get coverage. Some people lose their insurance from their employer but can get a policy, but have never had to, don’t know where to begin, and can’t accept that they should have to pay for insurance out-of-pocket. It’s too hard, too foreign, and goes against their internalized notion that insurance/health care should be free. A LOT of people fall in this category to some degree. The next biggest group of people are those that qualify for Medicaid but don’t realize it. The single biggest problem with Medicaid is the 5 year lookback, so someone who loses their job and can’t find another one in some cases has to wait 5 years for their income to show as being low enough to qualify. This is a state-level issue. Some states (like California, Massachusetts) open up Medicaid to more people, others done. Unfortunately, the rising costs of care are really hurting the budgets of those states that have opened things up and they are cutting back. But a lot of people (perhaps 1/3) that are uninsured do qualify, but the don’t know about the program, don’t know how to apply, are ashamed to, or are just too out of it to figure it out. I have an uncle like this – he’s in his early 60s, lost his job a few years ago, and the company killed off lifetime benefits for union members a number of years back. He qualifies for Medicaid in his state, but there’s no fucking way the guy could pull it together to do the paperwork if my mom didn’t hold his hand the entire way through it. The most complicated thing he’s done the last 40 years is drive a fork lift.
So, this is what she does. Others are nurses, others volunteer in other ways, but almost all put themselves there on the front lines between patients and care in some way. It provides a needed balance for their spouses, siblings, etc. to see how things really are working. People are correct that executives in their job are too far removed from the problem to see it – there’s no denying that, but that doesn’t mean that some of them aren’t fully aware of the problems through other efforts.
This won’t go away overnight. There is nothing that can be done in Congress to completely fix this because it requires an almost complete overhaul. Things like a public option will help some people, but it won’t help any of the millions of people that already have a Medicaid/VA/Medicare or even employer paid safety net but don’t use it – and that’s a LOT of people. Oddly enough, the mandate probably *will* help them. It was an odd side-effect of Medicare Part D because it forced everyone to work out what they actually had coverage for. A lot of these people will work out that they qualify for Medicaid, or that they can go to the VA. A lot will need my mom’s help to do it, which will only get fixed with a single payer option. It will force those people who can afford to but refuse to pay for insurance to do so – and let’s not kid ourselves, these people do exist. Hell, we’ve heard from more than a few right here. But the mandates apply to employers far more than individuals. And that’s where the real impact will be felt – getting companies like WalMart to provide insurance for 100% of their employees. If you are poor and qualify for Medicaid, you’re covered – the mandate doesn’t apply. If you are 65, you have Medicare. If you served, you have the VA, you’re covered.
But for everyone else, the cost savings will seriously help. The subsidies will help. The changes to Medicare will help. And from an macroeconomic standpoint, it will make things MUCH better. It will make people much more job portable – which is HUGE. Just consider Robin G above.
The one thing that I really wish the bill had to offset the mandate is a change to that Medicaid look-back and to provide a smoother transition for people that lose their jobs to layoff. I think that is immediately more important than a public option. But this bill will help so much it kills me that people are so bent out of shape over the politics of it. It’s just shameless, really.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Tsulagi:
Please address my argument at #100.
danimal
@kindness: Don’t be so sure there are 51 votes for a bill through reconciliation. I’m skeptical and have been since the summer.
I believe Dick Durbin is one of the good guys and as majority whip, he would have a really good feel for how many senators are actually on board for reconciliation.
burnspbesq
@Citizen Alan:
Unknown and unknowable.
No deal. You don’t get to sit on the sidelines and whine that you’re not getting your pony, and then laugh at the people who busted their ass to get a donkey through Congress. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Tsulagi
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: Yeah, I got full faith that out of conference there will be starbursts. From the guys who got us here. Yep.
SiubhanDuinne
@Max:
I’m reminded of that old groaner of a joke:
If “pro” is the opposite of “con,” what’s the opposite of “progress”?
Har.
Zifnab
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30620.html
Hoyer is prepping the House to get rolled.
dadanarchist
Okay, point taken. But still:
1988 was an arbitrary date, and the point (which you ignored) is that speaking in terms of social legislation, legislation that addresses social and economic issues that affect the majority of working people in this country, Congress is much more conservative now than it was in the 1930s, the 1960s, and even the 1980s. The point is that on socio-economic issues, Congress has become more inclined to support corporate interests over the interests of their citizens, and more inclined to legislation that eliminates regulations, scales back the welfare state, reduces union power, and otherwise benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
So: why, with this Congress, will it suddenly fix the bill to make it more progressive in the future?
Martin
How are mandates good for pharmaceuticals? Do you think that people will now be mandated to take drugs their doctor didn’t prescribe? Or were you trying to say that now that people are forced to have insurance that they could actually fill that prescription, and playing that off as good for the drug company but *not* good for the patient?
Jesus, you guys cannot keep denying the fact that almost the entire health care system, from your GP and the company that makes tongue depressors all the way up to the insurers, all get paid money out of our pockets, all make profits, and all of these things could be avoided if only we lived in North Korea. Even the UK pays profits to the drug companies and they’ve even moved the physicians into the public sector.
Yes, the drug companies could be punished worse by moving the US into the same kind of single-buyer drug market that other countries have, forcing drug suppliers to bring prices down to what they charge Canada, but that’s not in any of the bills open for consideration, and it has fuckall to do with mandates.
You’re yelling at clouds here.
Zifnab
@strawmanmunny:
I’ll be happy to answer there. On the first, I’ve got a policy, but it’s shitty and I’d like a better one.
One the second, I was an Edwards supporter until his campaign caved, and an Obama supporter afterwards. I didn’t really have a beef with Hillary’s campaign until it started coming off the rails after California.
cyntax
How did we get to sitting on the sidelines? In order to have any chance at pulling this bill to the left, there has to be a very real perception that an unacceptable bill will be shot down. I don’t think we should kill the Senate bill now, but I think we should raise holy hell so that the WH knows what’s at stake if they don’t get involved.
And right on schedule here’s some polling for you on this:
This has to be fixed in conference and the WH has to understand that giving Lieberman and Nelson what they want isn’t an option. The WH needs to roll up their sleeves and get involved in the conference work.
Citizen Alan
@strawmanmunny:
I am self-employed as partner in a two-man law firm that pays over $3000 a year for insurance coverage. It would be higher but I found a high risk pool I could get my firm into. The firm is going under in January. I’m still trying to figure out how to keep insurance after that.
I never supported Hillary Clinton. I was an early Edwards supporter because he actually pretended to care about working class people. At the time, of course, I had no idea that he was just a grifter who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. When he dropped out (thank God), I switched to Obama. I have nothing against Hillary Clinton personally and agree with her on most policy issues. I just don’t think she ran a good campaign and based on that concluded she would not make an effective President. In fact, I was afraid that, if elected, she would be as weak and vacillating and eager to compromise with the Right as Obama has proven himself to be.
And no, I’m not a PUMA. I still think that President Hillary Clinton would have done pretty much everything that Obama has done, except that she probably would want to keep us in Iraq longer (not that Obama has actually gotten us out rather than make pretty speeches about maybe doing so).
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Tsulagi:
You should know better than to try to put words in my large cow mouth, Tsu. I am not predicting starbursts, never have.
I am saying one thing and one thing only: the final (conferenced) bill will not be the Senate bill. The Senate bill is not a predictor of what the final bill will look like. Therefore ranting about the form of the Senate bill is counterproductive. The only thing the Senate bill buys us is a shot at the conference process. That’s it.
The opponents know this, and are perfectly happy to stir up shit over the Senate bill knowing full well that if it results in failure to pass a bill, the process is dead, whereas if a bill passes, the process goes forward. That is their entire game.
They want to stop the process. That’s their game, and the progressives seem really eager to let them play it. We’ll never know what happens in those conference meetings, but one thing is sure, there won’t be any until a Senate bill passes.
And another thing. Public Option is a political rallying cry. It is next to meaningless to me. If I get constraints on preexisting conditions, I win big time. If not, I lose. The political constituency, represented by the huge egos like Markos and Dean, wins at my expense. I say fuck them in the ass and mouth very much. They are not fighting for my interests. The health industry wins if they can control the preexisting condition rules. That’s the throttle on their profit machine.
Tsulagi
@Martin:
A non-insured pool of 30 million versus a 30 million pool with coverage, which one is more likely to generate greater sales for pharmaceuticals?
Hell, if they could continue to get non-interference in their pricing, I would think PhRMA would clap loud and long for single payer.
Wile E. Quixote
@AngusTheGodOfMeat
And Angus wins today’s “I’m as stupid as John McCain not knowing the differences between Shia and Sunni and too lazy to do any research on it award.” Congratuations Angus, From Wikipedia.
Hmmmm, Vermont House of Representatives. FYI Angus, since you’re dumb as a stump, the Vermont House of Representatives is what those of us who aren’t as dumb as stumps call a “legislative environment”. And it looks like Howard Dean spent not just a week but four years in one. Now we can say that Vermont is a small state, but it seems that the good Doctor had at least as much experience in politics as a certain Illinois senator who was recently elected to the presidency and probably knows more about health care than that Illinois senator, now president.
I despise worthless, lazy, stupid, good for nothing morons like you who not only say stupid shit like this but can’t be bothered to get off of your lazy worthless asses and do two minutes of research on Google to confirm what you’re saying. The fact that you made the stupid statement you did Angus shows that you’re as stupid and lazy as any Republican supporter of Sarah Palin. Why don’t you fuck off over to RedState, you’d fit in really well over there?
Citizen Alan
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
And people say that progressives are the ones who aren’t realistic! What I acknowledge is that (a) the bill can’t get out of the Senate without 60 votes, and (b) the current alliance of 60 Senators most likely to vote for the bill includes at least 2 who say they will filibuster any bill which doesn’t include their pet causes, 1 of whom is quite plainly willing to jerk the whole bill around for no reason other than spite. Whatever bill comes out of reconciliation wlll be the same thing as the Senate bill with, at most, a few insignificant tweaks. Hell, earlier this week, there was talk of just skipping reconciliation altogether and sending the Senate bill directly back to the House for a vote.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@dadanarchist:
Because I was making comparisons with the Congress circa 1904-1906 and legislation passed in that era affecting the economic interests of the railroads, who were in that era some of the most powerful private actors in US politics.
Now to qualify that analogy, I see one very big difference between today and TR’s era, and also the brief period when LBJ was able to move civil rights legislation thru Congress in the mid 1960s. Both TR and LBJ had the advantage of moving legislation which was popular with the opposition party (the western and southern Dems in the early 1900s were more economically populist and against the railroads than their GOP counterparts, while the GOP in the mid 1960s was less regressive on the subject of race than the southern Dems who dominated the Senate in LBJ’s time). So for TR and LBJ the trick to getting major bills passed was twisting enough arms using the patronage mechanisms within their own party to overcome entrenched opposition, while being able to count on a reasonably large number of votes from the other side. Today Obama is having to twist arms within his own party in the face of lockstep opposition from the other side.
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
Your mother sounds like a saint. I admire her. That has nothing to do with the fact that the bill will not do most of the things you think it will.
won’t change. The bill requires insurers to take anyone with preexisting conditions who can afford coverage (with or without subsidies) but allows them to majorly jack up the price for such people.
won’t change. The section of the current bill that calls for a ban on lifetime benefits caps actually contains a clause within it specifically allowing for such caps.
won’t change. The provisions barring recission are completely toothless.
won’t change. Nothing in this bill addresses these issues. People who cannot afford co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses will still avoid medical treatment even with insurance and will still be going to the ER.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Wile E. Quixote:
Uh, yeah, if you think the Vermont state legislature is an apt comparison to the US Senate. I don’t. I think Dean is a small town guy trying to stamp his feet and be a big player on the national stage, and he is out of his league. He’s a coherent and forceful advocate for HCR, but he doesn’t know how to play the pro game at the Washington DC level, that’s exactly why the Dem insiders didn’t want him when he ran for president.
The US Senate is a black hole of enormous power interests and huge money interests and lobbying interests. Dean’s absurd “let’s start over” suggestion takes us back to 1948, or whenever the modern string of HCR failures started under Truman. He thinks he is playing Vermont Ball, and he is playing in the World Series against the Yankees and all their money.
I stand on what I said. Dean wouldn’t last a week in the US Senate. He would just be another character in the shadows there. He doesn’t know how to play Team Suck My Dick, which is the only game they play in the senate. The Republicans are laughing their asses off right now, having Dean, the supposed best friend of HCR, call for killing the bill. They don’t have to work very hard, the idiot Dean is doing their work for them.
You have this completely wrong, as usual.
gwangung
Which, of course, would apply if there were cost controls or not.
I’d rather be working on getting cost controls into a bill, since it’s pretty apparent mandates are a necessary step for that.
geg6
@strawmanmunny:
I’ll answer:
I do. However, my sister, who agrees with my opinion and did even before I got to this point, does not and hasn’t ever. The research she’s done on the bill hasn’t convinced her that this bill is any better than the nothing she has. And before someone jumps on this, she doesn’t qualify for Medicaid and won’t qualify for a subsidy. Oh, and she has a pre-existing condition, which means her premium with this new bill will be one of the highest.
Neither my sister nor I supported Hilary in the primaries. We both volunteered for and donated to Obama, starting back in the fall of 2007.
Citizen Alan
@burnspbesq:
Are you literate? I’m saying that the supporters of the current bill on this site keep saying that matter how bad the bill turns out to be at least it will do X, Y, and Z. However, the current bill does not do X, Y, and Z and there are no indications that whatever gets signed will do X, Y, and Z. So I’m asking that when you find out that the signed bill won’t do X, Y, and Z, you don’t blame the people on the left. Because we told you that X, Y, and Z weren’t in the fucking bill, and you just stuck your fingers in your ears and yelled “la-la-la-la-Obama-loves-me.”
strawmanmunny
Zifnab,geg6 and CitizenAlan, thanks.
CitizenAlan, wouldn’t that bill, as it is right now, still help you out when the business goes under?
To be clear, I’m not against talking out and getting your voices heard. The problem is when people(not anyone at BJ) go on TV,blogs,etc…and start repeating the same things as the right does. Like Obama is weak, sellout, bailout,etc.
Argue against the bill, take aim at Joey,Nelson,et al. but the hyperbole used by some against Obama is what I find to be wrong.
There is still two paths left here. One is the conference committee, where Obama has said that he would be more involved from the beginning of this process. Two, is pass the bill and then make changes with reconciliation. Some of the things progressives want the most, PO or medicare buy-in, to my knowledge can be done by reconciliation.
So, I think putting pressure on the admin.,congress is a good thing. I just think the outrage meter needs to be toned down from 11 and not use the same slanderous attacks that the right wing does.
Still, it’s hard to bargain with Liberman when he doesn’t really care to pass a bill at all. I still don’t know what Obama and the Democrats could do to him that would change his mind.
At this point, I think going after Snowe and putting in a “trigger” is the way to go. That would be the compromise to the compromise.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Citizen Alan:
Okay, for one thing, you are saying reconciliation, which is a completely different process from conference. Reconciliation is a different set of procedural rules altogether.
For another, you are wrong about the conference process. It is entirely secret, even though it has, IIRC, a provision requiring one public meeting. Of course that one meeting will be a sham. In the real meetings, the real dealmaking and ratfucking will take place.
Most of what you have seen so far is Kabuki for the benefit of the folks back home and reelection campaign strategies. That way the liars can say “I voted for it before I voted against it” stuff and weasel their way through a campaign.
But once conference starts, that’s where they really start keeping score. That’s where the real power games are played behind the scenes, the stuff they don’t anyone to see. What will come out of that process? We have no idea. I want to find out, and the only way to find out is to pass a Senate bill.
Martin
@Tsulagi:
Ah, so your argument is that we’re better off with Robin G. not getting her meds and dying than pharmaceuticals increasing sales.
I think you’ve completely lost the plot. You’re in teabagger territory, arguing that we’re better off without firemen than with anything that resembles socialism.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
This is another bullshit comment. What makes you think we don’t do anything other than sit around and bitch? I’ve busted my ass for almost a year on getting a good HCR package through. I made phone calls, wrote letters, protested at my congressman’s office, sent emails, and donated cash. I did what I do for every tough political fight I feel passionately about. I am not getting anything I’ve worked tirelessly for and I have to sit here and read garbage like this?
Martin
@Citizen Alan:
Speaking as one of the people supporting the bill, none of the things that I’ve detailed are currently being considered for removal from the bill and are either identical to, or very similar to what’s in the house bill.
You need to provide detailed justification for why the bill won’t do X, Y, Z after people like me have provided detailed justification for why it will.
jenniebee
For me, it comes down to this: the “centrists” are players in this because they might vote for the bill, but they might not if they don’t get enough of what they think will make it work in it. The progressives are not players in this because nobody believes that they’ll walk away or punish Democrats at the polls. Dean and the unions have given progressive Senators a stronger bargaining position by making it more plausible that they could walk rather than accept a lousy bill.
I take it as a good sign that Biden has been dispatched to try to bring the Bernie Sanders of the left back into the fold. I’ll take it as a better sign if he goes back to Rahm and tells him that it’ll be easier to get Lieberman and Nelson on board with a Medicare buy-in than it will to get Sanders and Schumer on board without one.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Just to revise and extend this thought …. Just ask yourself, if conference is not where the real work gets done, why are the Republicans fighting so hard to prevent it from happening? Why don’t they just sign on to pass a wounded Senate bill, toss a couple of their caucus members at it to get that done, and sit back while the insurance lobbyists win the end game?
They are fighting to cram down public support and get Dems fighting with each other so that NO senate bill passes and gets to conference. That has been their game plan from the beginning, and they as much as said so, and keep saying so now. “With every passing day, the American people are rising up against this ….” blah blah blah.
That’s why they poured all that tv money into slamming HCR early in the fall. Their game has been planned and scripted since the get go. Now they have Howard Dean running the ball the wrong way down the field for them. John McCain was practically laughing out loud the other day.
Once they get this delay into the campaign season next year, and win back some seats in congress, the game is over. Dean is wrong, this thing isn’t coming back in the next congress so that we can “get it right.” Obama is right, it needs to be done now.
Citizen Alan
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Sorry, I meant to say conference. I had just responded to someone else who was talking about reconciliation and it was in my head. For the record, while reconciliation sounds great on paper, for various structural reasons I think we are more likely to see space aliens come own from the heavens to just give us cures for all our diseases than to see meaningful health reform come via reconciliation.
That “Kabuki” has successfully stripped nearly every substantive provision from the bill and Lieberman and Nelson aren’t done yet. As I mentioned last night, I would think it was the funniest thing in the world (in the sense that I laugh so that I don’t cry) if Nelson threatened to filibuster a bill without a major abortion provision and Lieberman threatened to filibuster any bill that did have one.
Lieberman, Nelson and possibly others want to kill health insurance reform altogether. Whatever comes out of conference, if it has any meaningful reform, it will be filibustered out of existence.
Citizen Alan
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
What do you mean fighting so hard? Other than announcing that they oppose any reform whatsoever, the Republicans have been irrelevant to this entire debate. The only Republican who even hints at supporting the bill is Snowe, and if she does vote for it, it will be the first step towards her switching parties, since she will not be viable in a Republican primary if she votes for reform.
More to the point, the Republicans don’t need to do anything. Their strategy for this debate has been very simple and straight forward:
Step 1: Terrorize low information voters into believing that the reform bill will be bad.
Step 2: Use their allies among the Democrats to make the bill as bad as possible.
Step 3: Vote against it en masse.
Step 4: Run against it for the next 20 years while passing incremental changes to make it even worse.
Why should the Republicans interrupt the Democrats when they are doing something as stupid as this.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Well, that is possible, but I don’t think it is likely. The biggest reason for that is that in the conference process, most of what is going on is lining up votes for the final passage attempt, and that process is a sausage machine of the highest order, in which votes are literally being bought and sold and traded. This is where the thieves really do their work. Most of the buttheads want that process to happen because this is the Super Bowl of wheeling and dealing in this congress. Whatever Joe Lie-bermann really wants (personally, I think it is mostly about having his dick sucked) he gets in that conference process. Or doesn’t get, however it turns out, but that is where the big stakes are. That’s the Final Table in the World Series of Politican Poker.
The bad guys, who want no reforms, want to prevent this process from taking place, because that’s where they have the least power and the most risk. They can’t posture to the cameras, they can’t lie to their constituents back home, they’ve done all of that they can do at that point. They can only hope that the conference fails to line up the votes needed for final passage, or that it produces such an ugly product that they can run against it in the next election. If the conference succeeds, gets a viable product and the votes lined up, we win the game.
“Kill the bill” is shorthand for “kill HCR for years.” That’s my view.
DR
How about we start having some actual closure votes so we can see how many times these guys (and gals) vote against Healthcare Reform.
Then, we can say, “Lieberman voted against Healthcare Reform 21 times”.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
There are two questions here: what should be done, and what should be threatened. My personal feeling on what should be done is that the “current bill” should not be scrapped but that more avenues of improvement should be explored. My personal feeling on what should be threatened is that I’m glad some people are threatening to go nu-cu-lar on this. Here, you and John please read this.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Oh that’s too bad, now I will never know what innocent word triggered your insane mod filter.
Martin
@Citizen Alan:
With the 90% MLR cap, you’re now arguing that insurers will jack of the price based entirely on the cost of care provided. If you eliminated the insurance industry altogether, those costs would still be there, and they are there now, they’re just distributed to different people. Remember, all health care costs are currently paid for, they just aren’t paid for evenly or where you think they’re paid for.
Trust me, if a hospital doesn’t get paid from a heart transplant recipient, it gets paid from 100 broken legs and 8 appendectomies. The hospital always gets paid. Premiums are going up so fast not because insurance companies are taking increasingly more of those dollars (though that is still happening to some degree), but as people drop out of the system due primarily to losing employer paid insurance, there are fewer people in the system to cover the costs for the nation. It’s a catch-22 and it’s just crossed the tipping point where it’s no longer stable and is in jeopardy of complete collapse – and soon.
But they aren’t arbitrary. They are uniform, like they are in Medicare, and the care providers know they will face them everywhere and know what they are. Currently they are playing one insurer against another and the insured against the uninsured. What that means is that the care providers will know that they can’t dump all of their costs on a small number of people. They’ll have to get spread out and put costs more realistically to the actual cost of the care delivered. That’s a good thing.
That’s your opinion and you haven’t provided anything to substantiate it.
It’s not a complete solution, not by any means, but you are arguing that a bill that improves the situation is worthless because it doesn’t totally fix the situation. That’s stupid. Even in the UK people avoid medical treatment and go to the ER. You’re expecting legislation to prevent people from acting like people.
Tsulagi
@Martin:
Martin, as the cow would moo, don’t put words into my mouth. I surely don’t begrudge Robin her meds. You asked how mandating insurance would financially help pharmaceutical companies. Asked and answered.
BTW, good to see the WH and Senate Dems think Robin should continue to pay at the $800 level to pharmaceuticals and trust them to fairly price in the future by killing the Dorgan amendment.
Eric U.
I sure as hell hope there is no mandate if there is no good and affordable insurance provided. That might kill the Democratic party. Best case is a disastrous couple of decades. I really don’t want to think of what would happen to the U.S. if that were the case. I haven’t recovered from the last decade, it has been sheer misery.
Martin
Actually, they aren’t. They’re framing the debate that people like you are falling into. Democrats aren’t saying the bill is worthless – not even Lieberman and Nelson are saying that, but Republicans are, and you and a lot of the left are buying that argument.
The only people arguing that this bill is shit are Republicans, insurance companies, and care providers. Sanders isn’t thrilled because it doesn’t go far enough, Nelson isn’t thrilled because it goes too far, but they don’t argue that it doesn’t do what it claims to do, just that they wish it did more, less, or different.
Consider whose arguments you are repeating here.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Tsulagi:
Not for nothing, but I take a pill that goes for $15 each and must be taken every day. That’s $450 a month for the pill without coverage. With basically Cadillac coverage, which is what I have now, I pay about $100 for that month’s supply. But a generic, which is not yet available, will trim that by 50% or more. However the drug companies have the generic tied up in court, and are dragging that out so as to protect their golden goose profit machine.
I can’t tell you how much I hate these motherfuckers.
Jennifer
Oouo@burnspbesq:
FTW
Martin
@Tsulagi:
No, you argued that the mandate was bad because pharmaceutical companies might benefit. That’s an entirely different animal. You can’t expand coverage to people without the care industry benefitting.
You guys are all screwed up in your arguments. You want care to expand but care providers to not expand. You are suggesting toward the socialization of pharma, which will be an interesting trick given that they are almost exclusively european companies.
You (and many others here) need to come up with a better and less contradictory boundary between solving the care problem for citizens and punishing the for-profit health care industry in the context of what is actually being considered. You want single payer? Great. We all do. And a unicorn. They’re equally likely right now. At least argue in good faith here.
The bill in the Senate creates more customers for pharma but the aggregate of those customers are going to pay less. We’ve knocked down some of the profiteering and expanded care. Dorgan’s amendment died. That’s unfortunate, but it’s dead and it’s not going to come back in this debate. Is what remains (more care, fewer profits) unacceptable?
Robin G.
@Tsulagi: It sucks that Big Pharma will get so much money, but tragically, that’s secondary, as far as I’m concerned. I need the medication. Yes, it’s blackmail, but they win for now. The alternative is the ongoing risk of no meds for me — and the *reality* of no meds for lots of others — and it’s impossible for me to describe the fear that comes with that.
I did without medication for *years* because we had no insurance, and nearly lost my life several times. When I saw a non-profit psychiatrist, I begged with tears in my eyes for him to not write the words “manic-depressive” on my sheet, because I knew what that would mean. He didn’t, which is why I have insurance now; but it also meant struggling for four more years with a crippling condition that could have been solved by 150 mg a day. And I’m one of the lucky ones.
The regulations on Big Pharma would have been nice. Next time, maybe. But for now… the choice is between me (and others like me) getting what we need, or sticking it to The Man on principle. I want to stay alive.
Tsulagi
@Martin: Martin, you’re full of bullshit but that’s okay. It’s America goddamnit.
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
You might look to see if you can buy that pill outside the U.S. We know a lot of expats who do that.
An example. One woman we know takes an assortment of meds for a medical condition. Her condition plus the meds sometimes makes her nauseous. The only anti-nausea med that works for her is called Zofran.
Her insurance company wouldn’t pay for that anti-nausea drug citing its use is for cancer patients undergoing chemo. Plus they questioned the severity of her nausea. Surely the $25-30 pricetag per pill for branded Zofran didn’t factor into their decision.
Anyway, until it was available here as a generic now around $1 a pill, she was having branded Zofran sent from a pharmacy in Argentina at a cost of around $8 a pill. A generic was also available much sooner in Argentina at under a buck that she says works just as well as the brand drug.
Tsulagi
Can we get a list of words that trips the mod filter?
licensed to kill time
@Tsulagi:
Here’s a linky
Martin
@Robin G.:
This. This is why the people arguing that the bill ‘isn’t good enough’ piss me off. They don’t have skin in the game. People will really benefit from this bill, not enough of them, and things won’t improve enough, but it makes real progress and it lays some foundational things that are really necessary for the next bill to be successful.
Martin
@licensed to kill time:
Completely unrelated, but what corner of society am I ignorant of where ‘s h o e s’ needs to be on that list?
licensed to kill time
@Martin:
I believe there’s a contingent of the Internet that has a “thing” for footwear. Just a guess ;-O
Tsulagi
@licensed to kill time: Thanks. In a comment directed to Martin and also Angus, apparently using the correct spelling of pharmacee brands you as a pervert. Maybe it’ll show up later.
Martin
@licensed to kill time:
Can’t be that. Hell, dildo isn’t on the list.
Tsulagi
Okay, in an attempt at subverting the mod filter, below is a copy and paste of a comment in moderation.
@Martin: Martin, you’re full of bullshit but that’s okay. It’s America goddamnit.
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
You might look to see if you can buy that pill outside the U.S. We know a lot of expats who do that.
An example. One woman we know takes an assortment of meds for a medical condition. Her condition plus the meds sometimes makes her nauseous. The only anti-nausea med that works for her is called Zofran.
Her insurance company wouldn’t pay for that anti-nausea drug citing its use is for cancer patients undergoing chemo. Plus they questioned the severity of her nausea. Surely the $25-30 pricetag per pill for branded Zofran didn’t factor into their decision.
Anyway, until it was available here as a generic now around $1 a pill, she was having branded Zofran sent from a pharmacee in Argentina at a cost of around $8 a pill. A generic was also available much sooner in Argentina at under a buck that she says works just as well as the brand drug.
licensed to kill time
@Martin:
Well, I don’t know really. I just spent a few minutes searching teh Google, and there are over 31 million entries for the footwear word plus spam. Somehow the two are connected but a more savvy mind will have to give us the clue-by-four.
@Tsulagi: You’re welcome, I think that list, it’s funny!
Jack
Table it. Come back from recess with a number of provisions that were negotiated away before any of the midwestern Dems or Republicans had a chance to obstruct.
Break the deals with PhRMA and AETNA, et al.
Break them.
You don’t keep agreements with people who break them before you.
You don’t keep faith with a bad faith actor.
Yes, they’ll give money to Republicans. Lots of it. They’re going to give that money to Republicans in 2010 and 2012 anyway.
They really are.
Force the conservative Dems to vote against what you know they’ll vote against. Force Lieberman to go on record in a vote against health care reform.
The 2010 election cycle starts for real in February. Lincoln and Bayh are up for re-election, as are Dorgan and Feingold. You’re not going to get the former on board with an actual liberal plan, at any juncture. It’s not going to happen. Dorgan and Feingold could use the pressure of upcoming primary contests to shift left.
None of the Republican incumbents are coming from threatened seats. They can rail against it all they want, without any danger.
You aren’t getting any Republicans. It’s not happening. It really isn’t.
So, come back to the table (avoiding this insane call to rush it through to give the Dems some kind of “win”) with something that forces people to take sides.
Real sides.
Then, free up the fucking base and the unions to go on the attack, already.
Even if that means dividing up the draft legislation into manageable parts, for example banning rescission and discrimination, et cetera.
Pass a Medicare expansion, earmarking the subsidies monies for Medicare instead, and force the Republicans to argue against their own position on saving Medicare.
Pass a measure which allows employers to negotiate/purchase coverage for employees directly from Medicare.
But don’t just “pass anything” on the alarmingly naive notion that the future presents unlimited opportunities for improvement.
Tom_23
@Jack +1. Lots of punishment and it is tied to the D’s until 2014 and beyond
Here is what I wrote before I went back to look at conversation earlier.
What’s the BATNA? (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement) Because right now the way Lieberman, Nelson, the Maine posse are playing it that is where this thing is headed. Plus, there will be no movement on b unless you have some other alternative. (Like c) Dean, Kos, et al is giving some credibility to c. And notice the freak out…