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As of today, Baucus faces an uphill battle:
- Rockefeller isn’t on board, and Kerry, Menendez, and Bill Nelson have concerns
- Wyden isn’t on board
- Snowe isn’t on board
- Grassley isn’t on board
So much for bipartisan compromise…
The Baucus Bill Drops Today |
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| By: Jason Rosenbaum Wednesday September 16, 2009 6:52 am | |
34 Comments
Our friend MaryMc is on the front page of Huffpo because she and Ron are divorcing over medical bills.
‘Tis sad…
I think MSNBC said Baucus was to hold a presser at noon eastern.
I just sent this note to Sens. Reid, Harkin, those from my state.
Anyone else worth targeting? It’s not even worth sending to any Republicans. If Obama suddenly announced that he’s against health care reform they’d be for it.
Is there an opportunity to here to communcate with our leaders about what is wrong with the MAX TAX legislation and what is right with the HELP bill? Concise, compelling, etc.
and the sausage making goes on………paging Upton Sinclair
I wonder if the 345,937 people who voted for Baucus in his last election have considered moving to Canada.
Upton here, “but it’s really good sausage” There’s not a lot of rat in it. Well alright, it is mostly rat. And spam.
So where is the bill? This “Chairman’s Mark” is another PR piece — 223 pages long. Where is the exact legislative language like in the Chairman’s Mark of the other bills?
AnticliMAX
Thanks for posting that, Loo. ‘Course, it’s not news to us, but, still, I’m going to FB, mare.
Hey, demi!
So sad.
Yeah, he’ll be explaining himself at noon. Should be interesting…
This is how Finance works. They mark up “conceptual” language, then it gets turned into legislative language after the vote.
The Baucus bill is the Democratic equivalent of Bush’s attempt to privatize social security. Democrats need to kill this immediately, or it will be hung around their necks for years to come.
After Wendell Potter’s testimony who in their right mind wants to be associated with:
So Max Baucus labored for six months and delivered this 223 page mouse? Let’s see:
It doesn’t have the support of any Republicans;
It doesn’t have the support of his Gang of Six;
It doesn’t have the support of key Democrats;
It contradicts his own proposal made last year.
“Heck of a job, Maxie!!!”
They have wasted months trying to appease the Rs, trying to make sure that they had a bill that Rs would support when it was clearly not going to happen. If the Ds had written a good bill, told the Rs to support or not and gone forward, we would probably be done with the whole thing now. All this time gone and people are suffering and dying. I’m disgusted.
Baucus and his insurance company Sugar Daddy need to get a divorce.
The Congress is back in session and doing the dirty work for the Medical Industrial Complex.
mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,
lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M,
conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M, j wilson 800K
were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.
Citizens for Tax Justice pointed this out. The tax legislation enacted under President George W. Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that results directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt that we must make since the tax cuts were deficit-financed. Over the upcoming decade (2010-2019), the costs of the health care proposals approved by three committees in the U.S. House of Representatives are projected to be around $1 trillion and deficit neutral(that means they’re paid for). In 2010, when all the Bush tax cuts are finally phased in, a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts were deficit-financed, which increased the national debt and resulted in greater interest payments on that debt. They never even tried to pay for their tax-cuts. So, for the price of bush’s tax-cuts for the wealthiest 5%, we could have had Health Care for every American. Instead Americans got bupkus and cheney/bush’s republican buddies got filthy rich off of the Blood Money from No-Bid, Cost-Plus Federal Contracts.
12 Million Americans were denied Health Care Coverage by the Medical Industrial Complex because they had a Pre-Existing Medical Condition. 12K Americans lose Insurance Coverage everyday. Over 18K Americans die each day because they lack health insurance. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)
Follow the Money: Link
Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!
Sign Single-Payer Petition: Link
Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.
SEMPER FI!
It’s not a bill. It’s a turd. Think John Water’s “Pink Flamingo’s” and the the insurance companies are Divine at the end of the film.
Yep, that about sums up the Baucus bill
Jane has a cross-post up on the front page, in case anyone didn’t know: “OFA Waves “Bye Bye” to Public Plan”
“Over 18K Americans die each day because they lack health insurance. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)”
Die each year, I believe.
Every single Congresscritter must lose constituents annually to “murder by spreadsheet.”
Do any state prosecutors on this list see a possibility for homicide prosecution where an insurance company employee and executives deny payment for treatment, covered by an insurance policy, to an insured whom they know will will almost certainly die without that treatment, and where the insured does die for lack of it?
It might be a slight stretch. But in D.C. years ago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office got a homicide conviction against a defendant whose car had struck and killed a pedestrian while the defendant was fleeing police rather than stop and get a ticket for a traffic offense.
Waving a traffic ticket, the prosecutor closed,”He chose a piece of paper over a human life.”
What about, “S/he chose the company’s profit over a human life”?
One word for Baucus: Karma
In this case, he’s reaping what he sowed (in betraying the ideals of Democratic Party and the wishes of his constituents) just about as quickly as we could hope.
Wendell knows and hits the nail on the head. The Baucus bill should be called the ” Insurance Industry Profit and Protection Act”
Here’s the deregulation payoff,
“Insurers selling policies through a ―health care choice compact‖ would only be subject to the laws and regulations of the state where the policy is written or issued.”
Bottom of p. 12: http://finance.senate.gov/site…..re_Act.pdf
I want to know what I did in a former life to have earned myself Max Baucus.
And that’s how shitty legislation happens. AND then they also have the opportunity to put other shit in that was never considered for votes … feature, not bug, huh.
The complete failure of this pile of shit is really the best thing that could have happened! Just imagine if Snowe or any other R for that matter were on board: we’d probably end up with this as health care reform. As it is, this creates a new chance.
protection? you must mean windfall. The Insurance Industry Windfall Profit Guarantee & Middle Class Punishment Act of 2009. The biggest act of corporate welfare since… well, a few months ago.
Perfect title for the article – dead on.
Did one of your lieutenants over at DKos tell Kucinich he wrote a POS diary? Wow. I thought you guys SUPPORTED single payer!
“you wrote a piece of shit diary
that did nothing to rally the troops other than to ask people to sign a petition and donate money.
I work full-time with the FDL team on health reform thanks to your donations.
by slinkerwink on Tue Sep 15, 2009 at 08:28:48 PM PDT”
For once, we agree. This is an extremely bad bill and it’s too expensive. It’s government regulation to benefit the corparate interests at the EXPENSE of the free market. When government tries to overregulate the free market, you don’t have a free market any more.
Wyden, of Oregon, is up for election next year!
Come on, Portland, jump on this guy! Make him scared!
He needs every single vote in metro Portland, and he knows it…
If we can’t get health care reform out of this Congress, we need to go ahead and sacrifice a few Dems. Let ‘em go; we have room in the head counts to lose a few in both houses and still hold majorities. Get rid of the excess baggage…
If Dems let a few Dems die after this debacle, the remaining Dems will understand, like they don’t now, that they need to learn to fight, grow some, etc….