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The Senate is about to unveil its health care bill, and with that, the process of legislating will move forward. As explained earlier, the Senate will immediately face a series of procedural motions which will essentially ask two questions:
- Should the Senate debate health care reform?
- Should the Senate vote on health care reform?
Senators will need to answer each of these questions, and it will take 60 votes to answer them affirmatively.
Reasonable people can differ on the question of whether the health reform bill in the Senate is worth passing. Certainly, I’d strenuously disagree with people who believe health reform won’t solve our country’s health care crisis, or that the status-quo is worth preserving. However, it’s hard to put together a reasonable argument that the Senate shouldn’t at the very least talk about health care reform, or allow it to come up for a simple vote.
Now, there are forces out there that would like to block debate or a vote on health care reform – the insurance companies and their allies. Why? As Goldman Sachs recently concluded when evaulating health reform plans, the status-quo would be best for the insurance industry and their stock prices. If a version of health reform like the House version passes – very much like what Reid is planning to introduce in the Senate – their stocks could drop as much as 39%.
Put simply, the insurance industry would like Senators to obstruct health care reform in any way possible to protect their profits and stock prices.
And so, the effort to get Senators to answer these procedural questions is underway in earnest, with two new ads going up today, one in Nebraska and one in Arkansas. The ads exhort Senators not to stand with the insurance industry for the status quo, and to give us a debate and a vote. It’s the right things to do.
We have been debating health care in this country for months, if not well over a year (not to mention the great debates about health care that have gone on in this country since the 1800s).
The election of 2008 was about health care reform, and President Obama’s campaign plan to control costs, regulate the insurance industry, and give us a public health insurance option won. Congress has been holding hearings and debating health care since January, with over 100 hours of hearings and 83 hours of debate in the House alone, and similar numbers in the Senate. And in towns and cities across America, people have been talking about this issue.
While the insurance industry hopes otherwise, it’s time for the Senate to take up the debate, and it’s only fair to allow a majority vote on the issue.
7 Comments
Can even the corporate welfare recipients seriously support a status quo that kills 45,000 yearly? Maybe they could be re-classified as terrorists.
While I certainly applaud the big picture of freedom of speech and debate, ESPECIALLY in our government, I’m afraid this issue alone glosses over completely the nuances of the reality we are all (prog/lib) facing in seeking REAL healthcare reform.
And to my point, I ask of what good is it to fight for right to debate when the debate will be geared to watering down an already weak House Bill?
Methinks the money, time and staff and donations given to so called progressive causes is being misspent in the REAL fight, which is for a ROBUST and VIBRANT PO (as single payer is just SO not on the table) that would be government run, open to ALL for enrollment, starts in 2010, and DIRECTLY competes with the private insurance monopoly.
There are other components to a PO we prog/libs are fighting for and have been clamoring for, including eliminating anti trust exemptions, Eshoo and Stupak, to say the least. I’ll not hash all that out. We know what we want, us progs/libs.
But I’ll repeat, to waste a single god damned penny on fighting and arguing the merits of debate when the wheels are falling off the whole reform effort as the legislation continues to be diluted into a form of corporate gift giving, is sheer folly, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Sheer. Folly.
And it only perpetuates the status quo.
What a waste of time, staff and money.
So I guess you believe being “Progressive” is more about being “Aggresive” than about “Progress.”
I’m with you, and we’ll fight attempts to water down the bill during debate. But given the 60-vote bar for adding amendments in the Senate, watering down will indeed be hard.
quoting Richard Kirsch, from your own link:
ROFL!
everybody knows “we don’t have the votes” for monumental Change! thats for Purists, not hardheaded pragmatic veal-pen policy wonks!
“quality, affordable health care for all” Ha! he sounds like Ralph Nader!
instead, what we need is a hugely complicated untried, untested, square the circle kludge that keeps the parasitic bad actors happy (they basically wrote the bill) by forcing Americans to pay for crappy policies, at whatever rates the insurance cartel thinks they can get away with! ka-ching!
“a mandate to enact legislation that will provide a government guarantee of quality, affordable health care for all” … in 2013, after the campaign of 2012, so when the chumps realize how bad it is there’s nothing they can do about it!
how about this example, cited by Digby, a safe Democratic, high status, well informed blogger:
hmm-hmmmm. They dryly note “These figures are for the premiums alone; deductibles and co-payments would represent additional costs.”
Despite tepid propagandizing by think-tanks and non-profits, the plenty of Americans will remember that they were snookered into voting for a party and a candidate making assurances of “quality, affordable health care for all” and what they got instead was a nasty mandate, enforced by the IRS (!), forcing them to subsidize the profits of the greedy, amoral, care and claim denying insurance cartel!
Ha! thats gonna leave a mark! and it’ll leave a mark on the credibility of ‘Progressives’ who were instructed to advocate for the Democrats Health Insurance Reform Act of 2009, as well.
so, HCAN, try to avoid linking directly to florid campaign rhetoric from your candidate that is best forgotten – “monumental change!” it just provokes embittered laughter, and resolve not to fall for the old bait-n-switch trick again.
Hey have you heard? Oh hey, look at that: Republicans ahead on Generic ballot
You link to an analysis of the Finance Committee bill, a bill that falls way short in a ton of key areas, affordability being one of them. We’ve been fighting these parts of the bill and will continue to do so, though thankfully, it doesn’t look like too much of that bill is making its way to the Senate floor.
So, I’d agree, the Finance bill would be a huge loss for America and for Democrats if it was passed. It won’t be.
So, any other criticisms?
Hi there Jason!
thanks for glancing at my post — glance further and you see, starting at the end of line 12 in the excerpted paragraph from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Report, these words:
my emphasis.
So, good point – the family in question will be ever so grateful that the Democrats in the House allow them to keep a whopping 8% more of the money they earn for things like guitar lessons or hardback book purchases for their daughter, rather than paying in to the insurance cartel so the CEO can buy fresh linen napkins on the Gulfstream V
since that is the difference between the bills, that must be what you are referring to as “huge” when you say
“Finance bill would be a huge loss for America and for Democrats if it was passed.”
ok, huge, small medium or large, lets let that ride. What if, after all the mandatory outlays on premiums, the deductibles, co-pays, and high rates for drugs that Obama ensured with his Pharma deal are still too much – d’you think the family in question will dare to compare the rhetoric of the marketing award winning campaign of 2008 with the dismal outcomes they personally are experiencing, and find the rhetoric wanting?
I mean, I don’t have generate new criticisms, there were plenty in my original post which you tacitly acceded to, by choosing the differential between the House and Senate versions as the point most worthy of response.
But, here’s a new one.
you may remember selise – she keeps some links handy to polls showing widespread, long-standing support across the country, and especially amongst Democrats, for something called Single-Payer, Medicare for all.
Have you heard of it?
here is a page that contains links to sixteen polls.
So, when a Democratic candidate for President goes around the country under a banner of Change, saying that if elected he will work to “1. Give all Americans access to affordable, comprehensive, portable health coverage”
most lifelong loyal Democrats could fairly believe he was talking about something like Single-Payer, Medicare for all, which they have long supported, and has been successfully implemented in numerous countries, like for example, mild-mannered Canada.
This is closely comparable to President Bush going around saying “Osama, 9-11, Saddam Hussein” over and over in close succession, maintaining deniability, but obviously having the effect of connecting unrelated Enemies.
Was this respectful, to toy with people’s hopes like that? Policy wonks and cynics may have known all along that Single Payer was not on the table, but consider the lesson being taught to lifelong, mainline Democratic constituencies. This goes again to my final point – a thin veneer of wonkish apologia cannot conceal the bitter truths about what the Democrats really stand for.