By far the best analysis I’ve seen on this total non-issue.
For the tl;dr sect: right-wingers have built a closed information loop based on false premises re: true cost of healthcare reform with regard to a key pre-existing condition that’s not addressed by the reform package at all (this being the annual “doc fix” legislation). A permanent doc fix, when and if it comes, will either be paid for or not; it won’t alter the cost or savings of the reforms as passed one way or the other.
This graph clearly requires some lightly paraphrased Diamond Joe Quimby:
You people don’t know what you want! I am flip-flopping!
Alan Grayson (D, FL) predicts exactly what was going to happen (that an amendment to the already passed healthcare bill goes through reconciliation alongside ping-ponged Senate bill), gets laughed out of the room by Chris Matthews. I’m oh so sure that Matthews is duly chastened as of this morning…
For the CSPAN caller last night claiming we were embarking on a $10T (as in trillion) spending spree. Not so, and never was. They have lied to you. Repeatedly. Systematically. You might want to make them pay a price for that come November.
James Fallows positively nails it:
the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)… TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period.
-and-
this [set of reforms and all the attendant process arguments] will not seem anywhere near as poisonous seven months from now as it does today. Jobs jobs jobs is what will matter most then.
So very true. If unemployment is at or near 10% in 2012, Obama will not be reelected. Period. If the economy continues to pick up this year, Democratic losses come November will be not-so-bad…not that they’ll be presented that way, of course. Anything short of a 100 Democrat Senate will be treated as an Historic Upset of the “normal order,” which, of course, currently has many Democrats representing historically red districts. But, back to Fallows:
There are countless areas in which America does it one way and everyone else does it another, and I say: I prefer the American way. Our practice on medical coverage is not one of these.
Nancy Pelosi touched on this point last night in her floor speech: that losing the fear of living insurance-free will let a thousand startups bloom. Folks locked into their current jobs simply to maintain a safety net for their kids can now think solely on the basis of how good they think their idea is. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. This is where the much longed-after “new economy” will ultimately come from.
Memo to David Brooks: hey, what do you know, the House actually voted on the “Senate” bill, passed it, then actually voted on the House reconciliation package that goes to the Senate to be actually voted on using the increasingly aptly named reconciliation rule. Remarkable.
Burns: You know, Smithers, I think I’ll donate a million dollars to the local orphanage…when pigs fly! [They laugh. The pig sails across the sky before them.]
Smithers: Will you be donating that million dollars now, Sir?
Burns: Nooo, I’d still prefer not.
2007: WellPoint pledged that its charitable foundation would give $30 million in grants to help the uninsured
2010: “It was just not something that the company really wanted to do,” said one former executive, who, like others interviewed for this story, asked not to be identified out of concern that discussing WellPoint could have adverse career consequences. “So it went by the wayside.”
All that back-room, closed-door, no-debate, unconstitutional wrangling has produced this epic fail of an outcome:
CBO has finished its work [scoring the “fix” sidecar and final healthcare reform bill] and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years – so, 2020 to 2029 – it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.
To put this in context, that’s more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.
But, by all means, let’s talk about the horror of “deem and pass” some more. Likewise, let’s attack and mock folks with Parkinson’s disease who currently can’t get insurance or afford treatment. Why can’t they all just exhibit some ‘Merican can-do attitude and Go Die in the Streets? And, for God’s sake, keep the Guvmint out of my Medicare!
The Jane Hamshers of the world really need to sit down and consider this kind of thing in light of their own unyielding demands for some theoretical, perfect-out-of-the-gate plan that they feel could pass if given the chance and, at least, 55 newly minted progressive Senators:
Congressman Alan Grayson, (D-Orlando), today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.
You see, the current iteration of health insurance reform isn’t it. It’s a starting point. To which popular things, like the public option, or a (vastly superior) Medicare buy-in program can be added. And it’s a hell of a lot harder to argue against a buy-in program when it can be presented as legitimate competition to commercial plans as opposed to some cog in a giant death panels machine. That’s also the moment that all the poisonous rhetoric the GOP employed in the run-up to reform bites them squarely in the ass.
Medicare began as a quite limited program you wouldn’t recognize today. Wasn’t even called Medicare; it was the catchily named Kerr-Mills Act that created Medical Assistance for the Aged (MAA). Can’t imagine why they changed that. But I’m sure everyone blogging about it was quite disappointed with it. Just sayin’.
Pass. The. Damned. Bill.
Lemkin 