The preliminaries are finally over in the battle to finally, finally, finally -- 97 years after Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it -- pass comprehensive health care reform. I think the right sports analogy to use is the extended, exhausting, NBA playoffs: after 82 regular season games, 16 playoff teams play in a best-of-7 series to get to the second round, and then the remaining eight teams play best-of-seven to get into the conference finals for another exhausting best-of-7 series. I think that's about where we're at, the conference finals, where the coming days will seem like a long tiring 7-game series that is only the preparation for the even more intense final championship round.
I am excited, though, because this is a whole lot further than we got to when I was in the White House health care war room in 1994. We got the bill out of some of the committees, but never out of Senate Finance, and never had a realistic chance to have a floor fight.
So now come the machinations and maneuvering to figure out how to merge the two bills in the Senate and three in the House. The strategy now looks to be to get through on the Senate side with the 60 Democrats and maybe Snowe, but to continue to hold reconciliation (where you only need 51 votes) out as an option if needed once the conference committee comes back.
As I had predicted awhile back, Baucus' initial bill in Senate Finance was an ugly mutt of compromises and decisions, but it got a little better in the committee process, as he gave the progressives on the committee a few solid improvements here and there. Reid will now merge the two bills, and I am convinced that he will work to create a better bill in the process, and then we have the floor fight and finally conference committee. At every stage, I think progressives have the ability, if they stick together and negotiate well, to make progress.
On the highest profile and incredibly important public option issue, I believe we are now well-positioned to have a public option in the final bill. We have come a long way since those summer months where all the conventional wisdom repeatedly said the public option was dead, but I think we are now at a position where the biggest question is more likely to be how good the public option is, not whether we will have one.
There will continue to be conservative Democrats who want to placate insurers and Olympia Snowe by dropping the public option, but I think progressives can stop that from happening. The key, as it has always been from the first day of this fight, is for progressives, especially in the House, to stay together and stay strong in the negotiations. In fact, I will go so far as to say this: progressives should not panic if the Senate bill isn't great on the public option issue, and Democrats in general shouldn't panic if the conference committee is a long drawn-out affair with lots of fussing and fighting. We have come too far not to get a bill, and as long as House progressives stay strong and stay together, that bill will have to include a public option.
The conference finals are about to begin, but I'm not going to tell you to pull up a seat, because we need every progressive to stay in the game (yes, I will torture this metaphor to the end). It is only because of the progressive movement that health care has been on the agenda, and only because of that movement that the debate has not drifted inexorably to the right. We have a shot at passing a strong bill that will actually cover all Americans and create competition and a check on the power of the insurance industry. We have a shot at making history. Let's stay on the court until the victory is won.
Lincoln Mitchell: What Olympia Snowe's Support Could Mean
By supporting a moderate bill in committee, Snowe has made the GOP, or at least part of it, relevant again; succeeding where Michael Steele, John Boehner, Joe Wilson, Rush Limbaugh and others have failed.
After months of delay, the full Senate is about to debate and vote
on landmark health care legislation. But first, Senator Harry Reid and
Democratic leaders have a big decision to make:
Will the Senate consider real health care reform with a public health
insurance option, or a watered-down compromise full of giveaways to Big
Insurance?
I just signed a petition asking Sen. Reid to include a strong public
health insurance option in the Senate's health care bill. Will you join me
at the link below?
http://pol.moveon.org/harryreid/?r_by=17539-10101106-ahdaK0x&rc=comment_mailto
Thanks!
We need health care, not insurance.
Only in the U.S. is a whole population exploited and ripped off. This is not a free market at all - the U.S. has the worst vices of socialism, without any of the benefits.
Veils of agreement are lifted;
The sides are now rigid,
The atmosphere's frigid
Judged by the way Snowe has drifted.
News Short n' Sweet by JFD8
http://twitter.com/JFD8
I live in a southern European country and I am self-employed. My monthly fee for unlimited public health care, excluding dental, is about 260 dollars a month. My mother used to have two employees in her house, and the monthly fee we had to pay for unlimited health care, excluding dental, was about 185 dollars each.
As for medications, we all have a health card that when presented at the pharmacy, will access a computerised database. My medicines cost a very small nominal amount. I have lived in the U.S.,and upon returning to Europe, found out that the same medicine wich is sold in my European country as a generic, was costing in the U.S. 10 TIMES MORE !!!! yes, 10 times more !!!
As a result of the strong universal public system, the optional private health insurance here is very reasonably priced, as it should be, as a result of the workings of a free market with laws of supply and demand.
I find it astonishing that in the U.S. there is not an armed revolution demanding a strong public option.
The strong public option is not about ideology, it is just common sense and a manifestation of a minimum of love for our fellow human beings.
Because that is the end result of insurance reform, that everyone is calling Health Care, but really has nothing to do with Health Care
And @DA12 - agreed.
My mother and her husband no longer have insurance.
My mother and her husband are extremely worried. He put in 38 years at GM and now sees a major part of his retirement package gone. My brother-in-law faces the same fate, and retired from the same factory.
My mother has had 3 cancer operations (lost both breasts) and 2 major strokes; he just had a rectal cancer operation a few months ago; the brother-in-law had a major heart attack on the shop floor 3 years ago and my sister has had 5 hip operations over the coarse of her life.
Where are these people going to get health insurance?
Mom is in a panic. Just one medication they bought yesterday and had to pay out of pocket cost $155 for a month supply (they each take about 10 pills a day). He came home and told her they need to speak to the doctor about all the meds they need and how to reduce the cost.
These are hardworking Americans who spent their lives working for a company they trusted and saving to enjoy retirement in their paid for home. They are freaking out.
So, we should all keep praying. There are some options out there; things might turn around sooner than the media allows us to think.