It’s not nearly as momentous as the passage of Medicare in 1965 and won’t fundamentally alter how Americans think about social safety nets. But the likely passage of Obama’s health care reform bill is the biggest thing Congress has done in decades, and has enormous political significance for the future.
Medicare directly changed the life of every senior in America, giving them health security and dramatically reducing their rates of poverty. By contrast, most Americans won’t be affected by Obama’s health care legislation. Most of us will continue to receive health insurance through our employers. (Only a comparatively small minority will be required to buy insurance who don’t want it, or be subsidized in order to afford it. Only a relatively few companies will be required to provide it who don’t now.)
Medicare built on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal notion of government as insurer, with citizens making payments to government, and government paying out benefits. That was the central idea of Social Security, and Medicare piggybacked on Social Security.
Obama’s legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon, of a market for health care based on private insurers and employers. Eisenhower locked in the tax break for employee health benefits; Nixon pushed prepaid, competing health plans, and urged a requirement that employers cover their employees. Obama applies Nixon’s idea and takes it a step further by requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, and giving subsidies to those who need it.
So don’t believe anyone who says Obama’s health care legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama’s health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option.
The significance of Obama’s health legislation is more political than substantive. For the first time since Ronald Reagan told America government is the problem, Obama’s health bill reasserts that government can provide a major solution. In political terms, that’s a very big deal.
Most Americans continue to be suspicious of government. That distrust is deeply etched in our culture and traditions. Our system of government was devised by people who distrusted government and intentionally created checks and balances, three separate branches, and almost insuperable odds against getting big things done. The period extending from 1933 to 1965 — the New Deal and the Great Society — was an historical aberration from that long tradition, animated by the unique crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and the social cohesion that flowed from them for another generation. Ronald Reagan merely picked up where Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover left off.
But Reagan’s view of government as the problem is increasingly at odds with a nation whose system of health care relies on large for-profit entities designed to make money rather than improve health; whose economy is dependent on global capital and on global corporations and financial institutions with no particular loyalty to America; and much of whose fuel comes from unstable and dangerous areas of the world. Under these conditions, government is the only entity that can look out for our interests.
We will not return to the New Deal or the Great Society, but nor will we continue to wallow in the increasingly obsolete Reagan view that we don’t need a strong and competent government. Today’s vote confirms our hope that we can have both strength and competence in Washington. It is an audacious hope, but we have no choice.
*****
Robert Reich was the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century. He has written eleven books, including “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages. His latest book is “Supercapitalism.” For Professor Reich’s page on Amazon, go here. The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.
Thanks to Professor Reich for permission to publish his articles on an ongoing basis. At Evans Liberal Politics, we give you the truth they don’t want you to see.
As debate on the reconciliation “fix” bill winds down and Senate Democrats have been unifying around a strategy of defeating all amendments (including a public option amendment, which is why we won’t see it offered) so that the bill remains intact, I’ve been wondering whether that strategy could or should change if a Republican amendment were somehow adopted despite the plan.
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The adoption of any amendment anywhere along the line would make the question of whether or not the reconciliation bill would have to go back to the House moot. Any change would send the bill back to the House. So if the bill were amended at any point, it would basically be costless to attempt to send the bill back to the House with a public option attached.
But it now occurs to me that the points of order the Republicans are threatening might not be handled until the end of debate on the bill and any amendments, so it may well be the case that Democrats are able to prevail against all amendments and keep the bill intact until that point, and only after the opportunity for amendments to be offered had expired would any of the changes that points of order could force actually be made. So it could be that supporters of the public option in the Senate would feel constrained from offering it until it was too late. The “costless” opportunity to add it by amendment might arise only after amendment time had come and gone.
But if the bill does have to be amended due to Republican points of order, that just creates an opportunity for public option supporters in the House. Yes, the path of least resistance at that point would be for the House to concur in the Senate’s changes and pass the reconciliation bill without further amendment. But if the House is going to have to take another vote on the bill, it might as well extract some price for it.
That probably means that public option supporters need to be talking to the House as well, and that the House may be the front line for offering such an amendment, with the Senate only asked to concur in it if the House is the one to include it. Supporters should be thinking about that possibility, lining up sponsors and backers in the House, and letting Senators know that if that were to happen and the bill were to return to the Senate with a public option attached by the House, that’d have to be considered as having the public option “come up for a vote,” and those letters they signed would either have to be honored or repudiated on that question. If the count of Senators who’ve said they’d support the public option “if it came up” are solid, then House Members would have reason to believe the provision could survive — at least politically — in the Senate.
Far be it from me to give Republicans political advice but this clamor to “Repeal It!” while Barack Obama is still in office and would have to sign any bill repealing the freshly signed health insurance reform seems a little … uhhh … dumb?
But hey, guys, knock yourselves out, right?
And that’s just what the GOPosaurs in my district of MI-01 are doing. Both super-conservative Tim Walberg and super-duper conservative Brian Rooney have both signed the “Repeal It!” pledge sponsored by the Club for Growth.
But yesterday, this political grandstanding met the bitter, harsh reality of our nation’s health insurance crisis, a crisis the new law hopes to alleviate in part, on the pages of the Jackson Citizen Patriot‘s website. On the page reporting Walberg’s and Rooney’s signing of the silly, toothless pledge is a link to a related story. The story is of a 19-year old young man, one of nine kids in his family, who has cancer. His family has no health insurance.
Here’s a blurb from the first article:
Two Republican candidates who want to unseat U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer have pledged to work to repeal the health care reform bill President Obama signed today.
The conservative group Club for Growth has created a Web site…where lawmakers, candidates and citizens can join the campaign to get rid of the law they find too expensive and intrusive…As of this morning, more than 50 lawmakers and close to 200 candidates have signed the pledge, as well as more than 13,000 citizens.
The candidate pledge reads: “I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.”
And here’s a bit from the story of the pancake breakfast held to benefit the 19-year old man from Michigan Center:
[Jake Fagan] first began experiencing pain in the fall of 2009 but did not notify his parents until months later. Both his mother and stepfather are facing financial difficulties and do not have insurance.
By the time doctors examined the him, they discovered a large tumor had already spread into Fagan’s abdomen. Had he notified his parents earlier, the cancer might not have advanced so quickly.
[...]
Moose Davis said his stepson has not let the cancer dampen his spirits.
“He didn’t want to be treated any differently,” Davis said. “I still joke around and give him a hard time sometimes.”
Fagan is more than happy to have the jokes directed toward him.
“It helps me keep my mind off (the disease),” he said.
As of Saturday’s event, more than $4,000 had been raised.
“I was hoping and praying we’d get to two grand,” Hitt said. “I’m just ecstatic that we hit this.”
It’s going to take a lot of pancake breakfasts for Jake and his family to pay for his medical care. Under the current system, he’ll never get health insurance now, not with cancer.
So when Rooney and Walberg and all the other Republicans happily sign a pledge to “Repeal It!”, that’s what they are signing on to:
Restoring the ability of health insurers to reject customers with preexisting conditions
Taking away the high-risk pool that would help families like Jake’s in the future
Taking away Jake’s ability to stay on his parent’s insurance (if they manage to get some) until he is 26
Restoring health insurance companies’ ability to cut people off when they get sick or when they have reached some payment ceiling.
The list goes on and on. So go ahead and stake your claim to that bit of hateful land, Tim and Brian. When Representative Mark Schauer is running his campaign to retain his seat as the Democratic Congressman from MI-07, he’ll be able to proudly point to his vote to start the process of fixing the system that makes families hold pancake breakfasts and bake sales just so they can receive health care.
On Politico, “Ken Vogel writes up the results of a Quinnipiac Poll on the Tea Party movement, which reveals them to be — no surprise — largely white (88 percent), massively worried about the direction of the country (92 percent), and by and large, supporters of the Republican Party (74 percent).”
“Hey Lord”, a man asks the Lord for help in his life’s journey. I had to put these songs near the bottom of my playlist since it represents, oddly, my own life’s journey and where I was at various times in my life, in a progression. I was “saved” late in life: in case anyone wonders, let me make it clear: we may have posts and links from AlterNet “sex and relationships”, but this IS a Christian website. 3:00
“Lovin Arms”, a great live vocal track in the style of Nickelback, Soundgarden etc. Laidback intro, all-out blazing chorus part, by Monatomik. 3:59
“Thirsty For You,” a very special, easy rock vocal religious track, invoking a man’s thirst to grow knowing something of what it feels like to be loved by our Lord, by Russell Henderson 3:30
The day after the bill passed, right-wingers took to the airwaves to make outrageous, wildly offensive comparisons to 9/11 and Nazis. Some called for violence.
A demonstrator stands in front of the House side of
the US Capitol on March 21, 2010 in Washington,
D.C. The health care fight has left America even
more polarized than when Obama took office in
January 2009 and also spawned a vocal conservative
“Tea Party” movement.
Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images – Mark Wilson
March 23, 2010 – The Monday after Congress passed historic health care legislation was a dark day for the right wing. Wouldn’t you be upset if you were doomed to live in a communist dystopia? Is there even a point in living once Nancy Pelosi kills every baby in America and your grandmother?
And by “upset,” we mean certifiably insane. Here are the 10 most awesomely overwrought right-wing freakouts spurred by the passage of a bill that promises to extend coverage to tens of millions of the uninsured and curb some of the most inhumane abuses of the insurance industry.
1. Last week, Rush Limbaugh swore he would move to Costa Rica if health reform passed. Instead, he heroically decided to stay behind and fight for freedom, by telling his listeners they’re in a death match with Hitler. “America is hanging by a thread. So we have to see what we can do with a thread. At the end of the day, our freedom has been assaulted. This is the kind of change that people did not think they were going to get when they voted for Barack Obama. Freedom must win the day.”
Limbaugh goes on to slam Rep. Bart Stupak, whose decision to vote yes on the bill after squeezing an anti-abortion executive order from Obama helped Dems clinch the needed votes. “Stupak is no different than Neville Chamberlain, who came back with that little letter from Hitler: ‘Oh, yeah, Hitler says no war between his country and ours.’”
Limbaugh followed up his outrageously offensive (but by this point run-of-the-mill) comparison of Obama to Hitler by mourning our democracy. It no longer exists, Limbaugh concluded, identifying the cause of its demise: our democratically elected Congress and president, of course. ”They won because they held Congress and the presidency, and therein lies the lesson: We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town.”
History is sure to smile on his selfless stand.
2. Glenn Beck, who warns that we’re on the cusp of a socialist/fascist takeover on a daily basis, had to reach to do justice to the drama of the occasion. He didn’t disappoint, wielding his vast historical knowledge to (unfavorably) compare the vote to the Gettysburg Address, Iwo Jima and the moon landing, Civil Rights and the heroism of the 9/11 first responders, before landing on a more appropriate set of analogies: the attack on Pearl Harbor; the St. Valentines massacre (“when the mob stepped in and cleaned things up!”); Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler; AND THE HINDENBURG!!!! “You see, being historic isn’t always a good thing,” he somberly concluded.
3.Shock Jock Neal Boortz took to Twitter to make an even more wildly offensive comparison. “Nancy Pelosi will be grinning and laughing this afternoon. Today will do more damage than 9/11.” Think the people who sometimes pose as responsible lawmakers will denounce Boortz’ (and Beck’s) outrageous exploitation of 9/11? No, because they’re too busy doing stuff like this.
4. Anti-abortion terrorist Randall Terry is using his pull with the Pope to get Nancy Pelosi excommunicated, because helping pass a bill that will extend health care to more than 30 million uninsured Americans does not obviate her role in unleashing a vast fetus Armageddon. Terry and some other crazy people held a one-minute protest on the outskirts of St. Peter’s Square outside the Vatican, bearing signs asking for Pelosi to be denied communion and excommunicated.
5. Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman channeled Glenn Beck and Boortz, comparing the bill to the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War (he thinks it’s not like those things), and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the Clarence Thomas hearings,
Then he says that passing a health care bill in a democratically elected Congress is tantamount to Soviet invasion, and calls for revolution: “March 21 did indeed change life as we knew it … I won’t forget the events of this day and while they heralded a change for the worst, I vow to be part of the revolution to unravel this mess.”
6. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association also offered a solution: shooting people.
… The last remedy left — other than bloodshed — is the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states any power not delegated to the federal government. The central government is exercising a power that it does not have, and can only exercise by usurping that power from the states. State governments can legitimately and constitutionally decide not to cooperate with the central government on the legal ground that Congress has transgressed the boundaries marked out in our founding document. The central government is trespassing on the sovereign territory of the states, and the states have every right to throw them off their property.
Trespassers can be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Squatters can be evicted. If they won’t leave, they can be tossed. And in the worst case scenario, if they won’t surrender peacefully, they can be shot….
It’s not as if in our divided, overheated political environment – where large segments of the population are armed and believe the government hates freedom — calls to violence could go wrong.
7. FoxNation.com somehow resisted the temptation to dress Obama up like Dr. Giggles, and instead opted for this slightly classier hyperbole:
8. Matt Drudge splashed this headline across his site: “A day that will live in infirmary!” — going for a combo of offensively uncalled-for historical analogy and really awkward pun.
9. As legislators prepared to vote, Sean Hannity wondered if that hour was when America turned on the path “completely towards” socialism. (Actually, you’ll know for sure when Van Jones and Cass Sunstien knock on your door in the middle of the night and drag you to a gulag.)
10.John McCain, though, sketched out the scariest scenario of all: a lack of GOP cooperation going forward. “There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year,” he threatened. “They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.” Oh sh*t, what if the GOP starts a campaign of mindless obstructionism, stalling Congress and making it next to impossible to pass legislation?
Health Care Reform Passes: And The Rest Is Just Noise: (Why the health care bill is the greatest social achievement of our time.)
The New Republic, DECEMBER 24, 2009, by Jonathan Chait:
American liberals have a habit of withdrawing into cynicism and ennui at the most inopportune moments. The 2000 presidential election, and subsequent recount, was one such moment. The most die-hard reaches of the left, deeming the Democratic Party hopelessly corrupt, rallied to Ralph Nader’s fulsome populist denunciation of Al Gore’s subservience to the corporate agenda. Among more moderate quarters, an attitude of wry detachment prevailed. (“G.O.P.-lite, Democrat-lite,” sighed Frank Rich, “For the 95 percent of the country unwilling to go for Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan, that is the choice, it always has been the choice, and it will still be the choice on Nov. 7.”) Those liberals who did see something large at stake took on an almost apologetic tone, conceding the lack of any inspired positive choice and focusing instead on the dangers of Bush.
The right, meanwhile, was engulfed in passion that occasionally flared into rage. Mobs of chanting conservatives harassed Gore at his residence day after day. Another such mob intimidated Miami canvassers into abandoning a recount then seen as potentially decisive. The left met all this with a shrug.
The denouement of the health care debate has brought about a similar moment in the political culture. The opponents of the bill are full of passionate intensity. The right, of course, is subsumed in rage and paranoia. Conservatives have been joined by fiery liberals like Howard Dean and a slew of left-wing blogs, denouncing the bill as a corporate giveaway and urging its defeat. The attitude closer to the center is more resignation and disappointment. (Frank Rich again: “Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger [Woods]’s public image.”) The endorsements invariably have a defensive tone—the bill “has some imperfections but is worthy of support,” concludes a New York Times editorial.
At some level, it is possible to understand the roots of liberal frustration. The machinery of Congress has ground away at the health care bill, as it does to almost any bill. But at a broader level, the liberal mood is insane. What has emerged from that machinery is not merely “better than nothing” or “a good start.” It is the most significant American legislative triumph in at least four decades. Why can so few people see that?
* The BILL ITSELF HAS PASSED! (10:48 p.m.) ((The vote was 219 to 212, with all Republicans against)) The second vote, on recommiting the bill, has failed as desired by Democrats. The third vote on the reconciliation package, has taken place, as reported above.
Washington Post, March 22, 2010, by Chris Cillizza:
Hoping to counter a series of Republican efforts aimed at winning governorships and state legislatures in advance of the decennial congressional redistricting process, the Democratic Governors Association is launching its own venture, led by veteran party strategist Harold Ickes.
Ickes, who served as one of the top operatives in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, characterized his role as fundraiser in chief (“I don’t do strategy,” he says wryly) for the effort, which is being called Project SuRGe (Stop Republican Gerrymandering). While acknowledging that redistricting is a tougher sell to donors than a presidential race or Senate contest — “It’s in the weeds,” Ickes says — he sees his job as “explaining to people the implications of redistricting at the federal level.”
Republicans have clearly grasped the importance of controlling the line-drawing process. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a group funded in 2002 and dedicated to winning state legislative races, has recently been taken over by a who’s who of national Republicans including Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, and former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Reynolds of New York. (Ickes praised Gillespie as “formidable”.)
Pelosi says 350 groups support the health care bill, including the AARP (the largest seniors organization), the United Methodist Church and some Catholic groups.
* CNN Video: Boehner: “Hell No You Can’t! ((reminds me of the old English novels about Parliament. ~ 10:40 p.m.))
NBC News Flash: Stupak Now a Yes Vote
Stupak Press Conf. on Health Care Bill Agreement with White House — Hyde amendment language inserted into bill: (We can sympathize with Stupak’s heartfelt beliefs) THIS MEANS 7 “YES” VOTES ((Health care reform is as good as done.))
* Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report: “Wow – Nancy Pelosi is getting so emotional, her forehead just moved.” ((On the Other Hand, Markos, owner of Daily Kos: It took the first black president and the first woman speaker to get HCR.))
Reps. John Larson (D- Conn.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind. ) didn’t agree on much Sunday morning, except one thing: It looks like Democrats have the votes to pass health care reform later this afternoon.
“We’ve got the votes,” Larson said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” an assertion he also made on ABC’s “This Week.”
“This is about whose side you’re on,” Larson added.” We’re on the side of the American people and those who have been denied health care.”
12:09 p.m. — Markos, owner of Daily Kos, on Twitter: “Yesterday: Dems will deem substitute amendment passed. GOP goes nuts! Today: Dems will deem subst amndmt passed. No one notices”.
12:08 p.m. — Markos, owner of Daily Kos, on Twitter: “Bart Stupak orders, then cancels, lunch.”
12:06 p.m. — Matt Yglesias of Think Progess, on Twitter: “Greatest progressive victory in 45 years looks imminent”.
John Cory, Truthout: “He is a self-professed rodeo clown and a millionaire huckster – a true American success story. Glenn Beck said, ‘I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes.’ Really? Glenn Beck is a Mormon.”
“We have the votes. We are going to make history today,” Rep. John Larson D-Conn., the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said today on “This Week”. “President Roosevelt passed Social Security; President Roosevelt passed Medicare; and today, Barack Obama will pass health care reform, demonstrating whose side we are on,” Larson told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.
“We are going to be much better positioned politically…if we pass this,” David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s campaign, told ABC’s Jon Karl this morning on “This Week.” “We had 15 million new voters vote in the 2008 election. These were people who were cynical that their vote really mattered. If we don’t pass health care, I think that sends a very depressing message,” Plouffe said. But, Plouffe insisted, if the bill passes “it’s going to be a very powerful message to them that the vote mattered and they ought to stay involved in politics.”
“We will see if they pass this bill,” Karl Rove, who was “the Architect” behind George W. Bush’s two successful Presidential elections, said. “I hope they don’t. I pray they don’t. It will be an economic disaster for the country if they do.” Rove said that the health care bill used “Bernie Madoff-style accounting” and was an “gigantic disaster.”
“Karl and the Republicans would be familiar with that,” Plouffe retorted. “Under their leadership, they took us from big budget surpluses to a $1.3 trillion deficit,” he said.
Oh, does the big bad Rovie use huge words now like “gigantic disaster”??? Poor Rovie, no college, just a country pig from Texas. See Plouffe demolishes Rove – Updated, Daily Kos, March 21, 2010, by Kitty.
WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton poked fun at Republicans, Democrats, his own health and his audience of reporters Saturday night, telling the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner he was there because “I really didn’t have anything much better to do tonight.”
Clinton, who stood in for President Barack Obama, said Democrats are going to pass health care.
“It may not happen in my lifetime, or Dick Cheney’s, but hopefully by Easter,” he said referring to his and the former to vice president’s heart ailments.
Tea party protesters scream ‘nigger’ at black congressman 20 Mar 2010 Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted “nigger” Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s. Protesters also shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, spat on at least one black lawmaker and confronted an openly gay congressman with taunts. Capitol Police escorted the members of Congress into the Capitol after the confrontation.
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Protester spits on Rep. Cleaver 20 Mar 2010 A congressman who was spat on by a protestor on Capitol Hill says he is declining to press charges, but turns out the Capitol Police say they made no arrests. Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver was making his way through a group of angry protestors when the incident occurred. Cleaver, who is black, was also one of several lawmakers who faced racial epithets as they walked to the Capitol to vote.
Brick thrown through window of Rep. Slaughter’s office 19 Mar 2010 The “Slaughter Solution” on health care isn’t the only thing that has come under attack in U.S. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter’s world this week. Sometime early this morning, someone threw a brick through the front window of her Pine Avenue office. The damage was discovered about 12:30 a.m., city police said. Slaughter, D-Fairport, NY, is head of the House Rules Committee, which will structure the debate on health care reform votes set for this weekend.
Obama Rallies Democrats in Final Push for Health Bill 20 Mar 2010 President Obama and House Democratic leaders on Saturday closed in on the votes needed to pass landmark ‘health care’ legislation, with the outcome hinging on their efforts to placate a handful of lawmakers who wanted the bill to include tighter limits on insurance coverage for abortions. Mr. Obama, in an emotional address at the Capitol, exhorted rank-and-file House Democrats to approve the bill, telling them they were on the edge of making history with a decisive vote scheduled for Sunday. “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country,” he said. “This is one of those moments.”
Dems race to lock in final votes 21 Mar 2010 Democratic leaders are still locking down the final votes needed to pass the centerpiece of their domestic agenda — an historic rewrite of the nation’s health care laws that would expand [overpriced] health insurance access to nearly every American. They hope to secure the votes of a trio of veteran Blue Dogs – Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California, and retiring Reps. Marion Berry (Ark.) and John Tanner (Tenn.) – as well as a handful of anti-abortion Democrats who could break from hard-liner Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) to back the bill.
Why You Should Be For The HCR Bill (Talking Points)
1.) Partially closes up the “donut” hole for prescription drugs in Medicare.
2.) Allows parents to claim children on their insurance up to age 26.
3.) Postpones the date at which Medicare becomes insolvent by over 9 years.
4.) No denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. The insurance companies HAVE TO give you insurance and are limited in how much they can make the premiums more expensive just because you have a pre-existing condition. (Of COURSE they don’t want this to pass!!)
5.) The abortion language in this bill — pending a possible cave to Stupak and his roughly ten followers — is ABORTION NEUTRAL. It does NOT make it easier to get an abortion, and it does NOT increase federal funding for abortions. The language roughly follows the Hyde amendment which is fairly tough about abortions. This bill does NOT make it easier to get an abortion.
6.) This bill SAVES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (AND YOU) MONEY: Politico — “The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the health reform plan will cost $940 billion over 10 years, but will trim the federal deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years and $1.2 trillion in the second ten years.”
7.) COVERS almost 31 million uninsured Americans, people like you and me, people with hopes and dreams, people who are now suffering without any health insurance.
8.) According to Congressman Wasserman Schultz, the top five insurance companies have just arranged “a 56% increase in their profits while dropping 2.7 million people covered by their insurance plans” (I think that’s in one year, not sure).
She spoke to one small business owner who “said that last year his insurance company raised premiums for his employees by 172% simply because he had one sick employee. Our bill will change that, to bring costs down and make sure that [costs are] manageable.”
…OR YOU CAN HAVE THE STATUS QUO. People it’s up to US! Now Get on these PHONES!
President Barack Hussein Obama quoting Abraham Lincoln: “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” Now, everyone makes a big deal out of Obama’s middle name…. Did you know that Obama’s FIRST name Barack is an African name, cognate with the Hebrew “Baruch” and meaning “blessed” in both languages???
Melissa Bean is a yes, as is Baron Hill, and Sanford Bishop, and Bill Owens. They’ve all been added to dday’s count which he now as “204-206, 11 undecided, 10 Stupak bloc.” The “no” vote added so far today is John Barrow.
Stupak still commands more than seven votes against the bill, said Rep. Dan Lipinksi (D-Ill.).
“They’re still short on votes,” said Lipinski, a Stupak confederate. “There’s still time and they still need votes.”
Lipinski noted that the agreement that led to Stupak’s stronger abortion language in the original House bill came about at the 11th hour. “Last time, we know what happened: They came at the last minute so we’re continuing to work on it.” Lipinski would not rule out support of an executive action by Obama, but added, “I’ll definitely have some questions about that.”
Shortly after her comments, Pelosi huddled in her office with anti-abortion rights Democratic Reps. Tim Carney (Pa.), Kathy Dahlkemper (Pa.) and Steve Driehaus (Ohio). After exiting the room, Dahlkemper told reporters, “We’re still working on it.”
Brian Beutler reports that Pelosi is also meeting with Stupak. Maybe he he won’t get his separate vote, but he’s still in negotiations to get something.
This is before there was any talk of an executive order by Obama. Here is the beginning of tdub’s diary:
UPDATEx9: Rep. DeGette of the pro-choice caucus says Dems don’t need Stupak and that she will support an executive order clarifying what everyone with a brain knows already, that the Senate bill will not spend Federal money on abortions. Pelosi also backs the executive order. (HuffPo, h/t Just Keep it Simple Stupid) It looks like “pro-choice female Dems” were a key part of giving Stupak the shaft.
UPDATEx8: Fullest reporting yet at Ezra’s twitter list for the latest! Brian Beutler says there are maybe 1-2 votes still to get.
The fact that 222 House Democrats voted down a Republican effort to outlaw “deem and pass” as a way to pass the health-care reform bill strikes me as very strong evidence that this bill is going to pass. In some ways, the easiest way for nervous House Democrats to let this thing die would’ve been to hide behind procedural concerns.
Great Live Video of Obama talking with Dems on MSNBC.
Charyl on Twitter has good phone numbers to call Reps to vote YES on HCR.
See, Timing for tomorrow’s votes, MSNBC First Read, March 20, 2010, by Domenico Montenaro: Vote on rule around 3pm, on reconciliation around 5:30, on Senate bill sometime after. Hopefully signed into law tomorrow evening.
Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives continued scouring for votes Friday among reluctant anti-abortion and conservative Democrats in search of enough “Yeas” to triumph in Sunday’s historic vote on a $940 billion health care overhaul — and they appeared tantalizingly close to their goal.
Democrats picked up five more “yes” votes Friday when Reps. John Boccieri, D-Ohio, Charlie Wilson, D-Ohio, Allen Boyd, D-Fla., Suzanne Kosmas, D-Fla., and Scott Murphy, D-N.Y., all said they’d support the bill. Boccieri, Boyd and Kosmas had voted against the House health care bill in November. Wilson voted for it then but had been undecided about Sunday’s vote.
Democrats need 216 votes for passage, and if no “ayes” switch to “no,” they should have enough. However, qualms about abortion, as well as some other concerns on a variety of topics, kept the outcome in some doubt Friday.
“Peace of Mind”: What we’re all looking for. Some of us try our best to find happiness serving God. Or the Universe….. or Jesus, as we are led. 4:39
