Senate Health Care Reform Bill Unveiled
Last night the Harry Reid unveiled the Senate health care reform bill, called The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The whole bill can be read here (warning PDF) and a 2-page summary can be read at this link (PDF).
The health care bill–which includes an opt-out public option–will require $849 billion over 10 years in new spending, to be paid for with cuts to Medicare, while reducing the deficit by $127 billion.
In that time it will extend coverage to 31 million Americans–94 percent of citizens will be covered by 2019.
Over the second 10 years, CBO projects even greater cost savings–up to $650 billion, with the caveat that after 10 years, their analyses become highly uncertain.
That price tag should reassure the faux fiscal hawks (who never voted no on war funding which is apparently free) – if the price tag was really what they’re worried about. It still contains the opt-out public option so that means that Reid will have to deal with in some way the Senate a#%hole caucus: Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson and Blance Lincoln. Reconciliation is still on the table:
In response to a question from TPMDC Nelson told reporters that, at a meeting this afternoon with Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Reid “talked about process, procedure, discussion about reconciliation and a whole host of issues of that sort.”
“Nobody’s really jumping up and down to push for reconciliation,” Nelson said, “he’s not threatening that, but anybody can conclude that if you don’t move something on to the floor, that is one of the possibilities.”
Nelson said he has still not committed to vote for even the first procedural vote, but in a sign that he’s leaning toward bringing a bill to the floor, he emphasized his view that the floor debate is a chance to improve the legislation. “I wanted to make it clear that that is, unlike some are suggesting, is not the vote…it’s a motion to enter into the debate and possible amendments and improvements of the legislation” Nelson said. “The vote is the second cloture vote, and that is the cloture on a motion to cease debate, and I wanted that clear, because I’ve already begun to see people out there say, ‘oh no, no, if you vote [to take it up] you’ve voted for health care.”
At this point I don’t really see the difference between having the Senate Democratic a#%hole caucus in those Senate seats and having Republicans in those seats and I’ll bet that the voters in their home states think the same thing. IMO, if they vote to kill health care reform I think they’re also killing their careers.
Tags: Health Care Reform, U.S. Senate
Take a moment to consider were the Senate a#@$$hole caucas comes from. They are not endangering thier seats at all, they are as entrenched as Tom Carper and Mike Castle and deal with an electorate frequently too stupid to tell what benefits them and what will hurt them. Personally I’d love to see a filibuster, a real filibuster and not just a threat of one. Now that just moight endanger a few a@##$$holes.
Jesse Jackson: ‘You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man’
The Hill ^ | 11/18/2009 | Mike Soraghan
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill. “We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” The remark stirred a murmur at the reception, held by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation as part of a series of events revolving around the 25th anniversary of Jackson’s run for president. Several CBC members were in attendance, including Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who’d introduced Jackson. Davis, who is running for governor,…
Blanche Lincoln is up for re-election in 2010 and she’s losing to unknown Republican challengers. I believe that I’ve read that progressive groups have raised $3.5M for a primary challenger to Lincoln so she’s pretty much screwed.
Lieberman is up in 2012 and his popularity is pretty low, especially among Democrats. I don’t think Lieberman will get a pass this time from Republicans either in 2012, not with the party purity purging going on.
Landrieu has always squeaked by in elections. I’m not sure when she’s up, it must not be until 2012.
I haven’t seen any numbers for Ben Nelson but I think he’s still popular in Nebraska.
Dump Blanche Lincoln in 2010. We can make it up by winning the open seat in Missouri.
Lieberman is DOA in 2012 – he might as well try to run for President, because Connecticut wouldn’t nominate him for dogcatcher at this point.
Landrieu just beat a solid challenger last year, she’s on cruise control until 2014. Nothing’s going to change her tune for the better unless people start repopulating New Orleans.
Ben Nelson gets elected on the basis of his centrism, and is untouchable in a primary. He’s pretty much all Nebraska Democrats have.
Max Baucus, unfortunately, just got re-elected last year. His stalling and backstabbing on the Senate Bill have ruined his approval with Montana Democrats. I’d say voters will have forgotten by 2014, but the current “delay eveything until 2014” plan just might bring this issue back up in time to either help him (“here’s that health care I promised!”) or hurt him (“Hi, remember how Obama wanted health care in 2009? Over the past 5 years, I’ve managed to dillute it out of existence.”)
Conyers: ‘I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can’
The Hill ^ By Michael O’Brien – 11/19/09 11:16 AM ET
President Barack Obama is “bowing down” to Republicans and corporate interests on health reform, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said Thursday.
Conyers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a longtime advocate of single-payer healthcare, blasted the president for a perceived weakness in leadership on health reform.
“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House,” Conyers said on the liberal Bill Press radio show. “He only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t even anything to write home about.”
unvieled today at over 2000 pages long, to be voted on this Saturday without having been read by any senator.
lizard i hate to break it to you but senators don’t always read bills. They have a staff, who divides the bill into digestable chunks, they read it, and then provide the senator with a summary of important points/legal analysis so he/she can understand the bill and vote.
Also, Santa Claus isn’t real.
Besides, reading bills is a major part of their job description. Geez, it’s like a firefighter complaining about having to put out fires.
An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate ObamaCare bills. We’d like to compare this dispatch to the AP’s dispatch earlier this week “fact checking” Sarah Palin’s new book. Here goes:
Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
• ObamaCare bills: 2
• Palin book: 11
Number of pages in document being covered:
• ObamaCare bills: 4,064
• Palin book: 432
Number of pages per AP reporter:
• ObamaCare bill: 2,032
• Palin book: 39.3
On a per-page basis, that is, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican officeholder as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and an untold number of lives. That’s what they call accountability journalism.
wsj.com
While we may well have some of senators try to shoot down the bill, the sad thing is that while some people will be upset, there is unfortunately too many people who don’t seem to care or will be happy that nothing has been done to protect people from the possibility of going bankrupt if they get sick. They would rather play that lottery and let other people who get sick suffer.
Unveiled and filled with potential and pitfalls. We need to move forward to a model of the public option that will work and is proven. http://cli.gs/23yYaM/