Medicare has really good rates, because they’re negotiating for every senior in America. Private insurance companies could not have competed with that.

and lord know we can’t have *that*!

not only do I tend to be intolerant of stoopid, evidently I can’t even decipher it.

As i read this -, he’s essentially saying – “the government could do this so much better – so this must be stopped.”

what am I missing?

The overpricing is part of the three pronged plan: the higher the cost of providers, drugs, hospitals, tests, and medical supplies, the higher the premiums have to be for regular folks who can’t afford them. The second prong is to underfund the program by eliminating employer mandates for all but the biggest firms. With the reduced penalities and employer paid premiums, the burden to pay shifts to employees and government. The third prong is a result of the first two; premiums rocket upwards to equal those in expensive, private plans and as a result, employees and self-employed need larger subsidies. Blue dog reduced subsidies put a squeeze on both employees and government. The result is that the unaffordable, underfunded, overpriced plan quickly fails.

The insurance companies, the drug companies and the hospital companies want this bill “dead”. This is the American way of doing business. Their goal is not to provide a valuable scarce and essential community service at a fair price. No. Half of their job is to prevent any and all competition by whatever means possible, including by buying legislators’ loyalties. The clear, consistent, and enormous profits of the health insurance industry show that they have a monopoly, even as their customer base shrinks to those left unrescinded because they never got sick.

So they go after the public plan in a three pronged attack: #1 overpay providers, #2 underfund the plan with no employer mandate, #3 reduce the subsidies to mandated citizens. The public plan fails and they stay in business.

This is insanity. “medicare has really good rates” so we have to kill it. Because the role of government is not to protect the citizen but to ensure the profits of private insurance. It’s very simple, isn’t it? Our Representatives and Senators are either in favor of the best deal for their citizens or the best deal for the corporate insurance company. What is wrong with us that we keep electing advocates for corporate greed?

Asshole.

Isn’t it true that the operating costs of Medicare are quite low when compared to other insurance programs. Way to cut costs, Mike.

A lot of our regulars are missing from this thread. Quiet day today.

How’s everybody doing?

And now coops being floated from Obama. After a while, I begin wonder why I bother.

One foot in front of the other.

Thank you so much for the work you are doing. You’re truly making a difference.

Medicare has really good rates, because they’re negotiating for every senior in America. Private insurance companies could not have competed with that.

Shorter Ross, “I have to take care of the corporations who keep me in power”.

Yesterday, at Union Square in Manhattan, I saw some of the khaki-pants-ed, tatooed monkeys who always argue for what actually hurts them the most. I hope they lie alone, choking on their own saliva at 3 a.m. without a call button to summon help some day, like I did in 2004. Then they would suddenly scream that their care was lousy because they weren’t rich. And they would suffer. They don’t know what it’s like to face your Maker without a call button at 3 a.m. Fools. http://crush.typepad.com (emasculation-blues)
http://apocalypse-blues.typepad.com/

Gov Crist gets to appoint a Senator this could be a whole new ball game. The House and Senate can throw out anything even the Blue Dogs stuff on a Bill.
Crist is running in a state where Obama could help him. Crist after being passed over by Jon McCain might want to switch sides like Arlen Spector did.
This isn’t over yet.
Worse come to worse Obama should Veto it.

Very nicely summarized. We wouldn’t want any of that real competition stuff. Price-fixing is working very well. Let’s not rock the boat, right Mike?

How do these fuckers sleep at night? Oh yeah. Unlimited free samples of Ambien from their corporate masters.

MIke Ross wants to seem important. By throwing Democrats under the Bus I think he watched the film “Mean Girls” one too many a time.
He doesn’t realize high school is over. He doesn’t realize that you do need friends in the world.

These people are beyond contempt. Loath is too tame a word. Scum? Parasites? Callous pricks? Will the people of Arkansas send this piece of garbage into retirement?

I’d love to post the reponse I got from my wingnut rep when I asked him where he stood on the healthcare issue. With the people, or with the heathcare industry. Seriously I don’t know how they sleep at night. I don’t know what happens when they get to Washington. I mean I expect this kind of thing from the wingnuts but from so called democrats… I don’t know. I’m way past disgusted, but have to press forward. My family and millions of others have way too much skin in the game to give up now.

If Mike sticks us with this bill then lets just say No to a crap bill. That and we show Mike whose boss lets end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now two can play games on with holding funds. until they get what they want.
The second we end both wars the second we have the cash for healthcare.

The bribery is so obvious, why can’t law enforcement step in and arrest these bastards? There has to be a fundamental law that would allow state police to arrest someone from their state that is openly shopping for bribes. It got Blago arrested, why won’t it get these congress “persons” arrested?

Yep, single-payer will fail, but it matters for the public option vote by how much. Presumably the Wiener Amendment will be first up in the amendments. So folks can vote for this and (if) when it fails, they can vote for the public option knowing that they have some strong core support for the public option.

Why this is important is because those single-payer advocates who have been sitting on the sidelines on whipping the vote now can whip the vote for at least the Wiener Amendment, which is now on the table. And they can whip the vote for a strong public option as a fallback position just to give Mike Ross heartburn.

BTW, Business Week has an article showing that Mike Ross is in the pocket of UnitedHealthcare, who have a former Steny Hoyer staffer running their lobbying effort.

Most likely not, they are far too busy voting against their own interests.

I want us to go after Ross in 2010 with everything we have. This guy is as sleazy as any politician I have ever seen. He’s NOT one of us.

“I’m way past disgusted, but have to press forward. My family and millions of others have way too much skin in the game to give up now.”

Seconded.

When will progressives channel their outrage at these pricks and develop a strategy to hound them wherever they go to insure they will never have any peace for the crimes they commit against the American people daily. They shouldn’t be allowed to go to the bathroom without someone being in their face.

As i read this -, he’s essentially saying – “the government could do this so much better – so this must be stopped.”

what am I missing?

I don’t think you’re missing anything. Those were my thoughts exactly as I read that.

Look at the VA system. Of course the government could do it much better. The real point is reform must be stopped because the money these pricks rake in from the lobby would dry up.

The only thing that’s going to slow down this train is public financing of campaigns – from dog-catcher to the presidency. Further, if and when it is learned that a bribe has taken place, both parties go to the pen. And I don’t mean “prison resort”, either. I mean serious ass-rape prison. Will that happen while we’re young? Ummmm….I’m guessing not. Accordingly, we need to focus on unseating principals like dipshit Ross, etal.

that Business Week article is certainly worth a read:

What people in Washington tend not to discuss, at least on the record, is the open secret that insurers are minimizing their forecasts of the eventual windfall they will enjoy from expanded coverage for Americans. UnitedHealth has given certain key members of Congress details about its finances and tax liability—both historical numbers and figures projected under various cost-sharing scenarios. But some on Capitol Hill are skeptical. “The bottom line,” says an aide to the Senate Finance Committee, “is that health reform would lead to increased revenues and profits [for the insurance industry]. … There will be [added] costs [to the companies], but we’re not sure the revenues and profits will be as low as they say.”

the Washington Democratic gameplan was corporate welfare from the get-go, with a scuffle as to whether to provide a fig-leaf of a public option or not.

that mandate part should give you all nightmares, but Obama is for it, so critical faculties honed to a razors edge during the (R) admin were suspended, as is the custom.

The only way “coops” would be acceptable is if they are NATIONAL coops. State-based coops could never compete with NATIONAL insurance companies.

Because cost control and containment are what this so called healthcare reform is about–right?

More and more this entire episode going way back into 2008 during the run-up to November 2008 election was to push some happy talk BS while shaking down the usual suspects who surely would give handsomely to have a seat at the “reform” table. Little doubt where the Obama gang was on this being the case. Word now dripping out that Obama WH may well let this entire so called healthcare reform function more like political payback–kill off any viable public anything–and assuredly is greasing this deal to kill any talk of Single Payer coming up anytime within next 10-15 years.

Barack Obama is proving himself to be quite the political grifter more and more.

Really like that bit about how Medicare is really good at costs control which is why any public option must not be based on Medicare. The SOBs–

Barack Obama does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012. This Obama WH is playing one damn cynical game if the whole point of this so called healthcare reform song and dance was little more then shake the money trees–put the fixes in–and polish the resulting turd and call it “reform”.

The bastards.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” -Thomas Jefferson

Yup. State plans would be crushed. A well-managed national coop would force the other players to compete.

Suck it, Blue Cross, etal.

That’s exactly what I understood, as well. *bangs head on desk*

Ross is already being targeted by the GOP – and frankly, he’s conducted himself just as Jane and others predicted he would

No, I’ve already promised myself once this fight (or this stage of this fight) is over, it will be my mission in life to drag the smoldering ruins of Jan Schawkowksy’s political career through the halls of Congress for any wannabe Emmanuel enabler to see.

actions have consequences congresswoman

I did see on Mythbusters a while back that you can indeed polish a turd.

“Ross is already being targeted by the GOP.”

Why would they bother. He’s already doing their bidding.

Real Change:

http://www.salon.com/comics/to…..index.html

Wow. Could he make it any more clear that he’s all about protecting Ins Co profits and NOT about making care/coverage affordable for Americans?

Level playing field, my fat, white a$$ets.

Thank you, Jane.

FunnyWheelieDiva

Word.

Simply tossing money and electing “representatives” doesn’t work.

At all.

Medicare has really good rates, because they’re negotiating for every senior in America. Private insurance companies could not have competed with that…

Now we’ve leveled the playing field…

–Mike Ross

That should be item #1 in every newspaper, newscast, blog, etc. in his district.

Thanks, but I take no direction from slaveholders.

Asshole.

LOL. I read the post and that’s exactly what I was gonna say! Beat me to it. Now I have to think of something else. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Good. You?

Did you miss this paragraph from Jane’s post:

So, the single payer advocates on the committee caved on tying reimbursement rates to Medicare, which Ross believed would have “led to single payer,” in exchange for a vote on single payer on the floor — which everyone acknowledges will fail, and the Blue Dogs had no problem with.

So the single payer advocates like Schakowsky traded away something that had a fighting chance and represented actual change for the better to get a kabuki vote that they knew would fail?

In other words, once again, the “perfect” (Nader, single payer advocates) gleefully let themselves used by the bad (Blue Dogs, GOP, other enemies of reform) to kill the good (Gore, public option).

Don’t you get tired of being used by the GOP? I mean, granted, they pay well, as the Pennsylvania Greens can tell us. But really now?

It’s high holidays in August for vacationers and sun worshipers.

Anyway, I can’t get behind cheap. Need to make it more expensive so everyone is equally miserable. The goal is to raise the misery index. You go, Blue Dawg!

you’ve articulated a nice corollary to the Ratchet Effect

where the purpose of faux reform efforts undertaken by the Democratic powers that be is to divert and neutralize efforts for real reform that have been simmering outside their control.

see for example the antiwar movement prior to its capitulation to the campaign to elect John ‘reporting for duty’ Kerry.

When the single-payer folks pull stunts like Schakowsky’s because they won’t back something they know would pass if they’d only get behind it, does Obama really have much choice here?

Nobody else is being smart and brave here, aside from Jane and those folks pushing the pledge. Why should he be?

hey PW, maybe you could take a moment to explain why imposing a mandate to purchase policies from the profit driven cartel is “the good”?

they are salivating over it, as the Businessweek article noted:

the open secret that insurers are minimizing their forecasts of the eventual windfall they will enjoy from expanded mandated coverage for Americans.

I doubt you will manage to reply to this simple point, but I certainly await hopefully.

While single payer never had a chance, not in the highly capitalistic US of A, a quality public option was eminently possible. Until things like this:

Initially the single payer advocates on the Energy and Commerce committee had balked when the Blue Dogs insisted that a public plan not be tied to Medicare, but they backed down in exchange for a floor vote on single payer:

Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) doubts the single-payer plan can garner sufficient votes to pass. But he said it’s important for the plan to be given a chance, in order to assuage the left-wing of the Democratic caucus.

So, the single payer advocates on the committee were “assuaged” and caved on tying reimbursement rates to Medicare, which Ross believed would have “led to single payer,” in exchange for a vote on single payer on the floor — which everyone acknowledges will fail, and the Blue Dogs had no problem with.

Jan Schakowsky once again leads the “progressive” bail in an exercise in complete kabuki.  If you don’t expect anything more than this from your “progressive” representatives, this all you’re going to get.  

But you knew that. Say hello to your GOP buddies for us!

seriosuly, what is the point of this exercise, other than to anger the bases of both parties?
the gop goons are losing their shit, the democrats are losing their shit, and..

well, quite frankly, i am sick to death of both of these parties. i think they’re nothing but corporate dicklicking tools who make the bukkake participants look lie the model of dignity and respectability.

From Mike Ross’ Health Care Web Site

Because of the overwhelming attention on this critically important issue, I will be hosting a district-wide town hall forum at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia on Friday, August 14 at 2:00 p.m. CDT and two district-wide telephone town hall forums on Thursday, August 13 and Thursday, August 27 both at 7:10 p.m. CDT. These town hall forums allow me to communicate with my constituents from across the 29 counties and 150 towns that make up Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District.

Perhaps he should hear from us?

I am considering a personal protest: violating any law that requires me to pay a corporation, ie, to provide law-enforced profits for any business.

I will refuse to pay for insurance and instead take it out of the taxpayer by using the emergency for all my medical needs (and skip on paying).

I REFUSE to obey any law that, by force of law, mandates profits for ANY company.

Well at least we have to give props to Ross for finally being honest. Thus far the Blue Dogs have been spewing all sorts of “fiscal conservative” nonsense. If they were in fact a fiscally conservative group, they would be advocating for single payer rather than working day and night to kill it. Now maybe we can bust these pinheads for their spendthrift ways with our tax dollars.

We have to dry up the faucet that’s filling the trough for these porkers. Corporate funding of campaigns can no longer be free speech. it is bribery, clear and simple.

Sporkovat, they weren’t referring specifically to the public option there and you know it. In fact, that page-five passage (which I notice you very tightly cropped) and much of the rest of that article is based on the assumption that there will be no public option in the final bill.

But nice try. Mike Ross high-fives you along with Nader and Mitch McConnell and the UnitedHealth gang.

ignoring the ad hominems, awaiting response to 46.

go on, you could be the first to say “I can’t wait until they start imposing fines on people too strapped to pay the premiums for garbage insurance that the Democrats have mandated.”

think that mandate will play well in the voting booth? then, please, explain!

Remember, be polite. The teabaggers will want to bait you into acting like they are.

the mandate, which you are failing to address as expected, is in the ‘reforms’ proposed irrespective of whether there is a public option or not.

there will be lots of folks like praedor whose instinct will be to refuse a tithe to the insurance cartel – what say you to that? bow down and pay, peasant?

I already responded, and is “ad hominem” your way of admitting that you are working hand in glove with conservatives much as the PA Greens?

Polite ends when a fist flies. First fist in my direction (or any physical act of aggression) gets a proper response. Turning the other cheek or merely shaking one’s head and ‘tsk-tsk’ing is NOT the proper response to Brownshirt thuggery (and this IS the modern equivalent of Brownshirt thuggery).

That mere ‘tsk-tsk’ nonsense didn’t work in Germany and it wont work here. It NEVER works anywhere.

Too many congressional progressives are always more interesting in grandstanding than achieving substantive accomplishment. Insisting on a public plan tied to Medicare rates doesn’t get Reps. Schakowsky and Wiener, etc. nearly as much publicity (and adoration from the dumber leftists) as being able to offer a clean, pure, and doomed single-payer bill with their names on it. Fluff matters.

Will there be hearings on the bill? CBO scoring? Leadership support? Of course not. Why would anyone go to the trouble for a symbolic gesture? Unbelievable.

If Democrats are intent on passing a bill that is tantamount to electoral suicide (the unintended consequences alone are fatal), I say good riddance. Add “incumbent” to the list of people I’ll never vote for.

Yup.

I have long since removed my name from all the DNC and other Dem mailing lists and hang up the instant I get an ID from them on the phone. No money, no votes. They are dead to me.

Yeah, that would really burn my britches if we don’t have a good public option but I’m mandated by law to funnel more money into the corporate coffers of some disease profiteer.

Oh, come on, Sporkie. The article’s opening pages — which you carefully avoid referencing — talk about how UnitedHealth and other foes of reform worked to block the public option. That’s what Business Week meant by the article’s title, “The Health Insurers Have Already Won“.

Here’s the key graf, right on the first page, that shows this:

The industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business. UnitedHealth has distinguished itself by more deftly and aggressively feeding sophisticated pricing and actuarial data to information-starved congressional staff members. With its rivals, the carrier has also achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.

So, with the basic assumption made from the get-go that the public option — which you deride as a sellout to the industry — is dead or may as well be dead, that’s why the conditions are obtained in the page five sentence you cherry-picked. If the public option is dead, then of course what’s left is going to give the industry profits, not reduce them.

And realize that by opposing the public option — which was the only meaningful option possible — you are helping the insurance lobby get exactly what they want. Congratulations!

You and Mike Ross can celebrate your victory together.

I really can’t make the question any simpler – why is a national mandate to purchase insurance from for-profit entities equated with “the good?”

maybe your conditioning is so deep that “the good” is synonymous with “the least worst”, thats my suspicion.

Sadly, according to someone on NPR this morning, Sotomayor is likely to side with the conservatives on the issue of campaign finance reform. I hope the guy was wrong, but that’s a huge disappointment to me if it turns out to be true.

Exactly. Will there be hearings on the bill? Did anyone demand them? Conyers has been trying to get them for years with no success.

Anyone who thinks this is a victory got played. Don’t be a chump.

Praedor, study the civil rights movement and study the reaction to the Chicago 1968 DNC riots, or eve.

In the first instance, the American people saw a crowd of sober-minded folk, dressed in their Sunday best, being teargassed and set upon by police dogs. That turned popular opinion in their favor. In the 1968 riots, Americans saw noisy, dirty anarchists and thus applauded when Daley cut loose with the truncheons.

I gotta agree with you here. Non-violence is a whole lot harder, but in the long run it’s always more effective. Imagine if Ghandi had led an armed insurrection against the British Empire — it would have been ugly and probably unsuccessful.

There’s a big difference between non-violent and passive though. We can’t be passive, but we need to have tremendous self-control even in the face of unreasonable provocation.

IMHO.

Why are you still pretending that your cherry-picked sentence from page five of the BW article referred to a health-care plan with a public option, when you know full well — and I’ve just shown everyone — that in fact the entire BW article is predicated on the idea that the public option is dead? Again, that’s the main reason it’s called “The Health Insurers Have Already Won”?

Instead, you keep squirming and wriggling and trying to change the subject, rather than admit that your attempt to pretend that the public option is what UnitedHealth wanted has been shot down.

How does it feel to be doing UnitedHealth’s work for them?

It’s instructive to me that the self-proclaimed single-payer advocates on the blogs are not interested in whipping the floor vote for HR 676. Or contacting Senators about the Sanders bill.

Exactly. The key is that you have to let the other guys be the bigger assholes. You also have to maintain focus and not let the street-theater people take over, because the media sees lefty street theater and immediately decides that the protesters can be marginalized.

Gandhi WAS armed (indirectly). He NEVER told his people to lay down their arms and go quietly into death. He told that that if they do not have it in them to do that, then by all means FIGHT. He stated clearly that THE worst thing to do was to simply sit back and passively go along to get along. He would never have been as effective as he was if not for the masses of non-Gandhi-esque fighters out there. He didn’t merely advocate wimp-assed bag-of-sand blocking of doors or traffic aka modern American “Gandhi myth worshippers. He advocated violations of the law: refuse to pay fines, refuse to pay taxes, refuse refuse refuse. Gum up the gears of society. I don’t see any of that from ya’ll. All i see is 1) turn the other cheek; 2)?; 3) we win!

Nope. Doesn’t work that way.

What was offered was to the Brits in India was dealing with EITHER the violent forces or the peaceful forces. British colonialists often cultivated an admiration for Gandhi because he was their least dangerous adversary. They had to choose. If they hadn’t had to choose (if EVERYONE had been passive bags of sand) then they would have had no problem defeating the revolt through attrition. The MLK myth of pure peaceful resistance winning the day also is just that, a myth. He and his peaceful protesters didn’t even start winning the day until AFTER the Black Panthers and other violent alternative groups came forward. The Powers That Be had to then make a choice: deal on the terms of the peaceful people or suck up expanding violence. Without a choice to make, no deal.

the public option as designed recently is insignificant . . . whether is covers 10 million people in 2013 or not is not material to United Health and their ilk.

I was asking about, and you were avoiding, the mandate.

again, why is mandating payment of premiums to the for-profit insurance industry we all know and love “the good”?

does that mean bigger fines for noncompliance are better?

The media is on THEIR side. They are no help to you – all they do is make you out to be weak when you get trounced (literally) by reichwing Brownshirts. Hell, they report on the thugs with a twinkle in their eye and/or turn any altercation into, at best, a he said/she said. Heads they win, tails you lose.

You are rewriting history to suit your own philosophy of aggressive intervention.

Another blow to the Gandhi myth can be read in an examination of his contemporaries:
http://www.tamilnation.org/ide…..olence.htm

Basically, the main reason the Brits bailed on India was the disloyalty of the Indian army and navy. Gandhi, for all the effuse mythology, had minimal impact.

Not really. You are buying into uncritical myth.

I don’t like myth except as a sideline. Myth is not something to base one’s life upon. It is as simple as that.

By the by, the most effective elements amongst the Jews of Germany under the Nazis were NOT those who passively went into death – it was those who revolted that had the bigger impacts and did the most harm. Gandhi was rightly and strongly criticized for advocating passive resistance and quiet entry to death by Jews under the Nazis. Those that did that made the job of the Nazis that much easier, that is all they did. Gandhi wasn’t to great vis a vis S. Africa either (he proclaimed that S. Africa should remain white ruled).

Yesterday, in the Senate:

Mr. KAUFMAN. Madam President, the White House, the Congress, and the American people are engaged in a stark debate over our Nation’s health care insurance system. A lot is at stake.

[…]

So let us carefully review the potential plans. We have a plan being developed by the House of Representatives, we have a plan from the Senate HELP Committee, and a plan from the Finance Committee, we have the bipartisan Wyden-Bennett plan, and then we have a plan I am going to spend a lot of time talking about, and that is the PHS plan.

In listening to my colleagues speak on the floor of the Senate, on television, talk radio, in newspapers, and in private meetings, one thing is clear:

They think the plan we end up with will be the PHS plan. They think a combination of those who want no health care reform and those who like none of the proposed plans will combine to kill all other plans. So what is the PHS plan? Our present health care system.

Let’s look at what will happen to average Americans if we keep our present health care system.

First, Americans’ health care insurance costs will explode–and that is not an overstatement–explode. The average family in America can look forward to premium costs for their health insurance of more than $24,000 a year by 2016. That is an 83-percent increase over the cost in 2008. In my home State of Delaware, the costs will be even higher, with the average premium for family coverage approaching $29,000. At that amount, more than half of Delaware families would each have to spend half of their income on health insurance. This means families will be forced to either go without insurance or to buy less coverage and put their life savings at risk.

Second, personal bankruptcies for medical costs will soar. Today, bankruptcies involving medical bills account for more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, a rate 1 1/2 times that of just 6 years ago. Going forward under PHS, we can expect more families in bankruptcy.

Third, insured Americans will keep paying a hidden tax to help pay for care for the uninsured. Under the PHS plan, doctors and hospitals will charge insurers even greater amounts to recoup the costs to provide services to the uninsured. Today, this hidden tax is estimated to be $1,100 per family per year. Under the PHS plan, it will most assuredly go up, raising the cost of health care for all Americans.

Fourth, Americans will continue to be denied coverage if they have preexisting conditions. […]

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.go…..sition=all

Yesterday evening, in the Senate:

Mr. DODD. […] Before my colleagues depart, let me say this: Let’s come back to work here in September, come back ready to offer our thoughts and suggestions and constructive criticism. We are going to pass a bill this fall, and we are going to do it with the help of any Senator willing to contribute and be a part of the solution. But we are not going to continue to wait for the sake of waiting until the politics get right.

[…]

The demagogues out there, chirping away about government-run health care or socialized medicine–that is baloney from top to bottom, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. In a nation as strong as we are, we place this many insured people at risk because we do not have the courage to stand up and do what needs to be done.

In our proposal we have crafted, we spent a lot of time working at it to provide relief and support on wellness and prevention and quality of care and to bring those costs down to the point I have described here this evening. Again, there may be other ideas and other ways of doing this. We think we have done a good job with our bill. But I wanted people across the country to know there are ideas out there.

There were 23 of us who worked on that bill. We spent 5 weeks, 60 hours, 23 sessions–the longest markup of a bill in the history of that committee and, we are told by some, maybe the longest markup in the history of the Senate on a single bill. We had 800 amendments filed, and 300 were actually considered. Some 160 amendments of my friends on the Republican side were agreed to and included in our bill, making it a better bill and a stronger bill. I welcomed their participation. But here we are, 3 weeks later, still stymied, unable to come together and shape a bill that would provide the relief so many people seek in our country.

I thank my colleagues for their efforts, particularly grateful to Senator Harkin, who did a terrific job on the prevention parts of our bill; Senator Mikulski, who wrote the quality provisions; Senator JEFF BINGAMAN, who worked on coverage issues; Senator Patty Murray, who worked on the workforce issues in the bill; and people such as Senator SHELDON WHITEHOUSE of Rhode Island, who joined our committee and did a fabulous job with Kay Hagan, our new colleague from North Carolina, along with SHERROD BROWN of Ohio, to shape the public option that is included in our bill, which I am certain my friend from Rhode Island may describe in some detail this evening about what we have done. This was so creative that the Blue Dogs on the House side adopted our proposal on the public option as part of the House-passed bill. Of course, Jack Reed and BERNIE SANDERS, as well as Jeff Merkley on our committee and BOB CASEY did a great job in helping us shape the legislation. I thank all of the members of the committee.

I thank Mike Enzi, my colleague from Wyoming, the ranking Republican member, along with his colleagues on the Republican side. They did not vote for the bill in the end. I regret that. But they made contributions that made it a stronger and better bill.

But let’s come back in September and get the job done. […]

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.go…..sition=all

WHAT ABOUT THE PLAN – WILL HE KILL THAT TOO??

Dogs in packs can kill wantonly…

a little over ten years ago in the Province of Manitoba, the government was on a “privatisation” binge.

They wanted to convert homecare from government operated, to for profit.

For all of the obvious reasons, the privately operated outfits were unable to compete with the government operated service.

At least our government (conservative at the time) was honest, admitted that government provided service was better, and ditched the attempt.

Re – the fear of government operated services:

I am amazed when I hear of people in the upper midwest going for weeks in sub zero temperatures, with no electricity; the privately operated suppliers do not have enough staff, or equipment to do a reasonable job.

In the Province of Manitoba our Government owned electrical utility does a splendid job. the service is rarely out for more than a few hours. which only makes common sense, since the temperatures in winter are often well below freezing. The rates are low, and the company makes a profit.

Brainwashed down there.

Not right away, anyway.

Who is the primary challenger and where should I send the check?

Assuming no public option and assuming no employer coverage, is there or isn’t there a requirement that everyone purchase their own insurance without a government subsidy, if they make more than 300%/400% over the poverty level?

My understanding is the answer is “yes,” and if a person makes more than $31,200 per year, they will be required by law to pay approximately $1,000 per month for health insurance and they will be penalized if they don’t.

If this is true, there will be widespread noncompliance because that is impossible and we’ll still have at least 20 million uninsured. Double or triple that number, if the economy is still in the tank.

that’s right.

average Joe who hasn’t been paying attention, just working, living his life, suddenly he is compelled to pay a profit maximizing corporation $xxxx per month for a crappy policy – dude is going to be so mad he’ll be seeing red, and whatever political faction that did that to him will be hated forever.

that would be the Democrats – good job guys!