My Thoughts on Health Care: Pass The Thing

Submitted by Nick D on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 12:58pm.

With Sen-elect Full Monty (aka Scott Brown) about to be seated, the way forward on health care just got considerably more complicated. My read is that there are four options:

Convince the House to pass the Senate legislation with not one change. This would send the bill to the President's desk for his signature.
Continue negotiations on a House-Senate conference committee version of HCR which with the aim of making the bill acceptable to moderate GOPers in the Senate.
Go Nuclear. Have Joe Biden, as President of the Senate, introduce a new Senate rule which would reduce the number of votes to kill a filibuster to 51. Such a rule change to my understanding would only require a majority vote for passage.
Give up on HCR.

My choice is option 1. Let's pass the Senate bill. Is it perfect? No. But it does contain many popular elements, as this story on FiveThirtyEight.com points out. It reduces the deficit and covers millions of uninsured Americans. Provisions like the tax on "Cadillac" health care plans and the individual mandate are less popular, but absoltuely necessary to any effort to hold down health care costs.

And, let's all remember that our political system was designed by the founding fathers for incremental change. Incremental change is what happened in the Civil Rights movement: Let's all take a step back and remember that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was built upon the foundation of a 1957 Civil Rights Act which, while weaker, set the stage for the eventual passage of the stronger bill seven years later.

So, let's git'r'dun.

Most importantly, we need to communicate the message that the out-of-control costs of our current system are a major impediment to job growth, because they are. Everything that we do for the rest of Obama's first term must be framed to point towards job creation. That's what Americans want, and that's what is going to move votes and elections. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

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I'm inclined to agree

Submitted by JollyRoger on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 4:04pm.

The Brown election polling shows that Massachusetts voters (1.) did not see healthcare reform as a pivotal issue, but (2.) were still incensed that things like a strong public option weren't included. Let's get the first installment in, and go pack on the payment plan. We'll get that public option eventually, because the "Independent" voters have clearly stated that they want it.

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Or maybe they DID see health care as a pivotal issue

Submitted by AmberCat on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 7:17pm.

Masachusetts is not a good gauge of whetehr people cared about the health-care bill because they passed universal health care several years ago. They got theirs. Nick, I wouldn't be so cavalier about the tax on adequate but costly insurance ("Cadillac" insurance is a fiction — it's just full-coverage insurance that may be costly for reasons beyond a person's control, like age, health factors and size of the risk pool).

ANY tax on regular working people who make $40,000 or $50,000 or even $80,000 a year is going to be a voter-killer in the fall. The FIRST thing they have to do is eliminate that. The only costs it keeps down are those of the insurance company; it puts policyholders on much thinner ice. I think it would be a really dangerous position to only talk about costs to the system — because what we are really reining in here is costs to the insurance companies while enhancing their profits. We need to talk about health-care costs to the individual, and when I hear all this palaver about the defiict (something Republicans rarely mentioned when Bush was running it up), I think more about the deficits suffered by the average person when they learn their preoimums are going to skyrocket again. The deficit is abstract; those premiums aren't.

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