Tainted Saints

“…Senate leaders and the White House will now merge the Finance Committee measure with another version of the legislation approved this summer by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The merged bill could be ready for debate before the full Senate later this month.

The Finance Committee measure, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates would reduce the federal deficit $81 billion over the next 10 years, differs in one major way from the health committee bill: It lacks a government-run health insurance plan, or “public option” alternative to private insurance, which President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders want.

Three committees in the House of Representatives have approved legislation that includes a public option. Those bills are being combined into one, and the full House is expected to debate the legislation later this month. Prospects for approval there look good.

“We don’t intend to go to the floor without a public option in our bill,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has vowed…”

“At least one senator in the Democratic caucus is blocking a public option – but we don’t know who. That’s because Majority Leader Harry Reid is protecting any senator who wants to join a Republican filibuster of health care reform.

This isn’t just wrong, it’s deeply immoral.  If a Democrat wants to filibuster a public option, make them do it in public.”

“The pivotal Senate Finance Committee was poised to approve sweeping legislation Tuesday requiring nearly all Americans to purchase insurance and ushering in a host of other changes to the nation’s $2.5 trillion medical system.

Much work would lie ahead before a bill could arrive on Obama’s desk, but action by the Finance Committee would mark a significant advance, capping numerous delays as Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., held marathon negotiating sessions — ultimately unsuccessful — aimed at producing a bipartisan bill.

Four other congressional committees acted before August to pass health legislation, so for months all eyes have been on the Finance Committee, the remaining one. It’s also the panel whose moderate makeup most closely resembles the Senate as a whole. And the committee’s centrist legislation is seen as the best building block for a compromise plan that could find favor on the Senate floor.”

“…The industry said the cost increases result from new taxes and a weakening of the penalties for failing to get insurance that would let Americans postpone getting coverage until they get sick.

Democrats and their allies criticized the report as biased. Health economist Len Nichols of the New America Foundation contended that, among other problems, the study failed to take into account the impact of subsidies that would help low- and middle-income people buy coverage. He said it also left out a key expected impact of a proposed new tax on high-value insurance plans, which is a reduction in the use of health services.

“It was paid for by people who are not interested in an objective analysis of the truth but are interested in a particular point of view being inserted into the political process right now,” Nichols said…”

“Industry representatives put Congress and the Obama administration on notice that if health-reform legislation doesn’t send even more new customers the industry’s way or if a windfall profits tax is included, the industry would hit businesses, individuals and the government with higher premiums, effectively defeating one of the initiative’s top goals, reining in ever-rising costs.”

After linking to Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment calling for free health care clinics in six states through Tainted Saints, a few folks asked where they could send donations. Now I have the answer: last night on Countdown, Olbermann announced that he had donated $50,000 to the National Association of Free Clinics, and urged viewers who can to also donate money toward this effort. They accept donations of any amount on the main page of their website.

From Joan Walsh (who also agrees that supporting it depends entirely on what ‘public option’ means):

“Is the public option opt-out a cop-out? That headline’s a cop-out, I admit, since I can’t decide yet. I would prefer a robust 50-state public option, and I’d support using reconciliation to get there with less than 60 votes. But the political realist in me knows Democrats would be pilloried for using reconciliation in a way that Republicans weren’t, when they passed George W. Bush’s budget-busting tax cuts that way, twice — see my Charlie Rangel footnote on the media double standard for Democrats, below — and it would become a huge distraction. If Democrats can get a solid 60 votes with a limited opt-out — to me, it all depends on how it’s written — I’m ready to listen.”

Read more…

Apparently, how this would work is that some form of the public option passes (I think that’s a critical point, because we still don’t know what they’re referring to now when they say “public option”), but voters in states that strongly object to it (read: the people who would probably benefit most from the public option, but have been thoroughly snowed by right-wing talk radio, Glenn Beck, and their idiot representatives in Congress) could vote their state out of it. Crazy, but maybe the only way now to get something done.

The full Finance committee is scheduled to vote on the bill next Tuesday, which is backed by Republican Senator Olympia Snowe. In addition to scorning the public option, the bill also doesn’t “…allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices, or adequately subsidize millions of middle-class families who will be required to buy health insurance that will be hard for them to afford. In short, it’s a great deal for private insurers and Big Pharma but not such a great deal for middle-class Americans.”

And then there’s the trouble with Keith — good at talking, not so good at getting to the actual point…