Ezra Klein: "This is a good bill. Not a great bill, but a good bill." Imagine...

[jefferson_dem]

Still time to think small

This is a good bill. Not a great bill, but a good bill. Imagine telling a Democrat in the days after the 2004 election that the 2006 election would end Republican control of Congress, the 2008 election would return a Democrat to the White House, and by the 2010 election, Democrats would have passed a bill extending health-care coverage to 94 percent of Americans, securing trillions of dollars in subsidies for low-income Americans (the bill's $900 billion cost is calculated over 10 years, but the subsidies continue indefinitely into the future), and imposing a raft of new regulations on private insurers. It is, without doubt or competition, the single largest social policy advance since the Great Society.

Not bad, huh?

This bill is likely to pass the Senate on Christmas, and head to the president's desk before the State of the Union. It will be hard to change big things about the bill between now and then. But it will be fully possible to change small things. An example came in the manager's amendment. The original Senate bill barred insurers from imposing "unreasonable" annual caps on spending. This bill bars them from imposing any annual caps on spending. That's thanks, in large part, to the left, which attacked that weakness ferociously.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/time_to_think_small.html

[BeyondGeography]

1. Now wasn't that better than killing the whole thing?

Just don't get the start-it-over crowd. Use this bill as the new baseline and push for improvements every year. That's what Rockefeller, Harkin and all of our best Senators on this issue are telling us.

[truedelphi]

2. If you like the notion of 166,000,000,000 in penalties paid by

Those who cannot afford it, if you like the fact that abortion was excluded or made prohibitively expensive, if you understand how easy (sarcasm here) it will be for a family of four making 54,000 to hand over 17&% of its income to the same weasels who brought us the health care mess, if you can accept and stomach the illogic of a President who once believed in Universal SPHC and now says that we have to have reform within the same system that is broken,

if you can accept all those things:

then I have

ONE HUGE, BROKEN DOWN NEIGHBORHOOD IN DETROIT TO SELL YA

[okieinpain]

16. what if you had sphc and still had to pay 17%. n/t.

[truedelphi]

17. It would depend.

First of all, if we nationalized the health system, such that prices were set by the cost of delivery of services, and we ALSO examined all the inflated prices that the Big Medical Interests have forced on us, it might not be 17%.

Now as it is, a hospital charges X amount for an MRI. If you examine the cost of the MRI machinery, the repairs and cost to house it, the current day cost Of an MRI Exam is much over inflated. But it exists as it does to pay for all the people in the insurance industry.

In one of the more truly obscene charges that hospitals in California have wrought against We The People, Sutter at Marin General came up with $300,000 in expenses and charges to create the software program by which the medical records could be digitized into computer systems for Marin General.

But then - they owned it, right? So you would think that Sutter would then export that created program to its other hospitals. Only that is not what happened.

Instead, I have heard that each Sutter Hospital has charged off that same amount to its local community for the software. And this sort of thing happens all the time!

[mcablue]

3. I am getting psychic powers. As soon as I read "Ezra Klein," I guessed the rest!

For some strange reason, i guessed that Ezra Klein was going to continue defending the bill as good regardless of the elimination of the best provisions, as he's been doing forever.

[kenny blankenship]

4. He's very dependable

as a complete corporate tool.

[jefferson_dem]

6. As are all 60 Senate Dems who support the bill, plus Reps. Conyers, Weiner, Grayson...

and Vicki Kennedy...

All tools. After all, they don't agree with you. Enjoy your stay in the bunker.

[NJmaverick]

5. Klien is a liberal and passing the bill helps people, so the support makes sense.

[xchrom]

7. No it isn't -- but who cares any more. Nt

[yurbud]

8. subsidies are a gift to insurance companies. control their prices and overhead spending or

cut mandate.

[Vinnie From Indy]

9. We're gonna need a bigger bus!

Or, at least one with four wheel drive.

Whatever they can do to make the stinking pile of crap better they should.

[impik]

12. Dude, we're already on the third bus. Once Krugman joined yesterday...

We had to bring a new one...;)

[ClarkUSA]

10. Excellent summary in the first paragraph of the big picture view.

Nice to see the FACTS from a credible source at DU.

[impik]

11. "without doubt or competition, the single largest social policy advance since the Great Society"

Oh, my eyes! My eyes! Facts! Historical context!! What are we going to do now???

[FrenchieCat]

13. K&R!

[AVID]

14. K&R

[Top Cat]

15. K&R

[Blasphemer]

18. So let him buy insurance from the Death Insurance Industry. Don't foist it on those who don't want

or can't afford it. It's not that complicated.