Health Care Legislation Continues To Move Forward
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health Care
Slowly, but surely, we’ll be getting health care reform in a matter of months. That is, if Democrats don’t overplay their hand.
The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus of Montana, described “a sense of inevitability, the sense that, yes, we’re going to pass health reform.” In interviews, senior advisers to the president said the progress on Capitol Hill vindicated Mr. Obama’s strategy of leaving the details up to lawmakers, though they are wary of sounding overconfident. [...]In the House, where leaders have vowed to pass a bill by Nov. 11, a fight over abortion coverage could still imperil the legislation, and Mr. Obama could lose some votes from liberals upset that the bill includes a weakened “public option,” a government insurance plan to compete with the private sector. Mr. Obama, trying to keep progressives in line, met with them Thursday night in the White House Roosevelt Room.
“He is making the case to them that this isn’t the exact bill you’d write, however, let’s take a step back and look at what we’re about to do here, and what a historic moment this will be,” said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
Now, it was my understanding that Obama had let the health care legislation form in the early days, but now they were getting involved with drafting specific legislation. Maybe that’s not the case at this point, but one has to think they’re beginning to get more and more involved.
However, going back to my biggest concern, will the more liberal Dems get out of the way and acknowledge the reality that this isn’t going to be exactly what they want, but it’s a hell of lot better than nothing?
We shall see…
This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
What do you mean by overplaying their hand?
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I’ve got to disagree on this point. The proposed legislation they unveiled last week was an absolute slap in the face to all of the people who supported Obama based on his promises of change and is worse than doing nothing. Without a strong public option, and with the need to “negotiate” reimbursements with the providers, HR 3962 is another gift to the insurance industry. They’ve already began raising premiums just on the off chance that they might actually have ended up with any competition, down the road. Yeah, right.
Coming out with a strong public option and letting the Republicans and blue dogs shoot it down would have been much more acceptable. They can be removed from office when their terms are up.
As it stands now, this current bill they are trying to pass will only piss people off as health care costs continue to rise (at a slower pace! whee!), and the Democrats will be able to take complete blame for passing health-care reform that is actually worse than the system that is currently in place.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
“better than nothing”?
Until we see the bill, and know how it will affect health care, we won’t know if it helps or hurts. The unintended consequences of legislation, no matter how well intentioned, are sometimes significant (case in point: the CPSIA.)