Healthcare Reform Thread II

[Elok]

Also, excellent Godwinization. Kudos.

It wasn't a godwinization. I figured you're liberal enough you'd have an easier time relating to Hitler than to the GOP.

[DanS]

They spent all of last ****ing year trying to get GOP support

You must have been watching a different debate than I was watching. At no time in the last year+ have the Dems made a serious attempt at securing GOP votes on health care. They didn't feel like they needed the votes. Playing for 60 votes (none GOP) in the Senate was their strategy.

[Guynemer]

Baucus wasted months and months trying to gain GOP support. Seriously, I'm the only one who remembers this?

[DanS]

There was no bill at that time. Just a lot of ideas floating around.

[Guynemer]

How does that negate the premise?

[DinoDoc]

Baucus wasted months and months trying to gain GOP support. Seriously, I'm the only one who remembers this?

Once they got the bill out of committee, the moderate wing of the GOP was basically told to go **** themselves and from then on it was a purely Democratic party ball game.

[Ramo]

Ludicrous. The Senate bill is largely the bill that Baucus wrote in the Finance committee with Snowe, Grassley, and Enzi. The attempts to expand public insurance to the Senate bill (the public option and the Medicare buy-in) were killed by conservative Democrats.

The framework of the health care bill is Romneycare plus cost controls. It's a framework that Republicans like Bob Dole have endorsed. Olympia Snowe basically wrote the Senate bill, then voted against it. Her stated rationale is that the vote was rushed (it took a full year for the bill to come up on the Senate floor), not any substantive reasons. The rationales that supposedly serious Republicans offer now, i.e. that they are against the individual mandate, are positions many nominally supported a year ago (say, Chuck Grassley). Orin Hatch was asked why he opposes the individual mandate now when he supported the Chafee plan which had an individual mandate in 1993-4. He said that he supported the Chafee plan only because he was trying to stop Hillarycare; he never really believed in what he was saying.

The Republicans were never negotiating in good faith. And I don't really blame them. That's the way our incentives work. As the opposition party, their job is to defeat the majority. And you do that through paralyzing the legislative process, because Senate rules allow the minority to obstruct anything.

But many Democrats haven't realize the game has changed, and they need to get their heads out of their asses.

[DaShi]

Once they got the bill out of committee, the moderate wing of the GOP was basically told to go **** themselves and from then on it was a purely Democratic party ball game.

Dude, you were just arguing that the Dems were united on health care. Any shred of credibility you had is gone. Stick to posting other people's ideas.

[Kidlicious]

you can thank a **** bag Republican when costs shoot up at the same 40% per year.

The Republicans had nothing to do with this piece of **** reform. None of them voted for it.

That doesn't mean it's not going to be their fault that costs shoot up. The problem is that the reform is too weak.

[Drake Tungsten]

It was moderate Democrats who prevented the reform from being stronger, not the Republicans. If you want to blame someone, blame Ben Nelson.

[Kidlicious]

Isn't one of the concerns with this unhealth care bill is that insurance companies will BENEFIT from this at the expense of their customers?

Both will benefit because more people will be buying insurance. One of the problems was that healthy people were dropping out of the system leaving only sickly people to buy insurance. Obviously that raises premiums.

[Kidlicious]

It was moderate Democrats who prevented the reform from being stronger, not the Republicans. If you want to blame someone, blame Ben Nelson.

So Republicans supported stronger reform?

[Kidlicious]

Let me get this right: are you saying, in effect, "even if we fixed the problem somebody else would wreck it again, so let's not fix the problem?" Is that the shape of it?

Let me ask you this. Would it be ok with you if we cut health and human services to balance the budget?

[Drake Tungsten]

So Republicans supported stronger reform?

The Republicans were irrelevant; the Democrats had enough votes to pass whatever reform they wanted, if they could hold their caucus together. The failure to pass stronger reform is a Democratic failure.

[Kidlicious]

The Republicans were irrelevant.

Let's hope they stay that way.