After Senate Finance’s epic fail, what next on health reform?
Sometimes it’s not easy being a Democrat. The big tent we live in can at times appear almost too big, accommodating as it is to people who by all rights should probably be Republicans. That said, now that the Senate Finance Committee process has failed us, (or perhaps more accurately, Max Baucus’ plan to twist healthcare reform to the benefit of insurance companies has at least temporarily succeeded,) what next?
Politico reports that Maria Cantwell is working on her own, state-based public option-like amendment (which will likely fail, too) that’s modeled after something or other from her home state:
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said a few moments ago that she is planning to offer an amendment to give states the power to negotiate down the price of insurance. If insurance companies agree to cover a chunk of the uninsured, states would help pay for the coverage. The states negotiate with insurers to set the cost and coverage of the program. The rates wouldn’t be tied to Medicare or Medicaid, but set at the state level, she said.
“It’s a way to get a foothold. If you can cover 75 percent of people that way then it’s definitely a public plan for the big chunk of the uninsured,” Cantwell said.
The House continues to hammer out its own bill, which could be ready by the time my fourth grader graduates college.
Meanwhile, the right wing group Conservatives for Patients Rights (get it? CPR…) has a novel idea: let insurance companies grow “too big to fail,” and ,,, tax cuts!
(Sigh). So if anybody has a good idea about how to get healthcare reform that doesn’t wind up being a giant new subsidy for insurance companies, plus a mandate forcing us to buy their crappy product, I’d be glad to hear it.
UPDATE: Here’s the White House response to today’s vote:
As the President said in his Joint Session address, health insurance reform legislation must provide more choice and competition in the health insurance market in order to drive down costs and provide affordable options to Americans who are uninsured or forced to shop in the expensive private or small group market,” White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said in an email. “He believes making a public option available on the insurance exchange is a good way to achieve those goals. He has said he is open to other constructive ideas of increasing choice and competition. He will work with Congress to ensure that under health insurance reform, Americans who cannot find affordable coverage will always have a choice.”
Trent Franks update: Obama is an enemy of unborn humanity
well, that clears that up…
Previous:
GOP Congressman: Obama an ‘enemy of humanity’
Bill Sparkman’s son speaks out
… and says he believes his father was murdered (oh, and Dan Riehl, he didn’t accuse his dad of being a child molester…) From the AP:
Josh Sparkman told The Associated Press in a phone interview that he is frustrated investigators still have not ruled out suicide or accidental death.
“I look at it as disrespectful to be still throwing suicide and accident around,” he said. “He didn’t do this to himself. That’s dishonorable. My dad was a good man. No person on this planet is going to fight cancer like he did, then turn around and kill himself a year or so later.”
… Josh Sparkman, 19, said he learned of his father’s death Sept. 13, a day after his body was found. Bill Sparkman adopted him when he was a baby.
“I completely broke down,” Josh Sparkman said. “It’s always just been me and my dad. It’s all I have, and I don’t have him anymore. I’m just kind of by myself.”
The younger Mr. Sparkman says he doesn’t have the money to bury his father, and that even if he did, the FBI has not released the body (they also searched his father’s home but haven’t told him anything.) He plans to move back to London, KY to try and find a job, and pay the $600 mortgage on his father’s home.
Schumer amendment fails – three Democrats bail on public option
The Schumer amendment, seen as the one with the best chance of passing the ill-begotten Senate Finance Committee, just failed on a non-party line vote of 10-13. Three Democrats – Max Baucus, Kent Conrad and Blance Lincoln (who wasn’t at the hearing but voted no on both public option amendments by proxy,) defected to the insurance industry’s side. Here’s the vote:
- Conrad – no
- Bingaman – aye
- Kerry – aye
- Lincoln – no
- Wyden – aye
- Schumer – aye
- Stabenow – aye
- Rockefellar – aye
- Cantwell – aye
- Nelson – aye
- Menendez – aye
- Carper – aye
- Grassley – no
- Hatch – no
- Snowe – no
- Kyl – no
- Bunning – no
- Crapo – no
- Roberts no
- Ensign – no
- Enzi – no
- Cornyn – no
- Baucus – no
Total – 10 to 13
On a related note: Blanche Lincoln is up for re-election in 2010. Democratic voters take note… Kent Conrad and Max Baucus aren’t up until 2012,
Meanwhile, the anti-public option “Democrats” become Fox News heroes.
What is the difference between the Rockefeller, Schumer amendments?
FDL’s Jay Walker has a helpful summary of the Jay Rockefeller public option amendment (that was just defeated in the Senate Finance Committee) and the Chuck Schumer version, which is being debated now. In short:
The best and most robust public option is the one submitted by Senator Rockefeller. It resembles the robust public option originally proposed in the House. It would pay Medicare rates plus 5% for the first three years. Medicare providers would automatically participate in the public option unless they choose to opt out. There is no penalty for providers opting out of Rockefeller’s public option.
The second public option is the one submitted by Senator Schumer and Senator Cantwell. It would add to the Senate Finance Committee’s bill the same public option that passed in Senate HELP Committee. The public option in the Senate HELP Committee’s bill is called the “Community Health Insurance Option.” This public option does not pay modified Medicare rates but its rates “shall not be higher than the average of all Gateway reimbursement rates.”
The final and weakest public option amendment was also submitted by Schumer. It would be his national “level playing field” public option. The government would only provide start up funds to help create a new public option that must follow all the same rules as private insurance companies. Like any private insurance company it would need to negotiate rates and create it’s own provider network from scratch.
Bill Nelson votes against the Rockefeller public option, will support Schumer’s version
UPDATE: Nelson is speaking now, and has said he will support Chuck Schumer’s version, which is less robust, but more “consumer driven.” Nelson has been slippery on his stance on healthcare reform, but had recently indicated he liked the Schumer amendment.
Original post:
Silent Bill, who has been loathe to tell his constituents where he stands on healthcare reform, told Floridians volumes today.
The vote on Jay Rockefeller’s public option amendment just took place, with half a dozen Republicans voting “no by proxy” and five of the panel’s 13 Democrats defecting from the majority position of their party, and the majority position of the American people according to the polls. Here’s the whip count (with Democratic “no” votes in bold)
- Conrad – no
- Bingamon – aye
- Kerry – aye
- Lincoln – no
- Widen – aye
- Schumer – aye
- Stabenow – aye
- Cantwell – aye
- (Bill) Nelson – no
- Menendez – aye
- Carper – no
- Grassley – no
- Hatch – no
- Snowe – no
- Kyl – no
- Bunning – no
- Crapo – no
- Roberts – no
- Ensign – no
- Enzi – no
- Cornyn – no
- Baucus – no
The Rockefeller amendment fails by a vote of 15 to 8. The Schumer version is up for debate now.
Breaking: Baucus pledges to vote against public option
Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, just spoke, and said he will vote against an amendment adding a public option to his “mark up” of healthcare reform legislation, saying that although he “sees a lot to like in the public option,” he will vote no because to his count, there aren’t 60 votes for it. Baucus seems to be laying the groundwork for an argument that Democrats need to pass legislation that is not reform in itself, but that “lays the groundwork” for reform some time in the distant future.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller is speaking on behalf of his amendment now, and just declared the public option “dead” in that committee. And he ripped into those who say “I just want a healthcare bill, I don’t care what’s in it,” and he has declared himself “astounded that my Republican colleagues have declared themselves absolutely satisfied with the $483 billion in new subsidies that the insurance companies are getting, on top of what they’re already receiving.” He called it “obscene to be spending that amount of money on health insurance companies and not on consumers’ healthcare.” He just added, if you have a problem with the government being involved in healthcare, “then take on the V.A. system.” …
Rockefeller is on fire. His best line to his colleagues:
“This is about people. You’ve tog to see people in your mind when you push your button to vote. The insurance companies can take care of themselves.” He added, “if you want to slide toward single payer … do exactly what my colleagues on the other side are doing. Say no to everything. Vote no on everything. … the public option is on the march.”
Watch the live stream here.
Dear World: How do you like us now?
A commenter made a very good point recently, in response an earlier post (about the “Obama assassination poll” on Facebook), that “The world is watching and wondering: what is going on in America???” Indeed, many people around the world must certainly be asking themselves: is this the same country that just last November, elected the first Black president, not just of the United States, but of a western country? Last year, and even up to January, America was the envy of the west, which knows in its heart that no Obama could win election there. With one decisive vote count, our population had shaken off the Bush years, in which America became an international pariah, prone to wars of aggression, cowboy diplomacy, intellectual malaise, religious fanaticism, financial profligacy, and even torture. With Obama’s election, the world hailed not just our intelligent, sophisticated, internationalist new president — but the return of the American people to sanity. And what a difference from even four years earlier, when London’s Daily Mirror pointedly asked:
… and dumb we seemed to the rest of the world. Now, in just one short summer, barely eight months into Barack Obama’s presidency, we’ve gone from a country that went from African slavery to a black president in less than 400 years, to a country that prompts unnamed world leaders to ask the president: what’s wrong with your people? Read more
GOP Congressman: Obama an ‘enemy of humanity’
People for the American Way, which I presume will soon be labeled a communist beehive by Glenn Beck and the RedStaters, has a right wing watch site, which has been monitoring the kooky “How to Take Back America” / Phyllis Schlafly kookfest (which has featured lots of talk about Nazis, and plenty of other over-the-top Obama paranoia.) PFAW dispatched their latest findings to the Huffpo, which reports that not only did Arizona Congressman (and pre-litigious birther) Trent Franks reprise the demand that the president prove that he is a natural born citizen of the United States, he went on to say this:
“Obama’s first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers’ money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries,” said Frank. “Now, I got to tell you, if a president will do that, there’s almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn’t be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can’t do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.” Read more
The red baiters eyeing SEIU, American Progress
Glenn Beck did his star turn on “Fox and Friends” this morning, spinning ominous warnings about the OTHER communists infesting our government: the Service Employees International Union, and the Center for American Progress. Now, you thought SEIU was just a union representing nurses, doormen and such. Well, you are WRONG! They are communist operatives plotting to destroy the world. And the Center for American Progress? You may see it as a think tank founded in 2003 and led by former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton named John Podesta, where the fellows include Ronald Reagan’s former undersecretary of defense for manpower, Lawrence Korb (here, just for you amateur right wing sleuths, is a direct link to the CAP’s fellows list. Enjoy!)… but no … NO! They, too, are commies. Worse: they are the fiends behind the commie information outlet known as ThinkProgress.org, which among other wickedness, consistently exposes the crazed ravings of right wingers like … Glenn Beck, who is emerging as the right’s real-life Joe McCarthy, only without the electoral power … And the whole nexus is tied together by the most evil one of them all: Valerie Jarret! Yup. Mm-hm. I konw, because Glenn Beck told me so on “Fox and Friends.” And Beck has now coordinated his message with the Storm Troopers at Redstate, whose “morning briefing” today included a frightening expose … Read more
Connect
Book deals
Links
Finalist: Best Liberal Blog
Poll
Loading ...
