Baucus' just-released healthcare bill is awful.

[Lief 🗽]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/health/policy/07health.html?_r=3

No cost control.

Much lower subsidies than the House bills.

No public option.

Not even a trigger for a public option.

Taxes on healthcare plans so that employers are encouraged to buy worse plans for their employees.

Individual mandates.

Still costs as much as the other plans with a public option, with cost control measures, with more generous subsidies.

So, essentially, because health insurance companies will be forced to take on people with pre-existing conditions, and because everyone will be mandated to buy from them, and because the government will be taxing the good insurance plans, and because there will be no public option or price controls, premiums will skyrocket even more than they are now and people will be pushed on to even worse insurance plans. This bill is worse than doing nothing.

It is awful, awful, awful shit that will ensure that Democrats never win another election in my lifetime.

/rant.

[CARLHAYDEN]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/health/policy/07health.html?_r=3

No cost control.

Much lower subsidies than the House bills.

No public option.

Not even a trigger for a public option.

Taxes on healthcare plans so that employers are encouraged to buy worse plans for their employees.

Individual mandates.

Still costs as much as the other plans with a public option, with cost control measures, with more generous subsidies.

So, essentially, because health insurance companies will be forced to take on people with pre-existing conditions, and because everyone will be mandated to buy from them, and because the government will be taxing the good insurance plans, and because there will be no public option or price controls, premiums will skyrocket even more than they are now and people will be pushed on to even worse insurance plans. This bill is worse than doing nothing.

It is awful, awful, awful shit that will ensure that Democrats never win another election in my lifetime.

/rant.

Of course its awful.

Its a proposed 'Act of Congress,' also known as a crime against the American people.

I believe it was Samuel Clemens who noted that there is no native American criminal class, except for Congress.

[Hash]

Can this joke of a Democrat cross the floor already? It's not like he's a Democrat anyways.

[Meeker]

Max Baucus needs to be relieved of his chairmanship.

[Alcon]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33420

[Ronnie]

Baucus, Baucus, he's our man, if he can't do it, no one can!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33420

life imitating art

[War on Want]

Holy fuck, this has got be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever written.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Who exactly is this bill supposed to help? I fail to see how even insurance companies would benefit from this.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Holy fuck, this has got be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever written.

[Frodo]

I wish he had just gone out and endorsed the Wyden/Bennett bill.  His proposal makes theirs look positively reasonable.   

[CJK]

Did we really expect anything that was not awful?

[Joe Republic]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33420

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/congress_deadlocked_over_how_to

[Torie]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Leif, are you one of those a free lunch is out there just waiting to be consumed for the taking  type of guys?  This notion that government can save costs is said often enough, but that does not make it true. I notice the bill has the word "subsidy" in it, which means that checks will be cut to the impecunious. And unfortunately by dumping the pre-existing conditions filter, there will be a subsidy from the healthy to the sick on a non means tested basis at either end, but we might as well suck it up. There is no good solution to that one.

As for the "less generous" subsidy bit, see the quote from the article immediately below this paragraph. In my opinion this bill still has excessively generous subsidies to folks making more than the median income, and I find that excessively generous myself. The comfortable middle class getting subsidies I don't think can be supported on any level as something that makes any sense, or is ethical frankly.  Look for this subsidy to erode further down the income scale I would suspect.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Hopefully the bill allows insurance companies to go national, which is essential to afford more private options and competition.

The Left is not going to get much more than this. It just isn't. The numbers are too scary, particularly given that government - state and federal - is essentially bankrupt as it is. 

Just take a cold shower and let the numbing experience afford  surcease to your pain.  I have done that in my time - now it's your turn! 

[anvi]

Good grief, that really is a piece of sh**t of a bill.  So much for compromise legislation.  The thing cobbles together provisions that are designed to make different constituencies happy, but it does it so incoherently that it ends up pissing all constituencies off and, as Lief says, just ends up worsening everything.  The article says that Baucus wrote it to appeal to Snowe, but I'll bet you all the money in my wallet that Snowe herself could write a markedly better bill.   

Man, Max Baucus sucks.

[CARLHAYDEN]

Holy fuck, this has got be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever written.

Finally, we agree on something.

[Ebowed]

Typical incompetence.

After the months they have spent 'negotiating' this garbage, did anyone expect a reasonable and coherent bill?  The longer these morons get to ruin a legislative proposal, the more shocking their end result is.

[Stampever]

No public option.

Not even a trigger for a public option.

Those two points are good things.

[Lief 🗽]

No public option.

Not even a trigger for a public option.

Those two points are good things.

If you're a CEO of an insurance company, sure.

If you like affordable healthcare, no.

Of course, for deluded "blue dogs" like you, I'm sure the insurance company CEOs will allow some of their wealth to trickle down to you.

[Rowan]

"The public option cannot pass the Senate," Baucus said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/09/eyes-obama-health-care-compromise-hands-gang-senators/

[Lief 🗽]

"The public option cannot pass the Senate," Baucus said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/09/eyes-obama-health-care-compromise-hands-gang-senators/

If Baucus could back up that statement by naming the names of people who will be voting against it, that would be greatly appreciated. Of course, he's made it clear that he wouldn't be opposed to a public option, so unless he was lying or is lying in this article, he should be able to name the 10 Democrats who will vote against a public option.

[Stampever]

No public option.

Not even a trigger for a public option.

Those two points are good things.

If you're a CEO of an insurance company, sure.

If you like affordable healthcare, no.

Of course, for deluded "blue dogs" like you, I'm sure the insurance company CEOs will allow some of their wealth to trickle down to you.

Blah blah blah ... Your side takes as much in insurance company CEO payoffs as Republicans do, so why not pull that 2x4 out of your eye before trying to reach the speck in mine?  You don't need a complete government take over of the system (which a public option will lead to) in order to reduce costs and increase accessibility.  But that's not what your side of the party is really after.  You just want to make everyone dependent upon the federal government, which in turn, would consolidate your power.  Of course, that in turn takes the burden off of the labor unions who are dying in debt from unbacked long-term health insurance benefits (a hidden cost not reflected in the left's assessments but we all know it's coming).  Hell, we're already in the tank for much of their pension obligations as it is.  Nothing like caving in to your special interest groups there, bud.

[Lief 🗽]

I'd rather my special interest group be workers than corporate hacks.

Also, as far as I know, I have not taken any money from insurance companies. They haven't even offered me any, which is rude, because lord knows I could use their ill-begotten blood money.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

This is why we should take the Newt approach:

"I don't believe it's intellectually possible to take 18 percent of the economy, of the largest economy in the world — life and death for every individual — and, in one sweeping bill, change all of it. First of all, no one knows enough to do this; and second, you arouse so many opponents you just can't get it done.

Because the minute you start putting together a 1,300-page bill, you have no idea what the different sections are like, how they interact with each other. And, in order to get enough votes, you end up buying people in for bizarre reasons and giving away goodies, and all of a sudden you have a political monstrosity.

I think if they would take — and this is what I suggested to Mrs. Clinton — if they would take five to seven smaller bills, take one on litigation reform to lower the cost of defensive medicine and to save billions of dollars; take one on fixing Medicare and Medicaid so we are not paying billions to crooks who are not delivering services; have one on prevention and wellness; have one on better practices.

You could pass five to seven bills and, collectively, they would add up to an enormous amount of change."

[Landslide Lyndon]

No public option.

Not even a trigger for a public option.

Those two points are good things.

If you're a CEO of an insurance company, sure.

If you like affordable healthcare, no.

Of course, for deluded "blue dogs" like you, I'm sure the insurance company CEOs will allow some of their wealth to trickle down to you.

Blah blah blah ... Your side takes as much in insurance company CEO payoffs as Republicans do, so why not pull that 2x4 out of your eye before trying to reach the speck in mine?  You don't need a complete government take over of the system (which a public option will lead to) in order to reduce costs and increase accessibility.  But that's not what your side of the party is really after.  You just want to make everyone dependent upon the federal government, which in turn, would consolidate your power.  Of course, that in turn takes the burden off of the labor unions who are dying in debt from unbacked long-term health insurance benefits (a hidden cost not reflected in the left's assessments but we all know it's coming).  Hell, we're already in the tank for much of their pension obligations as it is.  Nothing like caving in to your special interest groups there, bud.

Thank God there are useful idiots like you or else those poor insurance companies might not be making those megaprofits while denying health care to their consumers.
Tell me again why you haven't volunteered to go to Iraq?