Health Care -- Where Things Stand

Looks like Henry Waxman is getting to the end of his rope with the Blue Dogs serving on his panel. He is threatening to send the health care bill straight to the floor instead of through his committee if they can't come to some sort of agreement soon.

Good summary of the sausage making. Howard Fineman would probably call it "bo-o-o-o-ring!"

Reid: Useless per usual. But he is respected by his colleagues, so that's something. Pelosi is an arm twister so everyone thinks she's a witch.

Quibble: You state that Obama was "fumbling around with generalities and jargon" as a given, but not everyone thought so.

queencersei-- I just read that. Long past time to call out the Bluedogs for what they are effectively doing.

House Energy and Commerce chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) says his panel's Blue Dogs must relent, or he and leaders will move health care legislation directly to the floor, bypassing the committee altogether.

This morning, he told reporters that Blue Dogs are trying to "eviscerate" the landmark legislation. "I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans," Waxman said.

"I dont see what other alternative we have, because we're not going to let them empower Republicans on the committee."

Damn, Jay, that is one helluva a good piece you wrote there. Every sentence informative, you hit all the bases, executive, house, senate, summarizing where they are, what they are doing and what the sticking points are (and are not.)

Great work!

“As one Senate Democratic aide said, ‘Now you know how frustrated Congress has been with the Obama Administration's lack of clarity and involvement in the process.'”

…what, Congress can't strike deals on their own and need someone to hold their hand, wipe their tears, and give them a time out? Do Blue Dogs aka Corporate Democrats, Inc. [tm] really want a list of things or they just throwing tantrums to get cookies and a hug? (I'd give them a kick in the *** out the door instead but I digress.) Jay, nice piece here, I like your sense of irony, don't be shy.

The partisanship in Congress is insane. Do your jobs, or leave so someone else can.

I also applaud JNS for reporting facts in a non-partisan manner. Someone needs to sit down with Joe and talk about that.

Out of laziness I'm not going to reprint my previous posts, but check out the "Follow the money" post for my thoughts on alternative health care options (2nd page).

Agreed Paul. It's one thing to take your time over a complicated piece of legislation to make sure it is the best that it can be. It's something else to have to kowtow to a small groups stalling tactics. A group who's goal seems to be to either fail to come up with any meaningful reform or to water it down to the point where it fails.

18,000 people a year die because they can't get access to a doctor.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/healthcare/2002-05-22-insurance-deaths.htm

What we are seeing now is that Washington is fundamentally broken. Our elected representatives, like Max Baucus and Harry Reid, know that Americans are dying, but they can't bring themselves to do anything about it because they have been purchased by the insurance industry. They also don't want to hurt Chuck Grassley's feelings.

It really is this simple: 18,000 Americans a year dead. Single payer health reform would not only save those people's lives, but it would save the rest of us billions of dollars a year. But Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman and the rest of useless Democrats won't do anything about because they have been bought off.

Imagine if 18,000 people a year died due to terrorism. Would the Republicans and most of the Democrats be arguing over money? Ordinarily you would think the answer would be no.

However, also imagine that Osama bin Laden had purchased the same amount of political influence as the insurance industry. Based on the current behavior of the GOP, Max Baucus, Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman then the answer would - apparently- be yes.

A person who dies because the airplane they are riding on gets flown into a skyscraper is no more dead than a person who dies from lack of health care because Max Baucus is cashing big checks from the insurance and pharmaceutical industry.

(But never mind the 18,000 dead Americans. A cop in Cambridge has hurt feelings because Obama said he acted stupidly when he stupidly arrested a man for breaking into his own home. I look forward to continuing wall-to-wall media coverage of the Gates incident.)

People here have been attacking the Blue Dogs. I would remind these folks that without the Blue Dogs, Henry Waxman would not be chair of his committee, the Democrats would not control the House and we would not be talking about a health care reform bill. If anything, while they may seem a pain to the other Democrats, they are actually helping to protect Obama from needless attacks. They clearly have not forgotten what happened to Clintoncare all those years ago.

When the CBO states that the bills being proposed will not rein in spending, Congress needs to listen.

Personally, I would like a single payer plan. But at this point, I am willing to take what I can get.

The Borgen Project has some good info on the cost of addressing global poverty.

$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget.

Odd that when Bush wanted money to invade Iraq the Blue Dog Democrats fell all over themselves to write the check.

Or when Bush wanted to do Medicare Part D, with no funding mechanism in place, the Blue Dog Democrats were happy to say yes.

Or when Bush, later Obama, wanted trillions to bail out Wall Street the Democrats voted yes.

But when it comes time to vote to provide people with heatlh care, or to clean up the environment, or to improve our schools, Congress cries poverty.

Congress - which is firmly in control by the Democrats - lacks the competence and the courage to do its job. They are simply not up to the job of running the government.

Maybe the libertarians are right. Let's just dissolve the union, let states form regional coalitions, and go from there. From my perspective, maybe a confederation of states that included like-minded populations like Washington, Oregon, and Vermont, or the Southern states in the old Confederacy, would be far more responsive to the desires of their populations.

I'm fed up with having my health, welfare, and tax dollars decided for me by people like Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, and James Inhofe. I didn't vote for them. They don't represent me. (They barely represent the people who did vote for them.) Doesn't make any sense that my tax dollars, or the health choices of my daughters, should be decided for me by people that I can't directly vote for.

@choska: Imagine if 18,000 people a year died due to terrorism. Would the Republicans and most of the Democrats be arguing over money?

Bingo. This should be said everytime someone goes Chicken Little and starts running around shouting, "It's gonna cost money! It's gonna cost money!"

Yeah, it costs money. It costs money now.

Speaking of Ronny's version of corporatism:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_re_us/us_california_budget

@jcapan and grape_crush. You and I might agree, but our opinions don't matter. We don't write the big checks to Baucus, so we don't get invited to play grab-a$$ with him at his lodge in Montana.

Americans are going to die - tax-paying, patriotic Americans - because Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Nancy Pelosi won't stand up and defend them from the scheming grifters in the insurance, medical, and pharmaceutical industry.

Ralph Nader was completely and totally wrong to stay in the race in 2000. But that doesn't mean that his observation that there is barely a bit of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans was wrong.

What we are seeing on the health care debate is that, when crunch time comes and American lives are on the line, the politicians of both parties are going to do what is right for themselves.

It happened prior to 9/11 when the Bush administration was too busy on vacation to bother watching out for Bin Laden.

It is happening right now when the Democrats in Congress are more concerned with going on vacation than they are with protecting the health of the American people.

Sad part is that more Americans will die this year from lack of health care due to Democratic corruption than those who died in 9/11and the Iraq war combined.

Frontline did an entire program on how other democracies do universal healthcare.
UK
Japan
Germany
Taiwan
Switzerland

You can watch it streaming from their website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

Here is the shorthand of how they do it
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/

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