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(CBS/AP/iStockPhoto)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has long planned to pass the Senate's health care bill by Christmas, but that deadline seems to be slipping away as Republicans launched stalling tactics, and Reid continues to struggle to get the 60 votes necessary to pass the measure.
Some senators are pushing for a final vote at 7pm on Christmas Eve, reports Politico.
Meanwhile, all Democrats turned their attention on Sen Ben Nelson. He was presented with an amendment that would strengthen restrictions over using taxpayer money to fund abortions, but Nelson said he was still analyzing whether it satisfied his demands.
Democrats want to get the bill passed by Christmas to give negotiators enough time to reconcile each chamber's bill and send it to the president by the State of the Union address.
Meanwhile, now that he's gotten some ink for his remarks in a radio interview, former DNC Chairman Howard Dean makes his case in ink, with an op-ed for the Washington Post, arguing that senators should abandon the current health care bill and hold out for real reform.
Without a public option or Medicare buy-in, Dean contends that insurance companies can't be held accountable to the public, and ultimately, "your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to." If the government wants to make sure that affordability credits go to health care instead of into insurance agents' pockets, Dean says that lawmakers need to take up state-based exchanges. "When major bills near final passage," he adds, "an inside-the-Beltway mentality takes hold."
At the Washington Post's blog the Fix, Chris Cilliza notes that "Dean has little loyalty to the Obama administration --he was passed over for several jobs including secretary of Health and Human Services-- and it's entirely in his own self interest … to become the most public face of liberal opposition to the plan." Dean's outspoken opposition to the bill has already generated a backlash from Democrats and led some pundits --including the Post's Ezra Klein-- to draw comparisons to Joe Lieberman.
Without a public option or Medicare buy-in, Dean contends that insurance companies can't be held accountable to the public, and ultimately, "your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to." If the government wants to make sure that affordability credits go to health care instead of into insurance agents' pockets, Dean says that lawmakers need to take up state-based exchanges. "When major bills near final passage," he adds, "an inside-the-Beltway mentality takes hold."
At the Washington Post's blog the Fix, Chris Cilliza notes that "Dean has little loyalty to the Obama administration --he was passed over for several jobs including secretary of Health and Human Services-- and it's entirely in his own self interest … to become the most public face of liberal opposition to the plan." Dean's outspoken opposition to the bill has already generated a backlash from Democrats and led some pundits --including the Post's Ezra Klein-- to draw comparisons to Joe Lieberman.
Howard Dean is making a signal mistake that ignores a deeply imbedded political reality.
As I've said before, one of the things that has deflated the electorate's attitude over the health care debate is the debate itself. The saying is that the two things you don't want to see made are laws and sausage. We're watching a wide open debate on health care with all of its ugliness and duplicitous disingenuousness. Welcome to your government, fellow voters. This is the way they do things in Washington. It's just that normally, we don't see the inner guts of the process. It's messy and unappealing --like sausage making. But that's democracy, a messy process with a result that isn't always perfect, but as Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
We want instant solutions and that's just not possible in a society as complex, variegated and pluralistic as ours. Finding a compromise that's sage and prescient is nearly impossible. Humans don't do what needs doing until they have no other options left. We're not at that point with our health care system.
I think we will be --fairly soon. Regardless of what happens in Washington, economic realities still ahead of us will eventually manifest themselves with a sledgehammer blow and that's when we'll find ourselves with no other options but to fix health care. We're not doing a very good of addressing health care right now --we never have-- and as is often the case with difficult policy issues, we go through a protracted, draining, grinding process before finally arriving at a sensible solution. It took how long for women to get the right to vote? And how long after the Bill of Rights before the Emancipation Proclamation and how long after the Civil War to insure equal rights to minority races? Even today, there's a thread of populist sentiment still resistant to such legislation.
We get there --eventually.
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Does Dean have his own agenda? (Getty)
Some think health care reform is a bad idea, for whatever reasons. Some, like Howard Dean, think the health care bill has been gutted to the point where it ought to be scrapped. Both views ignore both our history and our potential future --that health care hammer blow that will finally affect enough Americans directly, making them realize, oh, now it's my problem. That's a discussion for another time, but the point in this column is that if you understand how our government works, you'll understand why there's value in the passage of the current health care plan.
This bill is not perfect by any stretch. No bill attempting massive reform of a sprawling patchwork system like health care ever will be on the first effort --at least not with our asinine attitudes, which is what leads to putting asinine lawmakers in office.
Has it occurred to the former governor of Vermont that we're about to enter an election year in which the party in power in the White House almost always loses seats in Congress? That this is going to be a very hard fought election year and the minute we turn the corner into January, every single thing you do is going to be a filter for how people will vote in November in the Congressional elections. When you're the former governor of Vermont you don't have to worry about stuff like that so you can say things like, "the bill needs to be scrapped."
When you are standing on the doorstep of the first significant health care reform in the history of the country, why would you abandon it just because you didn't get all you wanted?
Where's the reform? First, you're going to bring 30 million people under health insurance who don't now have it. That alone is reason enough for supporters of reform to be joyful. It would be a signal achievement if there was nothing else in the bill. Restrictions will be placed on companies --they're not going to be able to cancel you or refuse you for preexisting conditions, a significant step in the right direction, and one that Americans both left and right can applaud. After all, health insurance companies don't give a damn about your political affiliation; they just care about making a profit, which they certainly do as long as you keep paying premiums and don't get sick.
The big money interests --particularly the health insurance companies-- have our Congress bought and paid for on this issue. That's why it should be important to supporters of reform to push this bill through this time --so the big money interests don't buy and sell any more members of Congress. If they buy and sell many more of them you won't be able to find the bare majorities you have now.
I don't see how you can simply take the advice of Howard Dean, dump what's there and start over as we begin an election year. If you dump what's there now and start over, the issue will be dead. Reformers will not be able to reconstruct what they have now. My sense is that the Republicans know this, thinking if they give an inch, they'll end up losing a mile, and they don't even want to lose an inch; they want to get back in power. That's all any minority party wants.
The fact that supporters don't get single payer or public option or Medicare expansion this time around doesn't mean they won't get it in the future, but if supporters of reform scrap this bill, it'll be a generation before we get back to where we are now, and that's a reality of government that the electorate doesn't seem to understand. If we are unable to bring this current bill in any form to a conclusion, health care reform won't get done next year. It will be dead for a generation.
Once health care reform passes, however much it has been altered by political reality, you will have broken through a significant psychological barrier. From then on, it won't be as difficult to make nips and tucks along the way. This is how the majority of policy reforms and societal changes have occurred in our society --not with a broad broom sweep across with the speed of a television sitcom, but incrementally, even glacially.
That is our system, and unless calamity befalls the nation, that's how our system will continue to operate. If you want health care reform, you let this bill pass and then move forward.
Clinton says the bill is good enough to pass (CNN)
Just ask President Clinton, the last president to take a serious stab at health care reform. He says not passing anything would be a huge mistake. He's issued a statement urging Democrats to embrace the bill. You'd expect that from a person who supports health care reform but it's what he said in the statement that makes the key point: "These chances don't come around every day." What's transpired since his failure on the health care front should give any reform supporter pause before taking up Howard Dean's advice.
Just because you're not getting everything we want is not a good reason to trash everything you have.
Comments
For once I agree with that stupid Vermont LIEberal moron "KILL THE BILL YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
You know – I really hope Dean succeeds in derailing this SCAM of a bill.
I’d rather have a collosal blunder than a collosal catastrophe.
I would venture to say most Americans would rather see no bill passed than one that makes even more money for Insurance companies and gives them no choice at all – in fact Americans pride themselves on their freedoms – this bill takes their freedom away from them AND FORCES THEM TO TAKE OUT THEIR WALLET AND PAY FOR INSURANCE at the rate the private insurance companies want.
Man – talk about 20 million a year CEO’s laughing their asses off all the way to the bank while Americans continue to go bankrupt and die because they don’t get the kind of coverage other civilized western countries do – like France or England.
I hope this bill goes down in flames and I’ll help put oil on it as well.
I can't believe Dean agrees with the right side!
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