It passed.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is preparing to sign a transformative health care bill ushering in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the nation's history — and then hit the road to sell it to a reluctant public.

Obama will travel to Iowa City, Iowa on Thursday, the White House said, as he now turns to seeing a companion bill through the Senate and selling the health care overhaul's benefits on behalf of House members who cast risky votes. It is most likely that he will sign the bill on Tuesday, but plans are not yet final, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an as-yet-unannounced strategy.

House Democrats voted 219-212 late Sunday to send the landmark legislation to Obama. The 10-year, $938 billion bill would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce deficits and ban insurance company practices such as charging more to women and denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

"This is what change looks like," Obama said later in televised remarks that stirred memories of his 2008 campaign promise of "change we can believe in."

"We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people."

Obama's young presidency received a much needed boost from passage of the legislation, which would touch the lives of nearly every American. The battle for the future of the health insurance system — affecting one-sixth of the economy — galvanized Republicans and conservative activists looking ahead to November's midterm elections.

A companion package making a series of changes sought by House Democrats to the larger bill, which already passed the Senate, was approved 220-211. The fix-it bill will now go to the Senate, where debate is expected to begin as early as Tuesday. Senate Democrats hope to approve it unchanged and send it directly to Obama, though Republicans intend to attempt parliamentary objections that could change the bill and require it to go back to the House.

Sen. John McCain said Monday morning that Democrats have not heard the last of the health care debate, and said he was repulsed by "all this euphoria going on."

Appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," McCain, who was Obama's GOP rival in the 2008 presidential campaign, said that "outside the Beltway, the American people are very angry. They don't like it, and we're going to repeal this."

The complicated two-step approval process for the legislation was made necessary because Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof supermajority in a special election in January, a setback that caused even some Democratic lawmakers to pronounce the yearlong health care effort dead. Under the relentless prodding of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in particular, it was gradually revived, and the fix-it bill will be considered under fast-track Senate rules that don't allow minority party filibusters.

"We will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare and now, tonight, health care for all Americans," said a jubilant Pelosi, D-Calif., partner to Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the grueling campaign to pass the legislation.

"This is the civil rights act of the 21st century," added Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the top-ranking black member of the House.

GOP lawmakers attacked the legislation as everything from a government takeover to the beginning of totalitarianism, and none voted in favor. "Hell no!" Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, shouted in a fiery speech. "We have failed to listen to America and we have failed to reflect the will of our constituents."

Thirty-four Democrats also voted "no" on the Senate-passed bill.

Sunday night's votes capped an unpredictable and raucous weekend at the capitol, with Democratic leaders negotiating around the clock for the final votes as hundreds of protesters paraded outside, their shouts of "Kill the Bill! Kill the Bill!" audible within the Capitol.

A last-minute deal with a critical group of anti-abortion lawmakers Sunday afternoon sealed Democrats' victory. The leader of the anti-abortion bloc, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., didn't get to add stricter anti-abortion language to the underlying bill, but was satisfied by an executive order signed by Obama affirming current law and provisions in the legislation that ban federal funding for abortions except in cases of ****, incest or danger to the life of the mother.

Republican abortion foes said Obama's proposed order was insufficient, and when Stupak sought to counter them, a shout of "baby killer" was heard coming from the Republican side of the chamber.

Far beyond the political ramifications — a concern the president repeatedly insisted he paid no mind — were the sweeping changes the bill held in store for Americans, insured or not, as well as the insurance industry and health care providers.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation awaiting the president's approval would cut deficits by an estimated $143 billion over a decade. For the first time, most Americans would be required to purchase insurance, and face penalties if they refused. Much of the money in the bill would be devoted to subsidies to help families at incomes of up to $88,000 a year pay their premiums.

The second measure, which House Democrats demanded before agreeing to approve the first, included enough money to close a gap in the Medicare prescription drug coverage over the next decade, starting with an election-season rebate of $250 later this year for seniors facing high costs.

It also included sweeping changes in the student loan program, an administration priority that has been stalled in the Senate for months.

For the president, the events capped an 18-day stretch in which he traveled to four states and lobbied more than 60 wavering lawmakers in person or by phone to secure passage of his signature domestic issue. He also postponed an overseas trip to remain in Washington and push for the bill.

Obama watched the vote in the White House's Roosevelt Room with Vice President Joe Biden and dozens of aides, exchanged high fives with Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and then telephoned Pelosi with congratulations.

So, as we have at least three insane, rambling threads about how we're all going to die. Anyone want to have a real conversation about the actual implications of this?

Oh, and BTW: Attn all lib-bots: engage order 66!

[vindicatedxjin]

Hey there..my post had nothing to do with anyone dying... it was just ruined with the talk of milk and cookies.

[Ben Lahnger]

I suspect that the 2010 elections will skew conservative in a tea party/right wing/anti-abortion reaction, and the Democrats might lose their majorities in both House and Senate. And this will then inspire an attempt to repeal the whole thing. In the meantime there will be much crowing and gnashing of teeth.

I am disappointed that the conservatives stooped to such vicious animosity in trying to drum up opposition to HCR, and I am disappointed that liberals did so much demonizing of the health insurance industry in trying to drum up support.

It's not a perfect bill, and parts of it desperately need revision.

When will we be able to read the actual bill that the President is going to sign?

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

I suspect that the 2010 elections will skew conservative in a tea party/right wing/anti-abortion reaction, and the Democrats might lose their majorities in both House and Senate. And this will then inspire an attempt to repeal the whole thing. In the meantime there will be much crowing and gnashing of teeth.

I can't see that fear. Those people are loud but not that many. Glenn Beck said there were 1.2 million people in a Beck march or something of that sort, while the fire department estimated about forty thousand.
We should rejoice that the only opposition to more progress is a mere caricature.

[Saya]

Yeah, I still think that the tea baggers are too crazy for huge numbers to support them. I think by the time the 2010 elections come around everyone will realize "hey, we're not dead yet!" or have sobered their views quite a bit.

If Ben is right though, I'm going to move further away from the border I think.

[Ben Lahnger]

You're both forgetting that there was already an anti-incumbent backlash in recent elections before this bill passed. It's already impacted the Democrats and made this a closer vote than it would have been had it been voted on last fall.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, a man I don't care for much but who I know to be a very skilled politician, just recently rebuffed a strong conservative challenger in Kay Bailey Hutchinson (who from all predictions should have won) simply by portraying her as a Washington insider. And I foresee that anti-incumbent backlash trending up in coming elections.

[Alan]

Also, I like how the BBC writes it:
"...extending healthcare to an additional 32 million Americans as a historic advance in social justice."
I like how they say it's "a historic advance in social justice."

Seriously, only in America could people be so fucking stupid as to be angry about healthcare. While the rest of the world complains it's not enough, here they complain about the principle itself. Why do some insist on pretending to live in 1776?

[Despanan]

I'm sort of anticipating something like what happened with Medicare and Harry Truman.

There were tons of people losing their minds over that, and it ended up a huge success.

The conservatives are going to continue to freak out for a while, though honestly, the bill isn't even that radical. As Ben pointed out in CrazyMcRightWingNutJob's thread, the plan is actually fairly similar to Nixon's health care plan.

Hey Saya, any idea on how similar/dissimilar the HCR is to Canada's system?

[Ben Lahnger]

Despanan, any idea when we will actually be able to read the final version that the President is going to sign into law?

[Alan]

Here's something posted on a facebook called Socialism Doesn't Work:
Doug Scott
Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors: It doesn't matter what specialty you have trained yourself in -- you will all be paid the same! (Just TRY to tell me that's not Socialism!)

Then you get some twenty outraged posts about how we can fall into totalitarianism. Seriously, I wouldn't expect them to actually read those two lines, but how the fuck can they believe a bill would be written in that kind of language? It really doesn't raise any bullshit alarms in their heads?

Here was my response:
"Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors: It doesn't matter what specialty you have trained yourself in -- you will all be paid the same! (Just TRY to tell me that's not Socialism!)"
What I will say is that that's not Page 241 Line 6-8 of the HR3200.
Have you actually read the bill or you just like speaking against it?
Here are lines 6-8 in page 241, word for word:
"Service categories established under this paragraph shall apply without regard to the specialty of the physician furnishing the service."
This paragraph is in regards to the previous page, detailing a separation of service categories into basically those services which are codified, and those that don't.
All this means is that the healthcare bill applies to all health services. Just as any other bill mentions how its application will apply to all the particulars of said bill. No mention about money whatsoever. Not even close.

Once again I reiterate; there's so many legitimate reasons to dislike socialism. Why do you feel the need to simply lie and create red herrings to hate it?




They didn't actually address it.

[Saya]

I haven't gone over it all yet but its not that similar to our system at all. Here no one pays into a plan or anything, every citizen is covered under their provincial Medical Care Plan so coverage changes from province to province, but generally anything you go to the hospital for is free, the only thing I ever had to pay for thus far is prescriptions. You can get insurance to cover prescriptions and private hospital rooms and vision and dental, wheras I believe America's Plan is going to make it so you don't get rejected for a pre existing condition, here you can when it comes to buying insurance. Most places that I have worked at though lets you opt into the company health care plan within a time frame where your previous conditions don't come into play, and my university covers everything but insulin for full time students. On your own it sucks to buy insurance, but through work or school its not so bad. Oh, and abortion is totally free, except in New Brunswick.

[Ben Lahnger]

There's concern that the second House bill, the one that "fixes" the objectionable parts of the previously passed Senate-confirmed bill, may not clear the Senate itself. And it probably will go back to the House again before it can be finalized:

The House passed the overhaul — now what? - 21 out of 22 times, reconciliation legislation has been sent back to House

And, early last week MSNBC commentator and former Democratic Chief of Staff to the Senate Finance Committee Lawrence O'Donnell said that the bill was unlikely to pass because of the Senate Parliamentarian. Then I read this today:

Health Care Bill Puts Senate Parliamentarian in Crossfire

So, it really could come down to one person's interpretation of whether certain language in the bill can be interpreted as "a recommendation."

[Entropic]

Honestly, the cynicist in me says that this won't last the decade.

That being said, at this point any step forward is an improvement.

[Ben Lahnger]

You're not a cynic ... I'm a cynic. I"ll prove it.

You said "at this point, any step forward is an improvement."

I don't see that a concrete step forward has been taken yet. And as a true cynic, I say false hope is worse than no hope.

[Saya]

Sooooo its a little too soon to buy Limbaugh a ticket?

http://www.aticketforrush.com/

No one tell him Costa Rica has health care!

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

You're both forgetting that there was already an anti-incumbent backlash in recent elections before this bill passed. It's already impacted the Democrats and made this a closer vote than it would have been had it been voted on last fall.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, a man I don't care for much but who I know to be a very skilled politician, just recently rebuffed a strong conservative challenger in Kay Bailey Hutchinson (who from all predictions should have won) simply by portraying her as a Washington insider. And I foresee that anti-incumbent backlash trending up in coming elections.

It would have to be a historic (hysteric? lol) backlash for the Republicans to recapture the majority: 26 senate seats and 113 house seats? I don't think so.

[Ben Lahnger]

I don't expect it all in the next election, but the current anti-incumbent trend has been building over the last decade. It's part of what swept Obama into power (well, that and the Republicans totally bungling their nominee picks) but that is going to work the other way for a while.

And the main point is this ... there were about 33 Democrats who were given protection against voter-backlash in upcoming elections by allowing them to vote against the HCR bill. After the midterms, when the Dems lose some of that majority, they'll no longer have that luxury.

And when they have fewer seats, they'll have to get more solidarity among the remaining Democratic House members. You can do that math.

[Despanan]

Interesting article from conservative speech writer David Frum

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

[Ben Lahnger]

Despanan, good stuff there. Thanks for the quoting it.

He's largely correct on the matter. The democrats did reject some Republican proposals too near the end as they ran with an all or nothing approach of their own on the final bill, but at that point the Republican strategies up till them left them with no choice but to do so.

I'm not unhappy that a need that's been discussed by politicians for nearly 100 years (a news report I saw the other day cited President Teddy Roosevelt as having first brought up making health care available to all Americans in 1912) has finally been addressed, but the partisan politics that were in play here (correctly identified by Mr. Frum as being largely the Republicans fault for playing hardball all the way) have left us with a bill with some problems.

Is it better than no bill at all? Yes in the short term. I'm worried about the long term.

I'm also hoping that the uncivil discourse settles down for a bit. I'm tired of all the bad behavior on both sides of the aisle.

[HumanePain]

Our government officials have become sore losers. First, departing Clinton workers remove the "W" keys from White House computer keyboards when Bush was elected, now the right wing calls for vandalism. I am disgusted:

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/22...andalized.html

Democratic offices vandalized across the country
By JUDY L. THOMAS
The Kansas City Star

Authorities in Wichita and some other cities across the country are investigating vandalism against Democratic offices, apparently in response to health care reform.

And on Monday, a former Alabama militia leader took credit for instigating the actions.

Mike Vanderboegh of Pinson, Ala., former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, put out a call on Friday for modern “Sons of Liberty” to break the windows of Democratic Party offices nationwide in opposition to health care reform. Since then, vandals have struck several offices, including the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita.

“There’s glass everywhere,” said Lyndsay Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party. “A brick took out the whole floor-to-ceiling window and put a gouge in my desk.”

Stauble said the brick, hurled through the window between Friday night and Saturday morning, had “some anti-Obama rhetoric” written on it.

Vandals also smashed the front door and a window at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ office in Tucson early Monday, hours after the Arizona Democrat voted for the health care reform package.

Over the weekend, a brick shattered glass doors at the Monroe County Democratic Committee headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

Attached to the brick was a note that said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” — a quote from Barry Goldwater’s 1964 acceptance speech as the Republican presidential candidate.

And on Friday, a brick broke a window at Rep. Louise Slaughter’s district office in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Slaughter, a Democrat, was a vocal supporter of the health care reform bill passed by the House on Sunday.

Tyler Longpine, spokesman for the Kansas Democratic Party, called the incidents troubling.

“It’s kind of an alarming context,” he said. “We haven’t had any trouble here, but we’re fortunate enough to be on the seventh floor of an office building in Topeka.”

However, he added, “Most of our county offices are storefronts, which are a little bit more vulnerable to that kind of intimidation.”

Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.” Referring to the health care reform bill as “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act,” he told followers to send a message to Democrats.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

Vanderboegh told The Kansas City Star that the action was meant to “get everyone’s attention.”

“What I was trying to get across was that people do not understand how on the edge of civil conflict this country is,” he said.

Those who monitor right-wing extremist groups said they weren’t surprised to hear of the vandalism.

“Passage of health care reform will elicit a variety of responses from its opponents,” said Leonard Zeskind, author of the 2009 book “Blood and Politics.”

“We can expect militia types like Vanderboegh to become even more far-fetched and violent.”

To reach Judy L. Thomas, call 816-234-4334 or send e-mail to jthomas@kcstar.com.
Posted on Mon, Mar. 22, 2010 10:45 PM

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/22...#ixzz0j7i5vXB5

[Despanan]

Jesus. Hope those crazy fucks are arrested quickly before they start killing people.

[Ben Lahnger]

Contrary to Deadman's (reposted from infowars) claims, it looks to me like Democrats that voted for this bill are the ones who should be on the lookout for armed thugs.

This really disgusts me.