Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Thought for the Morning

by BooMan
Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 08:27:13 AM EST

Have I mentioned how much I hate the Baucus Plan? What I really hate is how politically stupid it is to even discuss forcing people to buy private health insurance at unaffordable prices. It's bad enough to force people to buy something from a corporation so that they can drive. We can always adjust our lifestyles in such a way that we don't need to drive. But we all are subject to the Baucus Mandate, no matter what we do. If we don't become customers of the very health insurance companies we loathe, we will get slapped with heavy fines. Most of the time, the Republicans distort and demagogue our policies. There is no need to distort this bag of shit. Just tell the truth and the Democrats will think it's hell.

Any Democrat who willingly even so much as debates the Baucus Plan as something plausible is doing incalculable damage to the cause of health care reform.

Thought for the Morning | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

So where is a decent bill in the Senate? Where is the House bill? Not rhetorical questions. I'd really like to know what's in the hopper besides the Baucus bill being rammed down our throats. Perhaps a recap article?

by The Voice In The Wilderness on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 08:50:55 AM EST

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

The HELP Bill.

by BooMan on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 08:56:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Thanks for the link. At a VERY quick glance, it seems to make the insurance companies regulated monopolies. That's good. But I see there is no bill number, so is this proposed legislation or a real bill?

by The Voice In The Wilderness on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 09:30:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

The jurisdiction for creating the health care reform bill was delegated to the HELP and Finance Committees in the Senate. The HELP Committee (led by Dodd, in Kennedy's absence) passed their bill out of committee in July or early August. The Finance Committee, led by Baucus, starts their mark-up next week.

In the House, the jurisdiction was split between three committees:

Ways & Means- Chairman Rangel
Energy & Commerce- Chairman Waxman
Education & Labor- Chairman Miller

They all completed their bills before the August recess.

So, four out of five committees completed their work before all those nutty townhall meetings. They all had a version of the public option.

The key stumbling block has been on how to finance the bill. An additional problem has been an unwillingness of key Democrats on the Finance Committee (Conrad, Lincoln, Carper) to back a public option.

The House has to meld their three bills into one bill and pass it.
The Senate needs Finance to pass their bill, then they need to meld it with the HELP bill and create one bill and pass it.

Then, the single House bill and the single Senate bill have to be melded into one bill (during a Conference Committee) and each house has to pass an identical version.

by BooMan on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 09:37:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Messy. Sounds like a long time before we find out what is really going to happen. Meanwhile, the MSM only talks about the Baucus bill, described as "socialist" by at least half of them.

by The Voice In The Wilderness on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 01:15:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 1)

I don't think insurance as a requirement to drive is a bad idea at all. Perhaps inexpensive liability insurance should be made available so that people aren't forced to buy a product from whatever private insurance companies are available to them. But a car can be a lethal weapon, so requiring training, a license and insurance in order to operate one seems reasonable to me.

The comparison with mandated health insurance is not a good one.

by Heart of the Rockies on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 09:14:41 AM EST

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Also, you can choose to not drive, i.e. taxi, bus, car pool. You can't choose to not get sick.

by The Voice In The Wilderness on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 09:26:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

most places one can't get by without a car - even in the Northeast.

Viva Obama

by Errol on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 10:49:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

That's why I included car pool. It's inconvenient, but you actually can get by with the help of co-workers and neighbors, even without public transportation.

by The Voice In The Wilderness on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 01:17:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

but yes, what you say about getting sick - heard some good discussions on that point, from Howard Dean iirc: that health "insurance" isn't comparable to insuring against say damage to one's home, because everyone gets sick and everyone has end of life care issues.

Viva Obama

by Errol on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 10:53:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 1)

You should be licensed to drive, after proving you know the rules of the road and can parallel park, etc. Should you also be forced to pay a corporation to certify you to the state? Should be forced to pay a corporation to give you your license in lieu of the state?

Yes, you should carry liability insurance when you drive. The state should provide you with that liability insurance at cost. At the very least, you should have that option.

by BooMan on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 09:30:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Interesting thought. Do assigned risk pools qualify?

by The Voice In The Wilderness on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 01:18:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

So did we dodge a bullet of sorts by NOT having Maxie drop this abomination before August?

Recommended by Hideo Kojima

by robertdsc on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 10:27:31 AM EST

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Quite possibly. It's harder to protest something if you don't have any hard numbers.

by BooMan on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 10:33:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Hey, BooMan, let me make your day about Baucus's bomb by offering a decent comparison to what he's labored to bring forth. Back during the French ancien regime, the French monarch had a really great tax on salt, the gabelle. The thing that made this tax so pernicious was that virtually everyone was forced to buy a specified quantity of salt every week, whether you used that much or not. Of course, since the French monarchy held salt distribution as a monopoly and it was a revenue generator, the price on salt was hardly subsidized. Naturally, the average French resident loathed the gabelle, which was only abolished in 1790. Guess what happened in 1789 to make that possible? I suspect we'd be looking at a reprise of those events if Baucus the Bourbon were to get his way.

by VizierVic (VizierVic@hotmail.com) on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 11:30:18 AM EST

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

This pile of steaming shit is an insurance company's wet dream. Hell, they probably wrote the thing. The Finance Committee will try to Rope-a-Dope and polish this turd for a couple of weeks and then it will likely get flushed. I think the plan was to do this with reconciliation all along, while idiots like Lieberman and Conrad jerk off on Sunday talk...

by bogenrim on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 12:18:40 PM EST

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

They did!! Sounds like you haven't been reading Marcy and Jane over at FDL.

by Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 01:07:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Hell, they probably wrote the thing.

bingo!

After all those months of buildup, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Sen. Max Baucus, produced a health-care reform bill that coddles the insurance industry to such an extent that it could have been written in a corporate boardroom. Indeed, you might say that it actually was, because it incorporates recommendations offered by two former Senate leaders, Republican Bob Dole and Democrat Tom Daschle, both now affiliated with Alston + Bird, a prominent law and lobbying firm that includes among its clients major health-insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital clients...

the revolution will not be televised...

by dada on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 02:58:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

nobody has answered me this...

what happens if there is NO BILL from the Finance Committee...why can't we just work with the 4 other bills.

by rikyrah on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 02:18:21 PM EST

Re: Thought for the Morning (none / 0)

Good discussion by Lawrence O'Donnell of the Huffington Post on Countdown last night. He was a Congressional staffer in a previous life, and provides a decent explanation about why it's actually better for the overall process if something actually gets out of the Finance committee:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/

by bogenrim on Fri Sep 18th, 2009 at 02:58:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Thought for the Morning | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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