Can Obama keep Democrats in line on healthcare to the end?
So President Barack Obama goes to Capitol Hill over the weekend and late Tuesday Senate Democrats reach a healthcare compromise on a public insurance option (Republicans oppose the legislation so every Democrat vote is needed to move it along).
Lots of day-after grumbling from both sides of the political spectrum: The Chamber of Commerce still opposes it and liberal activist group MoveOn.org said senators had “bargained away the heart of healthcare reform.”
Well, for critics it’s not likely to get any better on the public option front.
If the bill makes it to the final stages before becoming law, the Senate version would need to be melded with the House version. And a true compromise would require the Senate to take on a stronger public option and the House to weaken its hand.
One lesson from covering Capitol Hill is that nothing is a done deal until the final vote is in.
So that leaves plenty of room for lobbyists to meddle — because on the Hill the finished version of major legislation is rarely anything like what the bill looked like at the start.
As a common paraphrase of the John Godfrey Saxe quote goes — laws and sausages are two things you don’t want to see made.
House healthcare bill doesn’t boost public support – Poll
The big presentation — that’s 1,990 pages — of healthcare reform legislation by Democrats in the House of Representatives last week didn’t boost public support, with more voters still opposed to the effort, according to a new Rasmussen Reports opinion poll.
Just to recap where things stand: House Democratic leaders are hoping to move their bill to the floor for debate by late this week, it includes a government-run public insurance option. In the Senate, Democratic leaders are waiting for cost estimates on their legislation, which also includes a version of the “public option.”
The latest Rasmussen poll found that 42 percent of those surveyed favored the healthcare plan proposed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. That was down from 45 percent a week ago and unchanged from two weeks ago.
Looking at the Rasmussen historical chart, support for healthcare reform has hovered between 41 percent and 46 percent since mid-September.
In the latest poll, conducted after House Democrats unveiled their legislation last week, 54 percent opposed the legislative effort on healthcare reform. That was up three points from the previous week and unchanged from two weeks earlier.
Opposition to healthcare reform has hovered between 50 percent and 56 percent since mid-September.
“Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the numbers is how stable they have been through months of debate, town hall protests, presidential speeches, congressional wrangling and more,” Rasmussen Reports says.
I feel that I fully support this bill at this point, because the need for change in general is greater than our specific individual needs or wants. The entire health care industry from provider, practitioner, to pharmaceutical, has been allowed to dictate how it will care for the people and has lost sight of its primary focus, to provide quality care.
There are so many aspects of this plan that the politicians keep overlooking though. The medical industry is wrought with overspending and has gone for too long without any regulation or oversight. Insurance premiums have gone up 138% for a reason and it isn’t simply corporate greed.
Private insurance companies are a part of the problem, yes. When regarding health, private insurance never should have been allowed to be profitable business in the first place. For-profit insurance means requires a need to make money and inevitably that is going to affect the quality of the insurance that people are getting from the company. Companies don’t want to spend money on an individual so they will take whatever measures necessary to ensure they don’t have to. But the medical industry has been profiting all along as well. Procedural costs, visits, even x-rays cost varying amounts state to state, city to city and practitioners are being bounced around by pharmaceutical companies to try and make money while waiting a year or more for the insurance companies to pay up.
This may be why the US was ranked #37 according to the World Health Organization. http://www.ourblook.com/component/option ,com_sectionex/Itemid,200076/id,...
It is time for the entire industry to work as a single unit and break down the privatized barriers. Every doctor takes the Hippocratic Oath before receiving certification so when will the industry as a whole step forward and honor that oath?
Five days since you wrote this. It may look bleak for the democrats but even bleaker for the country is it is saddled with the debt, cost this will create. Interesting how the goal become passage not the content.