A Proposal Which Perhaps Is Worse Than No Health Care Reform

I was just looking over some articles on the proposed bipartisan Senate Finance Committee health care bill. I don’t have much time now, and it might not really matter unless it looks like this bill is the one which makes it thorough the Senate, but it is worth a brief note to say that the bill is terrible. Realistically I don’t think this bill has much of a chance of passing once people see some of the problems such as how it will impact employers and how it will increase out of pocket expenses for Medicare beneficiaries.

Staying with the status quo is a poor option leading me to accept aspects of the House bill which I am not happy about, but if I had to choose I would likely vote against the Senate Finance Committee bill and gamble on a more sensible plan coming up. I have been critical in the past of some on the left who are threatening to make a litmus test of a public plan and vote against bills which might be good but not perfect,  but this bill creates too many problems while providing insufficient benefits.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Eclectic Radical says:

    Ron, I want to make it clear before going any further that I am least half-joking… but would you forgive me for placing a tongue partially in cheek and saying ‘I told you so’? 😉
     
    More seriously, the original Senate bill as proposed by Teddy Kennedy was flawed but passable (though I found the burden placed on employers to be objectionable), but Baucus and company have managed to eliminate most of its virtues while magnifying the strength of the arguments against it in very much the fashion that worried me. This is about the center crippling health care reform in order to ‘save’ it, based on the premise that only a bipartisan bill is acceptable.
     
    This is why many on the left have been arguing for a more boldly partisan approach to reform and why the House bill, for all its faults, is considered better than the Senate’s current mess.
     

  2. 2
    Jim Z. says:

    Uh-huh.

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