Should House Dems Pass Senate HCR Bill?

[Babba]

Kevin Drum quotes Josh Marshall.

If Brown wins, I don't think it makes sense to continue the negotiations or trying to pass a bill through the senate prior to seating Brown. The House simply needs to pass the senate bill without revisions....For the House liberals, it was clear that only very limited revisions were going to be gained in the House-Senate negotiations. It's one thing if someone wasn't going to vote for the final bill at all. But if they were, the differences between the senate bill and whatever the negotiation was going to produce simply were not going to be big enough — not remotely — to justify voting against it.

For the conservative Dems, if they already voted for the more liberal House bill, it won't help them a wink to refuse to vote for the senate bill now — whether that means casting a no vote or just preventing it from coming up for a vote at all. This should be obvious to anyone who knows how 30 second TV ads work (or frankly, even how very reasonable political argument works). And the lesson of 1994 is clear: the folks who killed health care in 1994 didn't gain any benefit from it. They were the ones who got slaughtered in November.

Let me hazard a prediction. If the Dems push through this bill now, bank the accomplish and move on to selling it and working the jobs agenda, it'll be a bad but not terrible November. If they all run to ground after a Brown victory, it's really all bets are off. Why? Because this is about meta-politics. There are all sorts of reasons for the troubles the Dems are now having. They're overwhelmingly linked to the catastrophically bad economy — whether that's because of 10% unemployment, the spending that has been required to keep the economy from slipping into a Depression, the bailouts of the banks etc. But the key reason, the ones the Dems have some control over, is their ability to act and deliver on an agenda.

Obviously I have a dog in this fight: unlike a lot of progressives who have rebelled against the current state of healthcare reform, I think it's gone about as well as could be realistically expected. It brings down insurance rates, expands Medicaid, offers the prospect of moderately priced insurance to tens of millions of the uninsured, forces insurers to take you on even if you have a chronic pre-existing condition, mandates minimum levels of coverage, and takes several small but important steps toward reducing the future growth of healthcare costs. Passing it would be a historic progressive victory, something that conservatives are keenly aware of even if liberals aren't. That's why they've pulled out all the stops to defeat it. They know perfectly well that it will inevitably lead to further progressive victories on healthcare, and they're determined to stop that first step from ever happening.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/ ... res-future

House Dems have to decide to let HCR reform go for now or accept the Senate's version. The Senate bill does make some important changes in health care for this country. It doesn't do enough to make it affordable and the mandate is extremely unpopular with people on both the left and the right. But if we're sticking with private insurance as the basis of our system, the mandate is essential to bringing and keeping costs down. Single payer would have been the most cost effective and efficient plan, but since that's not going happen and since the public option isn't going to happen, should the House just pass the Senate bill and go from there?

[RedstateBlues]

While I've heard that initially SS and Medicare were much less progressive when first passed and improved later, I just don't see that happening with this legislation for many reasons.

So no, I don't think passing the Senate bill is a good idea.

[Babba]

While I've heard that initially SS and Medicare were much less progressive when first passed and improved later, I just don't see that happening with this legislation for many reasons.

So no, I don't think passing the Senate bill is a good idea.

How long do you think it will be before congress takes up major health care legislation again?

[DrJohn]

Pelosi says it will pass, one way or another.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/ ... cs/war_roo

[Babba]

Another opinion:

He's not the only one. Here's Grijalva:

"I'm not sure about who the audience is we are talking to. Are we talking to the audience that expected much more for us or are we talking to the audience that politically wanted to get something done? That's what makes the vote difficult for progressives."

....

There are, of course, ways to win these lawmakers over. Grijalva himself, hinted that a direct assurance from the president that he will push for changes to health care legislation immediately after it is passed into law (through the use of reconciliation) would go a long way to alleviate his concerns.

"It has to be from the White House and it has to be verbally and publicly from the president, saying that we will go along with the understanding that other things we want will be tackled independently and immediately," he explained.

These members obviously need more than "good enough," and so do their constituents. "Better than nothing" isn't really good enough when you're talking about critical domestic legislation upon which your party's political fortunes might be riding in November. Better than nothing really isn't the target lawmakers should be aiming for when making law that will have a direct impact on millions of Americans. Seems like it might be a good idea to aim just a little bit higher than better than nothing. "Better than nothing" is taking absolutely the wrong lesson from what's happening in Massachusetts, from what's happening in the nation. The American electorate isn't in the mood for "better than nothing," and it's not what they elected Dems in 2006 and 2008 to deliver.

If Coakley wins, negotiations can continue to make this bill the best policy Dems can achieve, the one that will make lives better and make people excited to vote Democratic again. Should Coakley lose, panicking and either dropping the bill entirely or shoving through a flawed bill that will be hard to sell to the Democratic base would be a disastrous response. The responsible alternative, the one Grijalva points to, is not letting reform die, but also not letting "better than nothing" prevail.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/ ... int-Praise

[RedstateBlues]

From John's link:

The procedure in question would involve simply having the House vote on the bill that the Senate has already passed.

If the House progressives vote against it, and the Republicans (of course) will vote against it, do they even have the votes in the House to pass it?

[Doodles]

While I've heard that initially SS and Medicare were much less progressive when first passed and improved later, I just don't see that happening with this legislation for many reasons.

So no, I don't think passing the Senate bill is a good idea.

How long do you think it will be before congress takes up major health care legislation again?

Oh, based on history, I'd say....sometime after we're all dead.

[RedstateBlues]

While I've heard that initially SS and Medicare were much less progressive when first passed and improved later, I just don't see that happening with this legislation for many reasons.

So no, I don't think passing the Senate bill is a good idea.

How long do you think it will be before congress takes up major health care legislation again?

Since we are only getting a couple of good things out of the bill anyway, couldn't they pass stuff incrementally? Like the "pre-diagnosed conditions" thing. Pretty much everyone is for that, including (I think) Olympia Snowe. They could get that. They could probably get electronic medical records and they could probably get some Republicans to go along with Medicare cuts, not because I think cuts are so great, but because if they did them right, it would save money that could be used to extend benefits to more people at some point.

If they can't make Medicare work, we'll never get single payer. It's the model, and if it goes into the red as predicted, we can't very well point to that and say "this is what we want for everyone" and have people agree.

Passing the individual mandate without any mechanism to control costs was a loser idea from the get-go, IMO. Why should it cost almost a trillion dollars to force everyone to buy insurance?

Another good thing might be that the Dems get the courage to get rid of the filibuster. Which we may regret later on, but for the next three years of Obama's presidency, this is going to hamper him a lot.

And the Dems should initiate a waiver for their own raises for the next couple of years to rehab their image. Dare the Republicans to vote against that.