House Passes Health Care Bill
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on November 8th, 2009 5:42 am by HL
House Passes Health Care Bill
With a few dozen Democrats jumping ship and the support of just one Republican, the House passed a historic health reform bill by just five votes. The measure would expand coverage to most Americans through individual and employer mandates, outlaw some of the insurance companies’ more unsavory tactics and provide a weakened public insurance option. The House bill would cost more than President Barack Obama’s arbitrary limit of $900 billion, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it would ultimately reduce the deficit over 10 years—another of the president’s requirements. Now it’s the Senate’s turn to—we hope—pass its own vision of reform. The two measures would be combined in conference and then head back to be voted into law, or not, by both chambers. It’s easy to be cynical about all this. The House measure, more ambitious than what they’re talking about in the Senate, doesn’t do a whole lot to control runaway health care costs. And while the insurance companies would have to play a more honest game of pool, they would be flush with millions of new paying customers. Then there’s the public insurance option, a nice gesture but really so stingy it would be met with riots in civilized Europe. Still, Clintoncare never got out of committee. This is undeniably a historic moment, warts and all. —PZS Bloomberg: The House voted 220-215 today to approve the measure, which would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Just one Republican, Representative Joseph Cao of Louisiana, backed the plan, and 39 Democrats broke ranks to oppose it. Lawmakers hailed the step as a historic follow-on to the 1965 creation of the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled. They said the bill would cover 36 million uninsured Americans and curb costs. New rules would prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, and seniors would get help obtaining preventive care and medicine. Read more READ THE WHOLE ITEM
With a few dozen Democrats jumping ship and the support of just one Republican, the House passed a historic health reform bill by just five votes. The measure would expand coverage to most Americans through individual and employer mandates, outlaw some of the insurance companies’ more unsavory tactics and provide a weakened public insurance option.
The House bill would cost more than President Barack Obama’s arbitrary limit of $900 billion, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it would ultimately reduce the deficit over 10 years—another of the president’s requirements.
Now it’s the Senate’s turn to—we hope—pass its own vision of reform. The two measures would be combined in conference and then head back to be voted into law, or not, by both chambers.
It’s easy to be cynical about all this. The House measure, more ambitious than what they’re talking about in the Senate, doesn’t do a whole lot to control runaway health care costs. And while the insurance companies would have to play a more honest game of pool, they would be flush with millions of new paying customers. Then there’s the public insurance option, a nice gesture but really so stingy it would be met with riots in civilized Europe.
Still, Clintoncare never got out of committee. This is undeniably a historic moment, warts and all.? —PZS
Bloomberg:
The House voted 220-215 today to approve the measure, which would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Just one Republican, Representative Joseph Cao of Louisiana, backed the plan, and 39 Democrats broke ranks to oppose it.
Lawmakers hailed the step as a historic follow-on to the 1965 creation of the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled. They said the bill would cover 36 million uninsured Americans and curb costs. New rules would prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, and seniors would get help obtaining preventive care and medicine.
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Breaking the Law for the Environment
“Illegal protest” can count a new baritoned bedfellow. In an interview ahead of the Copenhagen climate change conference, former Vice President Al Gore pronounced civil disobedience to be justified, believing that the global warming crisis requires more forceful methods of political activism. —JCL The Guardian: Al Gore has sought to inject fresh momentum into the Copenhagen build-up, saying he is certain Barack Obama will attend and predicting a rise in civil disobedience against fossil-fuel polluters unless drastic action is taken over global warming. Amid increasing incidents of climate protesters disrupting the operations of fossil-fuel industries and airports in Britain and elsewhere, Gore suggests the scale of the emergency means non-violent lawbreaking is justified. “Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play,” he says. “And I expect that it will increase, no question about it.” In his only UK newspaper interview to mark the publication of his new book, entitled Our Choice, Gore says it is crucial for Obama to attend Copenhagen in person, adding: “I feel certain that he will.” Read more READ THE WHOLE ITEM
“Illegal protest” can count a new baritoned bedfellow. In an interview ahead of the Copenhagen climate change conference, former Vice President Al Gore pronounced civil disobedience to be justified, believing that the global warming crisis requires more forceful methods of political activism. —JCL
The Guardian:
Al Gore has sought to inject fresh momentum into the Copenhagen build-up, saying he is certain Barack Obama will attend and predicting a rise in civil disobedience against fossil-fuel polluters unless drastic action is taken over global warming.
Amid increasing incidents of climate protesters disrupting the operations of fossil-fuel industries and airports in Britain and elsewhere, Gore suggests the scale of the emergency means non-violent lawbreaking is justified. “Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play,” he says. “And I expect that it will increase, no question about it.”
In his only UK newspaper interview to mark the publication of his new book, entitled Our Choice, Gore says it is crucial for Obama to attend Copenhagen in person, adding: “I feel certain that he will.”
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- November 7, 2009 The Rich? They Get Elected
- November 6, 2009 America Performs Its Familiar Role of Propping Up a Dictator
- November 6, 2009 ‘Daily Show’ Insta-Classic: What Lurks Within Glenn Beck?
- November 6, 2009 Sen. George McGovern on the Presidency From Lincoln to Obama
- November 6, 2009 Obama to Tribal Nations: ‘You Will Not Be Forgotten’
