I'm continually amazed at how people are perfectly willing to trust their healthcare to the federal government which mismanages just about everything that it has ever been involved in. And now to the tune of a trillion dollars a year.

No, not at all....you said that by asking a question and making a smarty remark. I'm saying this bill subsidizes health care only and does nothing to address cost, skyrocketing premiums, fraud, or waste.
It's modeled after Mass. healthcare - asked the "deserving" how they like that one.

Once again....there could have been real debate except the dems were determined to have their public option. So there was no debate except over that.

Medicaid Expansion

Most of the medicaid expansion is "unfunded" in most of the states after 3 years

Four states get some additional funding in the bill. Nebraska for it's vote get 100 % funded forever

Medicare

470 billion cut of which $120 billion is medicare advantage

Florida has no cuts to medicare advantage in the bill for it's vote

CORRUPTION AT ITS BEST

Anybody hear about the 10% tax on using tanning beds???

It's in the bill...

Democrats don't listen.....republicans were against the public option from day one. The debate was totally centered around that.


The only thing this bill does is give health insurance to 30 million people subsidized mostly by the government.

Or you can look at it this way, the taxpayers from the other 49 states have to forever pay for Nebraska medicaid expansion.

Your logic is so flawed....the playing field is not equal when one states medicaid expansion is prepaid and other states aren't just because you are the so called deciding vote. Your example would be correct only if all A's were given to students in one state whereas the students in other states would have to earn them. Obama is to blame because he PERSONALLY promised the American people that there would be no more backroom deals and that the days of secrecy in Washington were over. May I remind you that this is national healthcare, and should be for the fair and equal interest for all people from all states.

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (the critical 60th vote for the health care legislation) has gotten a special deal for his vote - the federal government is picking up 100% of that states tab for medicaid expansion, and get this, in PERPETUITY. That means forever. It seems three other states have special deals similiar to that too - Louisiana, Vermont, Massachusetts.

And Florida has a special deal on Medicare advantage.

So it comes down to I'll only vote for the bill if I can get something for my state.

President Obama needs to build a new national consensus, quick, if he wants to keep hope alive for a second term.

Despite the best efforts of President Obama and leaders in Congress, it’s becoming clearer by the day that both are in need of a dramatically new direction. Unemployment is not improving, raising serious doubts about the Democrats’ fiscal policy agenda. Uncertainty about Afghanistan threatens to undermine progress in the region and further diminish confidence here at home. Enacting meaningful and cost-efficient health-care reform is hanging on by a thread.

Additionally, independent voters – the critical bloc that handed Mr. Obama the keys to the Oval Office – have turned against his pro-spending agenda.

All presidents learn the lesson that they cannot bend history to their will. Plan A is almost always impossible and successful presidents learn to pivot to Plan B.

Fortunately, there is a proven Plan B strategy Mr. Obama can follow. It’s the modern day version of the Bill Clinton playbook, post-1994. It calls for separating from liberal old bulls in Congress, embracing the Republicans’ most common sense proposals, serving as the responsible guardian of the republic from the excesses of each, and viewing every policy idea through the prism of economic growth and opportunity.

What should the strategy look like now?

It starts with building a new national consensus with a sense of common purpose. Mr. Obama should address the nation to lament the partisanship that has overtaken nearly every facet of his administration’s first-year agenda, remind the American people that blue states and red states exist only in political punditry, and acknowledge that as circumstances have changed, so should our collective goals and policy priorities.

In the address, he reaffirms his position that a consensus on health care reform is essential to stabilizing the economy, reducing the deficit, and creating new jobs. But he also acknowledges that the system can only be reformed in the context of cost containment, broad economic growth and continued research, investment and private-sector innovation.

And as such, he invites a hand-picked group of moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans to the White House to negotiate a new, modest, bipartisan proposal to cut the deficit, create jobs, and introduce incremental reforms to our health care and energy systems.

For Mr. Obama, it means embracing popular conservative ideas like tort reform and interstate competition, alongside popular liberal ideas like guaranteed coverage despite pre-existing conditions. He should champion a sensible, moderate middle ground, like Olympia Snowe’s “trigger” and Tom Carper’s “hammer,” both of which would delay the implementation of the public option, until at least other reforms are first absorbed into the system.

It means dramatically scaling back the tax increases and Medicare cuts, in deference to the temporary recession, while reminding Americans that when times improve, tough decisions must be revisited. For now, though, offer the bipartisan negotiators a portion of unspent stimulus money to defray the costs of health care or job creation -- even offer Republicans some of it for a job-creating tax cut.

Above all, it means tying health care reform to complementary proposals to grow the economy, decrease the deficit, cut back wasteful spending, accelerate work on the new electricity grid and other urgent, job-creating programs. In the process, transform it from a conspicuous distraction to a seamlessly integrated part of a larger agenda that speaks to the nation’s immediate needs.
On taxes, Mr. Obama should encourage temporary payroll tax holidays to help small businesses struggling to survive the recession, not allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire in 2010 and publicly recognize the power of tax incentives to create high-paying private sector jobs. Every tax policy and program should be scrubbed for immediate potential to create jobs and if it doesn't meet a specific set of criteria, it should be set aside indefinitely.

On Afghanistan, the administration should embrace centrist, cost-effective ideas, such as Senator Nelson’s (D-Neb.) proposal to reintroduce the sale of war bonds that helped fund World War II. With the government sitting on more than $17 billion in war bonds, any alternative measure, including the introduction of a war tax against a bleak economic forecast, would further undermine the American people’s confidence in our mission and carry serious consequences for both Democrats and Republicans in the 2010 elections.

With a revised agenda rooted in a sense of common purpose and based on proven pro-growth principles, centrist Democrats would be relieved, independents would be reenergized, and most Republicans would simply try to take credit. A new governing coalition would emerge with the president at its head. Members of Congress who reject the new consensus would marginalize themselves on both sides.

This is not only the best chance Mr. Obama has to rescue health care reform, create jobs, fix the economy and sufficiently justify our ongoing presence in Afghanistan -– it could be the ONLY chance to reclaim his agenda and preserve the Democratic congressional majorities he needs to convince the American people that he's worthy of a second term.

By Doug Schoen
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/12/17/doug-schoen-obama-health-care-reform-economy/

Huh, the republicans voted for the Patriot act.....guess the dems failed to get it read. That's another one of Obama's broken campaign promises.

ROFLMAO

The republicans weren't ever going to vote for the bill because the bill was written centered around the public option. The revisions was an attempt to recover some democratic votes.

Besides, Obama should have kept his campaign promise and had the bill debated on C Span.

DECEMBER 18, 2009 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704238104574602232786471914.html

Barack Obama emerged from his meeting with Senate Democrats this week to claim Congress was on the "precipice" of something historic. Believe him. The president is demanding his party unilaterally enact one of the most unpopular and complex pieces of social legislation in history. In the process, he may be sacrificing Democrats' chances at creating a sustainable majority.

Slowly, slowly, the Democratic health agenda is turning into a political suicide pact. Congressional members have been dragged along by momentum, by threat, by bribe, but mostly by the White House's siren song that it would be worse to not pass a bill than it would be to pass one. If that ever were true, it is not today.

Public opinion on ObamaCare is at a low ebb. This week's NBC-WSJ poll: A mere 32% of Americans think it a "good" idea. The Washington Post: Only 35% of independents support it—down 10 points in a month. Resurgent Republic recently queried Americans over the age of 55, aka Those Most Likely to Vote In a Midterm Election. Sixty-one percent believe ObamaCare will increase their health costs; 68% believe it will increase the deficit; 76% believe it will raise their taxes.

Democrats also have managed to alienate the liberal base to which they were catering. The death of the public option and Medicare buy-in this week sent Howard Dean to thundering "kill the bill." A week from now, the current polls might look good.

Yet it is in individual states where the disconnect between the White House's soothing words and the ugly political reality is most stark. While Democrats are under fire for the economy and spending, it is health care that has voters thinking it's time for political change.

Consider North Dakota. A recent Zogby poll showed 28% (you read that right) of state voters support "reform." A full 40% said they'd be less likely to vote for Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan next year if he supports a bill. In a theoretical matchup with Republican Gov. John Hoeven (who has yet to announce), Mr. Hoeven wins 55% to 36%. Mr. Dorgan has been in the Senate 17 years; he won his last election with 68% of the vote. This should not be happening.

In Arkansas, 32% support this health-care legislation. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, also running next year, trails challengers by more than 50 points among the 56% of voters who strongly disapprove of the health plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the public face of health reform, can barely break 38% approval in Nevada. In Colorado, where 55% of voters oppose a health bill, appointed Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet told CNN he'd vote for a bill even if it "cost him his job." Give the freshman credit for honesty.

Nor is this a red state/swing state phenomenon. In deep-blue Delaware, 46% oppose the health plan. Democrats pounded Delaware GOP Rep. Mike Castle, running for Senate, for voting against the House bill. That vote has in fact kept Mr. Castle leading his expected opponent, Beau Biden, the vice president's son. Chris Dodd helped author the Senate health bill and is up for re-election next year. He is arguably the Senate's most politically vulnerable Democrat.

Don't trust the polls? In the past weeks, four well known House Democrats announced they will not run for re-election. All are longtime incumbents; one, Tennessee's respected John Tanner, co-founded the Blue Dog coalition. These folks have seen the political handwriting on the wall.

Democrats have also been pulled by another White House promise: That once Americans witness reform, they will turn around. Yet even supporters know this ugly bill will not "fix" health care. The problems will remain—with more in addition—and Democrats will own them. Meanwhile, the backlash against the pending health-care legislation is seeping out to hamper Democrats' broader agenda. Pew this week published a poll in which it marveled (fretted?) over the "extent to which the public has moved in a conservative direction on a range of issues" since President Obama took office.

So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party—the Barney Franks, the David Obeys—are focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a value-added tax and a permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe.

The entitlement crazes of the 1930s and 1960s also caused a backlash, but liberal Democrats know the programs of those periods survived. They are more than happy to sacrifice a few Blue Dogs, a Blanche Lincoln, a Michael Bennet, if they can expand government so that in the long run it benefits the party of government.

What's extraordinary is that more Democrats have not wised up to the fact that they are being used as pawns in this larger liberal game. Maybe Mr. Obama will see a bump in the polls if health care passes; maybe not. What is certain is that this vote is becoming one that many in his party will not survive.

More like Dodd and Reid

PO is DOA!!!

By passing this bill the dems will have aided the insurers!!!

Mon Dec 14, 1:35 pm ET

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats long ago gave up any pretense of working to rationally reform American health care. The exercise now underway in the Senate is a mad dash to get to 60 votes, and nothing more. That's why some Democratic senators who had no idea exactly what is in the "breakthrough deal" announced by majority leader Harry Reid last week immediately hailed it as a milestone. They're for anything that creates a sense of "momentum" and "inevitability."

But the substance does matter. If Congress passes something in the end, ordinary Americans know they will have to live with it. And from those voters' points of view the latest effort to strike a compromise among Senate Democrats would, based on press reports of what it involves, take the horrendous bill offered by Reid earlier this month and make it even worse.

In most ways, the new proposal is as terrible as Reid's original bill. It would spend hundreds of billions on a new entitlement even as our debt is mounting, inflict massive tax increases on a troubled economy, impose costly mandates on employers at a time of high unemployment, squeeze money out of Medicare without fixing the program, insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients, and cause millions of middle-class families to lose the employer-based insurance they have today and pay even higher premiums.

But in one crucial respect, the new proposal is far worse than the last one. For most of this year, the liberal Holy Grail has been the so-called "public option"--a new government-run insurance program offered to working age people and their families, much as Medicare is available to senior citizens. But, despite a full-court press by liberal activists, the idea has foundered on its complete lack of sense.

The only plausible reason to put more people in government-run insurance would be cost control, but no one believes the federal government now knows how to control costs sensibly. Liberals say a new insurance bureaucracy should be given the power to use Medicare's price-setting and regulatory structure to cut costs. But that structure has never successfully controlled Medicare spending because price-setting doesn't address volume--and so creates an incentive for more and more spending. Indeed, the Obama administration admits that Medicare's current arbitrary bureaucratic payment systems are a prime source of the inefficiency and inequity throughout the entire health sector, driving up costs for everyone. That's why the president and his team are proposing to set up an independent Medicare commission to straighten out the mess. They know they don't know how to do it and can only hope someone else does. So if Medicare is a big part of the problem, how is its model the solution?

Since no one has been able to answer that question, prospects for the public option have dimmed in the Senate. Liberals in Congress have been looking to save face and find another route to their ultimate goal of moving the country toward a single-payer health system. They may have found one in the compromise touted by Reid.

Apparently, in exchange for dropping the "public option," moderate Senate Democrats have tentatively agreed to open up Medicare to people age 55 to 64 (retirees can currently sign up for it at age 65). In other words, rather than build on the failed cost-control model of Medicare, they now want to actually further burden Medicare itself. Why take a roundabout path to failure when a direct one is available?
The irrationality of this solution is staggering. But, of course, it's a solution to Reid's political problem, not to the nation's health care financing crisis. Moderate Senate Democrats don't want to vote for anything called a "public option," but some of Reid's more liberal colleagues won't give up the dream of marching toward a single payer health care system. So he has offered up an even more direct path to such a system, but given it a different name and frame than the "public option."

Liberals are ecstatic at the prospect. New York representative Anthony Weiner, a single-payer advocate, called the idea the "mother of all public options." His excitement is understandable. According to the Census Bureau, only 4.3 million people age 55 to 64 were uninsured in 2008. But the total population in this age range was 34.3 million--so the Medicare buy-in is not a means to help the uninsured but a means to socialize the health insurance of a vast swath of the public.

Initially, a voluntary Medicare program might attract only a small number of enrollees, especially because those who opt in would be required to pay the full premium. But over time, employers would likely find it convenient to put their early retirees into Medicare to shed some of their costs, providing only wraparound coverage as they do for retirees over 65. Once the opt-in is established, moreover, pressure would build for Congress to ensure "premiums" are affordable. Directly or indirectly, the government would find ways to subsidize enrollment. If established, a Medicare option for the 55- to 64-year-old population would quickly become the default option for the entire age group, and a case for further lowering the age of eligibility would emerge.

And when that happens, those who have fought all year against a new government-run insurance plan will have lost the battle, and those seeking means of actually cutting the growth of health care costs will pretty much have lost the war. The Reid bill already assumes a 15 million-person jump in enrollment in Medicaid, bringing the total enrollment to 60 million Americans. If 20 to 30 million new people end up on Medicare, on top of Medicare's current 45 million enrollees, then more than one-in-three Americans would be covered by government-funded health insurance. A single-payer health care system would be all but inevitable.

Every criticism lodged against Obamacare this year applies to this new "compromise," and at least one more in addition: The only thing it compromises is the chance of reforming American health care for the better.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/weeklystandard/20091214/cm_weeklystandard/fromawfultoworse

Put into that questionaire how much are you willing to pay for it and your 70% number would drop like a rock.

I've just heard the first event will be

"indefinite detention".

One name....Jesse Helms must have been your hero then?