Now The Sausage Gets Made. More Than 500 Amendments Offered on Baucus Bill.
Yep, the Baucus bill amendments are in. If you want to take a look, here they are:
The Friday 5 p.m. deadline has passed for filing amendments to the health care legislation in the Senate Finance Committee, and aides to Senator Max Baucus have finished tallying them: 543 in all, from both Democrats and Republicans.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia will propose the creation of a government-run insurance plan. So will Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, but with careful rules to make sure that the public plan competes with private insurers on a level playing field.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon will propose a requirement that employers offer at least two different choices of health insurance, or provide vouchers that would let their workers shop for alternatives in a new, government-regulated insurance marketplace. Mr. Wyden has another amendment that would expand eligibility for subsidies to help people buy insurance, by raising the income cutoff to 400 percent of poverty from 300 percent of poverty, which for a family of four would be $88,200, instead of $66,150.
Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington will propose increasing the income cutoff for Medicaid to 200 percent of poverty, or $44,100 for a family of four. And Ms. Cantwell also has an amendment that would revamp Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals and other providers to reward high-quality, lower-cost care.
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey will push to lower a cap on the amount moderate-income families will have to pay in health insurance premiums to 10 percent of income, down from 13 percent. Senator Debbie Stabenow wants to push the cap even lower, to 6.5 percent of income.
Aides in the office of Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, are still trying to tally up all the amendments ahead of next week’s committee mark-up.
'…compete on a level playing field.'
In other words: the 'public' plan will cost as much as the private plans.
You will be required to buy the lousy private insurance or buy the lousy government insurance.
It is only reform if you control costs.
Tell me what I am missing here.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
That is the wording used for the crippled designed-to-fail version of the public option. It looks like both versions have been offered as amendments. Let's see what they do.
except for they allow the insurance racketeers to continue all of their execrable practices by generous use of loop holes. Recission? just give a little notice or claim "fraud" and they can rescind until the cows come home. and, so on.
The only thing this bill seems to lack in order to complete the absurd picture, since they are forcing us to shop at the company store on pain of fines and penalties, is a provision to re-instate debtor prisons.
I want a national petition to prosecute Baucus and his criminally corrupt crnies for quid pro quo bribery, influence peddling and violations of the denial of fair service law.
I hope this thing dies on the vine. It will give us more time to build momentum for single-payer or social medicine system and to boot out the corrupt in 2010.
HR-676!
The Bribe-O-Crats are out of their minds if they think they are going to get my vote again (Obama, Warner).
Mmm...sausage (drool).
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I think I'll have breakfast for dinner. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TaQabiB7Gg
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I guess it's true - you can put a dress on it, lotsa makeup, cover it with perfume, but a pile of manure is still a pile of manure.
For once I agree with Republicans - throw it away and start over....but THIS time, allow ONLY a single payer plan to be considered.
Health Insurance and HMO company's ramp up and rollout subsidiaries offering an alternative to Health Insurance and HM Plans? Best Buy Public Option!
Sometimes I wish God would just smote us human beings off the earth and get it over with.
off earth we don't NEED THEM.
Does it take 60 votes or simple majority to pass ammendments?
Committee level.
Here's an article that might answer some of your questions regarding the direction the Baucus bill may be heading:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/58691-dems...
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
Public option on a "level" playing field is crucial. Without it, the repukes will "game" the system in order to make the public option look bad.
That's what they did with Charter Schools in Michigan when they first started. Fat-boy Engler (R - who hated teachers), didn't require any of the public school restrictions on the Charter's. They didn't have to follow the vast majority of laws that governed public schools.
And of course, the usual wingnut suspects trumpeted the great success of Charter Schools the first couple of years. Why? Because they didn't have to go by any guidelines other than their own, and they could easily "fudge" their personal success rate.
Funny thing though; a few years later, they were required to be chartered under the same laws as the public schools, and 38% of them went belly-up within two years.
Imagine that?
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
the "level playing field" wording here means it has to compete "on a level playing field" with private insurance plans. Or, in other words, it has been handicapped enough to not be a threat to them.
I just read through the amendments. Rockefeller's version is the non-crippled one, and with his amendment to move to a federal pool not individual state pools, that plan should be as robust as the good house version. Schumer's "level playing field" amendment is the exact same designed to fail (too small, too expensive, few providers) as the bad House version.
Don't let them fool you with the verbage!
Some of Wyden's amendments were very good, and some were very errr pointy!
Kerry added a few that will help ease the initial impact on state budgets should this plan pass. Most state budgets can't take a whallop now, so that was good. Nothing to help long term costs though.
is nothing but a bit of Orwellian nomenclature, intended to hopefully disguise the fact that they are fucking the American People. It means that the so-called "public option" will sell at artificially inflated prices in order to make sure that the insurance racketeers do not have to compete: the government promises not to undersell the going price that the insurance racketeers establish through exercise of their de facto monopoly power. We will get shitty insurance, but can rest assured that we are paying through the nose for it.
This whole thing, from start to finish, is nothing but corrupt elected corporate prostitutes - who are masquerading as servants of the People - flipping the bird at America and having a good belly laugh at our expense. this whole fetid piece of business is just one of the reasons why I am beginning to feel compelled to acknowledge that the United States of America is a failed state.
Amendment #238 - Authorizing immunity for health insurance providers from civil claims for policy termination and denial of care.
??
There's NO amount of lobbying money that could EVER make me offer an amendment like that. Who ever it is, please let us know so we can start a campaign to oust that person immediately.
Thanks.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
Come on.....
You guys must have known this was coming...
They're poisoning the well on this one....anyone wanna ask why?
Here's a clue:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/07/commi...
and here as well:
http://www.opensecrets.org/capital_eye/health...
All it takes is money....
This core bill is so fucked up these amendments are just not going to do enough. If the Bill doesn't have a public option in there from the start then veto or vote down the bill.
Any meaningful amendments will get lost in the swamp that is Congress's Backrooms. As is the plan of course blame backroom deals for why the bill ends up being a Health Insurance Bailout bill. No it's not because the core bill is a piece of shit it's because they(the namesless congressmen and women in back room after back room) made it a piece of shit.
Medicare for All, now!
http://pnhp.org
INsurance companies are parasites feeding off the sick ... and letting people die when it profits them ... this is a sick society. Obama and the Dems should be fighting for single payer not finding way to give more money to the insurance companies.
If Obama and those Dems who are corrupt (most of them) actually gave a happy damn about the People, they would have fought the good fight for single-payer or social medicine. By their deeds, they prove that they neither care about the People nor the Nation. This entire fiasco is just one more fleecing of the People and their Treasury, by the corrupt as they guide the nationa into the status of being a failed state. One more step as the corporations convert themselves into a stateless, trans-national corporate oligarchy. They are dismantling our nation, and this is just one more step in the process.
Obama is bought and paid for. He can spew all of the lofty sounding oratory that he pleases, but he betrays himself by the causes he supports, and also, by those he fails to support. Aside from the occasional inconsequential bone he tosses the people, in order to do maintenance on his public persona, his consistent Anti-People actions speak so loudly that it is drowning out his oratory. Deeds always speak louder than words, and it is impossible to talk his way out of a situation into which he has acted himself.
I don't these guys understand just how clearly and finely focused they are revealing themselves to be to the American People. They've played their hands, and in doing so, have not left any room for guessing: they're rotten to the core. Irredeemable.
I am so ashamed of my senator. He is smart enough to realize that the United States will not be competitive in the world market unless we have a government run health care program paid for by taxes.
Since he isn't stupid, he has to be a crook. Sorry Senator, but the kind of blatant bullshit you are spewing is the lowest form of a lie. You make up the crap to fit your own bribes.
Comments are closed on this entry