Grassley and Blue Dog Ross both predict passage of health care "reform" by the end of the year.

[jefferson_dem]

FWIW...

What "reform" looks like remains to be seen.

Sen. Chuck Grassley

--"It's going to be difficult" for Senate Finance Committee to finish a bill in the next few weeks.

--Odds of enacting legislation later this year are "very, very good."

--Supportive of excise tax for high-end insurance policies. "We're interested in it, not for the sole reason of raising money, although it would do that. We're interested in it as a discipline within health care."

--In negotiations, Finance members are trying to reduce "perverse incentives to waste money." "We're spending hours and hours getting into detail that other committees have not."

--"It would have been good if he had said to the entire country what he said to me privately, that he would look to alternatives ... We have a very good alternative by going with cooperatives."

--On conversations with Republican leaders: "They said we've got to show the Democrats they don't have a vote to nationalize health insurance and then they'll come to us and we'll get a compromise ... I'm trying to be one step ahead of the Republicans that are saying that by trying to get a workable compromise ahead of time."

Rep. Mike Ross

--Do House Democrats have votes for health bill now? "I don't think they have the votes."

--By the end of the year "we will meet the president's goal of passing meaningful and substantive health-care reform."

--Public option should only be fallback. "A public option should be there to ensure that private insurance companies do right. If they don't, a trigger would be pulled and then they would have that competition from the government."

--"We're talking about something different, something more modern, something based on common sense that will work. Currently, what we have is broken."

http://thepage.time.com/details-from-interviews-with-grassley-ross/

[DrToast]

1. Very telling quote by Rep. Ross: "I don't think they have the votes." They?

Don't you mean "we"?

[RandomThoughts]

2. This statement defends the need for a public option now without a trigger.

--Public option should only be fallback. "A public option should be there to ensure that private insurance companies do right. If they don't, a trigger would be pulled and then they would have that competition from the government."

It makes the claim that private insurance companies will do right because the worry about a public plan.

When has the private sector not done for short term profits first?

A trigger is a stall, not to make the insurance companies do right, but to push a public plan down the road so they can keep their monopolies.

And it is shown they have monopolies because if they did not have monopolies, the 'market system' would have pushed down their cost already. The simple statement that they can choose to lower prices shows they are not a free market system. They already have a monopoly, so any trigger or opposition to a public plan is blatant support for a corporate monopoly.

[OHdem10]

3. GOP approve Cooperatives because this is a neat way to get rid of

Medicare.

Step by step they will eventually rip Medicare , SS and
Medicaid out of existence. Blue Dogs will be there
assisting.

[Inuca]

4. Why?

I am not saying you are right or wrong, I just don't know and I am asking.