Health-care reform begins now

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from Ezra Klein at the WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032605600_pf.html


Sunday, March 28, 2010

As someone who has spent the past year tangled in the minutia of excise taxes and curve bending and subsidy levels, it is good to finally say this: With the passage of the reconciliation fixes, the health-care reform debate is finally over. But if you're thrilled to hear that, then I also have some bad news: Health-care reform itself is just beginning.

This bill marks an evolution, not a revolution, for our health-care system. Whether it proves the cornerstone of a better, fairer, more affordable system or simply another expansion of the federal welfare state has as much to do with what happens when the law is implemented as with what's written in the legislation.

The system will not change in a year. Even by 2014, when it is broadly implemented, life will not change for most people. This is not single-payer (though you wouldn't know it listening to the GOP) or the ambitious Wyden-Bennett reforms. Come 2019, about 10 percent of Americans will have a different insurance arrangement than they would have had without the bill. Most of us won't notice any difference.

___ The legislation Obama signed into law last week doesn't promise sufficient reform, but it does lay down many of the necessary preconditions for it. It is an incremental bill with a comprehensive vision tucked inside. Tired as we all are, the work of realizing that vision starts now.


read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032605600_pf.html

[coti]

1. I sure hope so. We just dug ourselves deeper into the hole, and

Obama had darned well better have a broader vision of how, exactly, we're getting the hell out.

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2. .

[Motown_Johnny]

3. I, for one, would love to carry on the debate

The (R)s are trying to sell a "repeal and replace" slogan for the upcoming elections. I would ask them to first replace before they try to repeal.

Call them out on what they say would be cost cutting legislation for health care. Tell them we will help them pass it as long as the CBO projects that it will help cut costs.


Basically I want to call their bluff and make them show their cards, they got nothing and we need everyone to know it.