Are you pleased or not pleased that the Senate approved cloture on the health care bill?

[jefferson_dem]

[Vincardog]

1. This is a different question than "Are you happy with the contents of the Senate Bill?"

[jefferson_dem]

2. Yes, it is.

One could be not entirely happy with the content but happy that the "reform" effort is moving forward. That is the real question at this point, in my opinion.

[madfloridian]

3. Well, are you pleased or not please about these things?

Head Scratchers

1. Pre-Exisiting Condition Exclusion: The legislation bars insurers immediately from denying coverage to children based on a pre-existing condition. However, they are still free to do it to adults until 2014. Besides being a blatant exception to immediate consumer protections, this one is a true head-scratcher. Except for expensive risk pools, adults in the individual insurance market with pre-existing conditions have nowhere to go until 2014. Yet the coverage mandate begins in the 2013 tax year. So what are folks supposed to do in 2013? Take out a second mortgage to pay for health plan coverage that won't cover their pre-existing conditions (the risk pool requires going bare for 6 months, activating a 12-month pre-exisiting condition coverage exclusion) or pay a fine, just because lawmakers wanted a better CBO score?

Gut Checks

1. State Anti-Abortion Opt-In: Until now, federal money wasn’t allowed to be used for abortions except in life-threatening cases, rape, or incest. Now, in addition to that firewall, states can opt to pass a law barring abortion coverage within their insurance exchanges. So now it’s not just those who can least afford abortion services that are being denied them, it’s potentially every woman buying coverage within an exchange.

Also Nelson's reward for screwing up women's rights:

Nebraska’s Federal Medicaid Subsidy: Nelson bargained his state out of shouldering any costs from the expanded Medicaid program. Other states’ senators are probably not going to roll over on this one, as state budgets are already strapped due to the economy and Medicaid is chronically under-funded. So did we gain one more senator just to lose a few more?

http://healthcare.change.org/blog/view/7_features_in_the_new_filibuster-proof_senate_healthcare_bill

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Anytime the teabagnuts have to shut up and sit down, that is a good thing. nt

[TheKentuckian]

5. Mixed feelings. I don't want to scuttle the party, I want people to get needed help

but I hate this bill from structure to the way it will be funded on the tax side which will cause working people to foot the bill at the expense of wages negotiated away and we'll get higher out of pocket expenses and less coverage as a reward.

Hell, I'm not sure that doing nothing isn't a quicker path to some actual reform, even if it is just on market priciples.

I can hear it now, for the next four years we'll here that the bill hasn't been put into effect, then there will be several more years of "ramping up", followed by another battle with big insurance and electorial nonsense. I figure the first major adjustment is about 15 years off or longer because we will lose the huge numbers of uninsured as a moral issue since the people who are still on the outside looking in can be scapegoated as lazy or whatever.

We may also never be able to do almost anything in a forseeable timeframe because of budget and deficit woes. There will be no will or money for many years so we'll be stuck with no vasoline for the next near to a generation.

[silverweb]

6. It's a beginning.

[lamp_shade]

7. Onward and upward.

[jefferson_dem]

8. Kick.

:kick: