I have to decided to pull over to the side of the road and wait out the health care battle. I'll wait until there is actual bill before I do anymore reading or worrying about it. We'll be extremely lucky if anything happens before Christmas since the GOP has decided to pull out the 'delay at all costs' plan. Today Tom Coburn of Oklahoma put the brakes on the Senate by insisting that all amendments be read in full. Many of these amendments are very long and it will take days to get through them all...meanwhile the normal Senate agenda was to consider DoD spending today and get things in place before funding runs out on Friday...ain't going to happen. The Senate is broken and the minority is doing everything they can to befuddle the process. Add in jerks like Lieberman and Nelson and you have a classic 'clusterfuck'.
Right now I am leaning toward passing whatever shitty bill finds its way out of the morass as the cost and effort and even the possibility of starting over is impossible. The last major effort at health care reform was under Clinton and we just can't afford to wait that long to move forward, however small. We take what we can get out of this embarrassment and hope to improve it as we go down the road. If what the progressives who are calling for 'Kill Bill" say will happen comes to pass then there will be that much more pressure on government to do something to fix it and that much less credibility on the part of insurance companies and pharma.
I am not happy but the whipsawing and confusion are just draining. It is better to wait until we actually have a bill to measure and understand before we go insane.
Update: Marcy Wheeler(Emtpywheel) has a post at FDL discussing the downside of passing the Senate bill as it now stands with respect to enforcing 'Corporate Feudalism' and it is worthy of a read.
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