House Passes Health Care Reform Legislation: 219-210

The House of Representatives has passed the health care reform legislation by a vote of 219-210 late Sunday evening.

This final vote brings to a close a long debate that has taken place over the last year, but for many, the hard work is just beginning. Many activists are adamant that this legislation should be the starting point for more comprehensive and lasting reforms to the health care system. Jane Hamsher is one such activist and has posted a "mythbusting" piece about what this legislation does and doesn't do. Hamsher states:

The Firedoglake health care team has been covering the debate in congress since it began last year. The health care bill will come up for a vote in the House on Sunday, and as Nancy Pelosi works to wrangle votes, we’ve been running a detailed whip count on where every member of Congress stands, updated throughout the day.

We’ve also taken a detailed look at the bill, and have come up with 18 often stated myths about this health care reform bill.

Real health care reform is the thing we’ve fought for from the start. It is desperately needed. But this bill falls short on many levels, and hurts many people more than it helps.

You can click here for a PDF version of the "18 myths" that Hamsher references in her post.

As Democrats revel in the passage of this historic legislation tonight, Republicans went down swinging. Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) even went so far as to shout "Hell No" during the end of the period for debate:



After the initial passage of the legislation, members of the House were to vote on a Republican motion to recommit the bill over the issue of Federal funding for abortion. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is a pro-life Democrat who had initially objected to this bill's so-called inclusion of Federal funding for abortions, but rose to urge members of the House to vote against recommitting the bill based upon this issue. As Stupak was making his remarks, there was a call for order and then you could hear someone yell out, calling Stupak a "baby killer". Here is the video:



As of this writing it is not clear which member of the House shouted this at Stupak. It was initially reported that the shouter was Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA), but he was quick to say that he was not the culprit. He did give Talking Points Memo a few more clues to who may have been responsible:

Christina also reports that Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) told reporters that the "baby killer" was "clear as a bell."

I didn't look but it came from the floor, behind me and to the left.

And this:

It was close enough I decided not to turn around and look. ... It was in my area. I thought it was a southern accent.

Campbell returned a few moments later and said, "other people agree with me it was someone with a southern accent."

Campbell also said that some of the Republicans on the floor recognized the voice but would not say who it was.

The California Republican then came out again -- a third time -- and told reporters that "that is where the Texans sit. Californians are in one row, Texans sit behind us. I am being told it's a Texan. The people who know won't give it up."

It seems as though the ugly nature of some tea-party members spilled over into the House Chamber.

Rockefeller Retreats on Support for Public Option

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has been adamant in his support for the inclusion of a strong public option in the health care legislation. From October, 2009:

He's also a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor – and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

"I will not relent on that. That's the only way to go," Rockefeller told me in an interview. "There's got to be a safe harbor."

Now that the Public Option has made a comeback and actually has a chance to pass the Senate via reconciliation, Rockefeller has made a surprising reversal:

"I'm probably not going to vote for that," Rockefeller said. "I don't think the timing of it is very good."

Earlier in the evening, in a brief interview with TPMDC, Rockefeller expressed concern that playing hardball with the public option at this time could imperil reform, but he didn't say he'd oppose it.

"I don't know, I think the timing of the public option piece of legislation, which is not in what the President's going to suggest at the summit I think, doing that could create a lot of turbulence when we don't need it," Rockefeller told me.

To recap, when it looked like the Public Option was on life-support and had a slim chance of passage, Rockefeller supported it to the fullest. Now that the Public Option has a legitimate chance of passing, Rockefeller doesn't think he will vote for it and may even vote against it. Per usual, Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely:

This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it. They won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections by pretending they wanted to compel an end to the Iraq War and Bush surveillance and interrogation abuses because they knew they would not actually do so; and indeed, once they were given the majority, the Democratic-controlled Congress continued to fund the war without conditions, to legalize Bush's eavesdropping program, and to do nothing to stop Bush's habeas and interrogation abuses ("Gosh, what can we do? We just don't have 60 votes).

[...]

Basically, this is how things have progressed:

Progressives: We want a public option!

Democrats/WH: We agree with you totally! Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don't have 60, so we can't have it. Gosh darn that filibuster rule.

Progressives: But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.

Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists: Hey progressives, don't be stupid! Be pragmatic. It's not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform. None of this their fault. It's the fault of the filibuster. The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they're powerless, and they just can't get 60 votes to do it.

[Month later]

Progressives: Hey, great! Now that you're going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you've said all year you have that!

Democrats/WH: No. We don't have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller). Besides, it's not the right time for the public option. The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill -- which polls at 35% -- unpopular. Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we're going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.

This absurd dance does little for the millions of people without affordable health care coverage and will end up doing very little to fundamentally reform the system. Partly to blame for this mess is the filibuster which has proved to not only be a shield for the Democrats to hide behind, but also as a weapon for the Republicans to enact "minority rule". The Democrats talk tough and adopt populist views when they know they can not pass legislation due to the Republican threat of a filibuster. Then, when it becomes clear that the legislation can be passed through other means, those same Democrats amend their populist positions to appeal to the corporatist interests and avoid backlash.

All of this leads to partisan bickering and nothing productive getting accomplished. The best part is that no one wants to be accountable for standing behind policies that may not mesh well with the status quo.

While the Democrats continue to decide that they really don't want the public option (now that it has a chance of passing), Republicans continue to show even more evidence that their vision for America is to oppose anything that comes out of the Obama Administration.

The most recent example of this strategy is displayed through more hypocrisy by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH). Let's flash back to October, 2009 when Boehner criticized the Health Care legislation for being too long:



Fast forward to yesterday when President Obama released his own legislation which was presented in this eleven-page format. Boehner's response through his spokesman:

"The White House's 'plan' consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States' economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they're complaining that they can't find our plan on their own website? C'mon."

First the bill is too long and now, too short. Seems like the Obama Administration just can't win doesn't it? Well, that is precisely the point. Remember back in September of 2008 when former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced his three-page TARP plan? Boehner didn't seem to have much to say about the length of that plan and even rejected items that Democrats wanted to include saying:

“We need to keep it clean, simple, move it through the House and Senate, get it on the president’s desk so [Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson] can in fact intervene as quickly as possible.”

With Democrats being disingenuous and Republicans determined to oppose everything, it does not look hopeful for robust health care reform to come out of such a troubled process.


This piece is also cross posted here.

President Obama Releases his Health Care Plan Without Inclusion of a Public Option

President Obama has drafted and released his own 11-page plan for health care reform ahead of the planned bi-partisan summit. The President's plan is said to bridge the differences that are found in the Senate and House legislation and will almost certainly be the starting point from which a renewed debate will take place.

Igor Volsky describes some of what is in the President's plan:

The Obama plan maintains key elements of the Senate proposal but also incorporates stronger anti-fraud provisions and allows the federal government to review insurance rate hikes. On a call with reporters Pfeiffer insisted that the administration has not determined “on which path to move forward with”, but the bill’s substance suggests that Obama is hoping to bypass a prolonged-Senate debate and use the reconciliation process to fix the Senate bill and convince reluctant House progressives to pass the Senate legislation.

Volsky also has a great table that breaks down the differences in the three bills that you can check out by following the link above.

Jason Rosenbaum also does a good job at breaking down some of what is in the bill.

Here is how he describes Obama's employer-based plan:

The President’s plan, though not a full "pay or play" system, moves towards reconciling the House and Senate bills. If a business does not offer coverage, it must pay $2,000 per worker to help cover the cost of insuring its employees. The White House estimates that this amount is one-third less than the average amount businesses would pay under the House proposal.

and on taxing middle class plans:

The President’s plan does not do away with the excise tax entirely, but it makes some significant changes. The threshold at which the tax kicks in was moved from $23,000 as the cost of a health care plan in the Senate bill to $27,500 for families and from $8,500 to $10,200 for individuals, and the tax would not kick in until 2018.

In addition, dental and vision benefits won’t be part of the cost calculation, in effect raising the threshold higher.

Perhaps one of the most interesting elements that Obama's bill does NOT contain, is a public option. Though the public option remains quite popular with the populace, Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs has indicated that it will be up to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to get the Senate to pass this piece of the health care puzzle.

David Dayen makes a salient point on this:

We have seen this before during the health care debate. The House says it’s up to the Senate to determine what can pass. The Senate says it’s up to the White House to expend the political capital to get it across the line. And the White House punts it right back to Congress. Nobody wants to actually be responsible for the demise of the popular measure, but everyone wants to be on its side. Therefore you get the preposterous claim from Dan Pfeiffer today that the President didn’t include a public option in his proposal, but he supports it.

So once again we are back to wondering if the public option is going to survive another round of debate and negotiation. If Obama supports the public option, he sure has a funny way of showing it. If he really thought it was a plan that he could get behind, he would put it in the legislation that has his name on it. Since he did not do this, one can only surmise that he does not feel strongly enough to put his full weight behind a true public option.

As for the Republicans, here is a situation that fully illustrates their tactics on this matter.

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to the White House on February 8 asking them to post online any health care legislation that they wanted to discuss at the health care summit. Boehner stated:

If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand?

The White House did just this:

Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package.

Boehner then attacked the White House for doing what he had asked them to do in the first place:

"A productive bipartisan discussion should begin with a clean sheet of paper," Boehner said in a statement.

It will be interesting to see what happens at this summit.

John Boehner Continues to Advance the GOP's Strategy of Opposition

Congressman John Boehner (R-OH) has been a big critic of the stimulus legislation that was signed into law by President Obama last year. He even threw the actual bill on the floor during debate:



After the bill was signed into law, Boehner continued to publicly rail against the legislation, but in June he sent out a release which stated that the money redirected to "shovel-ready projects" by the Obama Administration created much needed jobs for Ohio. Here was the release:

“The stated intent of the so-called stimulus package was to create jobs, and certainly a $57 million slush-fund studying projects did nothing to achieve that goal. With Ohio’s unemployment rate the highest it’s been in 25 years, I’m pleased that federal officials stepped in to order Ohio to use all of its construction dollars for shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs.”

Even though Boehner's statement gives credit to the stimulus for its ability to create jobs, Boehner posted this on his Twitter feed this morning:

Today marks one year since the trillion-dollar “stimulus” was signed into law. Since then, 47 states have lost jobs.

Boehner's post was coupled with the release of his report entitled "Where are the Jobs?" which concludes:

At the beginning of February 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that 20,000 more jobs were lost in the month of January. This report confirmed that the U.S. economy has lost nearly 3.3 million jobs since President Obama signed the trillion-dollar ‗stimulus‘ into law.

The trillion-dollar ‗stimulus‘ was put together so quickly and so secretively that no member of Congress had a chance to read it before it passed, and it shows. Yet, as poorly conceived and badly executed as the trillion-dollar ‗stimulus‘ was, President Obama and Democrats in Congress still think that Washington is the answer to everything. Democrats‘ proposed government takeover of health care is already hurting small businesses by causing additional uncertainty and stifling job creation. The dismal performance of the ‗stimulus‘ demonstrates the dangers of allowing Washington to take more control over our economy.

Americans are asking 'where are the jobs,' but all they are getting from Washington Democrats is more government, more borrowing, and more debt piled on the backs of our kids and grandkids. Our economy will ultimately recover, but it will do so because of the hard work and entrepreneurship of the American people, not wasteful Washington spending. Republicans have proposed better solutions focused on helping small businesses create jobs to get our economy moving again.

Through much of the report Boehner criticizes the Administration for how they count the number of jobs that are created, citing "gross inaccuracies" and examples of "fuzzy math". It is interesting to note that on the same day Boehner decided to release this report, this article appeared in the New York Times. Journalist David Leonhardt writes:

Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

[...]

In the early months of last year, spending by state and local governments was falling rapidly, as was tax revenue. In the spring, tax revenue continued to drop, yet spending jumped — during the very time when state and local officials were finding out roughly how much stimulus money they would be receiving. This is the money that has kept teachers, police officers, health care workers and firefighters employed.

Not only do you have Leonhardt's piece that highlights the successes of the stimulus legislation, but you have private sector forecasters who are also saying that the stimulus has helped during this recession:

“It was worth doing — it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”

In interviews, a broad range of economists said the White House and Congress were right to structure the package as a mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than just tax cuts as Republicans prefer or just spending as many Democrats do. And it is fortuitous, many say, that the money gets doled out over two years — longer for major construction — considering the probable length of the “jobless recovery” under way as wary employers hold off on new hiring.

So while elected Republican officials continue to claim that nothing about this stimulus has worked, it is clear that well-known economic firms as well as private sector forecasters tend to think otherwise. The narrative that Boehner and other Republicans continue to espouse is a narrative of opposition to everything that is supported by the Obama Administration. They continue to rail against the stimulus legislation while accepting funds for their districts that were made possible by the exact same legislation. This proves true once again with Boehner's recent report that slams the stimulus but fails to acknowledge that he supported the money that Ohio received. This is the meme of complete opposition and despite the inherent hypocrisies that result, this meme has become the focused strategy of the Republican Party as we move closer toward the mid-term elections.


This is cross posted here.

Republican Health Care Bill Doesn't get Good Marks from the CBO

A few of the primary criticisms that those in the Tea Party movement and those in the Republican Party have leveled at the Democrats and single-payer advocates is that so-called "free market" solutions should be implemented to reform the health care system.

Two specific points that I have heard from these groups is that the U.S should implement "common sense reforms" including allowing insurance companies to sell coverage across state lines and passing tort reform. You can hear these points discussed at the recent "We Surround You" event that I covered on Fountain Square here in Downtown Cincinnati.

Yesterday, House Republicans had their health care reform bill (which contained many of these so-called "common sense reforms") scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and it wasn't a pretty story.

From an LA Times report:

...the CBO analysis also concluded that under the GOP plan, 52 million nonelderly Americans would have no insurance in 2019 -- even more than the 50 million in 2010. By comparison, the House Democratic bill would reduce the number of nonelderly Americans without coverage to around 18 million over the next decade.

The GOP bill is an amalgam of market-oriented measures that would limit medical malpractice lawsuits, expand the use of tax-sheltered medical savings accounts, let people shop for insurance outside of their own states, and make it easier for small businesses and hard-to-insure people to get coverage. The ideas reflect conservatives' suspicion of sweeping new programs, federal spending and additional regulation.

Unlike the Democratic plan, it does not include subsidies or other provisions that would make coverage more affordable to people of modest means.

"What we've learned over many, many years is that the reason people don't have insurance is that they can't afford it," said Drew Altman, president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, an nonpartisan health policy research group. "You can't make much progress toward helping the uninsured unless you help them buy it."

Ezra Klein helps to break down what this means:

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It's already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It's already made its compromises with reality. It's already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.

This is a major embarrassment for the Republicans. It's one thing to keep your cards close to your chest. Republicans are in the minority, after all, and their plan stands no chance of passage. It's another to lay them out on the table and show everyone that you have no hand, and aren't even totally sure how to play the game. The Democratic plan isn't perfect, but in comparison, it's looking astonishingly good.

This is cross posted here.