65 replies on “House Approves Health Care Bill”

  2. Hahahaha. I’d tell you, but I’m too busy being sent to a medical gulag where my grandma is facing a bureaucratic death panel staffed out with radical terrorists in Barrack [sic] Hussein’s Ameristan.

    Oh wait, no I’m not – because it turns out that was all bullshit and lies.

  3. You know the republicans are on empty when they start screaming “ABORTIONS!”

    This might be the Godwin’s law of the US legislative branch.

  5. The US is not in any way whatsoever a “Christian nation”, but if that’s the goal, we’ve just taken a tiny step closer to being one.

  10. @4: Motion to recommit. It’s of that procedural, bureaucratic red tape stuff that Republicans claim justifies their constant hatred of government – that is, when they’re busy not using it to hold up progress in that way government is oh so helpful for.

    Basically, Republicans are trying to kill the bill by sending it back to committee. They’ll lose.

    But America will win.

  12. @7: Yeah, only Kenyan-born secretly-islamic government bureaucrats appointed by the Health Czar can be paid our tax dollars to decide which grandmas get to face a death panel in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

    Hahaha jesus. It never gets old!

  14. America desperately needs Heath Care reform.

    This legislation does not deliver it.
    All it does is shuffle who is paying for what. Lot’s of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
    It does not make things better.
    It does NOTHING to change how health care is delivered or reduce the COST of health care.
    It will be ruinously expensive.

    It is bad for America.

  19. @17:

    I missed that. Too bad. Anyway, the motion to recommit died. So now, technically, only Barack Obama’s signature stands between the past and the future, a future where every American has the legal right to basic health care coverage.

    Change (sort of) has come (kinda) to America (I think?)…

    Now we gotta figure out how to actually do this beyond “little fixes,” how to actually make good on our now-legislated promise of universal coverage… ugh.

  20. @18: Early reports are that it was a teabagger on the floor!! No way. Whoa? Really? At this point I wouldn’t be too surprised if we see a Sumner caning when the reconciliation bill reaches the Senate…

    Sheldon Whitehouse, watch your back. The teabaggers are out there. And they’re angry. And they’re stupid. God knows what they could do.

  25. And this is the sound of the GOP becoming the Whig Party and being sent off to the wilderness for the next 40 years …

  26. Conservatives and Evangelical Christians are now required to report to their local United Nations service centers to receive their micro-chip implant and code bar tattoos.

    ALL HAIL BAAL!

  27. Meh… I stopped paying attention to all this health reform debate months ago.

    What I really need to know is: Who will be the next person voted off American Idol?!? ZOMG!!!1

  28. Re: Babykiller

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/…
    —–
    Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) 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.”
    —-

  29. It’s not perfect legislation by any means, but it’s a step in the right direction.
    I can’t wait to see how low the republicans and the tea baggers will stoop now. With their small little minds filled with fear by Faux Snooze, they behave worse than ill-behaved little children. Too bad they can’t be grown-ups and show some class….

  32. The pain in the pit of my stomach is easing. Reform is working already! (Yeah, I know this is just the start of a long, uncertain process.)

    Looks like every one of California’s 34 D’s voted to approve. Sadly, my “representative” is among the naysayers. I will now actively work to unseat him (and his seat is already much less secure than it was in 2006).

  33. Thanks for caving, Stupak. You took a starkly conservative stand, and then you completely bailed on it. Now, you can now be attacked from both the right and the left.

    Enjoy your last few months in office. You won’t be missed.

  35. I really feel that the fact this actually went through after all the uncertainty will be a big boon to the country and liberal causes. I can’t imagine the positive results of this can be glossed over and spinned as much as the contents of the bill were.

  39. From Newsweek:

    [“Reform” bill] mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of that for younger Americans. That’s much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those age 60 to 64 is four to five times greater than those 18 to 24.

  40. Truly an amazing accomplishment in the face of an unsurpassed bombardment of corporate money – Michael Tomasky lays out the picture in the current NYR Books:

    “One of the main obstacles to health reform is the power of money. Despite the recession, federal lobbyists and their clients spent an all-time high of $3.47 billion last year, of which $544 million came from the health sector. About half of that—$267 million—came from the “pharmaceutical and health products industry,” which stands as the largest amount ever spent on lobbying Congress by a single industry in one year.”

    That more than a $1 M per no vote from big pharma and friends alone. Yow!

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23764

  42. I have been pounding my head on the end of a desk in celebration.

    Now that health care is free, I can damage myself and yet pay no money.

  43. Now what for the Republicans? They had all their eggs in one basket with this one. Standing athwart progress, flailing their arms and screaming “No!” didn’t work out so well for them.

  48. Is it the end of America as we know it, and the dawn of a new socialist dark ages?

    Sadly no, but it’s a nice step in the right direction.

    (p.s. EAT IT YOU SONS OF WHORES. ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.)

  49. Obama is turning out to be good mental exercise for the republicans. During the campaign, they figured that if they made everyone afraid enough of him, they’d win. On the bill, they figured if they could just make everyone afraid enough of him, they’d win. The GOP spends more ink talking about Obama than any tangible idea they’ve got to make life better for the American people. The official definition of a conservative at this point is “somebody who’s hates liberals.” Keep it up, boys, I think that plan is just about to work.

  51. Great, now I have to wait for the next big freeze of winter inorder to put the old folks out on the ice to die when they can no longer contribute to society. This bill, with it’s death tax, should have been passed months ago when it was still freezing outside.

    Just Kidding 😉

  52. Frum really nailed it. This was the test that was going to end Obama. Now the story seems to be the question of how the Republicans will survive their self-imposed Waterloo.

    They come into November now suffering multiple defeats, crumbling public support for even their proxies (not to mention their actual approval ratings – totally fucked), the widespread feeling even among conservatives like Frum that they did nothing to seriously participate in bipartisanship, now having voted uniformly no on a whole bunch of things like covering pre-existing conditions and, perhaps most important, ridiculously sky high expectations they themselves inflated.

    In reality, they’re going to have to work very hard – with a discouraged base – to win any seats this November, let alone an entire chamber. It is unlikely many of them will survive a number of primary challenges, and when they do, it’s going to be even harder to make it through the generals with an ultra-right, teabagger-dictated agenda.

    Mark my words: ignore what the punditry has been speculating, and remember this media also thought Obama was never going to beat Hillary, that Scott Brown’s election meant the end of health care reform, and that Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani were likely Republican contenders for ’08.

    Outside the beltway punditry, this whole sad, divisive and disgusting display – punctuated by ideological failure – is going to hurt the Republicans very, very badly.

  53. 39
    which means rates for younger people will go up a lot.
    this plan is great for insurance companies, lots of healthy young people now forced to buy coverage and subsidize the oldsters.
    that is all this ‘reform’ has ever been about, just a way to get more money out of more people.
    it does NOTHING to cut the COST of health care.

  54. The Democrats reforms force insurance companies to cover lots of new things.
    It doesn’t say they have to do it for free, however.
    In the past they would have gotten those folks off their books.
    Now they will just pass the (greatly) increased costs on to other rate payers.
    The sob stories about people getting cut always got liberals all up in arms.
    Now they will get to do something about it.
    Personally.
    With their own money….

  55. @53: I don’t think it’s a bad idea for “healthy youngsters” (like me — I’m 25) to be required to have health coverage, because it’s incredibly easy to, you know, become UNhealthy through no fault of ones own. My uninsured friend who broke a leg in a hit and run at 19 is still paying hospital bills, and probably will be for some time. My girlfriend had to wait to have painful fibroids removed for three years because she was struggling to get some form of coverage, and is now having fertility problems as a result.

    We’re required to have car insurance; why is a health insurance requirement so damaging? Even if you’re looking at it from a purely self-interested position, you’re doing yourself a favor. Illnesses and accidents are never planned.

  56. HINT – some of the money will come from shrunken Insurance Company inflated and obscene profits.

    What a novel revelation.

    Also, pooling changes all these costs and risks. Get us the info – dear Stranger.

    That is why the systems work with universal national participation – giant pooling of risks.

    This is great news …. many kids up for adoption with disabilities can now look for a future in a home… they can get health insurance, for sure. YES, that is a problem.

  57. I wonder how soon many of the changes will go into effect.

    I know some of them have a “do by” date of 2013 but others could go into effect immediately.

  58. 56
    if you confiscated every penny of profit from all the insurance companies you could run the health care system for 48 hours.
    instead let’s replace private sector insurance company employees making $28K with Federal employees averaging $70K.
    that should free up a lot of money…..

  59. goddammit the republicans were right! i woke up this morning and my grandma was dead.

    now, granted, she died in 2001, but i’m pretty sure that obama and pelosi somehow had a hand in her death. maybe they jumped in that hot tub time machine i’ve been hearing so much about.

  60. Do I use the same welfare office to sign up for my free health care plan? I was talking to my HUD guy that takes care of my free rent, and he said that the IRS was going to handle that. I’ve never paid taxes before, so is there an IRS office I’m supposed to contact? What about my Access Card, that gives me all my free food, will I just be using that card when I show up at the doctors office. Don’t be telling me about no deductables neither. I shouldn’t have to pay for anything but my cell phone. Even that ain’t right!

  61. Hopefully, the Insurance Companies will punish the American people for making them behave in a decent manner by making premiums so high they become even more egregious, thereby creating a clarion call for Medicare for All in the not too distant future.

  63. 53:

    …lots of healthy young people now forced to buy coverage and subsidize the oldsters.

    duh, dude. that’s exactly the point. expanding the risk pool. a lot of young people don’t even have insurance right now. they should.

    insurance IS SOCIALIZATION OF RISK. BY DEFINITION. EVERY KIND OF INSURANCE IS SOCIALIZATION OF RISK to a greater or lesser extent.

    get over it.

  64. In reality, they’re going to have to work very hard – with a discouraged base – to win any seats this November, let alone an entire chamber. It is unlikely many of them will survive a number of primary challenges, and when they do, it’s going to be even harder to make it through the generals with an ultra-right, teabagger-dictated agenda. http://methoo.com

  65. In reality, they’re going to have to work very hard – with a discouraged base – to win any seats this November, let alone an entire chamber. It is unlikely many of them will survive a number of primary challenges, and when they do, it’s going to be even harder to make it through the generals with an ultra-right, teabagger-dictated agenda. methoo.com

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