It has finally been announced!
After weeks of negotiations.
After weeks of protests.
After weeks of bickering within the Democratic Party.
After shutting out the Republicans from having any voice.
Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is decending upon the Senate, like Moses, bearing the long awaited changes to the Senate version of the Healthcare bill.
Emerging from marathon talks with Majority Leader Harry Reid and White House officials late Friday night, Nelson said "real progress" had been made toward his call for greater restrictions on abortion within the legislation.Oh happy day! A compromise that leaves out 35 million Americans, will cost over $1.5 Trillion (That is Trillion with a T), will start to tax everyone immediately, won't provide any coverage for 3 to 4 years, and is unConstitutional.
Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to unveil a final package of changes in the long-debated legislation on Saturday "and is confident that it will prevail," his spokesman, Jim Manley, said in a late-night statement.
Reid made no comment to reporters, but Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., another participant in the talks, sounded pleased. "I've been in Harry Reid's office for 13 hours and I'm glad to get out of there," he said. "But I'm particularly glad with what has happened in that office."
With Nelson's vote, President Barack Obama's Senate allies would have the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans.
That gave Nelson enormous leverage as he pressed for concessions that included stronger restrictions on abortions to be covered by insurance policies offered in a newly overhauled health care system. Officials said he was also seeking to ease the impact of a proposed insurance industry tax on nonprofit companies, as well as win more federal funds to cover Nebraska's cost of treating patients in Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor. These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said the administration and Democratic leaders had offered concessions on those points.
The Nebraska Democrat has already rejected one proposed offer on abortions as insufficient, and the presence in the talks of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., indicated additional changes were on the table.
The legislation would expand coverage to 30 million people now uninsured and try to curb rising health care costs. Insurance companies would be prohibited from denying coverage to people with health problems, or charging them more. All Americans would be required to have health insurance, or eventually face fines. The nearly $1 trillion, 10-year cost would be paid for mainly with Medicare cuts and new taxes on insurance companies and other parts of the health care industry.
The week saw an intraparty brawl among Democrats, with liberals seething over the compromises Reid has already made to keep the bill moving.
Gone is a government insurance plan modeled on Medicare. So is the fallback, the option of allowing aging baby boomers to buy into Medicare. The major benefits of the bill won't start for three or four years, and then they'll be delivered through private insurance companies.
Read the full story here.
Other than all those reason, it is a wonderful plan.
Just wait until the House gets it. Without the public option or increase of Medicare, it won't stand a chance with Pelosi.
But it will get the votes by Christmas. Just do you think that the Members of Congress will get the votes next November?
2 comments:
Good way to look at this, I wrote about the impending doom from the actions taken by the democrats, and I noted that a few things are coming next for sure. This however gives some possible light at the end of the tunnel, if it passes the senate (which is most likely will) the House might reject it because of the public option.
I do recall however what was said yesterday in the speech given about the amendment to the bill, it was said that this is a starter house, only the beginning. Pelosi will likely say yes to this because she knows that Bigger Government and Socialism is wild and against Americans wishes, however she also knows that slow and steady, steady and slow is the way to get demands the progressives want for this country enacted. Notice all the subtle changes in the country in the last 100 years. Does this country look dramatically different in last 10 years? Of course it does but there wasn't a huge sweeping deal to change it but smaller things to make us compromise and give over small amounts of our freedoms slowly.
Thanks for posting!
Let's not forget one other little item in this calamity, Findalis. The fact that harry put some special clause in there that says that certain parts of the bill cannot be UNDONE unless there is a 5/6ths majority [something like that] to vote "yea" on it.
Oh my!!! It is such a NIGHTMARE!
Someone try to tell me why it is that bad things happen to good people and why bad things never happen to bad people...
Totally off topic. Two weeks and one day, smoke free. Knowing that any purchase of cigarettes only serves to put more money in the already over-laden coffers of washington thieves makes it somewhat easier.
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