But the work is just beginning!

Although it’s Christmas Eve, I wanted to share some exciting news: The Senate just passed a historic health reform bill. In all the back and forth, it’s easy to lose sight of what this incredible breakthrough really means. But consider this: This Christmas, there are millions of Americans without health insurance who risk losing everything if they get sick. There are mothers and fathers who wonder how they’ll provide for their children because an illness has wiped out their savings. There are small business owners who worry that they’ll have to lay off a long-time employee because the cost of insurance is rapidly rising. If we finish the job, all this can change. We will have beaten back the special interests who have for so long perpetuated the status quo. We will have enacted the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s, and the most important health reform since Medicare in the 1960s. In Decembers to come, millions more will have access to affordable coverage. Parents will have the security and stability of knowing their insurance can’t be revoked at a moment’s notice. And the skyrocketing costs plaguing our small businesses will be brought under control. When you make calls, write letters, organize, this is the change you’re making — a better life for your family and for men and women in every state. There is still more to do before I can sign reform into law — a last round of negotiations and final votes in the Senate and the House — and I’m counting on your help every step of the way. But for now, I hope that as you celebrate this holiday season, you remember that the work you are doing is making our union more perfect, one step at a time. For that, I am grateful to you. Merry Christmas and happy holidays, President Barack Obama P.S. — Organizing for America supporters are signing a note of appreciation to all the senators who have worked so hard to make this possible. I hope you’ll join them: http://my.barackobama.com/SenateLetter

I received this letter from SEIU. The letter should have also stated that all of us who truly understand this issue has the duty to explain to all our neighbors, acquaintances, and everyone we come in contact with the reason why healthcare reform as being constructed by this Congress is essential and in their best interest.

"We may not cure this crisis today, but we must start toward that end," said Sen. Harry Reid moments before a vote on the Senate floor. The Senate just passed their health care bill on a 60-39 party line vote. With this historic vote, we stand closer today than ever before to delivering the type of health insurance reform our members and every American across this country deserve. The Senate has taken the first step towards passing its health care bill. Now, the Senate, the House and the White House have an opportunity to deliver real reform, worthy of every American’s support. The next two weeks will be our last chance to fix the final bill. Start by signing onto an open letter. The House and Senate bills will shortly head into "conference," where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama will hammer out a final bill by merging the two. Conference is an opportunity to fix what’s wrong with the Senate bill. It is also, in no uncertain terms, our last chance to do this right. Send a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and President Obama, telling them to finish reform right. The final bill coming out of conference requires passage in the Senate and House, but no changes are allowed, so conference is the last chance we have to make things better. Today is the beginning of an aggressive campaign to put a good bill on the President’s desk. Two major issues must be addressed in conference: Health care must be affordable: Low and middle income families must be able to afford health insurance if they do not get it through work, and employers must be asked to provide good health coverage for their employees so health care is affordable on the job. We should not finance reform on the backs of middle and lower income Americans – but should instead incorporate provisions in the House bill that ask the wealthiest 5% of Americans to pay their fair share. We must hold insurance companies accountable: If the insurance companies win, we lose. Insurance companies must be held accountable with strong regulations and consumer protections, and we must be given the choice of a national public health insurance option available on day one. We must finish reform right. Sign now. Happy holidays, Jessica Kutch Online Campaign Manager SEIU.org P.S. Members of Congress use personal stories from constituents to decide their votes and illustrate why certain provisions are important. We’re looking for stories of financial hardship that illustrate why health insurance must be affordable. Do you or a family member have a story to share with Congress? Click here.

 Two telling statements:

• "Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill."
• "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill."

Together, he said, these bills, many of which are highly popular among his party’s left wing, "will make life better for many Americans."

On taking office in the midst of a severe financial crisis, Obama, a former U.S. senator whose senior staff includes many Hill veterans, settled on a legislative strategy that departed from those of his predecessors.

He decided that, rather than pursue big pieces of legislation one at a time, his administration would seek health-care reform, a cap-and-trade bill, financial reform legislation and other measures simultaneously.

"In some ways, we just didn’t have an option," Obama said. "Because of the financial crisis, we had to make a series of decisions that, back in 2007 when my presidential campaign began, were not at the top of our list."

"What I thought was very important not to do was further delay work on some of the big-ticket items that I had been elected to achieve and that were critical for our long-term economic growth," he continued.

Obama said he "could have put off" health-care reform, adding that "there are some people who would say that wouldn’t be such a bad thing — the opponents of reform."

But he said delaying on that issue, which has been tied to the country’s future fiscal and financial health, would have continued the "double-digit" rise in health-care costs and increase the burden on businesses paying for employee coverage.

"Given how difficult fighting the special interest has been on Capitol Hill, it’s clear that, if we hadn’t decided to make a bold step forward this year, we probably wouldn’t have had the political capital to get it done in the future," he said. "Sooner or later we had to take that on, even though we knew it would be politically difficult."

[CONTINUED] 

Obama rejects criticism on health-care reform legislation – washingtonpost.com

Email from Organizing for America on what is at stake.

Any day now, health insurance reform will come up for a vote in the Senate. We’re hearing a lot about what’s at stake with this vote for President Obama, the Democrats who are fighting alongside him, and the Republicans who have lined up in opposition. But let’s talk about what’s really at stake for America. The Senate health reform bill will: Extend coverage to 31 million Americans, the largest expansion of coverage since the creation of Medicare. Ensure that you can choose your own doctor. Finally stop insurance companies from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition. Make sure you will never be charged exorbitant premiums on the basis of your age, health, or gender. Guarantee you will never lose your coverage just because you get sick or injured. Protect you from outrageous out-of-pocket expenditures by establishing lifetime and annual limits. Allow young people to stay on their parents’ coverage until they’re 26 years old. Create health insurance exchanges, or "one-stop shops" for individuals purchasing insurance, where insurance companies are forced to compete for new customers. Lower premiums for families, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office especially for struggling folks who will receive subsidies. Help small businesses provide health care coverage to their employees with tax credits and by allowing them to purchase coverage through the exchanges. Improve and strengthen Medicare by eliminating waste and fraud (without cutting basic benefits), beginning to close the Medicare Part D donut hole, and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund. Create jobs by reining in costs — fostering competition, reducing waste and inefficiency, and starting to reward doctors and hospitals for quality, not quantity, of care. Cut the deficit by over $130 billion in the next 10 years. It’s a long list. But that’s only because this bill represents the most significant health reform our nation has seen since the creation of Medicare. And it’s important that every American knows what’s really at stake this holiday season. So please pass this email along to friends, family, and neighbors today — or click below to share this list on Facebook and Twitter, or print out a copy to share with others: http://my.barackobama.com/SenateReformBill We wouldn’t be this close to enacting these powerful reforms without all your hard work. Now, we’re in the final stretch — let’s keep it up. Thank you, David Plouffe

Progressives listen up! E.J.’s analysis on the structural deficiency of the inner workings of the Senate on its own dictate the passage of this bill. It is for this reason we must educate our neighbors and acquaintances to empower them make pragmatic choices predicated on their best interest.

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Monday, December 21, 2009

 

For progressives, the question on the health-care battle going forward is not whether they have a right to be angry but whether they can direct their fury toward constructive ends. The alternative is to pursue a temporarily satisfying and ultimately self-defeating politics of protest.

Of course what has happened on the health-care bill is enraging. It’s quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in.

In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will, a law would pass, and champagne corks would pop. But everyone must get it through their heads that thanks to the bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.

Because of a front of Republican obstruction and the ludicrous idea that all legislation requires a supermajority of 60 votes, power has passed from the majority to tiny minorities, sometimes minorities of one.

Worse, more influence in this system flows to those willing to kill a bill than to those who most devoutly want to pass one. The paradox in this case is that senators who care most passionately about extending health coverage to 31 million Americans have the least power.

That’s why Joe Lieberman held the whip hand in killing the idea of letting Americans 55 and older buy into Medicare. Unlike liberal senators such as Jay Rockefeller or Sherrod Brown, Lieberman was perfectly happy to see the health-care proposal die if that was the price of getting himself into the spotlight.

What transpired was thus not the product of some magic show in which more conservative senators are endowed with mysteriously ingenious negotiating abilities while liberals are a bunch of bunglers. The whole system is biased to the right because the Senate itself — a body in which Wyoming and Utah have as much representation as New York and California — is tilted in a conservative direction. The 60-vote requirement empowers conservatives even more.

In light of this, the notion that letting the current health-care bill perish would produce a more progressive bill later is preposterous. Anyone who wants to change or even abolish the Senate has my full support. But that is not an option now.

In the meantime, progressives such as Brown and Rockefeller are right to be fighting with all their might to push through this less than perfect but still remarkably decent proposal.

To vote against it, Rockefeller said when I caught up with him recently, "you have to be for not covering 30 million people . . . you have to be for denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions . . . you have to be against helping small businesses buy health insurance." His list went on and on, pointing to the rather astonishing progress this bill makes. Brown agrees, and suggests that progressives now need to direct their energies toward improving on the Senate’s work. Senate passage of this bill, expected later this week, will not be the final step. There will still be negotiations with the House, whose plan is, in some important respects, the superior product, especially when it comes to making insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income Americans.

While the Senate’s intricate balance severely constrains how many changes it will accept — Sen. Ben Nelson, who provided the critical 60th vote, made that clear in a Sunday CNN interview — there is still room to maneuver. Instead of trying to derail the process, which is exactly what conservative opponents want to do, those on the left dissatisfied with the Senate bill should focus their efforts over the next few weeks on getting as many fixes into it as they can.

And then they can do something else: Start organizing for the next health-care fight. Enactment of a single bill will not mark the end of the struggle. It will open a series of new opportunities. It’s a lot easier to improve a system premised on the idea that everyone should have health coverage than to create such a system in the first place. Better to take a victory and build on it — to accept this plan as a "starter home," in Sen. Tom Harkin‘s apt metaphor — than to label victory as defeat.

Successful political movements prosper on the confidence that they can sustain themselves over time so they can finish tomorrow what they start today. At this moment, rage is understandable, but hope is what’s necessary.

E.J. Dionne Jr. – Democrats: Stop screaming and pass health reform – washingtonpost.com

For those who believe reconciliation was an option to circumvent Democrats that have sold their souls to the insurance companies, Nate Silver’s analysis is very sobering. I think when all is said and done if Healthcare Reform passes, then the negotiating tactic performed by the President will ultimately go down in history as genius as no other method has worked thus far. That being the case we must continue the tough fight of modifying this dog of a bill to one that better serves the American people.

by Nate Silver

Jon Walker at has a new post up at Firedoglake entitled thusly: The Insidious Myth Of The Progressive Bill Killers. The post argues that wonks like me have greatly mischaracterized the position of the bill-killers. They don’t really think the bill is worse than nothing, Jon says. They just think a better bill can be achieved through reconciliation or some other filibuster-breaking strategy.

Really? I appreciate that Jon is injecting some subtlety into the debate. It’s been sorely lacking from most (although not all) of the kill-billers, who have unironically grabbed from a patchwork of right-wing frames to make their case. If there’s been a post from Jane Hamsher saying: "You know, actually this bill represents a lot of progress in comparison to the status quo, but it’s not all we hoped for, and I think we can afford to gamble a bit on making it better via reconciliation", then I must have missed it. Certainly, this more nuanced case has been made by some players in the debate — it’s very close to the position statements put out by the unions, for example — but it’s generally not the one we’ve seen from the activist/online left, which is the group that I and others have been specifically critical of. [CONTINUED]

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

By JOE BIDEN
Published: December 19, 2009

 

IF I were still a United States senator, I would not only vote yes on the current health care reform bill, I would do so with the sure knowledge that I was casting one of the most historic votes of my 36 years in the Senate. I would vote yes knowing that the bill represents the culmination of a struggle begun by Theodore Roosevelt nearly a century ago to make health care reform a reality. And while it does not contain every measure President Obama and I wanted, I would vote yes for this bill certain that it includes the fundamental, essential change that opponents of reform have resisted for generations.

We have been here before. In the past, as the moment of decision drew nearer, criticism from both the left and the right grew louder. Compromises were derided. The perfect became the enemy of the good.

Most recently, in 1993, Democrats had a chance to forge a compromise with Senator John Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, on a health care reform bill. Congress’s failure to pass health care reform that year led to 16 years of inaction — and 16 years of exploding health care costs and rising numbers of uninsured Americans.

We can’t let that happen again. While it is not perfect, the bill pending in the Senate today is not just good enough — it is very good. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions or drop coverage when people get sick. Charging exorbitant premiums based on sex, age or health status will be outlawed. Annual and lifetime caps on benefits will be history. Those who already have insurance will be able to keep it, and will gain peace of mind knowing they won’t be priced out of the market by skyrocketing premiums. And more than 30 million uninsured Americans will gain access to affordable health care coverage.

That is not all. President Obama and I know we have to put our fiscal house in order. This is why those who claim they oppose reform because they fear for our country’s fiscal stability should finally acknowledge what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office makes crystal clear: not only is the Senate bill paid for, it is this country’s single largest deficit-reduction measure in a dozen years.

I share the frustration of other progressives that the Senate bill does not include a public option. But I’ve been around a long time, and I know that in Washington big changes never emerge in perfect form.

Those in our own party who would scuttle this bill because of what it doesn’t do seem not to appreciate the magnitude of what it has the potential to accomplish. Howard Dean was head of the Democratic Party. I respect his leadership on health care, and I understand his criticism of the bill. But it is worth noting that on some of the key health reform issues — like ensuring that Americans have access to stable, affordable coverage, and doing away with abusive practices by insurance companies — the reforms in the Senate bill would do even more than Vermont, the state he governed, has done. And they would do it for the entire country. What’s more, this bill would expand both choice and competition in an insurance market that, for many Americans, has offered far too little of either.

The issues in the health reform bill are complicated, but the consequences of failing to pass it are straightforward. Those who would vote no on this bill need to look into the eyes of Americans who don’t have health care now and tell them they’re going to be better off without this bill — better off continuing to live without health coverage. They should explain to all those Americans who are denied coverage because they have pre-existing conditions or whose insurance ran out because of lifetime caps that they don’t need this bill. And they should tell the families who have insurance and the small-business owners who provide it that the relentless rise in their premiums without this bill will somehow make them glad it didn’t pass.

Is America better off today because a chance at a compromise health bill was missed in 1993? For my friends on the left, the rising toll of the uninsured provides an emphatic no. For my friends on the right, the soaring share of federal spending on health care likewise provides a no. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

If the bill passes the Senate this week, there will be more chances to make changes to it before it becomes law. But if the bill dies this week, there is no second chance to vote yes. What those who care about health insurance reform need to realize is that unless we get 60 votes now, there will be no health care reform at all. Not this year, not in this Congress — and maybe not for another generation.

Joe Biden, a United States senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, is the vice president of the United States.

Op-Ed Contributor – Why the Senate Should Vote Yes on Health Care – NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman, the great Liberal Nobel Prize winning economist says it much better than any of us have thus far.

Illusions and bitterness

There’s enormous disappointment among progressives about the emerging health care bill — and rightly so. That said, even as it stands it would take a big step toward greater security for Americans and greater social justice; it would also save many lives over the decade ahead. That’s why progressive health policy wonks — the people who have campaigned for health reform for years — are almost all in favor of voting for the thing.

The argument about the evil of the individual mandate is,as Jon Cohn says, all wrong. It was wrong during the primaries, when Obama unfortunately used it to demagogue his rivals — helping set the stage for problems now. And it’s still wrong.

And the truth is that health care reform was probably doomed to be deeply imperfect. As Ezra Klein pointed out a few weeks ago, we’re basically in a hostage situation: progressives really, really want to cover the uninsured, while centrists whose votes are needed can take it or leave it. So the centrists have a lot of power — which in the case of Joe Lieberman means the power to double-cross and indulge his pettiness.

Now, in a hostage situation there are times when you have to just say no — when giving in, by encouraging future hostage-takers, would be worse than letting the hostages perish. So the question has to be, is this one of those times? I don’t think so, given the history: as Kevin Drum points out, health reform has come back weaker after each defeat. I’d also point out that highly imperfect insurance reforms, like Social Security and Medicare in their initial incarnations, have gotten more comprehensive over time. This suggests that the priority is to get something passed.

But what’s happening, I think, goes beyond health care; what we’re seeing is disillusionment with Obama among some of the people who were his most enthusiastic supporters. A lot of people seem shocked to find that he’s not the transformative figure of their imaginations. Can I say I told you so? If you paid attention to what he said, not how he said it, it was obvious from the beginning — and I’m talking about 2007 — that he was going to be much less aggressive about change than one could have hoped. And this has done a lot of damage: I believe he could have taken a tougher line on economic policy and the banks, and was tearing my hair out over his caution early this year. I also believe that if he had been tougher on those issues, he’d be better able to weather disappointment over his health care compromises.

So there’s a lot of bitterness out there. But please, keep your priorities straight.

By all means denounce Obama for his failed bipartisan gestures. By all means criticize the administration. But don’t take it out on the tens of millions of Americans who will have health insurance if this bill passes, but will be out of luck — and, in some cases, dead — if it doesn’t.

Illusions and bitterness – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

Disclaimer: I love Keith Olbermann. He is generally correct. In fact most of his analysis today on his special comment was mostly correct on the Healthcare Reform Bill being a gift to insurance companies. But any for profit insurance system would be just that. There is already a DailyKos.com Diary that details the technical reasons to support the bill. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com also has three posts that better illustrates the points (Post1 Post2 Post3).

Keith is proposing that unless the mandate that all purchase or get insurance is removed the bill must be killed. The entire idea of the mandate is to ensure that we have millions of healthy people paying for insurance to spread the risk as everyone eventually gets sick or old. It would be irresponsible to remove such a mandate.

More importantly those wanting to kill the bill are shortsighted to the political implications of such an occurrence for Congress. President Obama is likely to survive a perceived wasted year on healthcare reform as did President Clinton. Congress would not for they would have been proven incompetent even with a super majority.

It is OK to not like a bill but it is important to understand that Democrats are not a monolith and will not vote that way unless the populous imposes that. Unfortunately many Progressives want to impose their will without popular support. If you want the moral authority of blanket imposition then the ideas must be sold and reflected in the polls. Unfortunately that is not the case.

As I have mentioned in many posts, we as Progressives know what is mathematically best for the country’s healthcare. Those on the Right seem to live in an alternate reality.We must find a way to sell it. Do not despair however. If we are unable to sell it, the natural capitulation of the system will do so later likely with deservedly catastrophic consequences for many who themselves opposed what would have saved them.

Again to all those shouting kill the bill. Be pragmatic and understand that more than ever we must maintain our sanity.

This was Senator Sanders defense of his Singlepayer Amendment after he withdrew it because obstructionist Republican Senator Coburn forced the entire 700+ page bill to be read.