The public option is obviously as dead as a doornail. My advice to the progressives is to take what they can get now.

I don't know what kind of health care reform will come out of this session, but I strongly suspect it won't be much. There is, however a silver lining behind this very dark cloud. I am reminded of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Don't be embarrassed if you've never heard of it, there really isn't a hell of a lot to remember about it; a mere pittance, really - a scrap of leftovers tossed out to "American Negros" (in the parlance of the age) in order to appease them. But it made the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - the one we remember - all the more easier seven years later.

We'll live to fight another day.

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan

The public option was stillborn. If they really wanted a public option, the debate should have started with an argument for single payer. Then Obama and the Democrats could have "compromised" their way to public option. Regardless, they've done a poor job and I doubt sincerity of their support anyway.

I'm still for single payer. The goal should have been to remove the profit motive from healthcare. Instead it looks like we'll be legally required to carry private health insurance. This is just government mandated business for the insurance industry. I fail to see how that is even a modest improvement regardless of the rest of the bill.

More so than the right, the biggest hinderance to change in the US right now is progressives. In the end they're reformers and compromisers to a fault. The US desperately needs a real Left, one willing to openly critique,challenge and change the very basis of power and social relations in the country. And, importantly, we need to get these kinds of people elected. Until that happens, all we'll get is moderate tweaks and handouts to big business (i.e., modest reforms by capitalists with a guilty conscience).

I wish I could say I didn't see this coming, but hell, who didn't?

All this bill is going to do now is make profit for health insurance by forcing people who still can't afford the insurance buy it. It is going to do diddly and shit to make health care affordable- it will just give the companies free reign to charge whatever they damn well pelase. My insurance costs me $117 a month and I only pay 25% of what my company pays. That is for single person care- by the way, not family. That is $468 for my insurance every month. And let me tell you- it is not rock star insurance. My prescription cost is $45 for non-generics (and there are some medications that don't even have generics- like birth control- something more americans need to be made aware of and use). Most of the time, by pharmacist just charges me the cost of the drugs because its cheaper than my co-pay. What the fuck? Seriously? I can't even begin to tell you how fucking expensive my knee surgery was. And then, I ran out of my allotment of physical therapy well before I needed to stop going. I only get $3000 a year for PT- and at $150-$200 bucks a session (slidding scale based on how far along I was), it runs out quick when you have to go twice a week.

People are stupid. Most have no idea what their insurance actually pays for and what their caps on things are. Most people don't even know that their care has caps on it.

The whole excersize of Health Care Debate makes me sick. No one really knows anything. How can congress justify what is 'reasonable' to pay when they don't have to? They really have no earthly idea how real people live anymore.

I propose that no Senator should be allowed to serve more than 2 terms. They need to go live in the real world.

Utopia: No argument here. The public repeatedly polls in favor at least a public option, but elected officials are still going to let it die. At the rate we're going, it will take another 50 years (at least!) to get single payer. We could have a workable public healthcare system if we didn't have cowards and criminals in office.