Senator Claire McCaskill (D) posted via facebook:

The release of the work-in-progress version of the finance bill should not be seen as the finish line. It is the starting line. Now the hard work begins. I’m still going through all the details of the Baucus Finance proposal, which as of next week will undergo major changes as committee members amend the current bill.

As those changes occur, I’ll be looking specifically at whether this legislation will truly increase competition, bring down costs, help protect consumers, and ultimate bring us better health outcomes. And, any health care reform bill I vote for will have to be deficit neutral.

[emphasis added]

There are a number of comments in support of the public option. And it would appear that Senator Baucus’ health care bill is DOA everywhere but inside the beltway Washington and at old media corporate operations. Even the republicans who worked so hard to place turds in this particular punch bowl aren’t going to vote for it. That’s where believing in David Broder’s myth of “bipartisanship” gets you.

And then there’s this, a comment in response to the second post:

…how about we adopt a policy that any war authorization also be budget neutral?

Touché.

“This is journalistic malpractice, plain and simple.  A reporter right out of J-school would have taken the two minutes necessary to call the San Bernardino Police Department and verify Ms. Kaelke’s statements. But that never occurred to anyone at Fox News before the network ran with the story. This kind of shameful work raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the entire campaign currently being waged against ACORN.”

-Eric Burns, president of Media Matters

As Beck crusade against ACORN continues, regardless of truth or accuracy, Media Matters for America is thankfully trying to hold Beck and his Fox News comrades accountable.

On September 15, Fox News’ Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity both broadcast Tresa Kaelke’s assertion, recorded on a hidden camera, that she had killed a former husband.

Both made a point of highlighting the statement. On the September 15 edition of his show, Beck played the clip and then said, “She never spanked her kids, but she did shoot her husband dead.” Later that night, Hannity played the same clip before adding, “Specifically, now, she goes into this scenario about her husband and the killing of him.”

The following morning, on September 16, Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson repeated the allegation, saying, “She killed somebody? Despite this, some lawmakers want to keep funding the group.” She later claimed that the husband was still alive, “according to ACORN.”

However, the San Bernardino Police Department itself has now confirmed that Kaelke’s claim was untrue. A department statement released on September 15 reads:

“The San Bernardino Police Department is investigating the claims made regarding the homicide. From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party’s known former husbands, who are alive and well.”

Furthermore, Kaelke has said that when she made the claim, she was seeking to deliberately mislead the undercover videographers, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, of whom she was suspicious.

“They were not believable,” Kaelke is quoted as saying in an ACORN press release. “Somewhat entertaining, but they weren’t even good actors. I didn’t know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me.”

The Media Matters video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

My jaw dropped and I said “What the hell?” when I read this at Political Animal:

Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-Ga.) has rapidly signed up 99 co-sponsors for his Czar Accountability and Reform Act of 2009…. All but one of them are Republicans: the member of the majority party backing Kingston’s crusade to prevent presidential advisers who haven’t been approved by the Senate from collecting salaries is Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.),

At 2:15 p.m., at least three House Republicans will join Kingston (R-Ga.) for a press conference on “their efforts to bring about increased transparency and accountability for President Obama’s czars.”

Considering Lacy Clay’s usually exemplary voting record on progressive issues, I had to have an explanation, so I called his D.C. office and ran the maze of “Let me transfer you to” and “I’m out of the office. Please leave a message.”

While I waited for a response, I wrote a posting wondering if Clay was actually concerned perhaps about an over-muscular presidency. That was the only reason I could imagine, and I lectured him about it.

If Clay’s reason for co-sponsoring King’s bill is a heartfelt concern that the presidency not accumulate unwarranted power without transparency, then I can only say that he’s the only one of the 99 co-sponsors with a sincere focus on improving government. The other 98 of them–99, counting King–could give a rat’s ass about over-muscular presidential powers. The entire wingoverse loved warrantless wiretapping.

No, they just hate Democrats and Obama in particular.

Eventually, one of Clay’s staffers got back to me and informed me that the information about his co-sponsorship was wrong. It occurred because of a clerical error in the House. Clay is NOT a co-sponsor of the Glenn Beck-despise-Obama-pretend-we-have-a-reason bill.

Oh. Never mind. And by the way, thank goodness.

Our previous coverage:

Senator Al Franken (D) at the 2009 Harkin Steak Fry – part 1

Senators Harkin (D) and Franken (D) in Indianola, Iowa – there will be a strong public option

The 2009 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa – photos

Before anyone gets a shovel and digs a grave for the Public Option, read this

The second and final part of Al Franken’s remarks:

….The truth is, if we don’t fix the system most of us are gonna lose the health care because we’re simply not gonna be able to afford the health care. [applause] And at the Minnesota state fair that’s the question everybody was asking, Democrats and Republicans. But right now in Congress Democrats seem to be the only ones asking it. Republicans are busy asking Washington questions. They’re asking, “How do we break President Obama?  How do we make sure he fails?” That’s what they’re asking.

Tom referred to Jim DeMint of South Carolina, our esteemed colleague who is, is close friends with, well, both of us. [laughter] Good, good friend. [laughter] And Senator DeMint said this, I’m gonna quote what he said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo.” Well I don’t think this debate should be about President Obama. [applause] [cheers] It should be, it should be about the people who are going bankrupt because of the cost of health care, [applause] even when they have insurance. [applause] The number one cause, the number one cause of bankruptcy, of personal bankruptcy in this country are health care crises. More than half of the personal bankruptcies in this country are caused by health care crisis. And more than two thirds of those people who go bankrupt because of a health care crisis have health insurance….

….This debate should be about that woman in Fergus Falls, the one I mentioned, the one with diabetes. See, her adult son has diabetes, too, but he can’t afford health insurance so she shares her insulin with her son. In America. [pause]

This debate should be about the older woman who came up to me at the booth. She said to me, “You know when you’re my age, everything is pre-existing.” [laughter] This debate is about the American people. And if this debate is about what’s gonna help the American people well then there’s really no debate. We’ve gotta change the system. And that’s what we’re going to do. [applause]

So the question is, the question is, if you get sick, how do you get health care? And how do we keep people healthy in the first place? And the answer to the question also happens to be the answer to keeping costs down. Tom knows that. In Minnesota we know that. In Minnesota we do pretty well. Ninety-one cents of every health insurance dollar goes to actual health care in Minnesota as compared to seventy to eighty cents in the rest of the country. In one health care roundtable a, a health care economist said to me, “You know, in Minnesota we get an ‘A’.” But then, then he continued saying, “But that’s only because we grade on a curve.” [laughter] Now here in Iowa you’re also in the top quintile in, in health care. But the way our system works we don’t really pay our doctors to keep people healthy. A doctor won’t get paid for helping a diabetic control his diabetes. But we do pay doctors a lot for removing a diabetic’s foot.

Now let’s take for example McAllen, Texas – the most expensive medical market in the country. In McAllen they spend three times as much on health care for Medicare patients as they do in Mayo Clinic. Even though at Mayo the get better outcomes. Well that’s because in McAllen doctors own the hospitals and they own the imaging clinics. So they perform more tests and procedures and Medicare pays for the tests and the procedures, but they don’t pay for the outcome. At Mayo it’s patient centered. The doctors who flock to Mayo are paid salaries. They don’t get paid more money for [inaudible] procedure, they get paid to keep people healthy. [applause]

See, right now we’re paying for sick care we’re not paying health care. [applause] And when doctors, and when doctors look at a patient as a dollar sign we get a far different outcome. Then when doctors look at a patient as someone you want to keep, get healthy and then keep ’em healthy. So we’re gonna change the system so that we emphasize preventive care on front end and reward doctors for good outcomes on the back end. [applause] And we’re gonna make it so insurance companies can’t deny you, your claim because of pre-existing condition. [applause] We’re gonna make sure that insurance companies face real competition with [emphasis] a public option. [applause] [cheers] we’re going to improve electronic health records [applause] so that doctors don’t do duplicative tests that are unnecessary. These changes are gonna keep us healthier, save families money, and bring down the cost of health care. And call me crazy but it just seems like a pretty damn good idea. [applause]

Now even though these are good ideas some people are gonna fight ’em with everything they got. And it’s pure, it’s pure politics. These people rail against government health care but they’re sure happy that their parents have Medicare. President Obama could propose just about anything and some of our Republican friends would still oppose it. They don’t even think the President should be allowed to tell kids to stay in school and work hard. [applause] [cheers] That’s how ridiculous this is. Their goal isn’t to see how much we can do, it’s to see much we can undo, or they can undo.

The last time the Republicans were in power they undid a lot. [laughter] Under Republicans we couldn’t get vaccines to kids during flu season. Under Republicans we couldn’t get clean water to New Orleans when the levees broke. Under Republicans we couldn’t tell the difference Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin. [applause] [cheers] And the last Republican President, I, I forget his name [laughter], left us, left us on the brink of a great depression. It’s that old Republican tactic. They run for office saying that government doesn’t work, then they get elected and they prove it. [laughter] [applause]

But what our friends across the aisle don’t get is this, this is a Democracy. It’s not the government versus the people. The government is the people. We’re on the same team [applause], we work together. And when government reflects the will of the people and responds to the people we make a lot of progress as individuals and as a country. I think President Obama said it best last Wednesday night in that great speech. He said this, “Our predecessors understood that government could not and should not solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains and security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little. That without the leavening hand of wise policy markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited.”

This is something we know in, in my family. When my wife Frannie was about seventeen years old her father, a World War II decorated vet, died in a car accident on the way home from doing two straight shifts at the paper mill in Portland Maine, leaving Frannie’s mom widowed at age twenty-nine with five kids. Now, Frannie’s mo
m had a high school education, that’s it, and they had a tough time, but they made it. And they made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. [applause] Sometimes there wasn’t enough food on the table, sometimes they turned the heat off, and this is Portland, Maine, it was kind of cold. But they made it. My brother-in-law, middle kid, went into the Coast Guard. Became an electrical engineer, he still works with the Coast Guard. My three sisters-in-law and Frannie all went to college on combinations of Pell Grants and scholarships. [applause] And Frannie’s younger sister, there’s one younger than Frannie, Bootsie. And Bootsie went to high school, my mother-in-law got a four hundred dollar GI loan to fix a hole in the roof, instead of using it to fix a hole in the roof, she used it to go to college at the University of Maine at Gorham. And she got three more loans and graduated. And got another loan, then got a masters in teach, in, in teaching kids to read and she became a teacher. And she had a career teaching Title I kids to read and because she taught Title I kids all her loans were forgiven. [applause] Every member of my wife’s family, every member of my wife’s family became a productive member of society. And they did it because of Social Security. [applause] They did it because of Pell Grants. [applause] They did it because of the GI Bill. [applause] They did it because of Title I. [applause]  Now, they tell you in this country pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that’s something that everyone of us here believes. But first you gotta have the boots. [voice: “Yeah.”] [applause] The government Frannie’s family the boots. And that’s what we’re about, that’s what we’re about. [applause] [cheers] I ran for the senate because I know that Frannie’s story isn’t unique. It’s Tom Harkin’s story. It’s the politics that he practices. It’s America’s story.

The health care bill we’re fighting for right now, it isn’t just about health care. It isn’t just about bringing down the costs, bringing down the debt. It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people the boots. If you go in to debt because a family member gets sick or hurt you’re gonna spend years just keeping your head above water. If your child has a pre-existing condition you can’t change your job to start a small business which creates seventy percent of the new jobs in this country. You can’t do it because you won’t get health care. Think about what this means for families and then what it means for our economy.

You hear Democrats talk a lot about opportunity. That’s because we really do believe in opportunity. And everything we’ve done [applause] in the last nine months reflects that. We inherited an economy on the brink of a depression and we passed a major recovery act that pulled us from the brink. Cut taxes for families, a third of it was tax cuts for people under two hundred fifty thousand dollars. [applause] It kept states, it kept states from having to cut even more than they’ve had to cut, saving jobs and police and nurses and firefighters and social workers. People who are needed at a time of financial crisis. And we invested in today’s infrastructure and tomorrow’s infrastructure. We passed a law in the last nine months to keep the credit card companies from taking advantage of consumers. [applause] [cheers] A law, a law to protect equal pay for women. [voce: “Yeah!”] [applause] We covered seven million uninsured children through SCHIP. [applause] We gave the FDA the power to regulate tobacco, to regulate it like the health risk that it is. [applause]

In any other year that would be enough. But this year we have the chance to confront the single biggest threat to America’s future and the greatest unmet moral obligation in our history, all rolled into one. That’s what health care is. [applause] [voice: “Obama’s (inaudible), he’s our President!”] This is, this is our moment of opportunity. This need, needs to be the moment where the debate changes, when the heat of an angry summer breaks. So, we need you. We don’t want to look back and say we squandered this opportunity because we allowed ourselves to be shouted down. Or that we voted for change and got scared of actual change. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] We want to look back on this day from an America in which everyone has health care and say, it wasn’t the easiest thing, but it was the right thing. [applause] And together we got it done. [applause] Thank you. [applause] [cheers] Now, now. [applause] [cheers]

Minnesota Senator Al Franken (D) was a guest and speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s (D) annual steak fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday afternoon.

Our previous coverage:

Senators Harkin (D) and Franken (D) in Indianola, Iowa – there will be a strong public option

The 2009 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa – photos

Before anyone gets a shovel and digs a grave for the Public Option, read this

Al Franken’s remarks:

[applause][cheers] Thank you. Thank you. Sit down, sit down. Hold, hold it, hold it for the end. [laughter] [voice: “Give ’em hell, Al.”] [voice: “Yay, Al!”] [voice: “What about Rush?”] Tom, Ruth, thank you for inviting me. I, you know, this is great on a non-presidential year, it’s nice and intimate here. It’s just you and you’re closest two thousand friends, right? [laughter] Governor Culver, let me, let me say something about your dad, your dad. I think all of us saw a lot of the Kennedy memorials and testaments to him and the funeral and there were a lot of tears. But there was also a lot of laughs.  And your dad gave kind of a testimonial that was just hilarious and, and it went viral. I don’t know how many of you have seen it, it’s just. [applause] So here’s my advice to you, Governor. If you have even half the sense of humor that your, your dad has [laughter] do not let people see it until you retire. [laughter] Just don’t, it’ll just get you in trouble. [laughter] I should know. [laughter]….

….The people of Iowa have known Tom [Harkin] as a lot of things. As a fighter pilot, a congressman, a senator, the first Iowa senator to be elected to two consecutive terms [applause], the first Democratic Iowa [inaudible]. [applause] As Frank Harkin’s big brother. As the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act. [applause] [cheers] As a presidential candidate who got seventy-six percent of the vote here in Iowa and who got seventy-six votes in New Hampshire. [laughter] as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. And he is now the man who will fill the void left by the passing of Senator Kennedy, as the chairman of the Health, and Education, Labor and Pension Committee.

Now, it’s not really that big a deal. [laughter] I mean, it’s only health, education [laughter], labor [laughter], and pensions [laughter]. I mean, who really would care about those things? [laughter] [voice: “Democrats!”] You know, except for maybe people who are concerned about their, their health. [laughter] Or, or their, you know, their kids’ health. Or maybe want their kids to go to, oh, a good school. [laughter] Or, I don’t know, people who, who work. [laughter] [applause] Or who may even want to retire some day. [laughter] You know, with a pension. [laughter] I suppose those people might care about the work of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. [laughter]

And you know what? I can’t think of anyone better to lead the charge on health care reform, on reforming our education policies in this country, on fighting for working men and women, and protecting folks’ retirement security than Tom Harkin. [applause] Now, really, honest, save it for the end. [laughter] Now he’s still on the Ag Committee, so this is a win for Iowa and a win for America. [applause]

You know, Tom invited me to the one steak fry that was cancelled, in two thousand one, nine eleven eight years ago. And back then I would have been happy just to be here as a friend and supporter. Eight years later I’m humbled to be here as a colleague. [applause] And now [applause], and now as a member myself of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee I am honored to call Tom my chairman.  [applause] In his role on the health part of the health, on the, of the HELP Committee Tom helped write, led the writing of the prevention title on the health bill. Yeah, so it’s, he’s focused like I am on preventative care. Now of course, one way nutritionists tell us that we could prevent disease if we, is if we ate less charcoal grilled marbled…[laughter]…red meat. [laughter] So please let me be the first to invite you to the two thousand ten first annual Tom Harkin tofu steam. [laughter] [applause] Tofu steam. Tofu steam. [laughter]

Now I may have arrived late to the Senate, but I really hit the ground running. Like one of the first few days I was in the Senate I ran into Senator Jim Imhofe of Oklahoma.  [audience groaning] Now you might know him as the one who, who called the scientific evidence on, on climate change, he called it, quote, “The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” So, I want to make friends with everybody. So I got to talkin’ with Jim. So, Jim and me are talkin’ on the floor and I said to him, “You know, Jim, I’ve been doing some research, some really deep digging and, it, it seems to me that, uh, you’re not entirely convinced [laughter] on the science of global warming.” And he said, “Oh, you’ve done some deep digging then.” [laughter] And I go, “Yes, yes, that something you’re gonna have to learn about, you’re gonna learn about me. I do my homework. And from the research I’ve done it just, it just, it seems like you aren’t entirely on board [laughter] with the whole climate change thing.” So, so that is me. That’s me, I do my homework.

For example, when I was first appointed to the Judiciary Committee I thought, “This is weird, I’m not a lawyer.” How am I gonna know what, you know, how to ask the right questions? But then I did some more of that deep, deep digging. And I discovered that most Americans aren’t lawyers. [laughter] [applause] That’s true. That’s, that’s a, that’s factual. [laughter] It’s factual. And I discovered that this is one of the real challenges of being a U.S. Senator, Washington expects you to think one way, but the American people don’t necessarily think that way. So, the challenge is not to get caught up in the questions that get asked in Washington. It’s to do what Tom Harkin has always done, ask the questions that the American people want answered. [applause] And right now, right now, those are health care questions. You know, when I campaigned around the state of Minnesota in two thousand eight, this was during my campaign, it seems so long ago [laughter], the people that talked to me about health care they, they really talked to me about three things. They said it cost too much. They said what am I gonna do if I lose my job and either I or my spouse or my, one of my kids has a pre-existing condition? And how am I ever, ever gonna get health care? Or, if something bad happens to me or one of my kids, and they get really sick, am I gonna lose everything? Am I gonna go bankrupt? And that’s what the American people want to know.

And by the way, when I say the American people I don’t just mean Democrats. A few weeks ago I was at my booth at the Minnesota state fair. And a group of tea party folks came in. Somebody actually videotaped this, put it on the web, maybe some of you have seen it. [applause] Well, they were angry. They were angry and they had t-shirts on that said TEE, uh, TEA, taxed enough already and a picture of a red, white and blue tea pot. And they also were, had with them some right wing talking points. And they were there to confront me on health care and they were, they came loaded for bear. So now, if you listen to the talking heads you would’ve, you’d think, oh t
his probably turned out very, very badly. But, a couple things happened. First of all, they realized I was a real person. That I wasn’t the caricature of a left wing demon that they had heard about, that they didn’t really have reason to be afraid of me or angry with me. And there’s a lesson in that for all of our political debates. When you look your opponent in the eye it’s harder to vilify them. And it’s a lot easier to reason with them. Now, in fact, somebody commented on a blog site, who saw this video on the web. They called me the, the “wingnut whisperer,” but [laughter] actually, actually, these people weren’t nuts at all. Not at all. Because, the next thing that happened was that we really had a great conversation. And I told them that the issue of health care was just way too complex for people to be injecting misinformation that engenders fear. [applause] And I said that I thought that the most egregious thing was the death panel. And then I kind of braced myself for their reaction. Well you know what happened, there were six tea party people there? All of them, each of them went, “Yeah, that was bad. Yeah, that was, that shouldn’t have happened.” So they didn’t want to talk about that. What they wanted to know was how are we going to pay for this? And you know what? That’s a great question. It’s a great question. It’s not a Democratic question, it’s not a republican question, it’s an immensely important question. And it’s one that Tom Harkin and I are asking every day. Now maybe we have a different breed of tea partiers in, in Minnesota, but the tea party people and I ended up having a good discussion. Now, at the end of this conversation did we agree on every solution? No. But we did agree that doing nothing is just not an option. [applause]

And that’s why even though I may have arrived late to the senate, I didn’t arrive too late. [applause] [cheers] Because this fall we’re finally going to reform our health care system. [applause] [cheers] How are we gonna do it? How are we gonna do it? Well first we’re gonna start by breaking that phrase “health care system” apart just a little bit. We’re really talking about two different things. The truth is we have really great health care in this system, in this country. We have great health care in this country. We just have a really terrible system. [applause] Now, let’s start with the health care part. We’ve got dedicated, brilliant, creative, smart doctors. [voice: “Thank you.”] [laughter] Not necessarily you, but… [laughter] other doctors. [laughter] I don’t know you. You may be great. [laughter] Nurses, medical device designers, and researchers, technicians, and brilliant, brilliant people working on our health care and doing amazing things.

So, if you’re a member of the Saudi royal family you get on your private jet and you come to America for your health care. [voice: “Yep.”] The Saudi royal family is willing to travel seventy-five hundred miles to Rochester, Minnesota to get great care at the Mayo Clinic. [applause] Now, for a woman in Fergus Falls, Minnesota with diabetes that same care is less than three hundred miles away. But it often feels like it’s a world away. That’s because if you’re an American you get great health care, too, but only, only if you make it through the terrible system. [applause] And by the way, when you have to navigate this system? It’s always when you’re at your most vulnerable, when you’re sick. Now first of all, if you’re lucky and you have insurance you’ve got to be able to pay the premium. And premiums have been doubling every ten years. If you can do that and you picked the right plan, because the truth is that people never really know what their plan covers until you get sick. Then you’ve gotta hope you, you filled out the forms right. ‘Cause if you didn’t your insurance can deny your claim. And you also have to hope that your, your insurance company can’t find a pre-existing condition. In other words, a condition that may or may not have actually pre-existed when you signed the policy. But, if they can find it, they’ll drop you from the plan. And even if they do pay your claim they have, they can have a cap. An annual cap or lifetime cap. And you can end up with medical bills that are tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

But if that all works out you get some really great health care….

Amy Smoucha, health care organizer for Jobs with Justice in Missouri, is taking the long view of health care reform. Not that she doesn’t believe that the country needs a health care reform bill this year. She absolutely does. But she knows the bill will have areas that need significant improvement, so she’s into organizing for the long haul.

On Monday, speaking at the West County Democrats meeting in St. Louis, she said that even if–god forbid–we don’t get a public option on this bill, that doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It means that we’ll get hugely valuable changes and that we’ll organize and start pushing again for a public option. The difficulty in getting the public option is that even if we get it into the conference bill, we’ll need sixty votes to get it out of the Senate. And Ted Kennedy died. The latest on getting a temporary replacement for him this fall is that it’s iffy:

Within the solidly Democratic Massachusetts political establishment, there’s widespread desire to fill the vacancy with a placeholder who can give the state a second Democratic vote in the Senate until a replacement for Kennedy is selected in the January special election. But the idea of scrapping the state’s 2004 succession law — and the message it would send to voters — is troubling many lawmakers and giving them pause. […]

Overriding that law so soon afterwards with another one, again with an overt political design-to provide a possibly critical vote in favor of President Barack Obama’s agenda this fall-is proving too much for some legislators to swallow.

“Should our loyalty be to being protective of the democratic process rather than to our partisan positions?” asked Democratic state Sen. Stephen Buoniconti. “A lot of members are uncomfortable and leaning toward saying we did a good job in 2004.”

While I can sympathize with their reservations, I agree with Steven Benen’s point that Republicans have never had any such hesitation. And anyway, call me unprincipled, but I’d change the law, on the assumption that the health care of millions is more important than behaving in a non partisan fashion on this.

Democrats can get a bill passed if they replace Kennedy; or if they forgo a public option, thus luring one or two Republicans to vote in favor; or if they use reconciliation. (But that could only be used for the budgetary aspects and something like forbidding insurance companies to drop people for pre-existing conditions might not make it through the legislative maze on its own.)

Smoucha urges people not to underestimate the importance of controlling the “pre-existing condition” scam or the importance of other aspects of the bill:  

• The current bill forbids insurance companies to dump people for pre-existing conditions. Michael Bersin wrote recently about a family whose child was born with congenital heart disease. Although the mother had insurance that paid for the baby’s delivery, the insurance company then claimed that the child had a pre-existing condition and refused to pay for any treatment.

  Here’s another jaw-dropper: “[I]n eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.”

  If we can stop such immoral, outrageously greedy behavior, we haven’t exactly failed.

• Medicaid will cover more people. Eleven million Americans currently without health care would get it through Medicaid. That’s not failure.
• We lack enough health care professionals. Rural Americans, for example, even if they have coverage, often find it difficult to get treated because we don’t have enough doctors to supply rural areas. The bill provides for funds to pay for medical and nursing school for students, contingent on their willingness to work a number of years after graduation in underserved areas. Rural and inner city Americans would not feel the bill had failed them.
• Insurance companies would not be allowed to drop people because they got sick. If they’re forced to stop doing that, we haven’t failed.
• Hard caps would exist on out-of-pocket expenses to stop bankruptcy that many people with catastrophic illnesses face even if they have coverage. We could succeed in stopping hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies a year.
• The bill would require insurance companies to spend a given percentage of the premiums they collect–say, 85 percent–on actual health care. Currently they spend as much as 40 percent of the premiums on other costs–like the paperwork involved in denying claims. They often have a policy of denying one out of every five claims. Requiring companies to pay for treatment is success.
• There would be no more cherry picking. If someone applies for insurance, he gets it. Does that sound like failure to you?

So the bill so far is full of boffo reforms. Still, you know we need that public option. And we have to push hard for it this next month. More on Smoucha’s ideas about that tomorrow.