The Senate's version of healthcare reform is finally ready for prime time. Considering that this was supposed to be ready in August, I'll withhold my applause on that point -- there's showing up to school tardy and then there's showing up late in the afternoon. It was the Senate who was the footdragger here; Pelosi was willing to keep the House in session during the August recess, but when Harry Reid caved and shut off the lights in the Senate, there really was no point in doing it. We all know what happened after that; the town hall shriekers made a big stink and an embarrassing spectacle of themselves, completely dissipating any momentum either chamber had. Forget two steps forward, one step back; August's progress to regress ratio was one-to-one.Still, here we are. We (assuming they can pass it) have got a bill. Like anything that's the product of months of horsetrading, wrangling, and compromise, it's an imperfect bill. Writing for The Atlantic's politics blog, Max Fisher does a good job of collecting legitimate criticisms of the bill and, by legitimate, I mean that the words "IT'S OUT OF CONTROL SOCIALISM, LIKE HITLER'S GERMANY!" don't appear anywhere in the post. I won't rehash it here, since there's no reason for me to rewrite an already good post, I'll just cite the criticisms and leave it to you to check them out.
Still, like the House bill before it, the Senate's version is not the bill. Both pieces of legislation will go to conference committee, be melted down into some sort of legislative alloy of both, and returned to each chamber for a final vote. Unless a provision is in both bills, there's no guarantee it'll make it out of committee. Believe it or not, all this stuff that's been happening for most of this year could reasonably be called the start of this whole process. It's just the hardest part... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
Photo source: New York Times
