they will "push the health care through" even though the republicans now control senate seats representing almost 35% of the country's population. OMG the undemocratic shame of it all!

best of all, without 60 in the senate, democratic leadership can actually step up to the plate and take a hard line via reconciliation -- passing a better bill in half the time -- without pissing off the moderates and centrists who got their chance to make a deal (but didn't work fast enough).

IMO a 59-seat democratic majority is a mandate exempt from the filibuster rule, much as a 55-seat republican majority was under bush.

the cruel irony: kennedy's death and the fall of his seat may have been the best thing for health reform yet.

Nancy Pelosi's an idiot- and I'm a CA Democrat saying that.

She's the Bill O'Reilley/Sarah Palin of the Democrats... just look the other way and wait for her to shut up.

I just don't see the Party of No cooperating now, though... so no help or progress on health care at all (well, until 2012, then SUDDENLY Palin will feel the "need" to run, and they'll suddenly want to look like yes to help her win... never mind it'll screw the country over for years...)

Palin will never win the presidency

i mean, you can't slam pelosi for properly representing one of the most liberal and vocal cities in the entire country. she has a tough job and she does it well, regardless of whether you agree with her ideology and constituency. but she is NOT o'reilly or palin. pelosi is duly elected, which is more than either of them can say.

and re: progress -- as i said before, i think this opens up reconciliation as an option that will now be politically palatable within the Democratic establishment, which is really what's important.

the party represents a tenuous coalition of interests and does a wonderful job of holding that coalition together to win seats from states like alabama and north dakota which it otherwise wouldn't. obama and reid have been really instrumental in making it work in the senate while they had to, and while they will still make the appropriate overtures and concessions to the party's conservative wing, they will be much less bound to it in terms of actually enacted policy, for reasons of procedure.

They'll pass something, but they won't pass this bill. Something needs to be done, but the monstrosity that has emerged out of the House and Senate is most likely dead. Good riddance.

And Palin will never even run. She'll stay at Fox and make money, like anyone with half a brain in their head would do.

Also, I take some objection to the title of this thread. Like Scott Brown said, the seat wasn't owned by the Kennedy family. If Massachusetts wants to elect someone who wasn't anointed as Teddy's successor they have every right to.

Plus the Kennedys have caught a lot of breaks. Like being really wealthy even during the Depression and stupendous electoral success and enduring popularity. Don't forget Chappaquiddick, either.

Sigh....I console myself with the knowledge that my party is too incompetent to truely abuse it's power.

If healtcare passes I'll spend my entire adult life (which starts in May) trying to help my country recover from the power play of a rookie politician made President trying to make his mark on history and live up to dipshit promises.

The Democrats can't do anything because they are not truely a single party. They have to extreme range of views, from Dixie-crats on the right to California-crats on the left. I really don't understand what the Republicans where worried about.

Tyler Durden- you're too young to hold such bitterness ;)
but other than that.... I'm glad you see things for how they really are :)

I don't understand what you American's have against an NHS?

Also, rather than this showing the Kenedy's are cursed surely it shows how good they were that they could hold posts that replacements can't?

I agree... and I agree...

figle, the basic theory goes "people wouldn't need government handouts if they had just worked hard enough for themselves in the first place."

it stems from soviet-era capitalism mentality to think that *any* sort of government influence on the economy. the idea of such government control became unshakably rooted in american culture as absolute anathema to freedom and democracy.

@tyler: obama didn't even write the bill. he barely had a hand in it. it was written by 60 veteran senators and 218 highly experienced congressmen.

but if you *really* want to go punch for punch in a policy debate, i'll start with Medicare Part D. *you* have the burden of explaining why Bush and the Republicans used the reconciliation process to force through the largest expansion of government spending on health care since Medicare, even though they had a smaller majority than the Democrats do now.

@figle; caveat, though; usually once we actually implement welfare-state programs, though, they tend to be quite popular. many of Medicare's beneficiaries don't even know it's a government program, hence the infamous protest sign: "NO GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE! DON'T TOUCH MY MEDICARE!"

@fig, I personally am in favor of health care reform - I think some of the limitations placed on insurors are just common sense, and the industry pockets more than enough profits to eat them - but I think the current *bill* is seriously flawed - so I'm perfectly happy that it's going down the crapper

update: my error. Medicare Part D wasn't passed under reconciliation. only four other massively expensive, unoffset tax-cutting bills were.

@strat
That's fair enough. It is also true that those who are slightly in favour are less likely to speak out than those who are fervently against, and that people who bring up a point are inclined to state a more extreme view than they actually follow in search of the shock-factor. Overall, I would suggest the views expressed on the forum are likely to be a rather unbalanced and extreme version of that actually felt by members of the site.

@fig - clarification on something else you ask: why are Americans against NHS.

To paraphrase PJ O'Rourke, when you ask the question "why don't they?" the answer is usually "money".

While nations in Europe tend to have more social services available to them, the funds to *pay* for all those services come from tax rates that would have Americans rioting in the streets.

Fully granting that Americans already consume more in government services than they pay for - hence the horrendously huge and nearly unpayable debt levels of both the Federal and various State governments - the trillion dollar price tag of health care reform made many people... uncomfortable. Saying 'we'll tax the health insurance companies and the rich' is nice and all, but people tend to think that the former are just going to pass the costs along to the consumers, and hence the current health care reform effort will effectively increase everyone's taxes.

And while people want to think that everyone should have access to a doctor, they balk when it comes to *paying* for someone else to see a doctor. "It's *someone else's* problem, not *mine* - why should *I* pay for that Other Person, who probably did something bad to need to go to the doctor anyway."

And hence good intentions are trumped by self interest.

It doesn't help that the bill was turning into a mammoth unreadable mess, full of as many loopholes and special exceptions as any of piece of pork in the capital, and no one had the slightest *clue* what the net result would be.

The lack of visible indications of success for the trillion dollars we threw into the stimulus package last year have tended to increase people's concerns about government spending.

The American people have been saved by the voters of Massachusetts. I mean, they did elect that terrorist-loving bastard for long enough that it was about time they saw sense.
If only the political establishment of the U.K weren't such centralist, budget deficit loving idiots we could save the people of the U.K from the rampant socialism we have at this moment in time.
I'm happy, but when the republicans do well it just reminds me of how SHIT the conservatives are.

this is not all that memorable. americans regularly make poor decisions at the ballot box. some of the poor decisions, like bush, have consequences. some, like brown, do not. while it is true democrats are dispirited, that is a character issue, in the same way that republicans tend toward the delusional. the best thing for the democrats to do is keep focused and finish up on health care, and then take up more of their items throughout the rest of the year.

no sense in getting involved in all of these republican hysterics, from fox-news-contributor-palin to maxim-bear-it-all-brown. let them have their fun, they just love to be drama queens, but we have michelle's vegetable garden to look forward to.

um, rule brit? we got rid of the terrorist-loving bastards in '08. for reference:

the rumsfeld-saddam handshake: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
the rumsfeld-saddam military ties: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics
the bush-bin laden business connections: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/09_18_01_bushbin.html
the bush-Saud business connections: http://www.amazon.com/House-Bush-Saud-Relationship-Dynasties/dp/product-description/074325337X

"this is not all that memorable. americans regularly make poor decisions at the ballot box."

QFT

Rule Britannia is, as best I imagine, a British teabagger. lmao

bbdaniels -"figle, the basic theory goes "people wouldn't need government handouts if they had just worked hard enough for themselves in the first place."

it stems from soviet-era capitalism mentality to think that *any* sort of government influence on the economy. the idea of such government control became unshakably rooted in american culture as absolute anathema to freedom and democracy."

Wrong, wrong, wrong... First we are a Republic, not a Democracy. Interchanging the two was an intentional tactic used by socialist groups in the early 20th century to attempt to push their ideology of majority rules regardless of how our government was setup. Yes, the *Federal* government should have almost no influence on the economy with the exception of interstate ommerce. The *Local* governments are an entirely different situation. The reason that it was supposed to be this way and why most Americans prefer it this way, even if they sadly can't articulate it, is that it is a lot easier to be heard on a local level than on a national level, and it is more effecient at holding elected officials responsible. Americans are very generous until our property is taken from us by a huge and wasteful government that makes backroom deals with the current party's, whichever that happens to be, supporters.

I do appreciate the difference between republicanism and democracy. however, your distinction is somewhat semantic now because there are no modern "democracies" in the true sense of the word -- every "democracy" is actually a representative republic:

"Founding Fathers like James Madison defined republic in terms of representative democracy as opposed to only having direct democracy." (Check Federalist 10 for the supporting Madison quotes).

The problems faced by the economy w/r/t ideas of the welfare state do indeed key to the powers allocated to the *federal* government. Problems like homelessness, joblessness, poverty, sickness, etc., do indeed all transcend the boundaries of states -- just read The Grapes of Wrath if you believe otherwise!

Because solutions to these issues necessarily require policy intercourse among the several states, the federal government is empowered to solve these problems via *both* the interstate commerce clause *and* the necessary and proper clause.

Now, this is not to say that local governments play no part, in fact they are of utmost importance. But federal coordination of local efforts and of regulations in key national sectors (like healthcare for example) are required to ensure that the US has functional markets and regulatory structures.

Of couse the problems you outline transcend state boundaries. However, finding the solutions to these problems was delegated to the states and not the federal government.
Yes, Jefferson referred to our system as a "Democratic Republic" as well as Madison's description. The reason being that in a large area it is not possible for the average citizen to be well enough educated on all the issues and circumstances for every area to make well informed decisions while perfoming their daily tasks.
There are multiple solutions to each problem, but not one solution works well for every area. The role of federal government is not to solve these problems with mandates handed down to the states, it is to ensure that the solutions chosen by the people for their states are Constitutional. The simple majority can't rip away the rights of the minority because they have more votes.
Regulation is necessary, but it needs to be in the right tone. That of restriction not mandate. Insurance companies, banks, etc.. can't do A,B,C. Saying that someone can't be discriminated against based on race, gender, age, etc... is not the same as saying a certain percent of business done needs to be done with people of these demographics.

right, hence health reform. insurance companies *can't* discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions; they *can't* drop coverage retroactively ... etc.

the potentially controversial provision is of course the individual mandate, but to me that's fundamentally no different than the income tax. the government is forcing people to do something because it's "necessary and proper" for the "general welfare of the United States."

That is like telling mortgage companies that they can't deny loans to people without any income, and they can't take the house used as collateral if the mortgage isn't paid. Insurance companies are for profit entities, which *should* lead to competition and better care. Now having said that, I don't have issue state government plans that provide catastrophic coverage.
"provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare" Yet, if you are a union worker who supported the current government, you are exempt from any taxes on your good health plan. Political BS that both parties are covered in, and promoting the welfare of an acute segment of the population not the general.
Ideally our employers would have nothing to do with our health care benefits since it is a commodity. That way it wouldn't cost Joe more than Bob for the same coverage provided similar health, and Jill wouldn't loose her coverage because of a lay off and then be denied later because of a pre-existing condition.

josh, the analogy is woefully inadequate and the competition argument falls flat when applied to insurance companies, thanks to the phenomena of adverse selection and shrinking risk pools. in a serious insurance market, you have to lock everybody in, and you have to guarantee everybody service, or the market fails. this is why fully socialized programs succeed better than the US model, and also why there are no equivalent problems in the *mandatory* car insurance market.

your second paragraph is just politics. take that as you will.

re: employer-based coverage: i agree wholeheartedly. see the near-perfect market system in singapore ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore ) for a brilliant implementation of the idea.

bbdaniels, I think we will have to agree to disagree. I don't pretend to be an expert on socialized medicine models, but I have *experts* on both sides make their cases. My point of view has to do my belief that power is addictive and when given needs to limited even when the intent is for the good of all. It was refreshing to have an actual debate without the usual name calling though.

the kennedy's must be cursed. this sort of screws with obama's plan, now we may never know what good healthcare is like... so sad.

Because this particular plan is likely not going through we may know what good healthcare is. When the federal government needs to have meetings with labor unions about taxes on dental plans I think that's a good indicator that the plan's gone awry.