Originally Posted by kane

I agree. This bill was passed by the senate and most people agreed that, as it sits, it wouldn't pass the house so there would have to be changes made to both the house and senate bills in order to get a bill that would get through both. Then the democrats lost their super-majority and crapped their pants. Now they are doing everything they can to get the senate bill through the house. Who knows what kind of promises were made to change people's minds and get them to vote for this bill and who knows what kind of insanity will follow in the form of amendments to the bill to follow through on all those promises.

The odd thing is that both parties and almost all of the people agree on about 85% of the stuff that is in the bill. It is that last 15% that has a lot of people up in arms. Much of what could be done will cost little or nothing and will simply change laws to make things work better. The big stuff is how to help pay to insure those that have no coverage and then how to oversee those payments. It seems to me the logical way of doing this would be to write a new bill that contains the stuff everyone agrees on and wants and pass it. Then go back and start working on the other stuff in a separate bill. Obama is always saying that this existing bill is better than nothing. I disagree. I think a new bill with the simple stuff that is universally agreed upon would be better than nothing and a strong start. They could then build on that down the road.

Of course the democrats worry is that if they pass a smaller bill with intentions to pass another bigger one down the road they may then lose the house and senate in the fall election and republicans really have no interest health care reform so any future bills will die with that election. So out of that panic they are rushing to push this through and hoping to fix the problems later. I think that will be almost impossible.