Health Care Debate

The vote is scheduled for tonight. The Senate is a curious creature, by design. Tonight's historic vote is simply to decide whether or not to debate the bill. The Republicans will threaten to filibuster whether or not there can be a debate. Which will require 60% of the US Senate to vote for debating the bill. This is not voting on voting on whether or not to vote on the bill or voting on whether or not to pass the bill. This is a vote on whether or not to talk about the bill on the Senate floor.

Second thought ,there are reports out that a handful of Senators are still searching for a Compromise, sigh. Mind you these are merely the Democrats compromising among themselves and maybe Olympia Snowe. The debate started public option vs. no public option, add in possible triggers that would never be triggered, opt-in to state wide plans and possible statewide coops. The latest manifestation was the nation public option with the States having the ability to opt out of the plan if they didn't want to be apart.

The most recent discussion is back to triggers this time the triggers would be more stringent and take place in 2013 when the rest of the reforms take place.

Here is my proposed compromise (mind you we have compromised way beyond anything I would truly liked to have seen). Nationwide State Opt-in plus triggers by state.

Setup the plan allow states that want to participate to join in from the beginning do so. There would be a whole slew of states that would likely do so. In addition for those states that do not opt-in would be governed under the trigger mechanism. If insurance coverage in any state does not meet the affordability standards established they would be required to offer the National Plan in their State Insurance Exchange.

This thought occurred to me a couple of weeks ago. I didn't do much with it at the time because the Opt-out option was gaining traction and looked like it had more than a fighting chance. We are getting close to crunch time.

Senator Schumer and Senator Carpenter are reportedly the central figures in working between the Conservative Dems and the rest of the caucus especially the Progressives. They were the duo that came up with the Opt-out compromise. We will see if they are able to patch something together.

Last note on Compromise. The progressives are in a serious bind. First, let's establish there are a large number of them that truly wanted a single payer system akin to something between England and France. There are a large number of people in this country that would jump at such a system. However, the progressives never really brought that to the table. They compromised before they ever started the discussion. Their compromise was the public option. Ok so true single payer is not going to happen we won't fight you on that as long as you give us the Public Option. That will help us swallow the fact that we are not getting what we and many, many of our constituents want.

Then the conservative started chipping away at the public option with opt-in, triggers, co-ops etc. Getting closer to the final voting the progressives were forced to find a compromise that they could live with. That compromise was the National Plan with State Opt-out. This was a big but grudgingly acceptable step away from a National Public Option. Not to mention how far away from their original position of a National Single Payer system. Now that we are on the brink of voting 3 - 4 Senators who have not moved 1 iota from their original position are calling for even greater compromise. The Conservative Dems are in a much stronger position Vi's a vie the Progressives. This going to come down to high wire chicken.