The New Republic writes about the Medicare bill that nobody understands yet:
Posted by DeLong at November 22, 2003 11:23 AM | TrackBackThe New Republic Online: etc.: ...And another thing about that Medicare "reform" bill: Since CBO didn't officially score the bill until yesterday afternoon, the negotiators who wrote the bill didn't publish final language until yesterday. Nevertheless, Republican congressional leaders are pushing to hold votes before Thanksgiving. House leaders are trying to hold their votes today. (The only reason they haven't yet brought the measure to the floor is that they don't yet have the numbers to pass it. According to one congressional source, the House GOP is hemorrhaging conservative votes on the measure. So much so that, according to this same source, White House officials have spent the entire day on the phone trying to coax votes out of Democrats.)
Remember what a cow many of these same people had over the secrecy and complexity of the Clinton health care plan in 1994? Well, the Medicare bill is 600-pages long. And buried in those 600 pages are all sorts of changes thrown in at the last minute, during meetings of a secret conference committee that included just two Democrats--one who votes like Republicans on Medicare (John Breaux) and one who lacks the backbone to defend his party's positions (Max Baucus).
Where's the outrage now?
They won the vote.
Posted by: Cal on November 22, 2003 02:00 PMThey won the vote only by violating House rules. On the initial vote, they lost 218-216. The vote was kept open for 3 hours as they tracked down and leaned on people to change their votes.
Why DeLay didn't just falsify the vote total is beyond me. He has that much contempt for democratic process.
Posted by: Charles on November 22, 2003 02:57 PMEvery policy we find in the bill is another blow at Medicare and Medicaid, and any hope of cost moderation. What are these folks about? Why slice Medicare to ribbons? Medicare has been a wonder for millions and millions of Americans.
Shame shame as well on AARP!
Posted by: anne on November 22, 2003 03:26 PMAn important trade note:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/opinion/22KRIS.html
Death by Dividend
BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
COATEPEQUE, Guatemala
In this impoverished corner of southwestern Guatemala, lush with jungle and burbling brooks, you can just about see people dying as an indirect result of America's trade agenda.
Even now, some governments in Central America choose to let their people die rather than distribute cheap generic AIDS drugs, which would save more lives but might irritate the U.S. And now America is trying to make it more difficult for these countries to use generic drugs.
That's why I decided to write about the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or F.T.A.A., not from Miami, where the negotiations were under way this week, but from rural Guatemala. Here it's easier to appreciate the stark choice that we Americans face: Do we want to maximize profits for U.S. pharmaceutical companies, or do we want to save lives?
American trade negotiators, in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, have pushed U.S. interests in a narrow economic sense by making it difficult for poor nations to use cheap generic medicines. In front of the television cameras, the U.S. has made some concessions to public health needs, but the compassion usually vanishes in trade negotiations.
The public drafts of the F.T.A.A. clearly place the priority on patents over public health, and the word is that the (still secret) draft text of a Central American Free Trade Agreement should also embarrass us....
Posted by: Anne on November 22, 2003 03:37 PMI wonder if a citizen group can sue? The 16 Democrats who crossed lines are cowards. Anything, and I mean anything, that Tom Delay supports should be opposed by the Democrats.
Posted by: cal on November 22, 2003 04:37 PMWhere is the outrage now? Well, um, here for example:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/000318.html
I thought the insurance industry funded TV ads against the Clinton health care bill and the outrage was over issues such as inability to choose a doctor. The last time I checked many people have private insurance with "preferred providers" and can "choose" their own doctors at additional expense. The lack of outrage means that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are happy and not buying TV time to stir outrage.
Posted by: bakho on November 24, 2003 06:35 AM