Epic Movie

Well, the health care bill is done ... at least the first phase. A few observations irrespective of whether one likes the bill or not:

Obama deserves credit for sticking to his agenda despite enormous pressure to either punt or piece meal it in the past 90 days.

Nancy Pelosi managed with a substantial effort to get the votes in the house... reluctantly I give her credit

The time warp aspects of the bill, e.g. 10 years of revenue vs 6 years of costs, delays in ending preexisting conditions, postponed taxes on Cadillac plans, the delays in medicare cost reduction vote as well as the failure to address tort reform, interstate competition, the failure to endorse individual rather than employer based tax credits, no change in drug imports, the very recently dismissed bias for union based plans all trouble me. Perhaps most fundamentally, I regret the bill doing nothing to preclude health care decisions being made by bureaucrats [whether they be insurance company employees or government employees] rather than patients and doctors.

Pretending in the legislation that congress is about to cut Medicare reimbursements by 20% , while delaying for 8 years the tax on Cadillac plans [leaving both sources of "revenues" for some future congress to levy] are the most egregious insults to our intelligence. Until these revenue sources are secured there is no way this program can really reduce the deficit. It may get a good CBO score but it's smoke and mirrors

Many will say all this can be chalked up to either the necessities of sausage making or desirable but expendable items in the interests of getting anything passed.

And yes, the process was totally partisan. That I lay at Obama's doorstep up front ... you don't give the heavy lifting to a very left leaning speaker if you truly have interest in a bipartisan bill. Nor do you call for a bi partisan TV show at 10 minutes to midnight; that was theatre. With all there was to debate and criticise why ridicule Cantor for bringing the 2700 page bill that was the subject ? He could have been more presidential and still made his point ... everyone knows Cantor is invariably into the detail.

On the other hand, the Republicans may have looked principled very early on during 2009's discussions but pretty ridiculous as time went on.

At least getting something passed is better than getting nothing passed for many people. In fact time will tell that in reality the bill does wonders for expanding coverage but puts a very heavy cost on the tax payer unless and until the cost side of the equation is tackled.

Even Krugman says "we will spend years if not decades fixing this thing."