Medicare for All advocates say yes. But I don’t see anything happening while the Republicans hold a 41 vote majority in the Senate.
Again, I don’t believe that the omission of the severability clause was inadvertent on the part of the Democrats. They had insurance companies on board as long as they had the mandate, but no way would they want the regs, such as requiring that 80 percent of premium funding go directly to health care spending, in place if they aren’t guaranteed business from everyone. They would rather continue to dedicate 30 percent to their administration and share-holder dividends. Only 3 percent of Medicare funding goes to administration by the way, and none to dividends.
The ruling is expected on Thursday.
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June 26, 2012 at 9:08 am
Julie Timmons
One could only hope so but I think your analysis is correct. No way the GOP will let it through.
June 26, 2012 at 9:47 am
tra
“I don’t see anything happening while the Republicans hold a 41 vote majority in the Senate.”
Ah, the U.S. Senate: The “democratic” institution where some members represent 37 million people (California), while others represent just half a million (Wyoming).
And, under current filibuster rules, the votes of a minority of 41 people members can block action by a majority of 59.
June 26, 2012 at 9:56 am
Mitch
Is there anyone alive who doesn’t think that, if the Republicans controlled 59 seats in the Senate, they would not change whatever rules they had to in order to ensure favorable tax treatment for the top 0.01%?
The Democrats need to fight harder. The Constitution has nothing to say about “filibuster by proxy.” If the Republicans really want to bring back pre-existing condition exclusions, let them filibuster away, but let them do it on the floor of the Senate, not in a memorandum.
June 26, 2012 at 10:07 am
Eric Kirk
I’m told that two years into Obama’s first term that the filibusters already set a record for any presidential term. Basically, a filibuster has become a no vote. At least for Republicans. I’m sure when the Democrats are in the same position they’ll cave for the “greater good” yada, yada.
June 26, 2012 at 10:12 am
Sonia Baur
I don’t see the utility of the “what if” arguments when actuality is so close. I have forwarded to you the information sent to me by my medical organization, Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (formed with the purpose of getting Medicare for all). It covers what we physicians can do to gain healthcare coverage for all, given any possible decision.
June 26, 2012 at 10:14 am
Andy Stunich
Medicare may have low administration costs, but that is only because the govt. is indifferent to the system being defrauded. What the system saves on admin costs are lost to hundreds of billions of dollars every year in fraud.
In addition, we already have unfunded liabilities for social programs we cannot afford. Hence, it is highly unlikely that a new government health care plan will be put in place. Obamacare would have been an unmitigated disaster anyway. When you increase demand, but do not increase supply for medical care, it means long waiting times for care and a government system put in place to determine who gets first care under a triage system. Every doctor I spoke to thought the system would be a disaster.
One of the key problems we face is that the level of care we can provide keeps expanding and it has become far beyond what we can afford in a society where the population is aging rapidly. Is it really fair for low income workers to be forced to pay for medicare out of their meager paychecks so that seniors who are on average far wealthier can get free medical care?
That is the type of situation that foments revolution. We are just lucky that these low wage earners have not yet realized they are paying into a system for those better off than themselves but a system that will not be there for them.
June 26, 2012 at 10:24 am
Sonia Baur
I don’t know Andy Stunich, but I do know that absolutely everything he says is wrong. I demand him to substantiate with statistics or references to same for any of his contentions.
June 26, 2012 at 10:28 am
Anonymous
That’s not all that is going to happen Thursday !! AG Holder is going to get spanked, again.
What the Obama Administration has done in the past week has been ……………… crazy? Is that the word for it?
Oh well, I hope AG Holder gets what he deserves in the end. Of course Eric you will probably defend anything a democrat or Obamas does.
June 26, 2012 at 10:36 am
tra
Actually the Constitution has nothing to say about the filibuster at all. It is simply a Senate rule. A simple majority could eliminate it, or limit it to certain kinds of bills and/or require an actual old-school-style nonstop speech on the floor of the Senate, or whatever.
When the Republicans had a majority in the Senate (but not a filibuster-proof majority) they repeatedly threatened to eliminate the filibuster. They did this whenever major priorities of theirs were falling short of 60 votes, but they wanted to pass them anyway, so then they’d announce that they were seriously considering abolishing the filibuster due to Deomcrats’ “obstructionism.”
At any rate, the Dems, who were facing Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, Bush in the White House, and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, pretty much collectively wet their pants every time these threats were made, terrified of the prospect that losing the filibuster would leave them with essentially no real way to influence policy in any major branch of government. The Democrats caved to these Republican threats again and again, rather than calling their bluff and seeing whether the Republicans were really willing to discard the filibuster, and take the consequences when and if the Democrats regained a majority.
In other words, Republicans were able to use the threat of ending the filibuster to win concessions from the Democrats, but never had to follow through on their threats (because the Dems never called their bluff). So the filibuster is still here, and in fact now that they are in the minority again, the Republicans have pushed their use of the filibuster to a whole new level — either using it, or threatening to use it, on nearly every major piece of legislation the Democrats have tried to move — and yet the Democrats continue to tolerate this obstructionism.
Is this because Democratic Senators truly believe that the filibuster rules, as currently written and practiced, are a good way to run the Senate? Or are they just (as usual) in a permanent defensive crouch, anticipating losing their majority in the Senate, and wanting to make sure that when that happens, they can at least pretend to still have some power there?
June 26, 2012 at 10:45 am
tra
At one point, when the Republicans were in the majority in the Senate, and they were openly the term “the nuclear option” to refer to their proposal to end the filibuster. But all of the sudden, one day they all started scolding the media for using that term, and insisted that the right way to refer to it was “the constitutional option.”
I think probably the Senate Republican leadership must have gotten a memo from Frank Luntz, alerting them that his polling had found that, for some strange reason, most people thought the image of a devastating, massive explosion — that would spread deadly radiation far and wide and poison the atmosphere, land and water for years to come — wasn’t the best way to describe your plans for governance. So the next day the troops all got their talking points / marching orders, Republicans universally started referring to it as “the constitutional option.”
June 26, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Sonia Baur
I’m old enough to remember the filibuster (southern racists reading the cook book into the public record, hours-on-end to stall legislation). I do wish the Democrats would not “whimp out” at the treat of a filibuster, but actually force the Tea Party sorts to display themselves in their full, absurd splendor with an actual filibuster. at least once. (“This is a test!”)
June 26, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Eric Kirk
I would be happy if they simply required a filibuster the old fashioned way (as in Mr. Smith’s). If they were required to continue speaking to block debate or cloture, then the voters would be hearinga about it day in and day out and decide whether the issue is worth the fuss. As it is, the filibuster is too easy, and made routine.
June 26, 2012 at 12:58 pm
thereasonableanonymous@gmail.com
I agree. The cloture vote is supposedly about a whether to vote to “end debate” on a measure and vote on it. So let the would-be filibusterers say everything they want to say, and then when they run out of material and resort to reading Bible passages, or the D.C. phonebook or random pages from wikipedia, or whatever, let the public judge whether that’s really “debate,” or just obstructionism.
June 26, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Mitch
It’s funny/sad. On the Herald, I’ve just been arguing that our situation is not the result of a conspiracy.
But it’s hard to understand why, sans conspiracy, the Democratic majority in the Senate, probably all millionaires, refuse to use the power they’ve been granted, instead choosing what someone referred to above as their “permanent defensive crouch.” If they’re going to be useless, they might as well join the damned conspiracy, hypothetical or not.
At least the GOP always supports the top 0.01% with all their might.
July 3, 2012 at 7:54 am
moviedad
Why do you all persist in continuing the fantasy that the millionaire democrats are somehow on the side of regular working people, when they’ve shown time and time again that they are nothing more the than a fake: “Good-Cop” playing off the republican’s “Bad-Cop?”
They don’t put up a fight, because they are on the same side. The very-rich work together against the rest of us. Figure it out already.