"Delay!", say Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Ron Wyden, Joe Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins

[seafan]

Six senators called for a seventy day hold on voting on health care reform legislation today, according to the Huffington Post. The senators involved include three Democrats, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Ron Wyden, two Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and one Independent, Joe Lieberman. Each these senators has raised at least $1 million from the health and insurance sectors combined over the course of their respective careers. What could seventy days do for their campaign coffers?

A hell of a lot.



UPDATE from enemy lines:


Joe Lieberman was just on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell: "We've got to be bipartisan, because we won't have 60 votes."


Naturally, Andrea asked if Thursday's CBO report (that said that the health care plan would add to the deficit) was part of the "problem", to which Lieberman waxed poetic.


Of course, She DID NOT MENTION THE FULL CBO REPORT, RELEASED FRIDAY NIGHT, THAT SAID THAT THE PLAN WOULD NOT ADD TO THE DEFICIT AND THAT IT WOULD ACTUALLY SAVE $6 BILLION.

THESE ARE LIES BY OMISSION and MANIPULATION, ANDREA MITCHELL.

Enemies of the people.



This is from Faux, so skip past the propagandist title, "Deficits, Taxes and Time Appear to Doom Health Care Reforms":

The CBO calmed nerves when it issued a second report late Friday that says adjusting the totals to reflect a 20 percent reduction in Medicare payments to physicians would save the country $6 billion over a decade.

The real story:

The Harvard economist further explained that the CBO report simply failed to report the full savings that health reform could provide over time. The health reform proposals would help reduce the cost of health care spending and payments, but they would also "change the underlying dynamics of the medical system so that it is less costly over time by keeping people of hospitals and from falling through the cracks."

Simply put, right now tens of millions of people lack adequate access to medical care. This means that most of these people are forced to wait until dire situations to see a doctor or go to a hospital – when care is the most expensive and the less effective, and which is often covered by public programs. The basic theory of the health reform model is that if everyone has access to health care all along, they will be generally healthier and will tend to need expensive treatments far less than currently is the case.

This systemic change would bend the cost curve in a manner that may not be precisely predictable precisely and apparently escaped the attention of the CBO report authors, Cutler suggested, but the "evidence is increasing that the amount to be saved and that we can save is enormous."

Even CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf admitted the CBO's report was incomplete. In a blog post at the CBO's website, on July 18th, Elmendorf wrote, "The figures released yesterday do not represent a complete cost estimate for the legislation." The report was limited to federal revenue and payments.

Linda Blumberg, a senior health policy analyst at the non-partisan Urban Institute, pointed to the competition in the insurance market that the proposed public option would generate as being the key to cost-savings that would result from reform.

"There is a great potential for the public plan option to have very significant cost containment impacts on private health insurance markets, both in terms of the level, and also potentially lowering the rate of growth over time right now, private health insurance markets are not competitive today," Blumberg said.

High costs today result from the "a tremendous amount of consolidation in both private health insurance markets and provider markets" today, she noted. "The public plan actually has leverage that provider insurers don't have today. The plan will be between private plans and Medicare and will lower the cost of premiums. Insurers will respond to the presence of competition by becoming more aggressive and innovative," Blumberg asserted.

Additional savings in the hundreds of billions will be found by reducing government overpayments to private insurers that plague the system today, said Judy Feder, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "Changes in medical system and public option will push health care system in direction of greater value."

.....

It is time for ACTION.


Republicans, Blue Dogs, ConservaDems, and lapdog media GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR WAY.