Reply #51: The bill as written does not do half the things you think it does.

[Political Heretic]

And I think the answer is pretty obvious there. Do we ban discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions, essentially end medical bankruptcies, insure 30+ million people, and enact a whole host of regulations on the insurance companies? Or do we not do these things?

It does not ban discrimination based on preexisting conditions. It says it will at some future point ban that discrimination - but not until 2014. Which mean nothing changes now, and there's plenty of time to prevent that from happening in 2014, after public attention is turned away from the issue. This is always why certain things are not enacted right away in legislation - its because the plan is to never enact it at all.

End medical bankruptcies? FAIL. Thanks to the decreases in subsidies in both the house and the senate below the insufficient subsidies that were in the committee versions of the bills, working class americans teetering in poverty will still not have the effective means to afford insurance, or rising premiums (for which there is no effective controls in these bills)

A whole host of regulations? Nice generalization. There are next to ZERO substantive regulations included in these bills.