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Why This Bill Is Right —and Why It's Wrong

Pundits make closing arguments on health care before vote

By John Johnson,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 19, 2010 9:48 AM CDT

(Newser) – This weekend's vote on health care reform is the main agenda for today's pundits:

  • Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: "If health-care reform finally staggers across the finish line, it will be because President Obama and congressional Democrats recognized—at long last—the truth that has been staring them in the face for more than a year: They'll be better off politically if they just try their best to do the right thing."
  • Jeffrey H. Anderson, Weekly Standard: This is a $2 trillion "ticking time bomb." The CBO report "should help wavering Democrats to resist the president’s plea and listen anew to the pleas of their constituents. Two trillion dollars is a lot to spend on something that Americans don’t want."

  • Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post: Not a bad weekend. The NCAA's and "the prospect of a quasi-climactic vote in the House that would finally have the United States join the rest of the industrialized world in offering health insurance to all its citizens."
  • Daniel Foster, National Review: "The simple fact is that nobody knows what this bill will cost. That's due in part to the guarantee that history will intervene, in messy and unpredictable ways, over the next decade. ... And it is due, in no small part, to the baroque lengths to which Congressional Democrats have gone in the name of obscurity."

The vote on health care reform will probably come Sunday.
The vote on health care reform will probably come Sunday.   (Shutter Stock)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 8 comments
Salverda
Mar 19, 2010 7:04 PM CDT
We don't want insurance, we want cheaper healthcare. Insurance is the reason why healthcare is so expensive in the first place. Obviously healthcare would be cheaper if we didn't have to fund the insurance industry with our healthcare dollar. Insurance is NOT healthcare! Insurance is an unnecessary third party parasite on the doctor patient relationship. Don't force people to buy insurance. Let the insurance companies compete against the fact that people don't need their product. Let doctors and other healthcare providers live off of what their customers can afford to pay, not whatever inflated prices the insurance companies require and will allow. Insured people use healthcare frivolously and make it more expensive for everyone, they are the free riders, not the uninsured who have to pay the ridiculously high prices that the insurance companies demand! If poor people need healthcare then give it to them, but don't force them to fund the insurance companies on top of it. What a bunch of heartless blood suckers we must be to let people die just because they didn't pay premiums to the insurance industry!

OG_Travis
Mar 19, 2010 6:54 PM CDT
wtf. Ok retardlicans please think for a moment. The bill's probably going to pass. Dems are probably going to lose congress in November. So let it pass and WORK ON IT. We have until 2014 before it goes into affect. That's PLENTY of time to tweak it and change it and make it a better bill. We all agree about pre-existing conditions, insurance caps, and lots of other stuff that's already in there. So let's take away some the shitty stuff, add some good stuff, and get the ball rolling in the right direction. Don't be so ignorant as to think that if this doesn't pass SOMETHING is going to change. Even your moron leaders agree that a lot needs to change because the current system is HORRIBLE. So...please retardlicans, just think for a moment.
GernnBlanston
Mar 19, 2010 5:08 PM CDT
Any writer who parrots (still!) that this is something "Americans don't want" has not read any polls, has not talked to me, but has topped off their tank of preening, presumptuous fatheadedness. Theses are the people from High School who started every diatribe with "In my opinion, I think that in today's society..."
 

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