Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a centrist Democrat from Arkansas, said Saturday she would vote to move forward with debate on health-care legislation, giving Democrats what appeared to be the 60 votes needed to bring the sweeping bill to the Senate floor for debate.

Sen. Lincoln, who faces a tough reelection battle next year, said it is “important that we begin this debate” and not “simply drop the issue and walk away.” She added a bit later: “I’m not afraid of that debate.”

Her comments came few hours after Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) said she would vote to move forward with debate, and a day after Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) said he, too, would vote to move forward. The three senators had all been undecided for weeks, casting doubt on the vote planned for Saturday on whether to proceed.

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Take the time to watch it all–he is one of the real heroes of our time.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid presented an $848 billion health-care overhaul package on Wednesday that would extend coverage to 31 million Americans and reform insurance practices while adding an array of tax increases, including a rise in payroll taxes for high earners.

Democratic leaders were jubilant that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that the Senate bill would cut federal deficits by $130 billion over the next decade. That projection, released shortly before midnight Wednesday, represents the biggest cost savings of any legislation to come before the House or Senate this year, but the measure’s effective date also was pushed back by one year, to 2014. Democrats said the savings could prove more significant in the long run, though the CBO said they “would probably be small,” amounting to around 0.25 percent of the overall economy, or no more than $650 billion between 2019 and 2029.

Those projected reductions could prove critical in winning the support of three wavering moderate Democrats whose votes Reid (D-Nev.) must secure to bring the legislation to the floor before the Senate breaks for Thanksgiving. But Reid also stacked the bill with provisions sought by liberals, including a public insurance option, albeit a version with an opt-out clause for states.

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Americans are worried about hidden costs in the fine print of health care overhaul legislation, an Associated Press poll says. That’s creating new challenges for President Barack Obama as he tries to close the deal with a handful of Democratic doubters in the Senate.

Although Americans share a conviction that major health care changes are needed, Democratic bills that extend coverage to the uninsured and try to hold down medical costs get no better than a lukewarm reception.

The poll found that 43 percent oppose the health care plans being discussed in Congress, while 41 percent are in support. An additional 15 percent remain neutral or undecided.

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The Catholic Church’s influence in Congress came in part from its longtime support for improving access to health care for poor and low-income Americans. “Health care has been one of their basic goals out there for years,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the Democratic sponsor of the abortion amendment.

The church also was able to capitalize on good will amassed from years of working with Democrats on issues such as tax credits for the working poor, Immigration, climate change and nutrition programs. In that regard, it earned a level of trust in way that other anti-abortion groups never could.

The church “played a critical role in a number of initiatives over many years that affect our most vulnerable people,” said Ellen Nissenbaum, legislative director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a group that focuses on policies affecting low-income people.

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Democrats have promised that health reform would reduce health care costs, but legislation the House passed last week would increase costs over the next decade by $289 billion. By 2019, health costs would rise to 21.1 percent of GDP compared to 20.8 under current law, according to an actuarial report prepared by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare payment updates for institutional providers, the provisions of H.R. 3962 would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates. In addition, the longer-term viability of the Medicare update reductions is doubtful,” the report said.

In other words, outside of Medicare payment cuts to hospitals, the bill doesn’t curb increasing health care costs. And even the Medicare payment cuts will be difficult to sustain.

The analysis is more bad news for Democrats, who are facing increasing criticism that their reforms don’t do enough to control costs.

Read it all from Politico

There is an air of absurdity to what is mistakenly called “health-care reform.” Everyone knows that the United States faces massive governmental budget deficits as far as calculators can project, driven heavily by an aging population and uncontrolled health costs. Recovering slowly from a devastating recession, it’s widely agreed that, though deficits should not be cut abruptly (lest the economy resume its slump), a prudent society would embark on long-term policies to control health costs, reduce government spending, and curb massive future deficits. The president and his top economic advisers all say this.

So, what do they do? Just the opposite. Their sweeping overhaul of the health-care system””which Congress is halfway toward enacting””would almost certainly make matters worse. It would create new, open-ended medical entitlements that would probably expand deficits and do little to suppress surging health costs. The disconnect between what Obama says and what he’s doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president and his allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

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“It’s our belief that it’s not just a political and economic issue, it’s a fundamental moral issue,” said David Liners, state coordinator for WISDOM, an interfaith coalition of about 140 Wisconsin congregations working to advance health care reform.

Despite near consensus in the call for reform, there remains widespread debate over who and what procedures should be covered – with undocumented workers and abortion as the main flash points – and at what cost; the role of government and whether the law or conscience should dictate a health care professional’s participation.

Alliances have emerged that reflect traditionally political divisions as much as faith, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

“It’s not a question of whether we need health care reform, but how we do it. And I don’t think government is the way,” said Mathew Staver, chairman of the faith-based coalition Freedom Federation, which opposes abortion and advocates a free-market approach to reform.”We believe individual liberties trump government-imposed obligations,” he said.

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At least a dozen health and budget experts have filled the Web and the airwaves with warnings that the House bill simply postpones the cost controls needed to finance the vast expansion of insurance coverage and Medicaid benefits envisaged by its sponsors.

One of them speaks with special authority: David Walker, the former head of the Government Accountability Office ”” the auditing and investigative arm of Congress ”” told me in an interview on Wednesday that the lawmakers are “punting on the tough choices, rather than making sure they can deliver on the promises they’re making.”

In a speech delivered less than 48 hours after the House acted, Walker, now the president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, laid out the tests that buttress his conclusion.

Acknowledging that “clearly, we need radical reconstructive surgery to make our health care system effective, affordable and sustainable,” Walker cautioned that “what we should not do is merely tack new programs onto a system that is fundamentally flawed” ”” and rapidly drive the national budget into ruin.

I cannot put into words the degree of my agreement with this piece. I once heard David Walker speak as I have mentioned before and he has real knowledge and authority here. The cost issue is not properly handled in this bill. In any event, read it all–KSH

What happens now? Democratic supporters of abortion rights need to accept that their House majority depends on a large cadre of antiabortion colleagues. They can denounce that reality or they can learn to live with it.

There is also a challenge for abortion’s foes, above all the Catholic bishops who have a long history of supporting universal coverage but devoted most of their recent energy to the abortion battle. How much muscle will the bishops put behind the broader effort to pass health-care reform? Their credibility as advocates for social justice hangs in the balance.

And if the Senate forces a change in the Stupak language, one obvious approach would involve a ban on abortion in the public plan — if such an option survives — and the application of Ellsworth’s rules to the private policies sold in the insurance exchange. The alternative would be Stupak’s original compromise offer to Pelosi. There are not many other options.

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The mural tells the story of a horrible day back in the spring. Fred was being transferred to a new hospital and Regina needed records of Fred’s many tests and treatments from the old hospital.

“I had gone down to medical records,” [Regina] Holliday says, “and they said, ‘That’ll be 73 cents a page and a 21-day wait.’ I said, ‘My husband is upstairs with Stage IV kidney cancer in your hospital and you’re telling me I have to wait 21 days? Everything’s on the computer. All you got to do is print it out and you’re going to make me wait 21 days?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s just the way it is.’ I was floored.”

This is a must-listen-to piece. If you listen to this and do not understand why Health Care reform is crucial, something is not right..

President Obama suggested Monday that he was not comfortable with abortion restrictions inserted into the House version of major health care legislation, and he prodded Congress to revise them.

“There needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo” on abortion, Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News. “And that’s the goal.”

On the one hand, Mr. Obama said, “we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.”

On the other hand, he said, he wanted to make sure “we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” because he had promised that “if you’re happy and satisfied with the insurance that you have, it’s not going to change.”

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Injecting itself aggressively into the health-care debate, the Roman Catholic Church in America has emerged as a major political force with the potential to upend a key piece of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Behind-the-scenes lobbying, coupled with a grassroots mobilization of Catholic churches across the country, led the House Saturday to pass an amendment to its health-care bill barring anyone who receives a new tax credit from enrolling in a plan that covers abortion, a once-unthinkable event in Democrat-dominated Washington.

The restriction would still have to be accepted by the Senate, where it will likely face a tough fight. The issue could sink the larger health legislation if the chambers fail to reach agreement, or if any consensus language leads supporters to defect.

The House vote, and the central role played by one of the country’s biggest religious denominations, stunned abortion-rights groups that had worked hard to elect Mr. Obama and expand Democratic congressional majorities. Activists on the left had thought social issues would take a back seat to economic concerns.

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Liberals furious over a last-minute deal that secured passage of healthcare legislation in the House by restricting abortion coverage threatened Monday to derail the massive overhaul bill.

At least 40 House members pledged to reject the final bill if the abortion provision survives in the Senate and the conference that joins the Senate and House versions into a single piece of legislation.

At issue are the insurance policies offered in a new “exchange,” or marketplace, where many people would use federal subsidies to buy coverage.

The House measure bars any insurance policy from covering abortions if it was purchased with a federal subsidy.

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First, let there be no more wrangling about the facts. The Bill as proposed by Nancy Pelosi – an unfaithful Catholic who should be ashamed and strongly opposed in her next campaign while we all pray for her return to the truth – promoted the intrinsic evil of abortion. It would have funded the feticide of our first neighbors in the womb. End of discussion. All of those folks who tried to argue that all of us who sounded the alarm over this evil were wrong have been exposed as frauds. The phony compromises and fake amendments were a subterfuge.

Before the determined and courageous efforts of Congressman Bart Stupak, a Pro-Life Catholic Democrat whose name along with Republican Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania of the 16th District of Pennsylvania is on the now historic amendment, the legislation would have funded more abortions with tax dollars. The “Health Care Reform” legislation which passed last night as HR 3962 – by a vote in the House of Representatives by a vote of 220 ”“ 215 – would have had a lethal effect, resulting in the intentional killing of potentially millions more of our first neighbors. Thank God for the courage and perseverance of faithful Catholic Democrat Bart Stupak!

The Stupak/Pitts Amendment was strongly supported by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops who worked with admirable persistence and courageous clarity in order to force its passage. It actually was passed earlier in the evening by an historic vote of 240 to 194.Some cowardly members did not vote at all.

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But its narrow passage in the House, where the Democrats have a large majority, underscores the difficulties ahead. Senate Democrats are struggling to agree on how to pay for the overhaul and whether to create a new public insurance plan to compete with private insurers, as the House did. Friction over how the bill treats abortion, which almost derailed the House vote, is likely to divide the Senate too.

“If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) said on Fox News Sunday.

With the passage of the House bill, Congress moved closer than ever to providing Americans with near-universal health insurance — a goal that has eluded many presidents since the days of Theodore Roosevelt.

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MS. [Rachel] MADDOW: So to the extent that this is going to actually cut the deficit, to the extent that this is designed to bring health costs down, we’ve got to do something. And I think people who vote against it are going to regret it.

MR. [E.J.] DIONNE: And 98 percent of small businesses are exempt from the taxes in this bill. This is a millionaire’s tax, basically, the biggest tax in this bill. And that the other thing is there are a lot of benefits in this bill that kick in right away. There’s a fund for people who have pre-existing conditions to get coverage right away. There are a lot of other provisions; no more recisions, so you can’t discover that, “Gee, I’m not covered after all.” They were smart enough to put a lot of things that kick in as soon as the bill is passed.

MR. [David] BROOKS: Rachel’s right that doing nothing is not fiscally responsible. But doing something that adds onto our current system without fundamentally changing our current system is fiscally insane. The idea that this is paid for is a political mirage. That tax surcharge on millionaires, that’s dead, that’s going nowhere in the Senate. The idea that we’re going to cut $400 or $500 billion in waste, fraud and abuse from Medicare, that’s historically unsupportable. We will never make those cuts, we’re never going to pull the plug on granny, all this stuff. It–most healthcare experts think that this fundamentally does not change the problem with healthcare system, which is the fee-for-service system which has been driving up costs for decade after decade.

Caught this on the way home from morning worship–read or watch it all.

The House of Representatives passed a sweeping health care bill Saturday night with a tight vote of 220-215, making it the biggest expansion of health care coverage since Medicare was created more than 40 years ago.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act, or H.R. 3962, restricts insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition or charging higher premiums based on gender or medical history. It also provides federal subsidies to those who cannot afford it and guarantees coverage for 96 percent of Americans, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

However, turning the bill into law remains uncertain.

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The moment of truth for health care is at hand, and the distortion that perhaps gets the most traction is this:

We have the greatest health care system in the world. Sure, it has flaws, but it saves lives in ways that other countries can only dream of. Abroad, people sit on waiting lists for months, so why should we squander billions of dollars to mess with a system that is the envy of the world? As Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama puts it, President Obama’s plans amount to “the first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known.”

That self-aggrandizing delusion may be the single greatest myth in the health care debate. In fact, America’s health care system is worse than Slov””er, oops, more on that later.

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The economy remains unsteady 22 months after the recession began, with banks restricting credit and consumers hunkering down. For these small businesses, and many others across the country, there’s an additional dark cloud: uncertainty created by Washington’s bid to reorganize a wide swath of the U.S. economy.

The economic contraction is of course the prime force driving companies to lay off workers. But a health-care overhaul grinding through Congress could bring unknown new obligations to insure employees. Bush-era tax cuts are set to end next year, and their fate is unclear. Legislation aimed at tackling climate change might raise businesses’ energy costs. Meanwhile, a bill aimed at increasing transportation spending is stalled.

Many companies say they have responded by freezing hiring, cutting benefits and delaying expansion plans. With at least 60% of job growth historically coming out of the small-business sector, according to the government’s Small Business Administration, that kind of inertia could impede an economic recovery.

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The Senate Finance Committee filed its sweeping health care reform bill Monday and its release served largely to highlight the divisions among Democrats over the direction of reform.

The massive, 1,500 page bill is expected to serve as the backbone for Democratic reform efforts going forward and five senators expressed concerns about one of its main provisions, a 40 percent tax on high-end insurance plans.

The tax is designed to pay for reform and lower costs by making the so-called Cadillac plans less attractive for insurers to offer. Under the bill, a plan that costs an individual more than $8,000 and a family more than $21,000 annually would be subject to the tax.

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CHARMAINE YOEST (President, Americans United for Life): Polling shows over 70 percent of Americans don’t want to see their tax dollars going for it, so that’s what this debate is over, is not whether or not you agree or disagree with abortion, but whether or not at the federal level we’re going to pay for it.

[KIM] LAWTON: Meanwhile, an interfaith group called the Religious Institute gathered signatures of more than a thousand clergy affirming access to abortion.

REV. DEBRA HAFFNER (Executive Director, Religious Institute): We believe that abortion should be safe, legal, rare, and accessible, and that a health care reform should not make it more difficult for women to get abortions in this country.

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What would you choose given her options? Watch it all.

The nation’s Catholic bishops have threatened to pull their support for health care reform unless their concerns about abortion and access for immigrants are addressed by lawmakers.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which supports universal access to health care as a “basic human right,” had been supportive of efforts to reform the health care system, but is concerned about taxpayer-funded abortions.

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ROSE HOBAN: Every day is busy for nurse Juanita Larkens(ph).

Ms. JUANITA LARKENS (Nurse): Good afternoon. This is Juanita. How can I help you?

HOBAN: She’s one of three nurses who manage Medicaid patients at Goldsboro Pediatrics. Goldsboro is a growing town surrounded by old tobacco fields that are being converted to suburbs. About 15,000 Medicaid-eligible children come to the clinic.

Ms. LARKENS: All of them are not known to us, I mean, but those that are introduced to us by whatever means, we will attempt to help them if we can.

Listen to it all.

Over the weekend, the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans released a study saying Baucus’ plan would hammer the middle class with huge increases in premiums and taxes. The study has stirred things up because it makes a case resting on acknowledged facts. You might call them the iron laws of insurance.

One of these is that the extension of coverage to a higher-risk group will raise costs for everyone, because the average level of risk in the entire pool of insureds goes up. Another is the law of large numbers: The more low-risk people you can get in your pool, the lower you can set your premiums. Another is adverse selection, the inevitable tendency of the highest-risk people wanting your insurance the most, and the lowest-risk wanting it the least.

These laws are, in effect, walls that Congress and the Obama administration keep hitting in their efforts to make health coverage universal without breaking the bank. Their idea is to get as many people as possible ”” especially the low-risk young and healthy ”” into the insurance pool as premium payers. In this universal system, adverse selection is no longer a factor, and insurers can cover the high-risk folks along with everyone else.

That’s the theory. But when it comes down to drafting laws, there’s always an insurmountable hurdle….

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Legislation that would transform the nation’s healthcare system cleared a significant hurdle today as the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 for a sweeping overhaul.

Just one Republican, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, voted for the bill. But that represented a victory for the White House, which had heavily courted Snowe, and it allowed overhaul advocates to claim that there was a vestige of GOP support for the measure.

“Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it,” Snowe said in announcing her vote. “But when history calls, history calls.”

The bill would require Americans to have health insurance, provide federal subsidies to help low-income workers buy insurance, establish new insurance marketplaces, regulate health insurer practices and expand Medicaid. The plan as drafted is estimated to cost $829 billion over the next 10 years.

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My husband retired from IBM about a decade ago, and as we aren’t old enough for Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company. But IBM, with its typical courtesy, informed us recently that we will be fined by the state.

Why? Because Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance, and this year, without informing us directly, the state had changed the rules in a way that made our bare-bones policy no longer acceptable.

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It makes doing your taxes look kind of easy. Dealing with your insurance forms when you’re sick is… it’s really hard.

—Karen Pollitz, a health policy researcher at Georgetown, as quoted on last night’s Marketplace

Concerns about the budget deficit may thwart efforts by Senate Democrats to pass legislation this month calling for the biggest expansion of the U.S. health-care system since the creation of Medicare in 1965.

The Senate Finance Committee, which had planned to approve its version as early as today, scrapped a vote to give the Congressional Budget Office time to complete a cost assessment. The delay threatens to dash plans by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to start debate in the full Senate next week after combining the measure with one from the health committee.

“CBO has a lot of work to do,” said West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, one of the finance panel’s 13 Democrats. He said the panel’s vote may be delayed for at least a week. Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said he’s still “hopeful” the CBO will deliver an estimate tomorrow.

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