The Senate HCR bill has, perhaps you've noticed, ignited a firestorm on our side of the spectrum over whether it is best, on balance, to pass it; or whether it'll do more harm than good and should be killed.
The division in the leftosphere I see seems to, in part, depend upon one's judgment about this issue:
If this thing passes or fails, what next?
Those in the "pass anything and improve it later" crowd take the position that it'll be a doable thing to start the whole healthcare-reform debate up again immediately--say next year--with an eye toward "improving" it by adding, oh, such things as real reform (cost controls--particularly including a public option; universal access; affordability; minimum guaranteed benefits; prohibitions against rescission and preexisting-condition denials; &c.), which the Senate bill does not appear to do in any significant way--or at least not at a sustainable cost, or for nearly enough people.
As it's written now, this bill threatens to explode the deficit by subsidizing insurance for an ever-increasing number of qualifying people, while NOT doing anything to control the rate of increase of insurance prices. If so, this will do nothing but send trillions of dollars to the health-denial and drug thieves while doing little to provide healthcare (as opposed to health "insurance"). And I'm convinced that the bill won't really do much to help many people anyway:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I AM drawn by the idea of helping whomever we can, even if it's a few million for a little while, and even at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. It's the most appealing thing about the Senate bill. And if it really will do something to constrain costs sufficiently to keep the system from imploding, then that alone might be worth it. Paul Krugman, whom I admire, thinks so and that it's worth passing:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I think that Arianna Huffington is more correct, though, from what I can tell. She says that the idea that healthcare reform will be revisited anytime soon is nonsense, and uses NCLB as an example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Makes sense to me: Hillarycare, anyone?
Besides, I've watched these corporatists twist the law and the political process every way but loose. They seem to have the power to game the system at will. Now it looks to me that they are doing it again, and that few if any of the "reforms" in the Senate bill amount to squat. And if that is so, then the corporations will simply raise prices at the same rate they have been, or faster--because that's what they DO if they don't run up against some force strong enough to stop them.
If this is so, and If Arianna is right and if we'll be "stuck" with this mess for another long, then either the government will go broke, or the plan's obligations won't be met, because it is insane to really give the health "insurance" and PhRMA criminals a blank check and expect that they won't overdraw the account. The worst of all possible worlds: Nothing is fixed, and the thieves get ALL our money--so much that the government will either go bankrupt or the currency will turn to sand, with one result being that there simply will not be enough wealth left in the public sphere to do healthcare reform--just as the population ages and needs it the most. Dystopia, in other words.
On the other hand, there is logic in the idea that ANY start is better than nothing, if for no other reason than to establish the idea that universal healthcare is the policy of the Federal government.
So what do you think? If it's the Senate healthcare reform bill that ultimately emerges from the abattoir, is it worth passing? If so: Do you think it's worth it on its own merits, or because you think it will be revisited soon and its flaws fixed? Or something else?