Monday, September 21, 2009

How Bad is the Baucus Bill?

The Baucus bill is so bad that already it has 564 proffered amendments. Mike Lux sums up everybody's nightmare from hell healthcare deform bill:

The bill makes it harder for women to be covered for abortions and legal immigrants to be covered at all. It penalizes employers for hiring poor people. It makes health insurance coverage unaffordable for many middle income people. It taxes high quality insurance plans. It provides no actual competition for private insurance plans, and no check on insurance companies' power. It is just a rotten, rotten bill all the way around, almost certainly worse than existing law, which is hard to do. . .

On the other hand, a lot of good things have happened this week. The AFL-CIO convention was one big strong pushback against the Baucus bill and in favor of the public option, the highlight of which was AFSCME President Jerry McEntee leading a chant of "Bullshit!"

The Baucus bill is an unmitigated disaster. In the 20-plus years I have been working on the national health care issues, it is easily the worst single bill I have ever seen introduced by a Democratic member of Congress.