Lex offers a detailed assessment of why the progressives might not be bat---t crazy. I'm so confused.
Here's just a taste of what Lex had to say:
Just how bad has Joe Lieberman crapped all over the whole debate on health-care reform? Bad enough that right now, I think it’s time he not only gets no health care, it’s time he gets intestinal cancer in a part of the world where morphine is as yet undiscovered. I mean, really, what kind of sociopath do you have to be to disregard those 45,000 annual deaths and singlehandedly chop up a bill to create something that:
- Mandates that every American buy expensive insurance from private companies without the choice of a public option and lets the IRS fine you if you don’t
- Severely taxes middle-class health care plans, rather than wealthy individuals
- Increases insurance premiums about $1,000 a year
- Increases health care costs
- Continues to exempt health-insurance companies from antitrust laws, inhibiting competition
- Provides a sweet deal for pharmaceutical manufacturers while denying the government the ability to negotiate for lower drug prices for Medicare, something Democrats actually promised three years ago.
- Apparently won’t let the government import drugs from cheaper foreign sources. I’m told my own junior senator, Kay Hagan, was arguing tonight that this was a “safety” issue, which must come as a surprise to the dozens of other countries that do this every day.
- Grants monopolies on new biologic drugs so they will never become generics
- Offers NO public option
- Offers NO Medicare expansion, even in return for payment, for 55- to 64-year-olds.
- Limits insurance-company payouts, contrary to President Obama’s promise in September
- Raises taxes in January while not beginning benefits until 2014.
