The Opinion Blog

The health bill the President will sign?

I don't normally do this, but I'm going to post the entirety of an item from Congressional Quarterly. So if you read what's below, give a courtesy click to http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003201570 so that neither you nor The Opinion Blog is stealing.

Senate Finance Committee negotiators neared completion Monday of a health care bill that would cost an estimated $880 billion over 10 years and include language aimed at reducing medical liability lawsuits.

The cost of the bill, newly estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, would be fully offset by spending cuts or new revenues, said Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “In fact, we’re a little bit to the good.”

The six negotiators — three Democrats and three Republicans — were expected to meet again later in the day, Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said, and remain on track to produce a draft bill by the end of the week. Baucus also planned an evening meeting with other Finance Committee Democrats to bring them up to date on the talks.

The six negotiators plan to talk Tuesday with state governors to discuss how much of the cost of a Medicaid expansion the states would be required to pay.

Baucus said the bill’s programs “are not going to cost states as much as originally feared.” The lower costs, which Baucus has not detailed, result from changes to the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid drug rebates.

Conrad said the draft bill would enable states to run demonstration projects with federal support to reduce medical liability lawsuits. One proposal is to require lawsuits to have a “certificate of merit” from experts before they can proceed.

The significance of this is that it's the first health-reform bill to emerge with significant political traction that the nonpartisan CBO has judged won't add to the deficit (other than the sadly neglected Wyden-Bennett bill, of course), thus fulfilling a major pledge Obama made in his speech. Before you jump down the CBO's throat, remember that this is the same agency that scored the Senate Health and House bills as costing well over $1 trillion, dealing them major blows.

What is the Senate Finance bill? It's basically what Obama outlined in his speech, minus the public option. It's got all the reforms to the insurance industry that end exclusions for people with pre-existing conditions and so forth. It has a mandate that all Americans buy insurance. It creates co-operatives so people without employer-sponsored insurance can band together and bargain for lower premiums from insurers. It gives subsidies to poor Americans so they can buy private insurance. I believe it'll have a handful of Republican ideas, such as the cost-controlling Medicare advisory committees and malpractice reform experiments. And in recent days, they've stripped out benefits for end-of-life counseling (ie "death panels") and hardened citizenship requirements for subsidies (thank Joe Wilson). (More complete summary here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/09/baucuss_framework_summary.html)

And, with the blessing now of the CBO, it's likely to pass, and the President will likely sign it. The CBO's report doesn't seem to have been made public yet; I assume it'll be released after the official unveiling of the Senate Finance bill on Wednesday.

Your thoughts?

The Last Knight of Camelot

Friday's editorial noted the passing of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, and the political era he represented.

A noted Republican senator remarked not long ago that were his colleague, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, able to be in Washington, the debate over health care reform would be going differently.

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah clearly meant that the health care debate, at least in the Senate, would be closer to some sort of agreement. Kennedy had that kind of influence and respect on both sides of the aisle.

Missing Judge Williams

Chief Judge Karen Williams abruptly resigned from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals this week, informing colleagues that she has early-onset Alzheimer's and stating that she did not want to write opinions that would later be questioned on the basis of her illness.

Absentee obstructionist

Friday's secondary editorial criticizes one of South Carolina's gubernatorial candidates for a singularly ill-advised campaign letter.

If you're not on U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett's mailing list, you might have missed his gubernatorial campaign's recent letter touting what he has achieved for you in Congress this year:

Immigration redux

Sunday's editorial suggests U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham as a natural leader on the next federal immigration-reform go-round.

Mixed messages seem to surround the future of the immigration debate in Washington these days. President Obama has indicated that despite the issue's thorny history - as well as daunting other reforms of the financial sector, health care and energy policy - he hoped to tackle immigration in the first year of his presidency. Recently, however, the White House meeting intended to launch the effort has been postponed - twice - though officials insist that the moves were only because of scheduling issues.

If and when that meeting does take place, however, South Carolina offers an obvious suggestion for a participant, Sen. Lindsey Graham. His qualifications are many: Foremost, he was among the bipartisan panel of authors of the Bush administration's narrowly defeated attempt at reform, an experience he describes with a glow straight out of a civics class, as he and a handful of members of both parties started with the basic issues and hammered out a law that addressed them all. Based partly out of that experience and partly out of his own solution-oriented temperament, Graham is a supporter of comprehensive reform - simultaneously improving border security, bringing order to an inept legal immigration system and dealing with the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally - and his approach evinces a broad understanding of the issue's many complexities, rather than a simple dogmatic set of demands.

Senators' Approach Hopeful

Saturday's lead editorial examines how President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee may fare with Republicans, through the lens of South Carolina's two U.S. senators.

Both of the state's U.S. senators are where one would expect at this early stage in the process of naming a new justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham are withholding judgment on President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the nation's highest court.

Start Talks on Social Security

Today's editorial considers the urgency of reforming Social Security and presents one possible option for moving forward.

Although flashier issues - the war in Iraq, illegal immigration and blame for the choking economy - tended to dominate the campaign trail in 2008, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham made his own unsuccessful attempts to fix a drying-up Social Security system one of his key stump issues. When he was a 22-year-old college student, both of his parents died, leaving him to raise a 13-year-old sister on Social Security survivor's benefits.

"I know what it's like to need it," Graham said during a televised debate in October, echoing comments he had made earlier to a crowd of supporters at Litchfield Beach and Golf Resort.

On Tuesday, as if the economic news about the present day were not gloomy enough, the U.S. Treasury told us what the future holds: In seven years, Social Security will begin paying out more money than it takes in, and by 2037, that deficit will devour what is now a $2.4 trillion trust fund for Social Security. Exacerbated by the recession, these grim dates are several years sooner than previously expected.

'Let us brave once more the icy currents ...'

Reminding the cynics amongst us that the ground has shifted beneath them, President Obama today set forth an ambitious agenda for his administration and the nation:

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Obama represents something completely different

In a column published today, my counterpart at The (Columbia) State explains why it's OK to be excited that Barack Obama is ascending to the presidency today:

By Brad Warthen

Perhaps it would be a bit much to quote from the Book of Revelation: "Behold, I make all things new.'' How about Monty Python? "And Now For Something Completely Different....''

COUNTERPOINT: Bush did well; just ask Obama

Ripped from the wires .. Charles Krauthammer argues that history won't take long to upgrade George W. Bush to the good president category:

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.