What a fiasco!! Even now some "experts" say that this shit sandwich is worth voting for, I have to ask where is the reform in this bill? We sure as hell are not reforming health care and we are not reforming the insurance industry. The government, by authorizing a mandate, just gave 30 million new customers to the private insurers, WITHOUT specifying any premium caps or cost control measures. Wonderful!! Yesterday many in the left blogs called for killing this atrocity, today the progressives got a major boost from Howard Dean (yes the same Dr. Howard Dean who would have been one heckuva HHS secretary, instead of Ms. Bipartisan Sebelius).

Howard Dean "Kill the Senate bill"

In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate,  Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as "the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," the reporter who conducted the interview tells me.

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"This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill."

Let me add here that unlike Dr. Dean, I did not think much of the medicare buy-in plan, because it would have burdened the State with an aging and less healthy population, but as far as reform went, it was still a tiny incremental step in the right direction. The bill right now is not a reform bill.