They made a threat they were not willing to follow through on, which means everyone will continue to roll them on every issue.

But Sirota is right that the House Dems should be screaming that the Senate bill is unacceptable. A lot of issues still need to be resolved in conference. The House bill is superior in most respects. Making a credible threat not to pass the bill would increase the chance of the bill being improved in conference.

Clapping louder about the historic progressive reform that just passed the Senate would only make the bill worse coming out of conference.

This whole "make it better later" argument makes no sense to me. Please explain to me where the political momentum will materialize to improve on this bill next year, after Obama signs "the most important progressive legislation in a generation" or whatever he's going to call it when he declares victory.

Obama wanted to do health care reform without making the drug and insurance companies angry. So next year he will get behind new bills on drug re-importation or letting Medicare negotiate for lower rates?

Key elements of the bill don't go into effect until 2014. I find it really hard to believe the White House will support Democrats trying to improve it before then. We will hear, "Hang on, give this bill a chance. Let's see if it's working, and if not, we can improve it in 2015 or 2016."

" I have to accept that a bill including the public option will not get 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate."

I'll disagree with that projection of reality. I would counter one that, if the House stood firm, Obama would actually step up and roll over Joe Lieberman personally, to make something like a PO/Medicare for younger people pass.

If the last week some elements of the Left Blogosphere including the FDL folks, much of Open Left and that part of O L that overlaps here have been screaming about betrayal by people like Franken and Dean without it seems to me fully taking into effect that nobody has seen the full bill as it was voted on. Even now we have the bill as introduced by Reid and then the Manager's Amendment which only came out after the vote itself, but not the fully blended text. The Managers Amendment here:
http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/manag ers-amendment.pdf

I am assuming that some people had access to a blended product that represented the whole bill text including all Senators, House leadership, the White House and selected outside advisors and pundits, but it seems that most bloggers are stuck on bill versions that were floated between the Committee passage out of SFC and Reid' introduction of his revised version.

What no one seems to entertain is that the last minute passages of the revisions suggested by the Team of Ten may have been significant enough to get Franken and Dean on board, and all out resistance Sirota-style that might have been justified a week or so ago may no longer be. Certainly the FDL people have adopted a rigid stance seemingly formulated weeks ago.

I believe the 85/80 MLR provision changes EVERYTHING. There was equivalent language in the House Tri-Committee Bill and I called it out in July as the most important provision of the bill. Over the summer and fall the language was displaced in a way that made it effective only BEFORE the Exchange was established, which made it almost worthless, at best a guide for negotiations between the private insurers and either the State or Federal Exchanges, now at the last second it was reinserted in the bill and made to apply to plans both before and after the Exchange is put in place.

This is huge and while I believe deaniac83 referenced it in his last post it mostly seems to have flown over people's heads.

Almost all of the scary scenarios pushed by backers of Jane become limited or even eliminated by the provisions of the newly revised Sec 2718. The language is on page 7 & 8 of the Manager's Amendment linked above. It takes time to think through the implications so let me leave you with this individual tid-bit.

Under the bill prior to revision the path for obscene profits meant a combination of a low risk population of young adults and an individual mandate. Woo hoo Aetna! After the revision that same combination means Aetna goes bankrupt. With strong MLR insurance companies cannot simply jack up rates while denying care EVEN IF they find some way around the restrictions on barring coverage for pre-existing conditions or for rescinding policies. To do so risks triggering the rebate provisions of 2718.

Is it just, maybe, kinda possible that Howard and Al get this and  Jane and David don't?

Discussion at Angry Bear.