Sorry for the terrible title joke, but as the picture shows I’ve really got to comment on the DC-area weather. Regardless, instead it appears that the 60th vote will be Sen. Nelson (D-[Nebraska]N.D.). The price is some limitations to abortion coverage but a better deal than Stupak’s:
Under the new abortion provisions, states can opt out of allowing plans to cover abortion in insurance exchanges the bill would set up to serve individuals who don't have employer coverage. Plus, enrollees in plans that do cover abortion procedures would pay for the coverage with separate checks - one for abortion, one for rest of health-care services.
Of these, the state opt out is more important I’d think. I wonder how that will interact with the provisions for nationwide insurance plans. The existence of nation-wide plans with the coverage should make the politics of fighting against those bans easier. There was also some weakening of cost-cutting measures and logrolling for [Nebraska]North Dakota that will probably be fiscally insignificant since almost no one lives there [the population is less than 2 million, less than 1% of U.S. pop]. Shame Sen. Snowe isn’t playing ball or we could instead be subsidizing Maine while providing with more abortion coverage. Sen. Landrieu didn’t muck around with the content too much and just got some giveaways for Louisiana which probably serve a legitimate policy purpose given ongoing recovery from Katrina.
Nate Silver rounds up the remaining challenges and from what Ezra Klein is reporting the conference committee should be highly expedited. I’ve long felt about this bill like I do when watching a film or TV series where there’s a major victory that risks being a false dawn. There’s so many distractions, so many risks, far too many sacrifices, but if we can just We are making the crucial first step here to providing a floor of health care coverage to all Americas. The Republicans are fighting so hard because they realize that so long as we achieve this in a fiscally sustainable way voters will become as protective of this entitlement as they are of the others. I’ll leave the final word to Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Ted Kennedy:
The bill before Congress will finally deliver on the urgent needs of all Americans. It would make their lives better and do so much good for this country. That, in the end, must be the test of reform. That was always the test for Ted Kennedy. He's not here to urge us not to let this chance slip through our fingers. So I humbly ask his colleagues to finish the work of his life, the work of generations, to allow the vote to go forward and to pass health-care reform now. As Ted always said, when it's finally done, the people will wonder what took so long.
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