LOL – at some point, we as a society should learn that use of the term “innovative financial instrument” should be met in the same way we’d react to an invite to participate in a game of 3-card monte on a New York street.

At a certain point in the deliberations, Republicans had to realize that a bill that they didn’t like was going to be passed. On the other hand, the provisions that Republicans objected to the most, for a public option or Medicare expansion, were stripped.

They could have decided to maintain ideological purity, and vote as a block to maintain a filibuster … or they could have acted pragmatically, allowing a few centrist Republicans from states where they wouldn’t be punished (eg, Snowe and Collins, Voinovich, Gregg) to make a deal that rendered Nelson’s and Landrieu’s vote irrelevant in exchange for stripping offensive earmarks.

By the way – did you ever look at the processes at the last moment during the Medicare Bill passage under Bush and the Republicans? It was a porkanalia that far outstripped anything we saw this weekend. In this bill, at least all the pork provisions are largely related to healthcare … in that case it was a huge laundry list of handouts, many of which had absolutely no relationship to the medicare program or drug reimbursements.

For what it’s worth, most Democratic analysists today are definitely finding fault with Landrieu and Nelson, who were claiming some high ground as fiscal conservatives then were willing to throw that principle overboard for non-fiscally conservative pork.

Bernie Sanders, for what it is worth, is doing exactly what his constituents elected him to do – to try to pass the broadest possible healthcare bill, and failing that, to improve access to healthcare for his own state.

such regulation …. discourages innovation

You mean the insurance companies won’t be able to do what the banking companies did to us?

How about this for an insurance innovation: People pay premiums. Companies pay claims.

Among other things, the final Senate version of the health care reform bill lacks the public option and Stupak anti-abortion amendment, which angers different factions of Pelosi’s razor-thin majority. Yet Sen. Nelson has warned that he will accept very few changes.

MARCU$

At some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions. Like Rosy O’Donnell blaming the fork and spoon for her weight problem.

Pathetic

Interestingly, Republicans had the power in their hands to strip the leverage that Nelson, Naldreau, and the others used to bring the pork home.

They could have simply signaled to Reid that they would allow the bill without a public option to proceed to the floor for a vote, if the pork was stripped out.

Ironically, it was the Republicans unanimity in trying to block the vote that gave Nelson an excessive amount of power, and made the bill less fiscally responsible.

This makes no sense–it’s equivalent to “we lose a little on each sale, but we make it up in volume.” If insurers can’t break even offering a qualified plan on the Exchanges, then they simply won’t offer qualified plans on the exchanges. That’s a self-correcting problem: the exchange idea will fail. It doesn’t mean that they won’t keep offering non-exchange group and individual plans.

And what did the Political Pigs receive in the trough? 300 million for Pig Landreau, The Big Pig from Nebraska, used to corn, receives a federal gift FOREVER. Lets not forget the east coast Piggies. New hospitals for this little Piggy Dodd, and even the Socialist Pig from Vermont receive more free, tax payer funded clinics.

And as all Political Pigs know with an election a stake, a tax on Botox is a bad thing, so scrape the 5% tax on cosmetic surgery.

Yes, lets all hale the HOPE and CHANGE in government. Did you see the insurance company stocks going up? No reason to suspect a insider deal. No import of prescription drugs, big pharma has cut the deal.
Its pathetic beyond description. A Democracy where the vote has a price, the excuse for Liberals to soothe their conscience. Soooie, Soooie