The Senate Healthcare Bill Is Worse Than You Thought

If you follow the news, you are no doubt aware that the Senate proposed a medicare buy-in for people between 55 and 65 as an alternative to the public option.

As I noted at the time, it was very restrictive, the people had to be without insurance already, and they had to be near poverty.

Well, it just gets worse: It turns out that this is not an buy-in to actual medicare, because the program, which could likely cover fewer than 1½ million nation wide, would not be able to use the rates that Medicare has negotiated, instead, it would have to negotiate it on their own, and with those numbers, they won't get anything close to the cost savings that Medicare has generated.

So the fob the program off on the poor, meaning that it will suck, and the strip it of the 40+ years of cost containment, and they call it "Medicare".

Harry Reid, tell Senators Baucus, Lieberman, and Lincoln to go Cheney themselves, and pass it with the budget.