Senator Reid Releases Senate Health Reform Bill

Various news sources have information for the willing:

Congress.org has five interesting provisions about the bill, as well as a link to the bill itself.

CNN has an article, a political analysis of sorts as well as a link to the bill.

NRTL blasts the bill, according to Politico.

AP, NYT, and NPR compare the House and Senate bills.

Remember- this bill does not include the more-than-quarter-trillion dollar “Doc Fix” bill that failed in the Senate a month ago. So whatever the Congressional Budget Office says…add that to it. The current CBO score is $849 billion, which includes Medicare cuts and raising some taxes, and will reduce the debt by $127 billion. So, in reality, the debt will increase by $118 billion, unless the government and CBO estimates are underestimates, which is generally the case.

Either way, the CBO score is great momentum for Senator Reid (D-NV) with fiscally conservative Democrats- who may ignore the “Doc Fix” numbers for the final vote on the Senate bill- and bad for those of us opposed to many of the Democratic health reform concepts. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, abortion is covered in the bill and there is a public option. This is bad because they are bad ideas, but good because it will allow moderate Democrats to oppose the bill if abortion and the public option are included, as some have said they will do. Whatever else happens, let’s at least hope the public option and abortion are eliminated. Contact your Senators.

One last note: this is the preliminary CBO score Democrats are all excited about. The final one is supposed to be out today.