Kill Bill

If I didn't know better, I'd assume Howard Dean's cartoonish rhetoric is a fairly transparent attempt to provide cover for moderate Democrats just before the big compromise and subsequent vote. Unengaged headline readers will simply figure the bill must not be too liberal if the dude who lost it in a corn field is now having a similar meltdown. Dean's rally cry doesn't come close to connecting with reality. And he no doubt knows that the fate of flamed-out major legislation is to be banished for a generation. Just ask Bill Clinton. With that, put me down for what Cesca said:

A family of four earning $38,500 will qualify for subsidies that will reduce insurance premiums from around $9,880 annually to around $2,000. A family of four earing $60,000 will see their annual premium reduced from $9,880 to around $5,240 via subsidies in the Senate bill. This is very important. Do we endeavor to yank these subsidies away by killing the bill, or do we pass the subsidies and work to improve the bill?

Also too, Yglesias has a nifty chart.

-- Update --

Just because this is a "win" for insurance companies doesn't mean a lot of other people aren't winners:

[If] I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every premium dollar on medical care, never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal. And that may be the exact deal we're getting. The profit motive is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

Nope, this isn't the best way to use tax dollars to make sure everyone has health insurance. But it's the best we can do with this Congress. A plague on both of our Houses...