You now know what we’re up against. Those 278 lobbyists (179 of them former lawmakers and aides), representing 338 healthcare special interests, spent nearly 2/3 of a billion dollars – $635 million – to great effect. You also know the organizations you trust are telling you to break the law, revolt, and block and kill the Senate bill at all costs. Stunned though I was last Friday, I didn’t do that. I called Obama to task for his lack of strong healthcare leadership, but I told you we needed to pass this bill anyway. Why?

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The Gang of 10 seems to be making progress. Don’t confuse this Gang with the bipartisan Gang of 6 that created the wimpy Senate Finance Committee healthcare bill. This one is all Democrats, split between liberals and moderates. Perhaps that’s why they are making much quicker work of party differences. Quick being a relative term, obviously, seeing as 2010 is less than a month away. Here are the main moving targets to watch in the coming weeks.

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Harry Reid had better take control of this process soon. From the original 60 amendments to HR 3590, most of which were put forward by obstructionist Republicans, we can now add 59 more for Friday-Saturday. Can you tell by now that our legislative process is completely broken?

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In Part 1 we looked at how HR 3590 can bend the US healthcare cost curve, and found some expected and some surprising answers. While deficit neutrality is a healthcare reform Holy Grail, from a personal perspective my first question is “It’s deficit-neutral for whom?” The answer to that, of course, is for the government, not you.

Yes, the bill includes some good subsidies for the poorest among us, and subsidizes even those up to 400% of the poverty level. That still doesn’t prevent over-sized US healthcare costs from continuing to bankrupt the majority of Americans, as we saw explicitly in an earlier post. So beyond subsidies, what does HR 3590 do to bend your healthcare cost curve?

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That huge sigh of relief you heard on Saturday night was the majority of Americans rejoicing that Senate debate on its healthcare bill could at least start. Yes, we got 60 votes! No one in the Democratic caucus wants to stick out as the road block to constructive healthcare reform debate … yet. There’s still a long road to hoe from here, but we’ve now moved away from the Senate starting line on HR 3590. What’s next in the healthcare reform marathon?

Find out and see a healthcare reform legislative road map here.                  blogsurfer.us