Kill The Senate Health Care Bill?

Bamf. Materializing here on the blog. Why away so long? I'll explain later.

Here's one reason. Facebook. It's been a fun little timesink. And buggy as hell.

One major plus to Facebook has been the opportunity to share news items with many people -- covering a lot of social ground, through different demographics, cliques, and gaggles of online folk -- with just a click.

But the news story of health care reform is so big, so crucial, and today so unpredictable that sharing one link isn't enough.

Case in point: Howard Dean, a major booster for health care reform and the US Senate's efforts, has come out against the Senate bill in draft now.

There's plenty of news coverage on the politics of it, the great and superficially entertaining bruhaha around it. But very little about what it means.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com best summarizes the pro side: that it will help some folks now and you'd be crazy not to.

Howard Dean's complaints boil down to, "It will do more harm than good." He claims:

• Under this bill, patients with pre-existing conditions can get health care, but at three times the cost. Health insurance companies can't deny them care. They can simply price gouge, especially if they're older.
• People will be forced to buy health care insurance or they will be fined.
• 27 percent of that money goes to health care CEO's, not to the cost of health care.
• A small percentage of the US will qualify for this coverage.
• The coverage under this bill would last for only a few years -- until 2014.

A private sector solution. No controls on the market. No universal coverage. With price hikes aimed at the old and the vulnerable.

Is Howard Dean correct? If he was, I'd hate this bill too.

So now I'm posting this to my personal blog and setting Facebook to import it. Please read. Think it over. Keep everyone talking.