March Madness: The OTHER win-or-go-home games.

[july_july_july]

The Countdown to Reform Wire from TPM is the fastest updating site, as far as I can tell.

Daily Kos is a close second with more on a potential executive order deal with Stupak. (In a perfect world, we'd be able to do this without Bart and his selectively anti-choice stance.)

The AP breaks down the bill. The link goes to HuffPo, but the article

Comments

[meiou_set]

GAH, SO NERVOUS. *lights extra millionth candle*

[july_july_july]

Seriously. It sounds like the latest tactic for Republicans is to encourage tea-baggers to interrupt and get thrown out. They are cheering on people in the chamber who disrupt the process. I don't even know.

[izhilzha]

Okay, so this looks a bit better than the last time I saw a breakdown of it. One thing (aside from "how the hell are we going to afford this?!") that does really, really bother me is INSURANCE MANDATE: Almost everyone is required to be insured or else pay a fine. There is an exemption for low-income people. Mandate takes effect in 2014.

Uh...this makes no sense at all. Mandatory *car* insurance does, because you're insured for possible damage you/your car may cause to *others* if you are at fault in an accident. There is no similar reason to make health care insurance mandatory, even if there is an exemption for low-income people.

[july_july_july]

Yeah, I call bullshit on the mandate, too. But the idea behind it is that if everybody has health insurance (and the government can make it cheaper for everyone with the other parts of the bill), then people who need medical care will actually go get it. Rather than, for example, not going to the dentist because you can't afford it and then ending up in the ER with a serious oral infection and incurring all sorts of medical bills that taxpayers will have to absorb. So in a backassward way, people who don't have insurance do cost everyone else money when they get sick.

But I sincerely hope there's a few more fixes in there before 2014.