Pivoting off of this morning's Robert Samuelson bashing, the Senate's successful cloture vote on health reform legislation this weekend is paving the way for some positive real world consequences -- near-universal coverage, cost and deficit cutting, and a framework for future reform.
Last week, Ezra Klein pointed out that Sen. Joe Lieberman's lackadaisical flirtation with killing the bill would have had real world consequences of a deadlier nature, which angered the discourse police -- harsh moral rhetoric is only appropriate when your talking about killing people, not healing them -- and the right, as my conversation with Matt Lewis above suggests. I do think that the "death panels" comparison is a false equivalence with what Ezra is trying to say, as I point out. And while Jane Hamsher goes after the final bill, I think this rebuttal from Jon Cohn gets at how this bill really does make things better for people on the lower end of the income scale.
In my entire conversation with Matt, we also touch on Democratic electoral worries, the foolish obstructionism of Senate Republicans (this bill will kill your freedom, just as Medicare did in 1965 -- right, Ron?), and why Howard Dean was wrong in his brief call to kill the public option-less bill. Check the whole thing out.
-- Tim Fernholz
