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Memo to the media: This has been a great week for health reform

October 30, 2009 5:55 pm ET by Morgan Weiland

Discussing health care reform today on Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough and NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd agreed that "[t]his week has been a mess for the Democrats." Todd added that "it does seem like they decided to take two steps back after they took one step forward because now they got a trillion dollar bill in the House, which is about $150 billion more than they said, than the President said that he wanted, and now they've got to have this back and forth and figure out how to get six to 10 moderate Democrats and Olympia Snowe on board."

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree that the past week was "a mess for the Democrats." Speaker Pelosi reported out a full House bill, the American Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3962), that achieves a number of key fiscal goals that only this summer many in the media were insisting were out of reach. The Congressional Budget Office found that the bill reduces the deficit by $104 billion over the next decade, and continues to chip away at it in the subsequent decade. Plus it comes in under the magic $900 billion number for the net cost of coverage expansion over 10 years -- a cost that is, in CBO's words, "more than offset." And these achievements are doubly important because they satisfy President Obama's must-have requirement that reform "[w]on't add a dime to the deficit."

If anything, all of this adds up to a big step forward -- arguably a bigger one than has ever taken to achieve comprehensive health care reform in this country.

Tags: Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, Chuck Todd, Morning Joe

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    • Author by lonells (October 30, 2009 9:33 pm ET)
         
      i am not one the smartest guys around , i can think for myself , which is the smartest thing a person can do . I have been seeing for the last decade untill now , how the system works . It all starts with the media ,the media controls the information that goes into the human mind , the controlling comes from the direction of the media outlet , they can be directed to build a issue up or destroy the issue . this is fact , we all can still see this everyday . I watch all five major news outlets , they all are spin masters . For example , health care , the reality inside the health care debate comes down to this , do you want to help your fellow Americans or not ? All the spin has left this question to be of no effect .The questions of the spin are can we afford it? will it raise the deficit ? its a gov. takeover ? will it take away from grandma ? all of theese debate points are useless , they are not even constructive critisism . these questions in reality , are an extortion of the current admin. trust , from the american people. I do not understand why this is the American way . We spend over half a trillion killing people , but we can't afford 1 trillion fixin people ! And the killing money has no limit , but the fixing people , adds to the deficet so its not good for the American people ?
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    • Author by dash63 (October 31, 2009 4:09 pm ET)
         
      For better or worse the dems own this one! I sincerely hope Mrs Snow stays out of this. I hope to not see a single Republican vote on this Turkey.
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