You are right, this one vote is not the end of this thing. But you are wrong to focus only on the public option. That’s actually been a red herring all along. The real problem is with the comprehensive structure of the bill itself. It sets up over a hundred bureaucracies ready to put a stranglehold on the industry, including a health commission with the power to make health decisions belonging primarily to physicians and their patients. These bureaucrats would indeed begin rationing care. They will most certainly begin dictating parameters for insurance companies designed to raise costs and produce higher premiums while reducing the quality of health care generally. The bill will raise taxes and increase the deficit alarmingly. There will almost certainly be a pro-choice provision. Worst of all, it would forever reverse the role of citizens and public servants. It is a frontal attack on our most basic freedoms—and it destroys our privacy absolutely in matters of the gravest intimacy. It’s an abomination, with or without the public option. It must be defeated—and it will be. If not in Congress, then in the Courts. If not there, then by constitutional amendment. It will not stand.
Very good post. There are many destructive things in this bill that need to be stopped and not just the public option.
I agree with your sentiment but I don't see that happening. Unless there is a sea change in congress the only method would be as follows:
Two-thirds of the state legislatures ask Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments. (This method has never been used.) (that's 34 states)
Ratification would be a whole other thing. (38 states)