Will Health Care Reform Kill the Tea Party?

[Ahso!]

It just might once Tea Party members cease yelling, screaming, protesting and behaving emotionally and begin to reason this thing out. From Mother Jones:While Meckler was standing in front of the Cannon House office building forecasting a Tea Party explosion if a law should pass, Dale Chiusano, a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, sporting an "I choose liberty" sticker, walked up to me and started complaining that his health insurance company had kicked his 22-year-old daughter off the family plan during her senior year of college. Like so many tea partiers I've interviewed over the past year, Chiusano was already the beneficiary of government health care, having spent 30 years working for the federal government. Now retired, he still gets to keep his federal insurance plan, but he was outraged to discover that he had to "pay through your nose" to get his daughter a private plan during the gap between college and her first job.



I pointed out that the health care overhaul would have saved him a lot of money by allowing his daughter to stay on the family plan until she was 26, a fact he hadn't known. Not that this information changed his mind—"you can’t have the federal government managing the family life!"—but people like Chiusano might feel differently once they see for themselves how the bill affects their pocketbooks.

Meckler claimed that the bill's benefits were illusory. "Nobody will see any new insurance for four years, but they will see higher taxes," he insisted. That's incorrect: Many of the bill's reforms will kick in almost immediately (PDF), including the provision allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until age 26. Medicare recipients, who seem disproportionately represented in Tea Party rallies and town-hall meetings, will also see tremendous benefits right away.

The bill will end copays and deductible charges for preventive care, close the "donut hole" in Medicare's prescription drug benefit (which forces the elderly to pay high out-of-pocket costs), and creates a $10 billion temporary fund to help offset the costs of insurance for people who retire before turning 65. That last benefit is likely to be a huge boon for Tea Party activists, but they'll also benefit from provisions requiring insurance companies to cover everyone regardless of their preexisting conditions. Aging Tea Partiers are much likelier than young people to need such protection. Full Article: Will Health Care Reform Kill the Tea Party? | Mother Jones

[Nomad]

I believe the tea party has already peaked. Where does that leave Palin? If she runs as a conservative shes going to have to *speak* and *debate* her opponents.

That will be an ugly train wreck.

[Carolyn]

The Tea Party is the republicans' Ralph Nadar. They will take votes away from regular republican candates and that will give the Democrats the edge. I hope they stick around. They are actually good for the Democratic Party.

However, what I see happening is that once this bill is passed, everyone who has been duped by the lies and twisted truths from the GOP and Fox News will be better informed, and at least some of these people will wake up and see who is really looking out for their interests. They are going to find out how the facts have been kept from them.