The Senate Health Care Bill is in trouble. Thanks to Lieberman, it looks like the plan to expand Medicare to cover a portion of the uninsured is finished. I've got ten minutes before I have to take a kid to an emergency appointment with an orthodontist (thank you, dental plan), but I am going to squeeze out a short rant.

We need health care reform. I've been to an urban emergency room. When my son, Ian, was 18 months, he became seriously dehydrated due to a bad bout with the flu, and he needed an IV. We ran down to the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian at 168th Street. The room was packed to brim with families. Packed. People were eating their dinner in the waiting room, because they had been there so long. It was dirty. When Ian was finally well enough to leave, I carried him out of there at 5am to get a cab rather than wait two hours for Steve, because I was worried that he was going to catch something there.

For many people, that emergency room is the only health care that they know. They wait until they are really sick, because they can't get antibiotics for strep throat.

The Senate needs to pass a bill to help those people in the emergency room.

They also need to figure out the lunacy of billing. Why does a doctor bill a Medicare patient $150 for an office visit, while a privately insured patient is billed $75?

We need something now.

Senate Democrats have not helped matters. I can't blog about a health care bill, if the bill mutates every day or so. I can't keep track of the latest plan. If I can't keep it straight, nobody can. We can't call our Senators. We can't rally support on our blogs.