On Tuesday night in Massachusetts the Democrats got a rude awakening for their arrogance in thinking that the election of another Democratic senator was a given and lost a seat in the Senate that they hadn't been expecting to lose. That now means that they don't have the numbers to automatically bank on getting a health care bill through anymore, or anything else they might be thinking about.

I'm trying to think about how I feel on what all of this means for a health care bill. Suffice it to say, on this blog and on my finance blog, I have talked a lot about health care over the past year, especially the goings on regarding the concept of a health care bill. I believe my stance is well known, but I will repeat it again for those who might be new to this blog.

I believe there should be a health care bill for those who can't afford health care coverage. That figure is somewhere between 46 and 50 million people, and almost all of those people are middle class. I think it's the right thing to do, and in the long-run it also might be the most cost effective thing to do. At the same time, I think that if there is going to be a health care bill that it needs to be done right. It can't be overly costly; it can be overly punitive to anybody; it has to be fair enough not to disrupt commerce as it pertains to other insurance companies; and it has to cover enough procedures and maladies to make it worthwhile, otherwise there's no point in having it and we can just send everybody to clinics.

There are a few things I don't like about the present bill, or at least what we have heard about the present bill. I don't like the idea that anybody is going to have to pay money into some kind of fund, or tax, or fine, if they decide not to have health care coverage. For the government to assume that everybody has at least $300-$400 a month to pay for health care coverage is illogical. And then to hit those people up for $900 for individuals and $3800 for families is outrageous.

I don't like the fact that pretty much one party dominated the entire discussion about health care. I don't blame that party however, that the other party pretty much decided they weren't even going to entertain any type of conversation about health care. Forget the idea of bipartisanship because it doesn't exist, but I do find it incredible that the first black president of the United States has found a way to teach two parties how to only vote for whatever their party leadership wants and not to really vote their conscious anymore. Sure, they can say they voted their conscience, but I can't think of any other time in history where there's been this kind of unanimity except during times of war. I'm not saying that they're doing it because President Obama is black, I'm just pointing out the irony of timing.

I don't like the fact that we really don't know what the health care bill is going to cover. We have heard that it's not supposed to cover abortions, and we have heard that is not supposed to cover illegal aliens. But we haven't heard all that much more about what it is going to cover. For instance, isn't going to cover foot care? After all, Medicare doesn't cover foot care, and some have said that this bill is predicated on looking at what the Medicare bill was like. For those of you who don't know this, Medicare does not pay for services that they consider are maintenance. They consider most foot problems as maintenance rather than as curing anything. They will cover foot surgery, but almost nothing else. But normal insurance plans do cover foot care. This is just an example of the types of things we don't know at the regarded what the health care plan was close to cover.

And I'm still wondering whatever happened to all the talk about electronic medical records. I haven't heard it mentioned once in the past 2 1/2 months, yet this was a very big agenda item that President Obama ran on. If this is not a part of the health care bill, then does that mean electronic medical records will not be funded anymore? And if it is part of the bill, then how much of this bill is actually for health services and how much of it is for ancillary types of things?

So, I never thought this bill was perfect, and I'm not even sure if I supported this bill or not. What I do know is that, good or bad, I think the conversation needed to be had, and it's turned out not necessarily to be a conversation, instead being more like someone ask for something without knowing what it was they were asking for, and a lot of people objected to something that they have actually no idea what they're objecting to. Not really the best way to run a country if you ask me. I guess we'll see what happens over the next few weeks as to whether there will still be any discussions about health care or not. And I feel real sorry for us if there's not.