The House of Representatives is having a special Saturday debate on its version of health care legislation, H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

It’s on C-SPAN right now and—guess what!—Republicans and Democrats aren’t getting along. In fact, they’re all kind of behaving like children.

The New York Times has a good post on its “Prescriptions” blog describing the procedures that the House will be following during its debate today. Watching this debate is a civics lesson like you never got in school.

It looks like the debate will continue all day, so pull up a couch, pop some popcorn, and feel free to comment on the page for the bill.

Health care reform legislation will be debated in the House this coming week, and the issue is all teed up.

H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, was introduced last week—all 1,990 pages of it.

You can see it by clicking “Read the bill” in the “Learn more” box on the bill’s page.

The Los Angeles Times has a good story answering questions about what the bill is meant to do.

The bill also has a score from the Congressional Budget Office. What it boils down to is this: a cost of over $7,800 per U.S. family. (Read about our methodology here.)

Here’s some summary language from CBO:

The estimate includes a projected net cost of $894 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage. That net cost itself reflects a gross total of $1,055 billion in subsidies provided through the exchanges (and related spending), increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers; those costs are partly offset by $167 billion in collections of penalties paid by individuals and employers. On balance, other effects on revenues and outlays associated with the coverage provisions add $6 billion to their total cost.

Over the 2010–2019 period, the net cost of the coverage expansions would be more than offset by the combination of other spending changes, which CBO estimates would save $426 billion, and receipts resulting from the income tax surcharge on high-income individuals and other provisions, which JCT and CBO estimate would increase federal revenues by $572 billion over that period.

Read the whole estimate (only 27 pages) by clicking “Read an analysis of the bill” in the “Learn more” box on the bill’s page.

For or against? That’s the important question.

Here’s the current vote on the bill. Click to vote, comment, learn more or edit the wiki article on the bill.

The Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill has finally been introducted. It is S. 1796.

At this writing, the bill text is not available, but reports have it that it is 1,502 pages long. To read it, go to the bill page, and click on “Read the Bill” in the “Learn More” box. (Again, if it’s not there yet, it will be soon.)

So do you think, as its authors do, that the bill will “provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending”?

Leave your comments below or on the page for the bill.

And here’s the current vote on S. 1796. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article on the bill.

Among the 40,000 earmark requests submitted by members of Congress is a $10,000,000 earmark for a medical facility in Ashdod, Israel.

This prompts a commenter to ask, “And what do U.S. taxpayers get in return for this $10,000,000 investment?”

The request is by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D) of New York’s fifth district. A 501(c)(3) group called American Friends of Ashdod Medical Center is located in Brooklyn, New York.

Ashdod is the fifth largest city in Israel, with about 207,000 inhabitants. The thing is . . . most of those people are probably not Americans. They’re likely to be, oh . . . , Israelis? The benefit to American taxpayers from such a payout is at least subject to question.

What do you think? Is spending $10,000,000 on a medical facility in Israel a good idea in your view?

Here’s the current vote on that earmark. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about it.

Site visitor Blaine Whittle writes in to note that his petition on Change.org is “#5 with a bullet this week.” Congratulations, Blaine!

The petition supports H.R. 676, the United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. According to its authors, it would provide comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents and improved health care delivery.

The discussion on our page for this bill is decidedly mixed, as it should be on important issues. As of this writing, the vote is running against the bill, but with a low number of voters so far, that could change quickly.

Experts are encouraged to edit the wiki article about the bill. (Here’s how.)

In the meantime, here’s the current vote on H.R. 676. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

A little over $12,000 per U.S. family. That’s the estimated cost of a piece of health care legislation called H.R. 3200, the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. I don’t know if “affordable” should really be in the title . . . .

It’s a preliminary estimate, and the bill is very complex, but this number gives you a sense of the size of the bill – and the issue. Health care costs money.

“Instead of saving the federal government from fiscal catastrophe, the health reform measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would increase rather than reduce public spending on health care . . . .”

That’s the lead sentence in a Washington Post article about testimony in Congress from the Congressional Budget Office today. The CBO is the source of most of the cost estimates we translate into per-family and per-person cost estimates for you.

We don’t generally cover issues until they are turned into legislation, and health care is an issue that has been much discussed, but not reduced to writing. All we’ve said so far is, “Here Comes Health Care.” And the legislation predicted in that post has not really materialized – or at least been introduced.

It’s certainly interesting that it’s news to some people – the idea that health care legislation will cost money…

S. 1252 would “promote ocean and human health.”

Let’s say you’ve been injured by a doctor. Who do you want deciding what happens? Do you want to be able to go to court, or do you want your claim considered by a “health care tribunal”?

The people in the picture to the right are not a health care tribunal. They’re a random group that probably look like what a health care tribunal would look like. Who are they? How did they get there? Do they have any relationships with health care providers? Or plaintiffs’ lawyers? Or defense lawyers?

They look very nice, and they certainly mean well. They’ve probably studied the papers in front of them very carefully. They have a computer, which is good. And they’ve got a couple bottles of water or soda to drink from – but not too much. None of this means they should replace judges and juries.

H.R. 2787 would send federal money to states to help them set up “health care tribunals.” (It doesn’t say how much.)

Congress is looking at dozens of ways of tweaking the health care system. We should be very careful about walking away from the our legal tradition, which gives injured people the right to sue for damages. There are certainly excessive claims in health care litigation, and there might be some tweaks to that system in order. But I sure don’t want the nice people on a “tribunal” deciding what is supposed to be decided by a judge or jury after a fair and impartial trial. Open to convincing, in the comments . . .

Here’s the current vote on H.R. 2787. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

As early as Monday, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) may unveil health care legislation, and President Obama says that he wants this issue to be dealt with this year. All this is according to a Washington Post story.

According to the Post:

In many respects it adopts the most liberal approaches to health reform being discussed in Washington. Kennedy, for example, embraces a proposal to create a government-sponsored insurance program to compete directly with existing private insurance plans, according to one senior adviser who was not authorized to talk to reporters.

The draft summary also calls for opening Medicaid to those whose incomes are 500 percent of the federal poverty level, or $110,250 a year for a family of four.

President Obama, meanwhile, is urging his most loyal supporters to reactivate the grass-roots machine that helped elect him and direct it toward health-care reform.

Kennedy also wrote about his bill recently in the Boston Globe.

We’ll feature the bill here, of course, when it is introduced. And as the cost-estimates come in, we’ll note them too.