With lawmakers reluctant to limit what insurers may charge, there's little to slow soaring premiums. Coupled with millions of new customers, that adds up to higher costs for taxpayers and consumers.
...
"We are about to force at least 30 million people into an insurance market where the sharks are circling," said California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a Democrat who served as the state's insurance commissioner for eight years. "Without effective protections, they will be eaten alive."

Soaring premiums coupled with millions of new customers forced to buy policies would likely mean higher costs for taxpayers to cover government subsidies for lower-income families and individuals.

They could also mean bigger bills for people who get benefits through work, as well as for their employers. LATimes

What Clinton did worked because he identified the goal, legislation was written to reach that goal, and whatever triangulation and chess-playing went on in between was designed to make sure the goal was reached.

When the message from Obama transitioned from "everyone should have access to affordable health care" to "everyone should have affordable health insurance," the effort to reform the health system went off the rails, because it was all about insurance and not about health, and not about the people.

That's about all they talk about now: insurance.  They blather on about fining people for not having insurance who can't afford the insurance to begin with, wouldn't be able to afford the co-pays and deductibles that would come with insurance if they had it, and can't afford the care they need regardless.  This is not the answer.

Now we're coming down to an artificially-determined wire, that just like so many of the last-minute efforts of Congress that have given us truly execrable legislation, is pretty much guaranteed to do nothing to improve the system, or the lives and health of so many Americans who need help, or the economic health of anyone other than the insurance industry and the lobbyists who do their bidding.  

It's just mind-boggling to think that all this effort seems now to be driven by Obama's desire to claim that he has achieved something no other president before him could; when people realize that the benefits of his achievement will accrue to insurance companies, not individuals, I do believe there will be a steep political price to pay.

I guess I draw two lessons:

1. Clinton had excellent fiscal success with a rollback of excessive GOP policies that were already in place from the last administration.  That could have been done this year as well, and probably would have been hailed as a success as the economy recovered (whether it was responsible for the recovery or not).
   
2. Democratic congresses rolled over for both Reagan and Little Bush to enact horrible policy.  Clinton was able to round up enough support from Democrats (in a Democratically controlled congress) to pass at this controversial stuff (and don't pretend that they somehow didn't know it was controversial at the time and were later surprised at the ballot boxes).  Democrats in Congress CAN be led by a president who is willing to lead them.

it appears that the economy has started to turn and at the worst has been halted from the complete devestation

Appears to whom? The double-digit unemployed people? The record numbers of bankruptcy filings and foreclosures? Those awaiting the coming crash in commercial RE?

Sounds like you're talking about the Senate's "old" ordinary business rules, not the new rules where a GOP "standing filibuster" is simply accepted.