I’m not sure there was any doubt, but just in case you thought that the Senate would act on an imminent bill from the House to repeal the entire health care law wholesale, the Senate Democratic leadership is here to tell you that they won’t. They frame it in a letter to John Boehner, signed by Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray and Debbie Stabenow, that they refuse to take up any bill that repeals consumer protections, specifically citing the closing of the prescription drug “doughnut hole” for seniors. On January 1, a new provision of the Affordable Care Act discounts the cost of brand name drugs for seniors who reach that coverage gap by 50%, with the full closure phased in later.

In addition to having to fend off the slow chipping away of the health care law by the GOP, especially if they gain power over one or both houses of Congress, Democrats have to deal with the foxes they left in the henhouse, who are systematically working to preserve their own profits at the expense of consumers.

The Congress and the President have promised to fix the doughnut hole in the new health care bill, but how do you fix the doughnut hole by making it worse for several years before you can make it better? Is this change we can believe in?

Is it possible that 31 Senators in the Democratic Caucus traded away $106 billion dollars in savings for consumers — and $19 for the federal budget according to CBO — for an empty promise that hasn’t even been agreed to?