Who’s right? CNN, or AP at 5:00PM today:

“We just heard today that, well, we may not be able to get the bill out of the Senate by the end of August, or the beginning of August,” Obama said. “That’s OK. I just want people to keep on working. Just keep working.”

More from CNN:

Obama has said his timetable is more a target than a make-or-break deadline…

Oh. OK.

Since the deadline is tomorrow, I think most would agree we’re not going to make it and that health care reform shouldn’t get tossed out the window because of it.

YMMV.

Nuthin’ but net! …the INTERnet can do it! That’s why you don’t find too many comments here. Instead, people are going here: http://action.firedoglake.com/…..delaylast+

Great idea

So break out the cots I have had to wait around unpaid for hours in the warehouse when the trucks were late! Congress can wait until the job gets done too! Nobody leaves or gets paid until the job is done!

Harry fails this we press the Senate for a new Leader.

Since the deadline is tomorrow, I think most would agree we’re not going to make it and that health care reform shouldn’t get tossed out the window because of it.

oh noes! you mean we’ll have to wait before the Democrats make tithing premiums to the insurance companies mandatory?

I guess I’ll just have to the take they money they were going to force me to pay and burn it then.

hey JH, I’m still wondering why you didn’t castigate the good Dr. Geyman earlier for saying

Unfortunately, the incremental “reforms” being built into bills in Congress are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

he must want mass death and rioting in the streets, clearly.

So what’s your plan? Let me guess — you don’t have time to come up with one.

from time to time when I have e-mailed a Senator about an issue I have added that Reid has to go and they
need to get some real leadership. Some of them, Whitehouse, Feingold, etc, MUST know how pathetic his leadership is.

Lovely to see the single-payer purists join forces with the GOP obstructionists to delay, and therefore stop, any meaningful reform at all. Thousands will die, and there will be enough blood to go around for all of your hands!

did you challenge Dr. Geyman for his plan, or was it some security slip-up, that he got invited on without one, that all critics of incrementalism must carry at all times?

Oh good, It’s Sporky Time!

That’s a joke, Son, I say, that’s a joke. Actually I’m looking forward to the revelation of the plan too.

BTW The News Hour claimed there was an announcement that there would -not- be an agreement before the recess, but was vague on who exactly was doing the announcing.

I’m growing more cynical by the day. If one congress can be spooked into war without regard for human life, what’s more blood on their hands?…

Okay here’s a plan. Took me exactly one minute:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…..00676:@@@P

HR 676. It has 93 cosponsors. You could be a complete idiot and figure out pretty quickly that 218 is a majority in the House. And then you’ll need a plan for the Senate.

So why aren’t you calling 125 members of Congress and asking them to cosponsor? I’ll answer that one too if you like — you don’t understand enough about how government works to know that’s what you have to have.

Lemme know when you hit 120 or so, that’s when it should get interesting.

Jane, thanks for thinking up the petition. The right idea at the right time.

93 cosponsors? Gee, I wonder why we can’t get them to commit to The Pledge??? Oh, I know, because their support for HR 676 is total kabuki meant to pull the wool over the eyes of the math-impaired. But you go right ahead and hold your breath until you turn blue sporky and watch our economy and health care access implode under the continued pillaging by the insurance industry.

BTW, I don’t know if anyone else noticed, I haven’t seen it commented on, but Obama did not discuss “health care reform” last night, he discussed “health insurance reform”. He knows what he’s got to work with in Congress and it ain’t much.

That said, I see no reason why we can’t use a single payer argument to hold the Blue Dogs feet to the fire. It is more cost effective and fiscally conservative, but they don’t actually care about such things. It would be fun to watch their heads explode as they try to rationalize their support of a far more expensive system.

The only reason the U.S. doesn’t have a Single-Payer Health Care system is…Link
Call Congress and the White House and demand,
MEDICARE/SINGLE-PAYER TYPE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL NOW!

Some claptrap about “socialism” would ensue, I’m sure.

And yeah, it makes no sense at all.

Mail I just got:

The battle over single-payer is in the House Energy & Commerce Committee (E&C). The committee was supposed to vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s single-payer amendment on Monday, but chairman Henry Waxman keeps postponing the vote because it might pass – just like the Kucinich Amendment for a single-payer state option passed on July 17 by a shocking 25-19 bi-partisan majority.

Today we’re told the vote could be tomorrow ( Friday ). This week we asked our 600,000 supporters to call all 35 Democrats. Based on your calls, we identified 9 solid yes and 5 more lean yes:
http://www.democrats.com/singl…..ittee-whip

Can you call the 5 lean yes and convince them to become solid yes on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s single-payer amendment in the Energy & Commerce Committee?

Lean Yes
Diana DeGette CO01 202-225-4431
Jane Harman CA36 202-225-8220
Christopher Murphy CT05 202-225-4476
Frank Pallone NJ06 202-225-4671 @FrankPallone
Bobby Rush IL01 202-225-4372

Hill staffers privately tell us your calls are “very helpful.” Please post a comment about your calls so we can update our whip list here:
http://www.democrats.com/singl…..ittee-whip

Also, be sure to send our Single Payer petition to your Representatives, and forward it to everyone you know who needs and deserves better healthcare:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-petition

And finally if you can be in DC on Thursday July 30, join us to celebrate the 44th birthday of Medicare and rally/lobby for single-payer:
http://www.democrats.com/node/19877

okay, I am totally confused. I thought that what you were whipping for was a “strong public option” for the current HR 3200, not HR 676.

It strikes me as incongruous when supporters of a program that can be shown to save lives and money based on experience are labeled “purists”, and supporters of a bill that’s complex, unproven, second-best, Rube Goldberg-esque, and can’t be shown to work based on experience self-identify as “pragmatists.”

Yes, it’s a funny old world. Check out this interesting interview with John Geymen. Asked “2. What sort of reform do you think we’ll end up getting from this president and Congress?” Geyman answered:

Congress is shaping up a failed reformm bill for many reasons, but biggest is that it doesn’t even consider single-payer and is trying to “reform” the system by accomodating a failed multi-payer system.

Not a lot of detail yet as to how the exchanges will work. But we can be sure that it will be complicated and only some people can try to change. The idea of the public plan 10 years ago was for a bg one, maybe 120 million people – now the CBO is estimating only 10 million because of all the restrictions.

Remind me again why we’re whipping for FAIL instead of trying to achieve sucess?

Oh, and as far as “purists,” so called, allying with obstructionists, Glenn Greenwald did something very like that with his “Strange Bedfellows” idea. Did you have a problem with that?

I’m a little unclear on what “understanding how government works” might mean.

Does it include the idea of waiting so long to take up a set of policy issues that you advocate for the inferior policy instead of the best one?

Here’s a plan:

How about hoping that progressive A-listers with the big megaphones wise up and advocate for the policy they know in their hearts and minds is right?

Here’s one way to start and it’s incremental: Whip to make sure that states get to experiment with single payer plans (because as I understand it, ERISA could prevent that). That’s what Kucinich did in the Senate, but this need to get in the bill, go through conference, etc. Kucinich, by the way, got that passed with a strategy that combined the votes of conservatives — to whom he appealed on a “state’s rights” basis — and genuine progressives, a “strange bedfellows” strategy that I commend to everyone’s attention…

I don’t doubt it, but it would be fun to declare in response, “Oh! So you prefer socialism then, given its fiscally conservative nature” ; )

Just signed. Thanks Jane.

You are correct. Jane brought up HR 676 (which has zero chance of passing) only in response to the incessant bitching of some who think she should be whipping a hopeless cause as opposed to one that has a chance of passing.

Dems thinking of staying?

Dems mull skipping panel, bringing healthcare to floor
http://thehill.com/leading-the…..07-23.html

I’m all for actual reform*, though I’m not understanding the deadline. Obama doesn’t seem to think there is one.

NOTE * Whipping to make sure that single payer experiments could take place in the states (the Kucinich amendment) would be a very good start on that project.

Why not compromise, then, and whip to make sure that single payer experiments could take place in the states?

NOTE Oh, and as far as this “actual chance of passing” talking point, I have this quaint concept that citizens get to advocate for the best policy. Abolition, for example, didn’t “have a chance of passing.” At the beginning.

Hmmm, and what kind of idiot do you have to be to see that a public option that’s already been negotiated down to a CBO predicted enrollment of, at best, no more than 4% of Americans under 65, isn’t exactly “robust”?

The Dem’s have really pushed themselves in to a corner. They gave up single payer because they thought it would be easier to pass a “public option”, so what’s the debate about? Single payer. Except because of the Democrats decision not to advance single payer, they can not debate single payer on the merits and instead are busy trying their utmost to prove the “public option” is not single payer.

By the way, how politically feasible is your “robust” public option? I mean, since according to every plan outlined so far, the Dem’s have already given away the store. How many pledges you got? What, like, 15?

By all means, advocate until the cows come home. I do it all the time and it has gotten me zip. I have a hypothetically “progressive” rep who is a kabuki expert. He does whatever the leadership tells him to do. What I want is single payer, but I’m not going to get it any more than I got the Dems to
-implement a real cap and trade system much less a carbon tax
-or put timelines in the supplemental,
-or send TARP money to regional and community banks instead of the crooks at Goldman Sachs etc
-or defeat the FISA Amendments Act
-or impeach Bush and Cheney
-or …

FWIW, I love the idea of the Kucinich Amendment I hope it passes, but given how hard it is just to get everyone who “strongly supports” the public option to actually commit to defeating legislation without it, I’m not holding my breath.

And with all due respect, abolition is a poor analogy to the current legislation, given that it did not come about via a peaceful legislative process.

MoveOn is running their own petition–can’t hurt to sign both, I guess.