There are ten Democratic senators from Obama states who have so far not committed to PO, and 8 such senators from McCain states, according to the People For The American Way (PFAW).

Assuming PFAW is correct, that means there are currently 42 votes in the Senate for PO.

Jeff Bingaman (D) NM is one of those senators. He also serves on the Finance Committee. And he just said he’s favorably disposed to the Schumer PO amendment!!!!!!

So the count is now 43.

New Mexico is currently a Solid Democratic state (thank you, Barack). There are three other Democratic senator public option skeptics from similar Solid Democratic states, Tom Carper DE, Herb Kohl WI and Joe Lieberman CT. Does Bingaman’s decision today mean it is more likely those other three senators will also come on board? If the answer to that is yes, then the count may be up to 46 as a result of Bingaman’s decision.

With regard to one of those three senators, Tom Carper, we may know the answer to that today, since he is also a member of the Senate Finance Committee. Stay tuned.

Ensign is so clever. blerk.

Ensign cherrypicking statistics to “prove” the US has the best healthcare in the world. USA! USA! USA!/s

the usual rethug argument is to say that it’s the “best” ’cause we spend more money on healthcare per capita than any other country in the world x2. “more money” = “better”, “most money” = “best”

Ensign: Tort reform is the answer!

like he cherrypicked his wedding vows

LOL! Oooof. Who would have an affair with that?

Kyl says Medicare will go broke, citing his own experts. Maybe it wouldn’t if they’d leave it alone, quit cutting its budget, and repay the funds (with interest) that they have raided from the fund…

There’s a chance to ask Kohl questions available right now at Time Goes By, an elder blog. Have at it!

Kyl says that the PO will crowd out private plans. Says private insurers will simply not be able to compete despite the restrictions on who can get into the PO in every one of the bills before the congress).

Medicare won’t go broke if its constituency is universal.

Jeff Bingaman (D) NM is one of those senators. He also serves on the Finance Committee. And he just said he’s favorably disposed to the Schumer PO amendment!!!!!!

don’t buy the hype

– dfh CW says they all loves them this weaker of the 2 Schumer amendments and will likely vote yes (so they can say so come re election time) but will vote against the final bill

watching how they vote on the stronger Cantwell/Schumer will tell us if the CW is correct

Interstate sale of health insurance = race to the bottom.

If you take out car accident deaths and gun deaths (he’s trying to soft pedal the fact that gun nuts kill people in this country).

Sen Ensign said this uh the next step to control healthcare costs if we follow his logic would be to ban guns and have automatic seatbelts that need to be clicked on before the car would drive.
Ensign is very worried about healthcare costs remove these costs/deaths/accidents and America is doing great.
so it stands to follow that the next step is….

Kyl is now undermining the co-op plan by citing the size of the state-by-state pools.

Doesn’t seem to understand that part of the solution needs to be opening this plan up nationwide.

I can’t believe the GOP gave us this nugget to use on tea baggers where is Perris?

Most of Kyl’s arguments & comments were pretty incoherent.

I’ll say! just think credit cards and the loss of usury laws.

Stabenow now challenging the statistics on cancer survival rates.

Panera? *g*

Stabenow says that the preventive measures requirements in the bill will help ensure that cancer survival rates are maintained as high as possible.

This might explain Kyl’s problem – he landed on his head
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..nntelnaes/

actually it well, unless cost growth is contained… which is precisely why the rethug position is so untenable: without reform, costs will continue to spiral upward, which will not only hurt the ability of consumers to access the private system but also mean still higher costs (and financial crisis) for Medicare. The status quo threatens Medicare as much as it does the rest of the healthcare system.

The Strong PO is the way out of this problem, by establishing a competitive dynamic with a public government-admistered industry price-setter that’ll force the rest of the sector to begin to contain costs.. and yet this is exactly the piece of reform that the conservadems will gut. It all makes zero sense.

Stabenow is now providing comparison of VA vs. Medicare vs. employer-based systems. Says that the various systems we have in place right now are what complicate this process.

No GOP mention of immigrants driving up healthcare costs yet? With the cameras watching is the GOP worried about Hispanic voters? Glen Beck and Lou Dobbs will be crushed.

Neo confederates using the federal government to impose corporate dominance and the least common denominator as if states’ rights didn’t matter. No matter what the blue states do, all a red state has to do is to relieve corporations of regulations and the blue states will be forced to allow them to do business across state lines.

in rethug logic, the next step would be to issue everyone with guns (since that’ll reduce gun violence if everybody has an equal risk of getting shot) and cut all funds to public transportation (if poor people can’t travel, there won’t be any more accidents). Voila.. healthcare reform achieved, Ensign style.

I hope the MSM is reading this you folks are shooting down GOP lies quicker than I have ever seen.

Stabenow is pointing out that according to the CBO, only about 25% of the uninsured will go to the PO. The remainder will be covered through some form of private option. Says she can’t understand why the opposition to the PO is so strong. Says 68% of voters want this choice, but that most of them won’t take it!

rethug logic

LOL

Stabenow pointing out same tired arguments were used against MediCare in the 60’s

“lots of demagoguery about govt – we’re the govt !”

mithras… thanks a lot for your blow by blow writings…

Stabenow says 78% of physicians want to see this option. Says that large majorities of various important groups support this. Says this is the most effective way to control costs, and to ensure that the other reforms in this bill work. Says this is the best way to control costs.

The Republicans are correct in saying that the presence of a public option will take the legs out from under the for-profit insurance racket, but I see this as a feature, not a bug.

Recess! Thanks Marcy

Baucus now calling for 45 minute recess until 1:45 p.m. EST.

Any Dem Senators suggesting the Senate and House get private insurance if they vote against the Public Option?
That would be a great amendment:)

Amen!

Gonna have to leave this to ya’ll. Have to get SOME work done today! :)

but but but

the AMA is against it so that disproves your point /s

hasta luego!

Every time I hear this “government is bad” crap, I invariably retort:

“Then you won’t mind not calling the FD if your house is on fire. Oh, and forget the PD if you’re getting mugged. And while we’re at it, no more driving on evil government-funded roads and bridges. And take yourself off the electrical grid while you’re at it, etc…”

Dumbasses.

well.. that and allowing private insurers to impose the death penalty on those who are sick. uh.. I mean, death panels. nah.. never mind. not going there…

They have private insurance – just have stricter guidlines..

Sen. Stabenow rules!

Thanks for liveblogging this, emptywheel!

thanks EW !

and if we get to vote, I’m going with Rockefeller’s “Banditry!” as this morning’s highlight

LOL Good point. The next time somebody gives me that “government is the problem” crap, I’ll just come back with, “Oh, so you want Goldman Sachs / Walmart / Enron running the COURTS, too?!?”

Sen Dodd and I discuss the idea of naming the public option in the HELP committee bill for Ted Kennedy (video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mYccbRUKvU

And- You wouldn’t mind stepping down from your government job and stop using your government health care and all of the other perks you get from being an elected government official. Just stick to sucking the teat of the corporate monopoly.

Rockefeller repeating Wendell Potter’s description of anything less than the “public option”

“Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act”

CCCHHHINg

Goodness, a new thread and you came up with another good one!

Too funny!

Rockefeller is sure going to bat for the uninsured (lots of folks in W Virginia uninsured)

Sure wish he would have batted this hard for accountability when it came to Feith and all of the other warmongers who lied our nation into a war based on a “pack of lies”

Mary, if you have a web connection that allows you to view msnbc online, but this will do your heart good — it’s kind of a hoot to watch a teevee host rein in the bullshit of a lobbyist and then request that the “audience notice my guest’s refusal to answer [my question about why he’s protecting huge uncompetitive healthCo monopolies].”

Very, very refreshing ;-))))

I actually did not realize that ONLY healthCos have an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust legislation (!).

Mary, I hope you have a few chuckles over these.

I tip my cap to you.

I suspect that it’s a ramp up to claim that ‘choice’ would come from allowing people to buy their health care from ‘the cheapest source’, even in another state.

It’s thinking like this that leads to loony tunes proposals like allowing 30 million Californians to buy their insurance from, say Alabama which may have super-weak laws and an Insurance Commissioner with 20 or so employees. Imagine the possibilities for incoherence, confusion, and hopelessness.

Slamming my head on the keyboard…!

Stabenow did very well – I’m a bit surprised – what happened to the Stabenow who voted FOR the bankruptcy bill that helped the banks and screwed the people?

Are they having lunch in a government-run dining room?

State health insurance corporations are using state law to exercise discrimination which undermines constitutional law. Segregationist and slave owners both claimed states rights to exercise discrimination under the color of law. Now corporate insures want a life tax? Now state tax codes are used to penalize citizens who do not want to enter into contracts with corporate scum? Go figure…….. a life tax to support corporations which use law to rape America and the republic?

I am in love. Who is that dude being sooooooo mean to the lobbyist? Can you fix me up. Oh wait….. I’m married.

Major league baseball is also exempt.

Actually I think Schumer is helping the overall cause. The name of the game here is not to get a good public option. The name of the game here is to get a public option into the bill that is voted out of Finance and to get a public option into the Senate bill.

Once we’ve done that then a public option is a guarantee in the final legislation. At that point the joint House/Senate conference committee takes over. The two positions then will be Senate: weak PO, House: strong PO. Obviously a compromise between those two positions will yield a better result than a compromise between no PO and a PO.

kind of like shopping around for state-administered 529 college savings mutual fund.

Visit unspeakable tortures on the Islamic world and construct a national security structure to prevent them fighting back so that you can get your own damn cheap gasoline in your car!

If the insurance companies all had to follow the same rules nationwide, it wouldn’t be a problem. the fact that they currently operate with different rule-sets in different states and that we don’t have any antitrust oversight of them is a significant contributing factor to the current set of problems we face.

I really do think that a nationwide PO is a critical minimum ( the keystone, if you will) to effective healthcare insurance reform, which will address the real issues to health care in this country.

501 c 3 tax exempt corporate health insurers, with no tax liabilities crafting law with law makers designed to enslave you?

Whoa, shit! Who was that masked man? That guy laid some significant wood on the worthless lobbyist.

R’s keep quoting the Lewin Group. Have any Dems pointed out who funds Lewin?

ahhhhhhhhhh US HEALTHCARE

Before the proceedings fire back up again, let me delurk just long enough to thank FDL, Marcy, and the posters following this thing on Cspan.

Just by following the comments I know that I’ll be better informed than most of the citizenry. (And it fits right in with my lazy nature.)

Thanks, pups, for doing all the heavy lifting.

Ain’t democracy grand? And a night out to the ball game in a nosebleed seat with a Coke and a stale dog thrown in runs around 50 bucks. Shit, it costs 10 to park the rig before walking through the gate.

Slave owners Segregationists and now Corporate Servitude……

so THAT’s how they get away with that.

The “East India Tea Corporations” was a “”tax exempt corporation”" which taxed the colonists for tea while maximizing profit for the King!

Quite the ripoff, isn’t it? As much as I love baseball I refuse to spend one dime at Tropicana Field, a domed stadium, to see the Tampa Bay Rays. Radio is free.

That said, I will go to see the Dodgers if they come during inter-league. Miss my Dodgers. *sob*

There is NO crying in baseball.

Seems federal law should protect the rights of Americans from the state discrimination operating corporations just as the feds protected the civil rights of Americans from the Jim Crow laws of the south???

Jim Bunning is one base short of a diamond.

He should have gone to the health care industry for campaign $$ after McConnell et al cut him off from the NRSC nipple. He’d be sitting fat right now with the (relatively) unpaid shilling he’s doing.

707!!! ROFLMAO

my comments aren’t really about Schumer – they are all about various weasels and the skirts they hope to hide behind

like many here, am pleasantly surprised that it is Rockefeller and Schumer actually leading on something as vital as PO

I haven’t been able to watch the hearing but did catch that R’s have been quoting United Health funded Lewin Group. I am curious if any Dems have spoken up & said that Lewin might be a tad biased.

EW has a new thread

Senator Rockefeller pointed it out early on this am

I’ve only been able to scan the comments on the threads at work but Rockefeller’s performance blew me away.

Hear this Senators…….people are not “”property”” as Justice Taney concluded in Dred Scott vs Sanford, to be manipulated by state run corporations seeking to tax “”life”” for profit?

Bad link.

Try this link if cbl2’s link does not work

new thread

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN3_wm.aspx

Good. Glad to hear that at least one did.

I’d like to respond to a comment from the previous thread:

foothillsmike September 29th, 2009 at 9:09 am 181
In response to Knoxville @ 171
Hate to say this but when you send money to DCCC and DSCC you are supporting folks like Mike Ross and Blanche Lincoln.

I specifically wrote that I sent money to DCCC and LESS money to DSCC. In fact, in August, the DCCC significantly outraised their Republican counterparts in the House, while the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) outraised their Democratic counterparts in the Senate.

I’d say that that’s because Democrats are much more happy with what the House Democrats are doing re health care reform (most of them aren’t Mike Ross and Jim Cooper’s!), while Democrats are very, very unhappy with what the Senate Democrats are doing.

THE BIGGER PROBLEM IS IN THE SENATE, AND SO I RECOMMEND SENDING LESS MONEY TO THE DSCC.

I sent the money I didn’t send to the DSCC – and added some! – to FDL Action’s ad against Arkansas Sen Lincoln and Rep Ross and to Health Care for America NOW!

Thanks.

Senator Crapo’s unfortunate name certainly describes his argument that the Rockefeller PO is bad because it kills competition by reducing costs.

Duh?????

That is the core of their argument. Mind blowing.

Tort Reform is such a blatant subterfuge one would think the Rethugs would be embarrassed even uttering the words!!

This is from a Commonweal Institute Report from 2003, entitled, “The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law,” by David C. Johnson, describing the real agenda behind tort reform…

The Political Agenda – Defunding Trial Lawyers

The alliance of the tort reform movement with the far right involves an agenda that goes beyond such tort-specific issues as jury awards. These linked movements want more than just restricting litigants’ rights and weakening regulatory constraints on business. By working to limit jury awards, and thus limiting the income of plaintiffs’ attorneys, conservatives seek to “defund the trial lawyers,” thereby undermining the attorneys’ ability to lobby effectively and to contribute money to the conservatives’ political opposition.

In a candid article discussing the Right’s agenda, Grover Norquist writes, “Modest tort reform, much of which has been actively considered by committees in both houses, would defund the trial lawyers, now second only to the unions—and this is debatable—as the funding source of the Left in America.”27 He has also written, “Modest tort reform would deprive pillar number three–greedy trial lawyers–of billions from American consumers. In some states trial lawyers give more to Democrats than union leaders do.”28

This agenda is further illustrated in an August 10, 2003 Seattle Times story, “GOP using ‘tort reform’ as powerful political club”:29

“The drive to limit court-awarded damages in civil lawsuits, often called ‘tort reform,’ usually is framed as a contest between accident victims’ rights and corporations’ desire to be protected from unreasonably high judgments. Increasingly, however, the battle is deeply partisan, as conservative groups try to mobilize the political right and cripple a key Democratic constituency, trial lawyers. . .

‘It’s a double kiss,’ said a key strategist involved in the battle taking place in Congress, state legislatures, bar associations and local judicial elections. ‘Republicans get to force one of the biggest backers of Democrats to spend money just to survive and, at the same time, please everybody from the Chamber (of Commerce) to the drug companies, to the Realtors, doctors, you name it.’

Ed Lazarus, a Democratic political operative who works for the American Trial Lawyers Association, said: ‘(I)t’s very clear what the program is — it is to defund the Democratic Party.’ For the GOP, he said, ‘it’s a double-header: more income for your side, and you take income from the other.’ ”

The above-mentioned Norquist stories make public what many have suspected – that the Right is not involved in advocating tort reform solely due to their concern over the insurance rates paid by doctors or damage awards paid by businesses. In a coordinated effort to weaken their political opposition, they are similarly targeting the Labor movement through “Paycheck Protection” legislation,30 teachers unions through advocacy of vouchers,31 aid to the urban poor, and attacking voting rights.

new thread.

Which part of that it’s not an entitlement was not clear to Cornyn?