thanks for clearing up the state of play, esp. with regard to the progressive caucus via Grijalva. Have you noted Chris Bowers’ list of people the White House invited over just a night or two ago? He thinks those are the people they are hoping to flip. http://openleft.com/diary/17666/counting-votes-on-health-reform-in-the-house

I guess the question is how many of them are willing to trade being a congressman for maybe on ambassadorship?

Vote for the bill and then you can escape to, say, Norway. That would be a good deal.

Stupak was on Chris Matthews last night saying that in the current Health care legislation that (put the page numbers in my notes will find later) it says that “they must” “must” provide coverage for abortions. Does anyone know if this is true? You can see the clip over at Hardball

I believe he said it was page 30 or 33, one of those.

This might lead to promises of odd-month rotating ambassadorships to places like Rwanda over the next few months. European options might require odd-weeks.

Or a lucrative job working for insurance or pharma.

the most ink for his “Obama is a bumbling stooge” campaign

It pays to have your own private PR department. Once Rahm has Obama out of the way (that is the line of succession, I’m pretty sure) then everything will be smooth sailing.

This is something that current and former supporters of Obama can’t understand…

Why is Obama destroying the entire Democratic party and possibly himself on this? The only conclusion that one can come to is that the deal to bailout the poor business model, known as the health insurance companies, by mandating the American people (especially the kids), under threat of the IRS and the feds, to patronize it, was made long before the election.

How sad. And it really stinks.

I’m no fan of the House bill either because IMO that PO is weak assed tea. The only PO I feel might work is the original Hacker one.

But one has to laugh out loud at these ass clowns when all they would have to do is a simple thing like add a PO and it suddenly becomes a way forward in the mid-terms.

The fact THAT is undoable, while MAYBE passing this POS is doable, just shows the sway the incurance companies have in the place.

Assholes. All of ‘em. Pwned Assholes.

Yet, many of us probably just got another robomail from MoveOn, or some other D oriented organization, wanting money to make the last push that will prove all of the Rs wrong about Obama’s approach to the Health Insurance repairs. Us or them.

OMG, all the liberal bloggers pimping David Broder. It’s too funny. Y’all are going to rue the day you decided to cozy up to Broder. Yuck! Gee, don’t lose your principles.

Rahm seems to serve as the most useful scapegoat for Obama. If Obama were really such a stooge that Rahm was actually running things how could you respect Obama?

Having spent a goodly portion of the past year immersed inside the medical care community, seeing the travails of those around me as they try to cope with the current state of the healthcare system, I fail to understand the glee here.

Adios.

All the public wants is access to public insurance. All Congress has to do is give us access to Medicare. It’s really that simple. I think they just can not believe the public refuses to buy their forced private insurance plan. They were sure we’d fall for it.

If you return Prairie Sunshine, perhaps you can let all of us know which parts of the senate bill will emerge to help the sick and dying in the next, say, two to three years?

So the House might just stand up to the Senate and White House after all? Too bad self-proclaimed “fighters for real health care reform” like Anthony Wiener (aka the “fighter” who talks tough but won’t fight) refuses to stand up and demand real reform in exchange for his vote.

Why can’t Senate Democrats use reconciliation to include a public option?

Let Obama work for the votes to get real reform for the American people.

OMG, all the liberal bloggers pimping David Broder. It’s too funny. Y’all are going to rue the day you decided to cozy up to Broder. Yuck! Gee, don’t lose your principles.

Acknowledging that by stopped clock or blind squirrel principle Broder got one right does not constitute “cozying up,” much less sacrificing principles. In my opinion you should give a little more consideration to your framing prior to clicking submit.

I don’t think it’s glee. I think it’s cynicism about the effort and an end game that is less than clear.

In Hollywood, there’s an inevitable studio process whereby someone gets their hands on a fresh script and they decide to make it. But before they do, they hire some big name, really expensive writer to come in an re-write it first — whether it needs it or not.

The logic is, that even if the movie flops, at that point the studio exec has covered his or her ass, and they can say “hey, William Goldman — well, it should have worked.”

That seems to be the process we’re engaged in right now. “I did everything I could, not my fault it bombs.” I’m certainly open to other suggestions because I don’t see any point in that, but it’s the only explanation I find that even remotely tracks with what’s happening.

More than a few folks have suggested this theater might be about hiding the fact that an instant revenue stream could be more important than whatever problems the rest of the bill might introduce. Even being against drug reimportation, as well, could be motivated by the fear of a loss in tax revenues. Cynical, rational or just plain wrong are probably not enough options to explain what we are watching.

I tend to go with the echo chamber theory but I’m willing to be persuaded.

The end result of these “reforms” that Obama’s trying to sell the American people will be a relatively inferior health care system that costs far too much. Even beyond the next two to three years, how does this bill represent an improvement in the long run?

The favored meme of the mainstream media: House Leaders push toward health vote by Easter –

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100304/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

So this is just more Kabuki?

I always think quoting Broder is a mistake. I mean, “got one right”. You mean, agreed with you. So he agreed with you, I wouldn’t use that as an example of how right one must be.

We’ll have to coin some other unit of measurement here like we did the Friedman for the Iraq war (rolling six months).

In reality they deny us what they all have access to because they know how much better it is. They don’t want the rest of us in the public system because in their minds we didn’t earn it! The folks who have public jobs with all the benefits and the elected pols many don’t want the public in on THEIR private little bonanza. You don’t see Gov’t employees rallying for the rest of us do u? The Corp. / Gov’t axis has nothing but contempt for the rest of us.

Huh, I read that same paragraph and thought it was snark, like the comments about her and that right wing blowhard calling for Rahm’s firing, who’s name escapes me now.

Sometimes it’s hard for me tell when it’s snark and when it isn’t. Helps dumb folks like me when they add the snark tag. Should’ve realized it wasn’t I guess when there was no tag.

I always think quoting Broder is a mistake.

I see you prefer misdirection to an actual defense of your statement that, “Y’all are going to rue the day you decided to cozy up to Broder. Yuck! Gee, don’t lose your principles.” This post contained a link to the Broder column, not a quote.

Swing and a miss.

Yeah, you are right.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Thanx for the post Sister Jane but could you help an old, brokendown healthcare provider rise above the muck of all the inside baseball subplots and backstories and tell me were the process stands right now on gettin the fixes needed to the Senate bill to make it possible for us to move into the November elections and beyond with an intact political coalition that can force change the direction of this country and get us the fuck outta the wars we’re in?

Here’s where I think we are: The Democrats in the House of Representatives need either a public option or a removal of the mandate in order to vote for the bill as it stands. The Democrats in the Senate can martial 50 votes in the Senate for a public option if the White House gives the go ahead. Nancy Pelosi can wrangle (no pun intended) the votes if the public option or a fix to the mandate is advanced. So just like in the fake education crisis in Delaware, the White House and the spinnings of The Tiny Dancer are all that holds up a solution.

If this is true then I am back to what I’ve been sayin all along, kill the God damned thing and hang the failure right around the President’s neck.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THIS GOD DAMNED THING HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH!!!

So this is just more Kabuki?

I’m not a professional oddsmaker, but when one is talking about the actions of this Congress, I’d say the odds of this being so must be, oh, I dunno, roughly 100 percent.

Give or take.

I’m still waiting for someone on Firedoglake to tell me how you were going to pass a better version of reform? Wondering where your votes were coming from? Give me names and a whip count that get’s your version of reform through the House and Senate. Where is it?

All you kill the bill people – when do you get a chance to pass anouther bill? When does this happen again? When this bill fails why do you think things will be any different than 1994? Or do we wait until the system bankrupts the country and the Republicans just kill Medicare and the governemnt says “we can’t afford to pay for insurance anymore, we’re out of that business now, it’s up to the American people.”

I understand why some blogs call FDL Firebaggers now. You people are just as stupid as the teabaggers. You just come from a different direction but you still don’t actually exist in the real world.

Why bring up Broder? What does his opinion on the matter demonstrate other than he feels just like some liberal bloggers about Rahm Emanuel? Personally, if it were me, I would question my instincts about Rahm if it were me rather than use Broder’s opinion as supporting evidence.

ob named the brother of a wavering rep. to the US Circuit Court.
(sorry, dont have the cite from yesterday)

Perhaps it was an attempt at snark. Good snark attempts to shed light through the use of irony. In this case it was simply an insulting misrepresentation.

You people are just as stupid as the teabaggers.

Thanks.

And I’ll gladly answer your question, right after you answer mine.

How can you call yourself a liberal or a progressive and support a bill that will kill any and all chances of single payer EVER occurring. Because if you think this bill became law, and the insurance industry got bigger and stronger, that the day would EVER COME where the Congress could take them on again and pass single payer, well then you must be….. stupid?

For myself it’s more like socially appropriate anger against political cynicism. Never let them know you’re weakness.

Offering people a terrible current choice against a potentially worse set of options that will cover more people but is designed to provide the bulk of the gains to businesses that benefit from the current mess. This insurance reform feels like a modern day version of “let them eat cake”. They seem to think that they can simply play Jake Elwood’s “It wasn’t my fault” scene and we will fall to the ground.

Personally, if it were me, I would question my instincts about Rahm if it were me rather than use Broder’s opinion as supporting evidence.

No one, I repeat NO ONE has used Broder to bolster their criticism of Rahm. Yet another misrepresentation to distract from your original comment. You appear to have trouble remembering what it was, so here it is again.

“Y’all are going to rue the day you decided to cozy up to Broder. Yuck! Gee, don’t lose your principles.”

Clearly you cannot admit that you might have been mistaken. When the day arrives that people rue cozying up to Broder please remind me of your prophesy and I will admit that you were correct.

First one must understand Obama went to Harvard so he is not a complete idiot.

Obama just didn’t wake up one day and say I am going to govern like a Moderate or Right wing Republican. Obama was the tool use by the Corporate Elite to keep a Progressive out of the white house in 2008. PERIOD

The Obama HCR scam is dead, it has been dead.

David Gergen last night stated it would be foolish for Dems to vote on the Senate Health Care Scam Bill with no Republicans votes, giving Republicans the silver Bullet they need to destroy Dems in November, Republicans are going to all campaign like Scott Brown, they are going to scream about how they will kill Obama Health Care.

What DEM can justify in the depths of a Depression forcing people to buy Health Insurance? Every State in the UNION will kill this mandate.

Charlie Cook all but told House Dems to get re-elected run against the white house and the senate.

Anyone with any political knowledge know that 2011 midterms are going to be base election. With Dems Base furious at the white house, who is going to be dumb enought to follow this white house to un-employment line?

You just come from a different direction but you still don’t actually exist in the real world.

I’m guessing this is a passing reference to Romans 12:2. Yeah, I went to Sunday school when I as a kid too.

Thanks for the reference and the general compliment.

Yer wastin’ yer time, ratfood. Bob prolly has more coherent arguments.

Here you go. We actually have documented the 51 votes in the Senate who have said they would support a public option:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/29/list-of-51-senate-democrats-who-support-a-public-option-whats-stopping-them-now/

All they have to do, as we’ve outlined, is pass the House bill. Then nobody in the House has to take another vote and risk their seat:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/04/if-health-care-deserves-an-up-or-down-vote-have-the-senate-pass-the-house-bill/

That clear enough for you?

The longer this takes, the more Rep’s are going to give up and vote “no,” I’m afraid. No one is talking about the parts of the bill the voters really want to see passed (hint: it’s not tort reform or “buying insurance across state lines”); everyone is concentrating on the mandate, and as necessary as the mandate is for making the actuaries happy, no one likes it. And the longer it takes, the more whining there will be about the way the bill is structured to phase in many of the most beneficial parts in years, not months. This is a real shame – if the original idea had been to open up Medicare to everyone we might be having arguments about restructuring Medicare’s payment system, but the public would have loved it and would have accepted a mandate.

Jane – I think you mean “loathe” when describing the way the public feels about the insurance companies (“…the product of the private insurance companies they loath.)

All the public wants is access to public insurance.

Completely false statement.

Citizen Hamsher:

Most of the time the inside Hollywood analogies help clear the fog in a discussion or argument but in this case the problem IS the Hollywood-like politics that have brought our system to the mess we’re in. My question to you, Sister Jane is: what is the alternative to killin’ the bill in the House of Representatives and hangin the failure right around Obama’s neck in November?

Undoubtedly, despite the fact that Bob can only speak three or four phrases.

When this bill fails why do you think things will be any different than 1994?

Well, both the US economy and the Republican Party have at this point squandered all of the potential they once had in 1994, so there’s two vital differences between now and 1994… and I rather doubt that the current residents of Congress are going to suffer defeat in election after election out of some steadfast refusal to do something constructive about health care reform, at least at some later date. (Remember, mind you, that the Senate bill does not count as doing something constructive.)

Not following you here alan???

The PO has consistantly polled in the majority. The PO stands for Public Option, or… Public Insurance.

So why is that a completely false statement? I got lost somewhere…

Michele Bachmann said on Larry King last night that Obama (that’s what she calls him, always, like Palin does) nominated a Congressman’s brother to be a judge yesterday and then had that Congressman up to the White House to ‘twist his arm to change his vote’ on health care reform. She wants an independent investigation of the steps being taken by the White House to get the votes in the House.

I wonder if Ken Starr is available.

Citizen alan1tx:

WTF…that is in fact what the public wants and there ain’t no other take on where the mass of people are on this issue. The public option or a by-in to Medicare is not only what the people have been sayin since August but is the only political way out for the Senate Democrats.

First one must understand Obama went to Harvard so he is not a complete idiot.

You do realize, of course, that Bush Junior also went to Harvard…

Uh oh…someone’s been nipping at the kool-aid.

destroying the democratic party may be their plan… As long as they are corporate, they don’t care what party they are.

nipping???

Perhaps they’re hoping that the U.S. will move from 37th to 30th in the WHO rankings. That’s visionary.

Well played sir/madam.

LOL

Citizen OldFatGuy:

Don’t waste yer breath there Brother trolls don’t recognize the logic of an argument. Actually, logic and reality melt the little critters into a puddle of troll goo.

No, just earning their paycheck.

Really?

Jane, you ought to insert a picture of Seth Meyer right next to this quote.

Am I missing something, or is there no WH angst over PROGRESSIVES in the House voting “no”?

Rahm + Obama seem to be continuing down their path of “they’ve got nowhere else to go” — the path that served them SO well in Massachusetts.

WRT Grijalva’s saying he may oppose: how about the others who said “no mandates” and “I’m only voting for a bill that contains a Public Option”?

How stupid do House members have to be to agree to pass the Senate piece-of-shit bill on the “promise” that “changes will be made? [Answer = obvious]

Heh. Ok, maybe kool-aid bonging? Can you earn a paycheck for that?

Here’s the paradox in this whole situation. The fact that Democratic members of the House are scared to vote for it makes the bill seem all the more scary and left-wing even though it’s a Republican’s dream healthcare reform bill. And contains not just a few Republican ideas, but aside from Bernie Sanders’s clinics is almost exclusively Republican ideas. And the freshman and sophomore House members can’t sell that in the slightly Republican districts.

But the public option, which is a moderate’s fix to the Republican bill is wildly popular where people actually have been allowed to understand what it is. But the Congress can’t seem to do the people’s business because they are afraid of the election.

And single-payer, which is understandable and if passed would be the most popular of all, hasn’t been allowed off the starting blocks.

It is maddening. It’s like Congress (both parties) intensely wants to drive off a cliff because governing is “too hard”.

Something like 65% of people poll that they are in favor of the Government offering a Public Option.

Far fewer (15 to 20%) would consider signing up themselves, and the way the PO is currently structured the CBO estimates that only 2% would.

The Bush Republicans shamelessly paraded their lies and larceny for all the world to see. It was like they were intentionally destroying their own party. Now Obama and the DLC are totally trashing the Democratic Party. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now. Could it be that the Oligarchy WANTS us to hate and despise our political institutions?

Am I missing something, or is there no WH angst over PROGRESSIVES in the House voting “no”?

Is it really the progressives who are holding up the “House pass the Senate bill” meme? Or is it the Blue Dogs in the House?

Does anyone here have a vote count on that?

Then you still lost me, because the quote you said was completely false was:

All the public wants is access to public insurance.

So, if 65% poll in support of offering a Public Option, isn’t that saying 65% want access to it?

Spare me your “real world” condescension.

It hinges on the intended meaning of the word “all.” 65% is not ALL of the public, or the public option is not ALL the public wants, they would also like affordable meds, etc..

I hope that helped muddy the water. “g”

Citizen Flamer,

I’m not against a PO, just this PO.

(I’ll admit that when I first read “All the public wants is access to public insurance.”, I read it as “Everyone wants public insurance”. My bad there.

Ok, gotcha.

Not lost anymore.

Thanks RF!!!

“You people are just as stupid as the teabaggers. You just come from a different direction but you still don’t actually exist in the real world.”

I exist in a real world paying where $5,000 a year for a 65% bronze plan versus an extra 2.5% of my income to the IRS, in exchange for nothing, isn’t much of a choice.

You live in a fantasy world where insurance companies only make 3.9% in profits, where this piece of shit legislation will “provide coverage” for 30 million people, where it’s the best we can do, where people will like it once it’s imposed on them, where the Democrats will hold on to power by passing it and where you hold the conceit that you’re the only adults in the room.

Adults are people who’ve learned that if they bend over and take it up the ass it will only be the beginning of the abuse.

The DLC’s ideas changed the Democratic Party when Clinton was elected. The Party signed on to Friedman’s free market theories and were instrumental in NAFTA. By 1994, the Democratic Party no longer represented the working class, shifting to the pro-business ideology we see today.

Citizen alan1tx:

That’s the entire point, Citizen, your tail just grew teeth and bit you in the ass. A majority of over 60% want the option of a public plan available to force competition in the system. The number of people participating of course depends entirely on the pricing and the impact that competition would have on those insurance comapanies that stayed in the game. The CBO number was a conservative estimate based on the most limited plan in order to score it within the budget rule limits.

Wow, the only alleged “adult” in the room just made a very childish argument.

How so?

Some people think the mandates without a public option is worse than nothing. Duh

Stupak … says that “they must” “must” provide coverage for abortions.

And Betsey McCaughey could point out the ‘death panel’ text. It is NOT in there.

I lived that story S.D. I quit the party over NAFTA. I know why the DLC sold out the working class. They did it for money ………………

Oh wait – thanks S.D.

The polling question should have been all along:

Over the next decade, millions of Americans will lose their private insurance, or it will become too expensive for them. If that happened to you or a member of your family, would you favor having access to an affordable public plan?

This is the question that Obama should have been asking voters every time he spoke about health insurance reform. The answer would have been an overwhelming “yes.”

Because excepting a mandate to pay private insurance and pharma whatever they want to charge… with nothing but promise of ever skyrocketing prices from them… while leaving tens of millions without care, and bankrupting the entire nation to do so, is not good for me, my country, or my party.

Kill this damn bill!

I think their “Plan B” is to do a stripped-down bill that expands Medicaid and makes kids eligible to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26.

Rahm leaked it on the day of the summit IIRC.

That’s a post.

Done

Wouldn’t this be the sort of piecemeal legislation which Obama has already placed “off the table”?

The reason it is being done the way it is being done is that Obama feels he needs something, anything of an accomplishment.

Be sure, that if the Senate bill is passed by the House, that bill will be signed by Obama. At that point, he has his health reform, and no incentive to push through the “fixes.”

In the Senate, they will say, well, we now have health care reform. Why piss everyone off and create an even worse atmosphere by using reconciliation? They will have no incentive to do something difficult.

Why should they? The bill the House will have passed was one they liked and agreed on. THEY don’t have a problem with it.

Also, what I don’t get is why didn’t the House and Senate have more open hearing closely examining the French or German systems?? Those seem to be working.

The Mass system, which I understand a lot of the bill is based on, isn’t working. All the predictions of how much it would cost and the cost curve, etc. never came true.

The public has no real idea of the French or German system and how they work. Open, lengthy, public hearings would have gotten that info out. Maybe, the public would have liked those systems and you could have built big support.

How stupid do House members have to be to agree to pass the Senate piece-of-shit bill on the “promise” that “changes will be made? [Answer = obvious]

This is soooo obvious, and Jane’s solution @40 to have the Senate pass the House bill also seems soooo obvious, that I feel sure I would have seen these suggestions somewhere in the MSM by now. At least as questions. I know the MSM sucks completely and is entirely in the tank for its corporate owners, but not a one a’ them asked why can’t Senate just pass what the House did?

Could it be, the House bill is subject to being filibustered in the Senate?

I quit the party over NAFTA.

me too, that and the 1996 welfare “reform” bill. Howard Dean pulled me back in after our huge anti-war demo in D.C. in January 2003.

Hmmmm….. Did Rahm do as much to welfare “reform” as he is doing to health insurance “reform?”

Maybe subject to filibuster, but more likely the Senators don’t like the House bill even more than the House doesn’t like the Senate bill.

I mean no way Barbara Boxer will vote for something with the Stupak amendment.

In order for hearings to have an impact on public opinion, the media has to cover them and cover the policy content accurately. I think that having hearings on the French and German systems would have been as ignored as the fact that Baucus refused to have single-payer advocates at his hearing.

The Mass system is popular enough in Massachusetts — to the point that there is not a whole lot of support for a national effort, especially one that is a watered-down version of what they already have.

No politician is really serious about cost containment. That was very clear at the Healthcare Summit. When Republicans are worried that doctors aren’t being paid enough and might drop patients, no one is really worried about cost containment except as a club to smash Medicare.

Stupak sucks, no doubt about that. Which makes House bill suck as passed. If conference committee could function, it could delete shitty parts of bills from each chamber and patch together semi-less-shitty conference report. But conf. report would also be subject to filibuster.

So I like using reconciliation a LOT. Except, Senate should be forced to adopt reconciliation amendments first, so that House could pass those first then vote on Senate bill. This is not an original thought. David Waldman’s logic on that over at Dkos is sound IMHO: lots of amendments are passed to bills that do not yet “exist” as laws, since bills are amended all the time before they are signed by the President. Conrad’s perplexity on that is bogus.

I’m givin’ 5-to-1 that the pee-pants dems in either house will not have the balls to pass this health care bill or anything like it.

I’m also givin’ 7-to-1 that the rethugs beat the dems like a rented mule with their failure to get anything done and that idiot Americans vote these right wing obstructionsts and fear mongers into power in Nov. 2010. After all, Americans like winners not losers, even if the winners are flaming, fascist assholes that only want to give tax breaks to the rich.

Any takers?

An extraordinarily good point, you make.

Hi Rahm!

Prolly a hell of lot more entertainint, too.

Er, Bush (and Kerry) were Yale / Skull and Bones alumni. Of course that probably isn’t a big difference from Harvard for those of us that went to state universities.

And to think some people pay to watch a good spanking . . . . now I know why. *G*

That. Was. Priceless.

Yep, I believe the word is care, not coverage.

OMG you adopted a Republican?!?!?!!?!?!!?

I haven’t seen anyone pimping Broder. More like, “OMG! If even Broder is holding his nose, everyone must be able to see that it’s a shit sandwich!”

I really hope this goes down in flames. If they can pull off this crappy HC bill, “entitlement reform” will get a major boost. It will be bad enough if they take a loss on this to make them back away from our SS and Medicare.

The public wants care, not insurance.

I’m uninsured and have preexisting conditions so I can’t get insurance. But I still want this bill to go down. It isn’t glee at the suffering of others or even indifference. Some just see this bill as the beginning of making things much much worse for those of us being literally killed by the current system.

No politician is really serious about cost containment. That was very clear at the Healthcare Summit. When Republicans are worried that doctors aren’t being paid enough and might drop patients, no one is really worried about cost containment except as a club to smash Medicare.

I’m glad others noticed this. When the issue of increasing reimbursements and subsidies come into frame my first thought is, “Wait… the problem isn’t that we’re spending too little on healthcare.”

I dunno. Kosmass is my rep. The R’s are lining up to run against her. They can’t wait. So she wants to “move to the right” (won’t have to go very far) She’s gonna need the party’s help and $$$ and, of course, they can make it difficult for her if she votes the wrong way. Her statements on health care are and always have been gibberish. (How can you have a jerk like Kosmass and a good guy like Grayson in adjoining districts? And why did i get on the wrong side of the line?)

Doesn’t seem like he and Rahm are on the same page these days.

Barbara Boxer championed the Nelson Amendment, which — as DDay has mentioned — may be WORSE than Stupak because it tees up a SCOTUS challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Sorry, don’t wait for any profile in courage there:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/20183

It’s all about keeping AHIP and PhRMA from doing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Harry and Louise attack ads this election cycle. Rahm fears those ads as he fears nothing else.

Well, if Rahm thinks Plan B is a stripped down version of the Senate bill, and Obama doesn’t, then does Obama have a Plan B at all?

I haven’t heard of one, but then I wouldn’t be the first person he told.

Apparently Obama’s Plan B is his 11-page letter of revisions. If this plan fails, he should immediately start all over again with nothing but a plan to open up Medicare so anyone can buy into it. He can keep his slogan, “If you like the insurance you have you can keep it,” but he won’t have to keep his promises to AHIP and PHARMa anymore. Let the Republicans talk about how awful Medicare is and how it’s already broke, let the insurance companies put out all the negative ads they want, and let the Senate try to justify killing the idea, especially when the actuaries tell them it will actually save Medicare. The people will love it, and Obama might actually get re-elected.

“Rah rah” — Dubya

Technically “mandates without a public option” may be good, but politically it’s a disaster we really don’t need.

Progressives say simply, if we’re to have mandates we need the public option to provide cost control and choice.

Without a public option we can, and must, do without the mandates. Even if that means pre-existing conditions that’s the way it’ll turn out. At least we’ll have the other reforms (and they’re not all chopped liver).

That ‘stripped-down bill’ would be worse, I guess, than the Senate bill without mandates or a PO. And, who’s to say that if we fail on this HCR that any other bill(s) could be passed.

I say the only decision left is whether to include a PO. If they have the senate votes we get it. If they don’t, then they need to reconcile themselves to no mandates as that’s the only way the Senate bill can pass the House.

Er, Bush (and Kerry) were Yale / Skull and Bones alumni. Of course that probably isn’t a big difference from Harvard for those of us that went to state universities.

If you’re worried about the over influence of Harvard & Yale, consider that Bush I & II went to Yale, both Clintons went to Yale law, Howard Dean went to Yale, Kerry went to Yale and Bush II & Gore went to Harvard. And that’s just the ones I can think of just now.

Be afraid. Be vewwwy afwaid.

What I’ve learned in this healthcare debate is (I think) a universal truth… the general public (and perhaps some Members of Congress) never actually support or oppose a plan, rather they support or oppose a description of the plan. The map is not the territory… except in politics.

Sooooo, the Democrats should move leftward on policy and righward on rhetoric. Something along the lines of, “The Republicans have a point, the bill is too long, we need a shorter bill that doesn’t cut Medicare or give taxpayer dollars away to private insurance lobbyists who make backroom deals. Instead of forcing Americans into a new unproven public option, let’s expand the existing, proven Medicare system. Let’s make this incremental improvement now and we can debate a more comprehensive plan like the 2000 page Senate bill after the people have their say in the midterms”.

Always concede the principle….. so admit defeat even as the House passes a Medicare buy-in plan via reconciliation– I’ve been beating the drum for Pete Stark’s Americare bill for months. :o)

I must confess, its a riddle how a bill [Americare] that’s 3% the length of the Senate bill (60 pages vs. 2000) can cover 100% of the population even as it reduces National Health Expenditures (the Senate bill does neither)… and it doesn’t have a single insurance exchange! And for some reason Americare starts Jan. 1, 2011 when the President has made it clear that real health care reform requires we wait till 2014.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/04/bart-stupak-“i-dont-think-they-have-ten-votes-for-the-senate-bill”-open-to-reconciliation-only-route/#comment-92300

Thanks, Jane: the state dynamic is very illuminating! Carry on, please!

I had another *flash* as I was contemplating the quantum physics impossibility that the House would pass the Senate bill on promises of *immediate* Senate sidebar reconcilitation votes while Obama signs the Senate bill into law and … and … and …

… the WH and the Senate PUNK the House and decide “Hey, we’re done. It’s a win!!!!”

Wouldn’t that kind of thing start a Civil War in another country???? Srsly.