As if it wasn’t enough for the taxpayers (and the economy) to get reamed by Max Baucus on Medicare Part D and his Senate Finance Committee health care bill, the LA Times is reporting that Max Baucus nominated his girlfriend for the US Attorney job.

The HuffingtonPost has a fascinating look at the Goldman Sachs analysis of the effect of health care reform on the private insurances companies. Their basic conclusion is that any reform, even under the weaker Baucus bill, would be bad for the insurance companies. Of course, they concluded that the Baucus bill would be dramatically less [...]

ABC is reporting Reid is leaning towards putting a national, weak, “level playing field” public option with an opt-out provision in the merged bill. The move could be a result of real leadership, terror at the thought of losing his election, courage, profound personal conviction, incredible pressure from inside the caucus, necessity, or a combination of [...]

Unity ’09 just sent this around to its members groups, giving them talking points about the Baucus bill:

There are 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans on the committee, which means they can only lose 2 Democratic votes and still pass the amendment. So in order for a public plan to come out of Finance, 3 of these are going to have to get off the fence.

The Washington Post says that the White House — and the health care industry stakeholders that the Post tried to entice into their Pay2Play salons — are happy with the response to the bill.

Rep. Grijalva is doing what we always ask progressives to do.  While others stood by and watched Van Jones and Yosi Sergent and a huge piece of progressive infrastructure swept away by capitulation to Glenn Beck’s McCarthyist tactics, he’s fighting.

Let him know we need more of that.

We started this whip count effort on June 23 because it became clear that in the course of making their deals with stakeholders, the Baucus Caucus (who were negotiating on behalf of the White House, with the participation of the White House) had very likely already dealt the public plan away.