Senate Panel Votes Against Public Option

A key Senate panel on Tuesday voted against creating a new government health insurance plan to compete with the private market.

The 15-to-8 vote in the Senate Finance Committee could forecast the fate of the public option in the Senate as a whole.

The outcome was expected but still a defeat for liberals who view government-sponsored insurance for the middle class as a key component of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. MSNBC

Now, they're debating a Chuck Schumer amendment, a supposed conservative public option -- whatever that is. Update: Shumer's option also failed. Watch the Senators debate health reform:

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Some context:

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Grassley: Medicare is Part of the Social Fabric of America

Axelrod: Obama May Give Another Health Care Speech Soon

Update: Obama will give a speech to Congress on health care, prime time, Sept. 9

David Axelrod says Obama may give another health care speech before Sept 15, offering even more specifics and guidance to Congress. Obama also may be giving a health care speech in Pittsburgh at the G20 later this month. Despite Obama's guidance, speeching, and town halls to date, many of the people working on health care still seem clueless. Wingnuts have dominated the conversation and diverted people's attention.

Hopefully the wingnuts are out of the way, and out of the media's system, so that people can now talk about how to make the health care bill better. From the sounds of the bill running through the Senate, it just won't do the trick. I'm thinking, they should just give the task to me. Honestly, I could figure it out better than all these people who 1) are taking a long time 2) whining a lot 3) don't seem sincere.

Republican Mike Enzi has called for scrapping the health care bill, a bill that he's been working on, which says to me, he must not have been working very hard. He must not have been sincere in his efforts. Same for Chuck. I'm offended by their backstabbing, pretending to work on the bill with the democrats and then coming out against health reform in public.

I don't care who gets the bill done--the republicans and democrats or just the democrats-- so long as it's a good bill.

The health reform bill HAS TO HAVE a way to combat fee-for-service. Doctors shouldn't get paid per procedure. They should also be more inclined to explain procedures and tests. Patients need to be more informed about their health care. They need to take charge of their health care. Most people trust the doctor too much. Test and procedure names should be placed online so that people can look them up by disease or illness or alphabetically.
The health reform bill HAS TO HAVE incentives for people to stay healthy -- preventative measures. Why can't health insurance be like car insurance? If your are an irresponsible driver, you pay higher rates. If you are a smoker, drinker, obese, then you pay higher rates. That would provide incentives for people to stay healthy. I know I don't speed for a couple of reasons, but one of them is because I couldn't afford a higher rate of insurance.
The bill HAS TO HAVE an option or a way for low income people to get insurance.

Faced with falling approval ratings and increasingly impatient with Senate negotiations, Obama is considering a speech in the next week or so in which he would be "more prescriptive" about what he feels Congress must include in a health bill, top adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday in an interview.

The speech might occur before the Sept. 15 deadline that the White House gave Senate negotiators to seek a bipartisan bill, Axelrod said. He suggested that two key Republicans have not bargained in good faith.

Congress reconvenes next Tuesday after an August recess in which critics of Obama's health proposals dominated many public forums.

Some Obama allies feel he gave too much leeway to Congress, where one bill has passed three House committees, another has passed a Senate committee and a third has been bogged down in protracted negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee.

Axelrod indicated that Obama would not offer new proposals but would be more specific about his top priorities.

"The ideas are all there on the table," Axelrod said. "Now we are in a new phase, and it's time to pull the strands of these together."

He said there is serious discussion in the White House of Obama "giving a speech that lays out in specific ways what he thinks" about the essential elements of a health care bill. NPR

Here's a guest on Morning Joe who says Obama doesn't have a speech problem. I'd agree:

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Howard Dean on Face the Nation Aug. 23

For me, Howard Dean is the person who's making the most sense on health care reform. He gets the politics and the policy. Bob Schieffer asks if Grassley is right-- is Obama sending mixed signals? Dean says Chuck Grassley is sending mixed signals. I'll say.

Grassley backs off on pulling the plug on grandma. Kent Conrad says public option doesn't have the 60 votes to pass the Senate. Dean has said that the bill may not pass the Senate with the public option but when the House and Senate bills are merged, it will be added back in:

Daschle Says Obama Prepared for Plan B

The WSJ this morning says a Sept. 15 deadline has been set for the Senate Finance Committee to come up with a bipartisan bill:

The six negotiators are working against a Sept. 15 deadline to reach a deal before Democratic leaders give up and move ahead with a partisan bill. A conference call went until nearly midnight Thursday with no major breakthroughs.

The committee is the only one working in a bipartisan fashion. I think the republicans will be happy if the deadline is missed. They will be glad to be relieved of healthcare. Republican involvement has been a joke to this point with death panels and all. Even if I was aligned with republican philosophy, I wouldn't proclaim myself a republican because I wouldn't want to be associated with a group of neanderthals. They're so talented at exploiting people.

The democrats need to become more confident in what they're proposing.

They need to make sure that health reform is real reform, that does what it's supposed to do and that it doesn't bankrupt the country. If they were confident in what they were offering, then they'd be more aggressive, which leaves me wondering: do they believe in what they're selling?

There has to be a way to accomplish Obama's health reform goals, but I'm not sure the democrats have the answers right at this moment. Unfortunately, the republican trolls took a legitimate debate off the table for selfish purposes --power. That's offensive and loathsome to me.

President Barack Obama is likely in September to end Democratic efforts to work with Republicans on health-care legislation and press for a party-line vote if the stalemate on the issue in the U.S. Senate persists, a person close to the White House said.

The president and his advisers have started devising a strategy to pass a measure by relying only on the Democratic majority in each house of Congress, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In a separate interview, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Obama is losing patience with negotiations between three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, the only congressional panel seeking a bipartisan consensus on a plan to remake the nation’s health- care system.

“He’s waited and waited,” Daschle said yesterday after meeting with the president. “He has indicated, much to the chagrin of people in his party, that virtually everything’s on the table. And he’s gotten almost nothing in return for it.” Read the rest at Bloomberg

Plan B:

Daschle said the president continues to hope that Republican Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa, Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Olympia Snowe of Maine will support his agenda, as a result of their talks with finance panel chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat.

Yet Daschle said, “there’s a realization that we have to be prepared for a Plan B” -- a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation.

That process allows the Senate to pass, with 51 votes instead of 60 typically needed for contentious legislation, measures intended to cut the federal budget deficit either through spending cuts or tax increases.

Republicans Doctor Obama Photo for Propaganda Purposes

I have always thought the photo in the video below of Obama smoking, which has been used on anti-Obama sites since the campaign, was a real photo. It's an unflattering photo but it never bothered me--until now.

Now that I've learned it is a doctored photo, I hope the republicans go down in flames on healthcare.

A Financial Times columnist Niall Ferguson writes:

President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world’s biggest and toughest job. FT

What is wrong with these people? The stream of hate rhetoric is constant. Republicans seem to only represent the fringe. I'm not seeing any mainstream republican voices coming through. I know there are decent republicans in the mix but I can't hear them.

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Rahm says the evidence is in--republicans don't seem to want to work on reform:

Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.” NYT

Britain Unites to Defend its Healthcare From American Wingnuts

Wingnuts are offending people across the globe with their lies and distortions about other countries' health care systems. You can't just go around makin' stuff up. Britons--both the left and the right--want to set the record straight on their National Health System. They say their free national health care system is fairer than ours. I believe them. Canadians are rallying to defend their national health care as well.

In Montana today, Obama says he's not looking to model any other nation's system, he wants a "uniquely American" system.
The fringe, though, aren't concerned with facts because they can all see Russia from their house. They are one stubborn lot of people and they're loud and obnoxious and they're not going to slink away or back down. Many of them are just seniors who've been scared out of their wits by ugly emails. But we should all be excited about the prospects of health care reform instead of distracted by the right wing crazy talk. A very thoughtful post from Brown Man:

...the time is now to get your ass back in gear.

Because the people you think you defeated, the people you thought would go home with their tails between their legs because their candidates based their message on fear instead of hope - they have not left the building.

They did not go gently into that good night. Read it.

Even the woman who appears in conservative ads complaining about Britain's national health care says she was misled:

Even British health campaigner Kate Spall — who criticizes NHS failings in U.S. television ads produced by Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a lobby group that opposes Obama's plans — declared that the group had misled her and was distorting her true views.

Spall's mother died of kidney cancer while waiting for treatment, but she said she is still a supporter of the NHS.

"There are failings in the system but I'm not anti-NHS at all," she said, praising Britain's commitment to universal coverage.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old.

The superheated debate broadened this week to include renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a British icon who suffers from motor neurone disease. A U.S. newspaper wrote that under the British system Hawking would be allowed to die — an assertion that Hawking said was absurd.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking said, joining the ranks of those praising Britain's system. NPR

Senate Panel Scraps End of Life Consultation (Death Panels for Wingnuts)

Proving that democracy works, whether it's obnoxious and violent or polite and respectful, the senate finance committee has scrapped end of life consulting. But this is a benefit that we lose. Perhaps it will be presented again once people start acting like mature adults again:

A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing.

The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of advance care planning consultations with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of healthcare legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly." Read more at the LAT

Grassley's got nerve. He helped contribute to the confusion. All of the republicans did.

Grassley Wants to Pull the Plug on Granny

I made that up. It's a lie. I made it up to match his lie:

Update from the White House:

Grassley Explains His Vote Against Sotomayor

Lindsey Graham was the only republican to vote for Sonia Sotomayor.

Grassley Says Obama Can't Raise Taxes

Where does the republican party dig up these people? Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says don't raise our taxes. Since they have nothing new to say, the RNC should just play a broken record instead of enlisting Zombies to do their weekly address.