Health Care Reform-- The Latest Wrinkles

Dianne Feinstein's name is spelled incorrectly-- and she's on board now anyway

The lobbyists outnumber members of Congress 6-1; they're well-armed; and they're not giving up. They mean to kill meaningful health care reform and they don't care what it takes to do it. They know no one is going to shoot them or put them in prison, not even someone who's family members are dying because of the screwed up status quo they're defending. This morning the most venal and untrustworthy of the Insurance Industry lobbying groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), ramped up its full attack against Obama and Senate Democrats, basically calling them liars and claiming that health care legislation would drive up premiums, rather than making coverage more affordable. They've spent billions on bribing politicians in the last two decades just for this moment. Even one of the really bad corporate whores, unscrupulous Nashville Blue Dog Jim Cooper admits “The lobbyists are winning." No detail of the complex legislation is too small for them and the politicians they own are willing accomplices to their perfidy.

But this isn't an obscure intra-banking regulation that people can't understand that theyy're trying to kill. This is health care reform meant to make the lives of tens of millions of Americans better and more livable (literally). Saturday in his national radio address, the president said the national consensus for reform is unprecedented (watch the clip below).

If Obama can't pick up the bipartisan support he so craves from the vicious obstructionist pygmies in the Republican congressional caucuses-- even self styled co-president Olympia Snowe is better at playing destructive cat-and-mouse games than at actually doing anything constructive-- Obama will take the support from Republican-lite governors, mayors and former office holders, even calling them "distinguished leaders." The Republicans in Congress... different approach, probably based on a growing sense of frustration:

[T]here are some in Washington today who seem determined to play the same old partisan politics, working to score political points, even if it means burdening this country with an unsustainable status quo. A status quo of rising health care costs that are crushing our families, our businesses, and our government. A status quo of diminishing coverage that is denying millions of hardworking Americans the insurance they need. A status quo that gives big insurance companies the power to make arbitrary decisions about your health care. That is a status quo I reject. And that is a status quo the American people reject.

The distinguished former Congressional leaders who urged us to act on health insurance reform spoke of the historic moment at hand and reminded us that this moment will not soon come again. They called on members of both parties seize this opportunity to finally confront a problem that has plagued us for far too long.

That is what we are called to do at this moment. That is the spirit of national purpose that we must summon right now. Now is the time to rise above the politics of the moment. Now is the time to come together as Americans. Now is the time to meet our responsibilities to ourselves and to our children, and secure a better, healthier future for generations to come. That future is within our grasp. So, let’s go finish the job.

Still not frustrated enough to say anything about the Blue Dogs and corrupt DLC Senators from his own party-- Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson-- (not to mention the always treacherous Joe Lieberman) who are also working full-time with the lobbyists to wreck the aspirations of the nation. I mean Bill Frist and Tommy Thompson, let alone confused ole Bob Dole, don't get to vote. Blanche Lincoln does and she and Ben Nelson are the two most likely to join the GOP filibuster to prevent an up-or-down Senate vote, something the Democrats would win. And now that most people acknowledge that the lobbyist-written Baucus Caucus (basically him and Conrad and a gaggle of the most corrupt of the reactionaries) plan for co-ops is dead, no telling how he'll vote on cloture. The new new strategy is for an opt-out provision for states that would rather do without health care for its poor (mostly minority) citizens. As many as a dozen states, primarily from the libertarian west (i.e., Idaho and Wyoming) as well as the worst of the old slave-holding Confederate states could go in that direction. The idea, even before that debate is taken up, is to get something on the table and agreed to so that the bill will get into the House-Senate conference committee, where it will actually get written.