Health Care By August Christmas Martin Luther King Day!

Cool, health care reform has a new deadline - Nancy Pelosi hopes Obama will have a bill by the State of the Union, but a Martin Luther King deadline is much more symbolically potent.

Even the State of the Union deadline has a major caveat:

In the case of health care reform, Pelosi credited House Democrats with having saved Obama’s initiative after the onslaught of attacks during the August recess. And if the Senate can complete its bill this month, she will work to try to send a House-Senate compromise to the White House before the State of the Union.

If the Senate can finish a bill this month?  Is that still realistic?  I say not.

Comments

[PD]

Interesting post title.

[clarice]

If it's not passed by the SOTU address, will we be treated to temper tantrums by The Won?

[Neo]

This is fast becoming Obama's role on the world stage: managing disappointment. The gap between what international opinion demands of him and what he can deliver widens with each passing month, and it falls to him to explain why.

[Old Lurker]

If it is not passed by the SOTU address, will the world run from our debt now that POTUS has announced the US will go bankrupt without it? Gee...that was a remarkably stupid, risky thing for a US president to say.

[Jane]

It's toast. This is day 4 and I am more confident than ever (which isn't really confident, but more than completely unconfident).

Everything is slipping away from this guy and as we have seen, he has no idea how to do anything but give speeches.

B+ indeed.

[sbw]

that was a remarkably stupid, risky thing for a US president to say.

But he says different things to different audiences. Some people call that two-faced; others call it nuanced. Still others call it BS.

[Porchlight]

They haven't given up. Supposedly they're working on the abortion language right now to appease Nelson. That means they really need his vote or they wouldn't touch it. So I'm guessing they must not have Snowe or Collins or they wouldn't need Nelson.

And Nelson is under pressure in NE to vote no.

But let's say they get him back.

Next up - if Sanders and Burris are serious about voting no to a bill w/o a public option, how do they get them back in line w/o losing Lieberman again?

[anduril]

Health Care By span style="text-decoration: line-through;">August Christmas Martin Luther King Day!

Humph! Is this another one of those cryptic expressions, like SOB?

[Pofarmer]

What's really scary to me, is that the opposition is from totally opposite directions. One faction is against it because it isn't fascist enough. There's a dangerous dynamic here.

[glasater]

Bill Nelson of FL just said on Greta he is voting for the bill. Medicare Advantage is grandfathered in for his state plus a few others.

[clarice]

glasater, my guess is that the bill will fail and that behind the scenes they are trading so that those who vote against it are from states where they will surely lose if they vote for it. This will obviously not hurt Bill Nelson.

[Sue]

They are going to get some version of a health care bill. What in hell it is, I have no idea, but Obama is going to sign a health care bill.

[centralcal]

Dang, Sue. You are cheery tonight. Alas, I think you are right.

[Pofarmer]

What in hell it is, I have no idea,

Yeah, neither do they.

[clarice]

If they get no Reps and Sanders sticks to his promise to vote against it, How do they get 60 votes?

[Sue]

Sanders will vote for it.

[Dave B]

They'll all vote for it. Leiberman's wife gets threatened, he folded, Nelson's military base gets threatened, he folded after a little payola. All of them are whores, getting paid by other whores with money that doesn't belong to them. We need to clean the cathouse out before we're all destitute. We mean nothing to them and the disdain for taxpayers that this Congress and Administration have for us is staggering. I never thought I'd see something like it in this country. All the great men and women that made this country so great, so free, so powerful, and so fruitful must be turning over in their graves with tears in their eyes.

[clarice]

Well, I hope Sue and Dave are being overly pessimistic.

[JM Hanes]

All I can say is, my mellow is totally harshed.

[glasater]

If this bill passes in any form, Krauthammer says it will take at least ten years to clean up the mess it will create...

[Bill Woods]

"... By span style="text-decoration: line-through;">August ..."

In the title, there's a missing < before "span" (and possibly a missing </span> after "August").

----
As to the substance, this thing keeps tottering forward like Frankenstein's monster. Are we really dependent on moderates in the Senate voting it down over abortion, or liberals in the House voting it down for lack of a 'public option'?

[ms. docweasel]

so is this a post about the incorrect usage of style tags?

[I Won]

And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his need. I am the Alpha and the Obama, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.

[pagar]

"Bill Nelson of FL just said on Greta he is voting for the bill. "

Was he mentioned as one would might not vote for the bill? How does one know that Medicare Advantage is grandfathered in for Fl and some other states. Has someone actually seen the bill? This is ridiculous. Nothing but highway robbery! How does one end up with things like Medicare grandfathered in some states but not others?

[PE]

I have absolute faith in the ability and willingness of Congress (this band of idiots), to effect a grand mal screw-up.

If these clowns are allowed to run free and wild long enough, they'll end up with Affordable Air Travel For ALL Americans.

[Neo]

Affordable Air Travel For ALL Americans

Isn't that a "right" already ?

[pagar]

In my 06:52, the last sentence should have the word Advantage inserted after Medicare.

IMO, the first requirement for supporting any candidate should be their willingness to commit to reading all of every bill and showing (by electronic means)whether they vote for or against the bill. It is very difficult to go back at election time and figure out who voted for what bill.

[Jane]

WEll my optimism has waned a bit this morning - was told last night that Ben Nelson had been given $500m to agree - but I have no idea if that is true.

And I saw that Bill Nelson interview last night and it was almost chilling.

[Rob Crawford]

If these clowns are allowed to run free and wild long enough, they'll end up with Affordable Air Travel For ALL Americans.

Nope -- that would violate Climate Scientology.

[clarice]

And the Sanders statement has been hedged.

Keep writing the "progressives" demanding they stand firm. LOL

[pagar]

" was told last night that Ben Nelson had been given $500m to agree "

How is this different than bribery? Is there an unlimited amount of funds available to the US Senate to use to bribe various members?

[clarice]

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Average life expectancy in the United States has reached almost 78 years, a record high, federal health officials said Wednesday.

From birth in 2007, women can expect to live to 80.4 years on average and men to 75.3 years, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is great news," Dr. William O'Neill, executive dean for clinical affairs at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said of the overall findings.

Many people say the United States health care system is broken, O'Neill said. "But, this is kind of great evidence to show there has actually been some dramatic improvements in the health of Americans over the last 20 years.

*I believe this figure must include a considerable portion of people who immigrated from countries with far worse health systems and if it didn't the figure might well be higher. (We get mre Mexican immigrants than Swedish ones.)

[PaulL]

There sure is a lot of pessimism here. The best thing for the country would be if the bill does pass, straight Democrat. That will ensure huge numbers are voted out of office. Any law signed can be repealed.

I'm tempted to hope for initial failure of the bill, too, but, looking at the big picture, far more Democrat damage will be caused if it passes.

[clarice]

It would take years (one estimate I saw said 10) to undo this pig,Paul.

[anduril]

Via Michael Barone:

The odds are still against Republicans picking up the 41 seats they need for a House majority. But it's interesting that when Massachusetts Democrat Michael Capuano, fresh from a second-place finish in the primary for Edward Kennedy's Senate seat, was asked to tell the Democratic caucus what he had learned on the campaign trail, he replied in two words: "You're screwed."

[anduril]

George Will--still on a roll:

And the president pushing this agenda has, with his incontinent hunger for attention, seen his job approval vary inversely with his ubiquity. Consider his busy December -- so far.

His Dec. 1 Afghanistan speech to the nation was followed on Dec. 3 by his televised "jobs summit." His Dec. 8 televised economics speech at the Brookings Institution was followed on Dec. 10 by his televised Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which was remarkable for 38 uses of the pronoun "I."

And for disavowing a competence no one suspected him of. ("I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war." Note the superfluous adjective.) And for an unnecessary notification. ("Evil does exist in the world.") And for delayed utopianism. ("We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes." But in someone's.) And for solemnly announcing something undisputed. (There can be a just war.) And for intellectual applesauce that should get speechwriters fired and editors hired. ("We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected." If the human "condition" can attain perfection anyway, human nature cannot be significantly imperfect.)

[narciso]

The only time I can think off when something like this was reversed, was after Allende, Thatcher couldn't really roll it back, and it draws money and vitality out of the economy.

[clarice]

What would we do without economists?
"WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of newly laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week as the recovery of the nation's battered labor market proceeds in fits and starts. The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of new jobless claims rose to 480,000 last week, up 7,000 from the previous week. That was a worse performance than the decline to 465,000 that economists had expected. "

[PaulL]

When I watched the Krauthammer clip, I took his "10 years to repair the damage" to refer to the Democrats getting back in power.

The only way the health bill would not be repealed is if it were like the situation in the former UK, where most people want government health care. We don't have that situation in the US.

[clarice]

I think --I of course haven't seen the bill--that immediately new bureaucracies will be formed and new procedures put in place, that insurance companies and states will do a number of things to comply , that there'll be changed in Medicare...undoing programs is as complicated as setting them up I think(though so few are ever undone it's hard to say.) But you might be right. My speakers aren't working so I can't hear anything here.

[DebinNC]

I think the bill is sufficiently awful now to keep Collins and Snowe in line. Paul at Powerline doesn't think Nelson (CO) or Lincoln have the courage to not ultimately support it, but that Webb (VA) does, especially after the recent election there. As Paul said, "He would be a hero in VA." Some Dem may want to pick up McCain's maverick mantle and establish a record of independence for a future prez run...like Bayh perhaps. It's hard to believe all 60 will support this Medicare robbing disaster.

[Ignatz]

--The only time I can think off when something like this was reversed, was after Allende, Thatcher couldn't really roll it back, and it draws money and vitality out of the economy.--

Maybe. But just as likely this is the last gasp of the welfare state in the west.
The time is fast approaching Europe, Japan, and slightly slower, the USA, when they will each be faced with the stark choice; financial meltdown, national bankruptcy and generational civil war or significantly dismantle the welfare state peacefully.
Either way the status quo of a little more air in the state's balloon every year is going to pop. Demographics and actuarial tables can be ignored for only so long.

[clarice]

Spain is essentially bankrupt; Greece really is and Chile appears to be doing well.

[hit and run]

Clarice:
My speakers aren't working so I can't hear anything here.

It's probably because you aren't running linux.

Oh boy,look at the time. I gotta run. Have a great day everyone and enjoy the thread.

[clarice]

SMACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[glasater]

Oh boy,look at the time. I gotta run. Have a great day everyone and enjoy the thread.

Great news on the job front, Hit!

You did such a fab job of tracking down all the bits on Peter B. and putting them in one place--now can you track Kim down for us?:)

[Pofarmer]

How is this different than bribery? Is there an unlimited amount of funds available to the US Senate to use to bribe various members?

Pretty much, yeah.

Sometimes, I think the best thing for us would be a collapse of the Federal Govt.

[DebinNC]

Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor today: LUN

Lord, help us.

[clarice]

(I think I got this from Hot Air--I'm sorry I lost the link)

The path to 60 just got a lot more difficult: In an interview Thursday with a Nebraska radio station, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said new compromise language on abortion funding is unacceptable. “As it is right now, without further modifications, it isn’t sufficient,” Nelson told KLIN radio in Lincoln, NE. This could be a significant blow to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to line up 60 votes in the coming days for the health care bill. Nelson has said he would filibuster the bill unless the abortion language mirrored what was included in the House bill.

[glasater]

By my lights Mitch McConnell is definitely NOT a RHINO....

[Jane]

Glasater,

I heard otherwise from someone at the Tea party who was in a position to know.

[centralcal]

Jane: Really, you heard that McConnell is a RINO? I have a hard time thinking of him as that - maybe not always as effective as he should be, or as I would like him to be - but RINO seems a bit of a stretch.

[clarice]

Surber says Reid doesn't even have 50 votes.
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/6030
And Copenhagen is socked in by a blizzard; coldest weather in 14 years.
LOL

[Jane]

Centralcal,

Yeah and the person who told me was in a position to know. She thinks he is a sell-out and a bunch of worse things. She did not have one good word to say about him and warned me to watch out for him.

I have no reason to know if that is true, but I also have no reason not to believe her.

[Porchlight]

The mood seems to be shifting on the Hill. This Politico piece starts off by describing the left's attacks on the bill, but ends as a roundup of general misery for Obamacare proponents. The (dare I say it) consensus is that this is a horrible bill and that it would be insane for Dems to pass it - if they even can pass it. The word Republican barely appears - suddenly GOP "obstructionism" doesn't seem like such an awful thing anymore.

To me it sounds like media Dems are trying to send a message to the WH to stand down.

Politico: Left rebels against health reform

[clarice]

Politico says at least 2 hold outs, Surber says more and maybe as many as 10.

[Porchlight]

Nelson really doesn't sound like he's caving anytime soon, if you read these excerpts from his Nebraska radio interview this morning. Maybe he's just talking tough for his constituents? Anyway, it's heartening.

[Jane]

The panel on Fox News all think he will cave.

[glasater]

I'd like a little more solid footing than an opinion from someone who's "in the know".
There are a few folks I would trust implicitly--with heavy on "few".
However, Jane, I am so glad you are getting acquainted with all kinds of thinking for that is how we all learn.

[Jane]

Glasater,

I just put it out there as a warning. She actually gave me some pretty concrete examples - none of which I can remember now, so take it for what it is worth. I have no stake in the game and know very little about McConnell other than that.

[centralcal]

Jane: Well, we will have to keep our eyes on McConnell, then. I am not convinced he is a RINO, per se, perhaps just another one of the good ol' boys who have been in the Senate too long.

And . . . Mark Steyn is hosting the Hannity show on Monday, according to Jonah Goldberg who is going to be on the Great American Panel. Thought you'd like to know, since you "won" and all. lol.

[clarice]

My poli sci professor friend says that the opposition to the bill from the left will probably evaporate when there's a vote BUT it is strong enough to give the blue dogs cover to vote against it, I think he's riht and remain cautiously optimistic ,

Somebody up there likes us. I mean , after all doesn't hail and blizzard follow Gore on her trips to warm we are about to boil over?

[DebinNC]

Powerline explains the catastrophic effect of the bill's Medicaid expansion on the states. I would think a number of governors in purple states are pressuring their senators to vote NO if that massive unfunded mandate survives.

[pagar]

"I have no stake in the game"

Every American has stakes in the game. At this point, the stakes are getting very, very high. If we can't stop the rush to defeat America, by Americans, I believe the game will soon be over.

[DebinNC]

FWIW, I posted the link above to McConnell's speech yesterday. I loved what he said. If he's a RINO, his remarks didn't reflect it.

[ManBearPig]

Yeah I don't get McConnell being a RINO; he doesn't move my highly tuned Squish-o-meter at all. He may not be the most effective voice on the Sunday chatfests because he looks kind of dorky and people seem to prefer dorks with man-boobs and a baritone speaking voice; but the content of what he says is usually spot on.

[Captain Hate]

Out out damn sock!!