Politically speaking, ram-rodding through the health care bill is the most foolish thing the democrats can do.
November will be an absolute blood bath if that happens.

Well, it's not like the Democrats were using it anyway.

I have said repeatedly at my site that when Democrats act like Republicans and pretend that all opposition to Barack Obama's corporatist policies comes from the right, they cede political ground to the right wing. Polls indicate that Massachusetts voters do not think that Obama is far enough to the left on issues like health care and bank bailouts. Why did they then vote for Scott Brown? Because he was the only person who at all addressed voter concerns about these issues.

Combine that with a candidate who thought that the seat was owed to her simple because she has "(D)" after her name and it's not fantastic that Scott Brown won. It's fantastic that anyone thought he wouldn't.

BTW- Scott Brown is my former State Senator. I grew up in his district, one of the last Republican bastions in Massachusetts left over from the Civil War.

Health Care in the Balance - what does that even mean? Seriously, not trying to be a jerk but I've now heard this message umpteen times in umpteen email alerts and frankly it means nothing to me at this moment? I can't even grasp what the conversation on health reform or health care is today?

The President has already said that he doesn't want to ram the health-care bill through before the new Senator is seated. He recognizes that the people have spoken, even if it was only in Massachusetts this time.

This healthcare bill is a montrosity either way. Scrap it and start over, and move to the middle to include some Republicans in it. This is the only way to help salvage some of the damage already incurred. Anything more or less will spell disaster for the Democratic party in November.

You mean we're going to lose the health-care bill that guarantees enormous profits to the health insurance industry and drug companies, and provides absolutely nothing at all to consumers until 2013???

Yeah, I'll get right on the phones.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha – Cracks in the stone wall of a one-sided congress are just starting to appear. This is the right change needed towards compromise and restoring the balance of power. When the majority party only represents the special interests, makes deals to procure votes behind closed doors so bias legislation will pass, and attempts to dictate to the public way of life choices; the American people that have been hoodwinked, deceived manipulated and even ignored by this injustice vote the other way. Now it is time for a new roar in the Senate - a roar that truly represents democracy rather than the present collective agenda that aims to order the American people around. The people in this country need to take their government back from the extremists and their commandos. Oregon take note, this is a wake-up call. The stench of a collective agenda in this state is also ripe for replacing.

For all the people who don't understand what is wrong with the health care bills, walk up to your neighbor and ask him or her: Will this bill make you better or worse off?

For about 90 percent of the population, the answer will be "Worse off." The other 10 percent are in Michael Moore films.

Good post Jeff,

I seriously doubt the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and SEIU will go for the current senate version.

Rammed through as you propose punishes the health plans they have negotiated over the years with the Cadillac Tax ($8,500 single/$24,000 family) at 40%.

do you REALLY think that the employees of Oregon state agencies and Trimet will calmly take this?

Gentry, where did the President get by working so hard to include some Republicans in the crafting of the current bills in Congress for HCR? Nowhere!

The answer is not to accommodate those whose aims have been clearly hyper-partisan and inconsiderate of the greater good, but to actually re-examine how you have failed to serve your constituency and reconnect with them.

Jeff it is unfair to single this thread out as dominated by anonymous trolls. It is true most disagree with you.

The HCR bill you propose to save is a mess and you know it. HCR is dead, bogged down by a bunch of unseemly wheeling dealing just to get it to the cusp of palatability for a Democratic supermajority that still couldn't hold their noses and get it done?

You deserve to lose the issue. When you couldn't tell the approximately 270 million or so Americans with some form of medical insurance what they stood to gain by insuring the remaining 30 million, most of whom could never afford the idiotic individual mandate, and then began carving out exceptions for your buddies and all but ignored the continued deterioration of the job market, you lost the electorate's trust.

Yes, people staring down the barrel of a job loss really wanted to face the prospect of being dunned by the IRS for unpaid health care insurance premiums they couldn't afford to purchase. How out of touch was that?

Not liking what you hear, Jeff?

I don't know about the righties, but all the progressives I know hate this health care bill, have taken to calling it health care "deform", and I can't imagine them doing much to help it out.

I'd say scrap it and start over, but Rahm Emanuel will probably make it even worse. This seems like a defining moment for Obama and the Dems--they gotta pick sides--although I fear that they already have, and will stick with their failed centrist/corporate/hawkish strategy.

Andy Stern of SEIU says the House should pass the Senate bill with a fix in senate reconciliation of the funding and coverage elements.

Rolling over and playing dead by the Dems will insure their losing both houses of Congress in the fall. Why would anyone want to contribute to the Dem party or volunteer time or services after this betrayal and demonstration of incompetence? They still have the second largest majority in the Senate since the 1970s and they can't pass a health care bill?

No matter what happens, I will remember this apparently doomed effort at reforming health care to be the biggest political screw-up ever, and it was orchestrated by the "leaders" of my own party.

I am also tired of hearing Dems complain on TV this morning that their inability to accomplish anything with their super majority was because the Dems were blindsided by the Repigs and their tactic of 100% opposition. Anybody who ever heard the name "Karl Rove" should know that Repigs are generally lying assholes, and anybody that expected the Repigs to just "go along and get along" with Obama is an idiot.

The market is down 122 points as of now. Perhaps because our corporate friends are beginning to suspect the sweetheart deals offered in the health reform bill are not going to materialize?

Jeff, the correct # for Kurt Schrader is 202) 225-5711. You posted his fax #.

Ok, don't listen to the trolls. How about Firedoglake: Tell Earl Blumenauer: Keep Your Word, Vote “No” on a Bill Without a Public Option

Seems to me that all of the concessions on the Senate side have put too many House Dems between "Barack and a Hard Place"

"Ed Bickford: Jeff it is unfair to single this thread out as dominated by anonymous trolls. It is true most disagree with you." ====

It depends on the definition of 'troll' (viva la Clinton).

As Kari describes 'troll', every regular progressive BO poster who disagrees with the DemoTalkingPts (still being crafted... A) full speed ahead with USS Obamacare, FU to the Reps/nation, or B) we will wait until we seat the new Sen from the late great state of Kennedy, or C) we are still dazed and confused), is a troll. Of course, Kari hates everybody who spews another point of view, hence they are all 'trolls'.

So Jeff, are you just another version of Kari?

@ Greg D. "The market is down 122 points as of now. Perhaps because our corporate friends are beginning to suspect the sweetheart deals offered in the health reform bill are not going to materialize?"

The stock market's moves are too mysterious to understand, at least for me, but, I think you are right. It appears that both versions of the bill had much to make the health care industry happy. Many of those 122 points could well have been recognition on the part of health care companies that the promised government gravy train wasn't about to leave the station.

Harry, thanks for demonstrating trolling with your snarky, contentless comment.

Jeff, to short-circuit the reconciliation of the quite different bills from the House and Senate for the simple reason that a Senate seat has flipped while the Democrats dithered would definitely be seen as ramming the bill through.

Really Jeff, although the probable result is regrettable, the process was regrettable to say the least. As stalwart a Democrat as Howard Dean advised that this reform effort was a failure and should be allowed to expire. The "large majorities" you cite were achieved at the expense of sweetheart deals for dissenters and industries that stood to gain, a stain on the institutions an offices that indulged in them. I don't know how they could take pride in that.

I want health-care reform, and I am personally suffering from the lack of it! The verdict seems to be that we Democrats have failed. We have to take the lesson like adults and go forward better men.

We progressive Democrats can't do anything now that our large majority has been decreased by one. (Whew! It was tough trying to explain why we couldn't do anything before this.)

I blame Nader.

One of the ugly things we've learned over the past year is that too many of our Democratic leaders are like too many of the Republican leaders. They're treating their big initiatives (like health care and climate change) as opportunities to give huge sums to special interests in what gives a very strong appearance of trying to buy leadership for a long, long time. The public got wise and tossed the Republican majority out, and now the process has begun with the Democratic majority. There's time to right the ship, but step one is recognizing there are legitimate objections to how and sometimes what is being done. The blanket denigration of such concerns is arrogant and ultimately self-destructive.

Sorry, Jeff, but I don't think the gains outweigh the fact that without a public option and with a requirement to buy insurance, this "reform" is nothing of the sort. I didn't expect single payer to make it out of the gate, but I did expect there to be a public option. Otherwise, we're just requiring people to give money to the Health Insurance Companies. I can't support the bill in its current form.

As for anonymous comments---that's been a complaint on this site for quite some time. Whatever happened to BO.2 that was going to take care of that problem (or so I thought)?

Jane Hamsher: Tell Earl Blumenauer: Keep Your Word, Vote “No” on a Bill Without a Public Option:

"In July, Blumenauer signed a letter saying he wouldn’t vote for any health care bill that doesn’t have a public option. But he subsequently told the New York Times that he really didn’t mean it, and he might just vote for an Aetna/PhRMA giveaway anyway. (I guess Amgen, Eli Lily and Pfizer got their money’s worth.)

"Does this mean nothing to him?

"This appears to be a pattern with Blumenauer: in 2007, he signed a letter saying he’d vote against any war funding bill that did not contain troop withdrawal provisions. But when the supplemental came up for a vote this year to continue funding for the wars and it didn’t have any, he voted for it anyway. It creates the public perception that ending the war by cutting off funding is apparently only something to be demagogued when Republicans are in office and there’s no hope of actually following through on it." (http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/20/tell-earl-blumenauer-keep-your-word-vote-no-on-a-bill-without-a-public-option/)

I sent Rep. Schrader an e-mail through his website encouraging him to vote for reform, even if it takes just passing the Senate bill, and making some tweaks during budget reconciliation. There is lots of good in the Senate bill - it will cover 30 million Americans and build a foundation for universal coverage. It has strong cost control provisions. It will provide federal subsidies for the working poor who earn too much for Medicaid to buy insurance. It will provide strong federal regulation for the insurance market for the first time, so insurance companies have to compete on cost and quality, not on who can enroll the healthiest population.

All of us who care about reform need to encourage our representatives to stand strong and lead. After all of this, to accomplish nothing would be devastating for the effort to achieve universal coverage.

Another note: Massachusetts has the lowest uninsurance rate in the nation, at around 5%. Oregon is at 16%, probably much higher now due to the recession. There is no reason that an election in Massachusetts should ruin health care reform that our country desperately needs.

People are angry and frustrated. Many people do not understand what is in the health care bill. This is not that different than what happened during the drafting Medicare. As the legislative process dragged on in 1965, public support for Medicare dropped. But Congress passed it, and it is such a popular part of American society that now even Republicans claim to support it. I predict that the current health care reform legislation, if enacted into law, will be just as successful, if not more.

The messiah himself has come out to say that they will not try to ram healthcare through.

President Barack Obama is telling Democrats not to "jam" a health care overhaul bill through Congress, instead urging them to coalesce around popular parts of the bill.

Obama To Dems: Don't Jam Through Health Care Bill

Put a fork in it, it's done.......

This was the health care bill that Kennedy wanted for decades? Or is it a bill with the same title? Where does the logic come from that says that the only way we can insure people is to transfer trillions to the insurance industry? I would bet that you could spend 1/3 as much, give it straight to doctors and tell them they have to treat x number of freebies a week, and you would get more for less. Not that that is a reasonable system, but when you can think like a 12 year old and outperform this leg, then I think it's fair to say that this isn't the only way to get the job done. The quandry for Dems is that it's the only way to get the job done, without changing business as usual. People asked for a change in a number of areas, and it is painfully obvious, to me at least, that no President can deliver on that. He ain't in charge. Talk to the face. That's what he's there for. The desperation in the tone of posts like this lead one to believe that discontinuing party politics as usual is a complete non-starter, some refuse to question the party, the leg really does matter, so, please, please, please pass this and let this chalice pass us by!

This is all a bit strange. Some people have spoken. Why is he so quick to make it a referendum on HCR anyway? Can you imagine Shrub in 2008 saying, "well, clearly the American people have spoken with regard to our Iraq policy"?

And I would draw a distinction between trolls and the rude hard right.

So Jeff, are you just another version of Kari?

No, Kari is Jeff's sockpuppet.

I have no doubt that the Democrats will be as bad as the Republicans were at hearing what the voters are saying. As soon as Senator Nelson was bribed for his vote and then the largest campaign contributors to the Democrats got a fat-cat sweetheart giveaway in the "Health Care" bill, Coakley's support dried up like an Obama campaign promise.

The Republicans were corrupted by their power and swept out of power 14 years after getting it.

It looks like the Democrats were corrupted in less than two.

There is no high moral ground, but it is pretty obvious which party actually deserves "culture of Corruption" attached to the party label. Seven times more appropriately attached to the behind-closed-doors deal makers in the Democratic Party.

I knew the D's would be hoisted on their own petard. I just never dreamed it would happen so quickly.

I vividly remember the 1986 election when the weak Republican Senators who rode in on Reagan's coat tails were up for re-election. Because of a class I was taking where (among other things) we studied the 1986 campaign as it was happening, I kept track of every prediction I could find. Nothing higher than 51 Dem. and the final number was 55.

We were thrilled at 55--meant so much when it came to confirmation hearings, among other things.

But we should be angry at 57-41-2? Why? Nelson, Lieberman, et al have lost their power to blackmail. Lieberman should be stripped of his chairmanship.

Politics in many ways made more sense in the 1980s. Consultants, labels, conforming to an ideology were not as important then. By 1986, the internal Dem. debate between "we've always done it that way" mentality where everyone identified with a group, vs. independent thinkers asking "why not consider this?" had been going on for awhile. I think that debate was healthy. Grass roots politics was healthier back then.

So, a few suggestions:

1) Candidate quality matters: that is why Ron Wyden defeated Gordon Smith in Jan. 1996 and Jeff Merkley defeated him in Nov. 2008. The old idea from sales---you can't force people to buy something they don't want--is true in politics. Coakley was a lousy candidate---anyone in Mass. who thinks standing outside Fenway Park or some other landmark shaking hands is beneath them deserves to lose.

2) Ron and Jeff won because they established a connection with voters, not because they fit a label, have an ideology, agreed with everything a consultant told them, or called voters who don't follow politics the way bloggers do names like "low information voters who might be neocons" --the sort of rhetoric too many people use as if every vote is not equally important.

3) The Constitution says "Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings...'. Isn't it time to revist (not allowed for procedural votes, for instance) or end the fillibuster? Why must everything take 60 votes? How many other things that began 150 or so years ago are we still doing in this country? At the very least, make it the way it was in the 1960s---talking is required, not just threat of a fillibuster. Say to Nelson, Lieberman, etc. "Go ahead, we'll stay in session and you can talk all night. Read the phone book if you want, but you are not likely to break Strom Thurmond's record!".

4) Civil rights legislation didn't all pass at once: something like 4 years between giving Americans like Margaret Carter or Avel Gordly the right to vote, and giving them the right to stay in any hotel, live in any apartment, in any neighborhood. Why the whole big bill at once?

There has been a proposal already to take the non-controversial ideas out of the bill (cost control, pre-existing conditions, etc) and pass them separately. Then, if the Republicans refuse to vote for them, use it as a campaign issue. Have voters ask incumbents why they don't support cost control legislation, for instance. Call their bluff.

5) Mass. is now an Independent state--more people with that registration than either D or R. Maybe it is time to stop trying to force everyone into a label, ideology, party and start debating actual issues, actual legislation, and involve the public in the discussion.

6) I read in the paper this morning that Sen. Gregg and Sen. Voinovich support some legislation along with some moderate Democrats. So pass the legislation and prove that the sky does not fall when a bipartisan coalition passes something. Let McConnell and DeMint see how popular they are being the party of "bring down Obama, nothing else matters". McConnell, as I recall, had a tough re-election last time around.

It is time to go back to basics.

Generic candidates don't run, actual candidates do (Bruun vs. Schrader, for instance). There were some people here who don't live in the 5th Dist. who were unhappy with some of Schrader's votes and the way he decided them. Would you rather have Bruun in Congress?

Is it just possible that there are 5th Dist. residents (esp. those who are NAV in philosophy, regardless of how they register) who think Kurt DOES represent them, whether people in the Portland area living in other districts think so or not?

YMMV. If you think I am guilty of heresy, then maybe I should register NAV after the primary.

Well, reasoned, imho, LT.

I forgot to add, an you reminded me, that not so long ago, most Dems mentioned Mass in the context of "how the hell did they elect Mitt Romney"? A little of that would go a long way now.

The leaders of the Progressive Socialist Democratic party blew the healthcare Deal. They made no effort to be 'Transparent' - as promised - and instead engaged in partisan behind-closed-doors deals. And now your SuperMajority is gone.

Buwhahahahhaha! Dumb Asses.

Please keep Pelosi and Harry Reid in power! They're the best gifts the Repubs have had in a while.

<img src="http://standupforamerica.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/democratic_crybaby_seal.jpg"></img>

We cannot let 41 republicans in the senate take away health care from millions of Americans. This is the issue of our time and we have to fight for it.

We have to fight for all the americans who only get their health care in emergency rooms. Who delay treatment and do not get their diseases caught in time. We have to fight for all who are burdened by double digit health care cost increases. We cannot turn our back on them now and think only of our own position. We cannot be cowards when we are so close to offering hope to millions.

Now is the time to fight. To stand up to those who believe that government can not be on the side of its citizens. That government must stand indifferent to its own people because it can never do any good. The ideology of the status quo, where opportunity goes to those who can afford it.

For those of us who are democrats, this is why we are democrats, to fight this fight. The house should pass the senate version of heath care now and send it to the president. This will not be a victory for democrats, but for the American people. This is our defining moment, this will bring out the best that is within us, its time to fight and its time to win!

This is a critical moment. I just got off the phone with Earl Blumenauer's office in DC to urge support of the Senate bill.

I’m beginning to think Mr. Alworth is a stealth conservative/tea-bagger/Republican operative who wants to see the Dems continue their melt-down in the coming year.

How else do you explain anybody in their right mind arguing to blast full speed ahead on this debacle of a health bill after the ultra-libs in Mass handed the Dems their head to them on a platter?

It has to be clear to even the most rabid BHO supporter that this bill has been soundly rejected by the voters and it is time to kill it. The voters are not stupid or ill-informed.

If the Dems don’t want to lose control of Congress they had better listen to the voters and kill this bill.

"Politics in many ways made more sense in the 1980s. Consultants, labels, conforming to an ideology were not as important then. By 1986, the internal Dem. debate between"

LT: I agree with most of your post above but not this excerpt. I suggest you read some of Walter Karp's scathing essays skewering both Democrats and Republicans for a sober history of this period.

We need to just move on and get some jobs open. It is time to stop letting this drag out.

Ignoring all the mindless populists and Republican sociopaths who crawl out from under rocks, I submit the following is a Rorschach test of values and intellectual integrity on the the Democratic health care reform effort:

Yesterday before the polls closed, Josh Marshall posted this:

Future of HCR?

in which he asserts:

If Brown wins, I don't think it makes sense to continue the negotiations or trying to pass a bill through the senate prior to seating Brown. The House simply needs to pass the senate bill without revisions and await changes that will be passed in a separate bill that can be pushed through reconciliation (the content of a particular piece of legislation is critical to determining whether the rules allow it to go through reconciliation). Letting the bill die now would be stupid, frankly suicidal in political terms and good evidence that the Democrats just aren't prepared to govern the country.

This afternoon he posted this:

Relieved

The Rorschach test on the values of people like Jeff is this question: Do you believe the email from the anonymous staffer supports or refutes Marshall's unequivocal assertion yesterday? How one answers that question is absolutely definitive of one's values, political intelligence, and wisdom.

Personally, over the last couple of months I have come to believe Marshall (PhD Brown, BA Princeton) is exceedingly strong proof that an Ivy league education frequently is money wasted.

Posted by: Buckman Res | Jan 20, 2010 7:14:22 PM

This is a critical moment. I just got off the phone with Earl Blumenauer's office in DC to urge support of the Senate bill.

I’m beginning to think Mr. Alworth is a stealth conservative/tea-bagger/Republican operative who wants to see the Dems continue their melt-down in the coming year.

When organisms are dealing with stress of a kind that can be fatal, there's that penultimate phase where they get tunnel vision and become locked into the same behaviors. A less clinical way of saying it would be that we're seeing the death throes of the DPA.

All that aside, another thread mentioned the Oregon Health Plan vis a vis the measures, and the case of Alzeihmer's patients. It's a good case of how all the politicking is making us miss the fact that it just doesn't work. We've heard, ad nauseam, that it's a start, better than nothing. Well, in a lot of cases, it is nothing. So, consider all those poorly defined syndromes and even acknowledged diseases where the science is rapidly emerging. The vast majority get zero consideration from existing health plans. If you have Chronic Fatigue, and you find a nutritionist that is helping you a lot, you had better have a caddy plan and some luck if you want coverage. Those people are disproportionately represented among the uninsured. There is no provision to make companies expand coverage. That is more than a niggling detail.

How many times have you heard the Dutch system disparaged in this debate as too idealistic or just crazy? It gets mentioned because you have universal, single payer coverage, for everything down to sex change operations. What you don't hear discussed is the details about how the system works. They are ruthless accountants. If 3% suffer from Chronic Fatigue, and are getting good results with nutritionists, but an average of 9 wrong diagnoses and no help from M.D.s, they don't fund treatment for CF at an M.D.! Fine, if you want that, but you'll have an 80% co-pay.

You can not begin to believe how much you can save on health care if you just set up a system that is data driven. To do that requires aggressive, highly engineered legislation. That is REFORMING the system. The bill is about Health Care Reform. The discussion has focused almost exclusively on the premise that we should pass it because it extends health care to millions of Americans. That wasn't the point of the bill. It was REFORM. There is no reform in it! I consider the pre-existing conditions bit to me more torte reform than health care reform. What else is there? If reform is the substance, and you consider windfall for the industry to be pork, the pork to substance ratio on this one has to be historic, approaching infinity.

Progressive leaders actually agree with that. That's why their proposing revoking the anti-trust exemption makes sense. That's reform. It is being hastily mentioned now by those smart enough to be embarrassed that there is no reform in the bill!

2) Ron and Jeff won because they established a connection with voters, not because they fit a label, have an ideology, agreed with everything a consultant told them, or called voters who don't follow politics the way bloggers do names like "low information voters who might be neocons" --the sort of rhetoric too many people use as if every vote is not equally important.

What a load of counterfactual horse apples.

In the 1996 special election, Wyden won by 1.6% because there were two right-of-center minor party candidates who pulled 3.5% and he was running against a Republican who had tarnished the brand by having to resign due to legitimate sexual harassment charges. In the 1996 general election, Smith won by 3.9% in a blue year in which Clinton carried the state by 8%. Wyden won because a lot of the mainstream Democratic machine groups who Wyden long ago turned his back on worked their behinds off for one of the most ungrateful candidates we've seen. Not because he had established anything close to a connection with voters. And he's won ever since due to weak candidates, the benefits of incumbency, and a base who hasn't been presented with a a reasonable alternative they would jump to support if the Democratic Party actually called out Wyden for every position he's taken counter to positions they have publicly taken.

Trivia question: We hear a lot in the recent health care reform debate about how we have to reign in the cost of Medicare Part C (Medicare Choice/Advantage), the attempt by Republicans to privatize Medicare in 1997. Who, in his first year as a Senator, voted with the Republican majority in the 105th Congress to pass the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that created Medicare Choice/Advantage? Who in 2003 also voted for Medicare Part D that prevented the government for negotiating prices with drug companies?

Answer: Wyden, the guy who has spent his entire career working for the private insurance, hospital, and pharma industries.

Now, in 2008, in the first blue year since 1996 when Obama won the state by 16.4%, Merkley barely pulled out a win by 3.4% when again there was a right-of-center minor party candidate on the ballot who pulled 5.25%. Besides the same Democratic machine groups once again working their butts for a really weak candidate, the DSCC dumped a bunch of money into negative campaign ads in the last several weeks. And the one truth about politics is that given a choice, choose well crafted negative campaigning against your opponent every time.

These guys won with knee-jerk low-information voters on the Democratic side because they had a "D" label.

You're delusional LT and your political advice, as well as Jeff Alworth's, is worth the price people pay for it here.

"We need to just move on and get some jobs open."

Then what? We wait another decade or two to do something about the worst health care system in the industrialized world? Of course, we need jobs, but if they don't pay enough to cover the exorbitant costs of health care for inadequate coverage then something is rotten is the United States.

We could make an excellent start by getting rid of politicians who work for the insurance and banking corporations instead of the people they claim with their lying mouths to represent. Getting rid of Wyden this year would be a step in the right direction.

If you think health care is bad in the United States, check juancole dot come for today's posting and learn how things are in Gaza to which we in the United States are accomplices.

We progressive Democrats need to grit our teeth and support our corporatists (better than their corporatists) in their attempt to bail out the corporate insurers.

Corporations are people, too, people! They need our money to continue to dominate what passes for a "health care debate". And, sure, as soon as we pass this glass half-full bill, we'll be able to give it a hope and a change, and, voila! Reform!

<h2>By the way: the argument that Medicare has such popular support seems to suggest that Medicare Part E is the way to go, and not that the current glass-half-full bill should be supported instead, so we progressive Dems should ignore it or else we'll be called socialists.</h2>