The farrago of nonsense proposed by the cocksuckers on the Finance Committee is a threefer- it shovels bucketfulls of our money to the insurance industry (which is paying off these bastards bigtime), it does little to increase access and less than nothing to control future economy-crippling costs, and it will fail quite visibly and thereby poison the well for real health-care reform for another generation (or until the current "system" simply collapses due to its unsustainable cost.)

If anything like this passes and is signed by Obama, I'm through with the Democratic Party for good.

Put the fault on the healthcare proposal where it belongs--directly on our Senate and the Senators who reside there. These folk outlast any prez and they know it.

There are two things they will understand: money and votes. The lobbyists only bring the money and the general public can't usually grab that particular incentive. If we have the votes in their state, we can get their attention.

None of us need to accept the framing that the prez is responsible for these ridiculous and retroactive proposals. The Senate, yet again, is revealing itself as a serious obstacle to progress. That's not a "new" observation--think how long the Senate delayed any action on civil rights....decades without end!!!

This is the same exact scenario with healthcare since the 1950s. Exactly the same......

When Baucus jumped in ahead of everyone to "lead" the fight for health care reform, this was totally predictable. At that time it was pointed out that he was owned by the insurance companies, and was simply doing what they ordered him to do. Harry Reid is not up to the job of policing the Senate to get things done, so unless there is a way to resurrect LBJ, some kind of end run will be needed. Ted Kennedy just picked a terrible time to get sick.

You might also note that Baucus is letting the Repubs run the show in his coalition of the purchased.

This week, when I started to freak out that they might not include the public plan I did two things.

First, I started harrassing my congressman and my senators. I plan to email them every single day, with new evidence that the majority of their constituents want, and need, a public plan. Please do the same. When they hear from people, they get scared and start to rethink their assumptions. They need two things to get elected: money (which is why they're being asshats in the first place) and votes. When they assume we're not paying attention, they do what the money wants them to do. When they know we are paying attention, they sometimes actually do the right thing.

The second thing I did was to take a deep breath and remember that there were weeks like this during the campaign when it looked and felt like the sky was falling and Obama wasn't saying much about it. What I realized then is that he is a strategist. He's not reacting to every little thing because maybe he's got a long term plan and he hasn't chosen to reveal it yet. So, he's letting Congress and the media have their fun. Meanwhile, the blogs are whigging out, OFA is organizing events all over the country, and Obama himself is about to lauch Operation Town Hall.

So, I'm still feeling a little panicky, but I'm also still hopeful. It's not over.

May God bless and keep Max Baucus . . . Far away from us!

How can they be counted in the census when this fight is going on in Anchorage, Alaska right now!?? Very, very sad.

Ezra Klein's take on this draft was interesting. If you're not boycotting WaPo because of their axing Froomkin, I highly recommend it.

My sense, however, is that the Finance bill is the carrot for the Republicans and the Senate HELP and House bills are the stick. This [Senate Finance] is what you can get if you sign on in sufficient numbers to make it worth our while to give some stuff up, that [Kennedy/Pelosi] is what you get if you force us to use reconciliation and ram it through with 51.

With the exception of the Ladies of Maine (whose votes are not needed enough to buy if they come alone), I don't think any of the Senate Republicans are capable of voting for any kind of meaningful health care reform on this scale--and bad as it is, the leaked Finance staff draft would still be the biggest thing to happen to health care in this country since Medicare, both in scope and in cost. The base simply will not permit them to vote for something that big. For the ones from the deep red states, voting for it would be political suicide. And if that's the case, some blend of Kennedy and Pelosi's versions win, because there will most definitely 51 votes for it and no need for more.

My only fear is that I'm wrong. If eight to ten Republicans have the stones--or enough pressure from Big Pharma and Big Insurance to save them from the greater evil--to face the base, the pressure to take shelter behind a wall of Broderian bipartisanship could become too much for a a lot of Senate Democrats to bear.

Real health care reform requires breaking out of the inflationary spiral promoted by traditional insurance schemes. Innovative strategies to deal with the problem are emerging that don't involve insurance companies. The "individual mandate" is a crass attempt by the insurance lobby to shut down such reforms and herd us all into the corporate insurance pen through force of law.