Let's call their bluff.

Let's go with 51 vote and reconciliation.

See if this jackass will fillibuster.

And then primary these traitors.

And if I lived in North Dakota, I'd vote against Sen. Conrad. See how it works?

PRIMARY, ANYONE?

he can vote against it, just as long as he doesn't filibuster it.

and he should get zero dollars from the leadership PACS or the DSCC, plus a primary opponent endorsed by Obama

at least he is honest about being an enemy of the non-elites

When he said that there were no votes for the public option he was referring to himself.

This could be interpreted as good news of a sort. If he's no longer hiding behind the "doesn't have the votes" line and is openly admitting that, it's not about votes but, rather, is about the fact that he's against the public option himself, it may mean that Grassley's antics over the last few days have finally killed off their "negotiations."

What an asshole!

Just went and read the story. (Sound of me kicking myself for not going and reading the story). Assuming the local reporter covering the thing managed to accurately convey the gist of what's he said, he left himself a ton 'o room.

What it says he said was that he wouldn't vote for "government-run healthcare." He promised, in other words, to vote against those proposals for a system like Britain's or like Canada's. Yay Kent. He promised to vote against things that aren't being seriously considered by Congress.

But I didn't see anywhere in the story where he said he wouldn't vote for a plan with a public option in it.

Obama should be doing town halls all over the country until this is done. He is great at explaining the situation and brings it home to the people. Get obama out there to all corners of the country and deal with this. Also, he should go on Fox News Sunday and smack down Fox with facts in accurate information and turn around the dynamics of what is going on here.

There are very few models of successful health care co-ops. It's an extremely risky strategy to deploy at a national level. Simply put; untested.

North Dakota, with a population of 640,000 people, has the exact same power in the U.S. Senate as California, with 38,000,000 people.

That's a per-citizen force-multiplier of 60 to 1 in North Dakota's favor. Do you think there's something inherently wrong with that?

Think of it this way: If the Senate were a representative body, a single Conrad could not have more sway than 29 Feinsteins and 29 Boxers COMBINED. Today, he does, strictly in terms of per-citizen representation.

Good article about this in Sunday's WaPo that mentions Conrad specifically.
http://tinyurl.com/myu3fs

The more I hear about the public option, the more I realize that the votes aren't there. Kent Conrad's not a bad guy, but he's a realist. If he votes for a public option, he knows he's out. So, what he's offering is something right now: a nonprofit alternative. I have no idea whether it will work.

My hunch is that someone like Wellpoint will destroy a small cooperative in market share. I mean, look at the airline industry. When there is a start-up or a smaller airline that enters a market like Detroit or Minneapolis, where Northwest is the dominant player (now Delta is the dominant player), when an airline like Southwest enters the market, Northwest drops prices and blows out the new entry.

There is no reason to doubt that this won't occur again in the health insurance market. However, I do think that there are benefits to cooperatives. As I understand it, a cooperative is a medical treatment and coverage organization which charges patients for accessing doctors and nurses at the practice.

For one thing, if we can get coops to get away from fee-for-service plans of their insurer competitors, we will have begun to lower the cost of health care. As you know, Medicare is the government plan for the elderly and it does very little to minimize extraneous medical treatments. This drives up everyone's costs because we're often paying for the unnecessary treatment. Perhaps the cooperatives -- where doctors are encouraged to drop the fee-for-service billing -- will be better.

I guess what I am saying is that folks should start to acknowledge that the public option:

1.) is not likely to emerge from the Senate; and
2.) may not be the best option.

If the cooperatives don't work, perhaps we return and have the health care debate again. But, if done correctly the cooperative plan will:

provide patients subsidies to pursue alternatives to employer-based insurance;
provide patients subsidies based on income to join a health coop or insurance plan;
encourage/motivate doctors to work for a cooperative instead of continuing in the fee-for-service world; and
shed cost.

That's not to say they will necessarily compete with Wellpoint or United, but there is a possibility that cost of health care treatment will fall. In turn, this will make coverage more affordable.

I know, it's frustrating: we have sixty votes and still cannot get universal coverage. But, something is better than 12 years of Republican rule.

What do you say we lock him in a small room with Howard Dean for an hour (I'd pay money to see that)? That should take care of things one way or another.

Brian, you're good. But you're moving from fact to analysis to speculation. This article states, "[I]n case it wasn't obvious before, [Conrad's] position has probably had more to do with his ideological opposition to the public option than with a dispassionate analysis of Senate politics."

Really? How do you know that? How do you know Conrad's opposition is ideological in nature as opposed to technical or practical? I suspect you're right that it is ideological, but maybe he thinks a public option isn't technically feasible. Did you ask him?

More important, just because Conrad didn't reveal previously that he was against a public option doesn't mean his analysis of where the votes are in the Senate was either wrong or overwhelmingly influenced by his personal view. I strongly support a public option and think it's an _essential_ part of health care reform, but I'm not sure the votes are there for it in the Senate either.

There are 60 Democratic Senators. How many Republicans do you think you can get to support a public option as part of a deal? Name them. Do they equal the number the Democrats we lose on a public option, separate from Conrad? If not, Conrad is right.

The real questions for TPM to ask are:

(1) Is there a parliamentary protected way for a public option to be included in a reconciliation bill, thereby lowering the needed vote total to 50 plus Vice President Biden?

(2) If the House passes a bill with a public option, the Senate does not, and a non-reconciliation bill conference report comes back to the Senate with a public option included, will Conrad or any other Senate Democrats filibuster _a conference report_ simply over the presence of a public option, even a capped one in terms of volume percentage or participant number (which by the way is what I see as the final compromise)?

That's what you should ask Conrad among others. But apologize to Conrad first. You went too far.

So he is saying he won't vote for funding Medicare anymore?

Or maybe the interpretation of what he said is not accurately conveyed by TPM's framing of it.

I think he probably speaks for Baucus and Nelson as well.

So, that only leaves one question. Would any or all three (Baucus, Conrad, Nelson, perhaps even some others) vote for cloture on a bill that DOES include a public option? If they won't, their careers as Democrats are over. The Democratic Caucus in the Senate and Democrats just in general would be furious. Not to mention whether the DNC would help to support future campaigns by these three. They might as well switch parties.

I mean, if you can't support at the very least, a public option, and be a Democrat, then there is really no reason for you to be a Democrat. Its not like we're talking about National Healthcare (like Great Britain) or even Single Payer (like Canada). Its just a stinking public option for God's sake.

Finally, I don't think budget reconciliation is as heavy a lift as some are leading it to be.

Check this out from the NYTs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/politics/02hulse.html

Not the best option. But its there.

51.....reconciliation

Me thinks there has to be some changes in our system. How can a senator from a state whose population doesn't even equal a mid-size city get so much power? It really is kind of mindboggling. Throw in the fact that the most populace states and in fact probably 3/4's of the population, at least, want a public option. Something is really f'd up.

How do we pull the plug on this jackass and his pal, Grasshole?

He should leave the party as well.

Good News !

A staff writer at The New Yorker and some experts have examined Medicare data from the successful hospitals of 10 regions, and they have found evidence that more effective, lower-cost care is possible. Thankfully, the provisions in the reform include more expansive policies than they have.

Please be 'sure' to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !

Some have followed the Mayo model with salaried doctors employed, Other regions, too, have found ways to protect patients against the pursuit of revenues over patient.
And a cardiac surgeon of them said they had adopted electronic systems, examined the data and found that a shocking portion of tests were almost certainly unnecessary, possibly harmful.

According to analysis, their quality scores are well above average. Yet they spend more than $1,500 (16 percent) less per Medicare patient than the national average and have a slower real annual growth rate (3 percent versus 3.5 percent nationwide).

Surprisingly, 16 % of about $550 billion (the total of medicare cost per year) is around $88 billion per year, except for Medicaid (total cost of around $500 billion per year), medicare 'alone' can save $880 billion over the next decade.

In addition, under the reform package, along with the already allocated $583 billion, the wastes involving so called "doughnut hole" , the unnecessary subsidies for insurers, abuse, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc are weeded out, the concern over revenue (below) might be a thing of the past.

(( Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion + the $583 billion revenue package = $1048 billion - the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform = $6 billion surplus - $245 billion (the 10-year cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don’t face big annual pay cuts) = the estimated deficit of $239 billion ))

In modernized society, the business lacking IT system is unthinkable just like pre-electricity period, nevertheless, the last thing to expect is happening now in the sector requiring the best accuracy in respect to dealing with human lives. Apparently the errors by no e-medical records have spawned the crushing lawsuits (Medical malpractice lawsuits cost at least $150 billion per year), and these costs have led to the unnecessary tests, treatments, even more profits so far. And in different parts of the U.S., patients get two to three times as much care for the same disease, with the same result.

Thank You !