Reid Assures Snowe That Public Option, Medicare Buy-In Are Dead

Passing single pay health insurance in budget reconciliation is a shady thing to do.

What a sad sack Harry Reid is.

Snowe is not as smart as she appears.

I will be glad to see the smarmy, completely ineffective Harry Reid go. His mealy-mouthed asshattery is exceeded only by his lack of leadership, and the entire package has cost our country dearly.

That is all.

In that picture, Olympia Snowe looks alarmingly like the Wicked Witch of the West telling Dorothy she had only until the hour glass ran out to live.

"I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too! Hahahahaha!"

It's basically starting to look like the white house was right to begin with. If we'd continued negotiations with Snowe instead of walking away and trying to go it alone with a 59-member caucus, she very probably would have still been on board at this point. If we'd done that we could have gone around Lieberman and at least could have got a "triggered" public option. The trigger would never, you know, trigger but at least that would leave us in a far better position to try to pass a public option separately in a few years (since all we'd have to do is pass a law saying "the trigger triggers now").

Obama made a deal a log time ago that there will be no public option. Probably with Insurance company lobbyists. it was all a show, it's been off the table since the summer. think about it...

Obama did nothing to get Baucus off his ass before August. he knew delays worked against progressive reform.

He had little to say about the public option back then. then the web and liberal TV demanded he support it.

He floated a trial balloon, "it doesn;t have to be in there as long as cost savings are in there" not a direct quote but you remember it.It backfired.

He spoke about the PO here and there but never forcefully advocated for it.

Every time a conservadem made a threat the WH said to give in, every time. The same for Snowe, she couldn't be convinced to vote with her constituents? Tell me how that could be? I bet she might still vote for the bill in the final vote so that it can be touted as bipartisan. I'd bet they always had her vote but had to keep her from saying so until it's dead in it's current form.

Joe Lieberman got the word at the end, kill the items the insurance companies don;t like. it comes from the same insurance lobbyists who talk to the WH. thats how they play the game. how will you know this was all a deal between the WH and insurance companies? JL keeps his chairmanship? anybody? nobody wants to take that bet because nobody made threat leading up to this mess, it wasn't an option. JL did it because he knows his odds of winning again are dismally low, he had nothing to lose. he may run as a republican, in which case what he is doing only helps him, i bet he retires for lobbying money.

The terms of the deal were worked out long ago and it has all been for show.

Time to find a progressive to run against Obama.

C'mon Bernie, Kill this bill!

"I cannot find it in me to exult in this hour."

So said Gen. Mark Clark at the signing of the 1953 Korean Armistice. I think that sentiment applies today as well. This bill may, politically, be the best that could be gotten now, but nobody can say it is more than a shadow of what could have been.

It is unblelievable that, with nearly 60 Democrats in the Senate, the limited Medicare buy-in, at minimum, could not be done. Maybe the real questions is why are people like Lieberman, Nelson and a few others even called Democrats? Why was reconciliation not an option? Would Bush and the GOP have used it?

Maybe things will look different over time. Maybe, as some are already saying, the public option and/or medicare buy-in can be added later. Later when? Does anyone think that the next congress, which will likely have many more GOP members, will be more receptive to any of these ideas. Does anyone think Obama, even if re-elected in 2012, will be in a postion to achieve either of these? Does anyone think it likely the next President, whenever he or she is elected, will have any interest in a public plan or medicare buy-in?

What the hell is wrong with this picture? Whomever called the Senate the "world's greatest deliberative body" had no idea of how right he was -- deliberately misguided; deliberately misinformed; deliberately mistaken. These jerks have seen this coming for over a year -- if not a decade -- yet, they either fail to inform themselves, or misinform their constituents, or both. There is simply no excuse for the hand-wringing, faux agonizing, or plain foot-dragging and obstructionism we have seen for the last 8-10 weeks. At least 30% of the members of the Senate have collectively revealed themselves as either morons, or as duplicitous, lying cretins. The term best describing these slugs is the Spanish insult: "¡Sin Vergüenza!", or "Without shame!"

Is this woman retarded?

The insurance companies get the gold mine while everyone else gets the shaft. Way to go, Harry, Way to go. I hope Tom Daschle gives you a little coaching of how to adjust back to the real world when the people of Nevada fire you in 11 months!

A dumb ass question. Can't the Medicare buy-in be added next year under reconciliation? Once in place, it would be popular if subsidies were added in and the the time-line for the exchange were accelerated.

I'd dare the Repubs to vote against it in 2011.

Do we really need the Senate, or would a unicameral system be more appropriate for the 21st century? Finland, for example, does just fine with one house. If there has to be has to be a senate, then what about curtailing its powers as in England. After all, most senators are millionaires and basically clueless about the sufferings of America's riff-raff. If we did the English reform, Joe Lieberman could become a Lord Spiritual!

I would never be likely to vote for republicans, but after this disgrace in the senate and white house, I for sure will never vote for another democrat for national office. Obama and the pussies in the senate deserve to go down come next election cycle. This was supposed to be better than Bush ? How ?

I'm laughing about Reid promising anything to anyone, after all he promised his constituents that he has a back bone, but that was just another lie.

I have to agree with those posters who think scrapping the bill is not such a bad idea. It has nothing in it which will actually improve health *care*, it just provides subsidies (mandates) to continue the status quo for insurance companies with no cost control and increased liability for taxpayers. If we can't have something that at least paves the way for single payer, why fatten up the industry that will fight it tooth and nail so they're in an even better position to kill it next time? Makes no sense, just like our beloved Senate.

We have to get something passed NOW!!!!!!!!!!!