With Public Option, Medicare Buy-In Gone, Is Snowe A Gettable Health Care Vote?

No Health Insurance Company Left Behind. An historic bi-partisan achievement.

another 123 die today! Thanks Steny!

All members of Congress will give up their public run health care insurance untill all Americans are insured!

To hell with this sea hag, and with Reid, and yes, Obama. I stood on street corners for this man in 2008. And now this. He's done a lot of good, I truly believe that. But he could have been courageous and great, and he's just another pol.

Shorter Snowe: OK, you called my bluff, but give me until January to think of a new excuse not to vote for this.

Much more artfully done than Lieberman's painful effort at the double reverse flip flop. He could take lessons, not that he cares.

Lieberman's flip flop seems to be blowing in his face. The MSM is skewering him over the coals over this.

All she's doing is proving how full of shit she is. Satisfy her concerns and then she'll find some other lame excuse not only to vote no on the bill but to support the filibuster. Fuck her, fuck Lieberman, fuck 'em all. Move this through reconciliation and take their leverage -- and their bullshit -- away.

It's important to remember what's important here: We have $663.8 billion to spend on the defense budget for fiscal 2010. USA, USA ....

Does it matter if Snowe is gettable?

Perhaps her consent to a watered-down healthcare bill would add some razor-thin veneer of bipartisan appeal. Still, that won't make the sausage any more palatable for many progressive and conservative voters who have been following this issue.

The idea of government forcing citizens to buy health insurance won't sit well with progressives. Not without a robust public option or Medicare-buy-in. It won't matter how much this coerced purchase is trumpeted by a token Republican and other corporate politicians. Conservatives will rightfully fan that discontent.

I'm for regulating the fat cats without tossing them any more meat. Pass a package of sensible regulations that protects the healthcare of consumers. Do that first, without a mandate to buy insurance. Call it the first phase of a victory-in-progress.

Slow walk her? Mays well bury the critter if she were walkin a hair slower. I seen putrified corpses wit more git up an go than thisun.

With the public option gone, who really cares now? The bill is now so watered down that you couldn't sell it in a bar for a dollar. It is pure water and pork at this point.

Make a deal with Snowe and throw Traitor Joe under the bus. Enough is Enough. Let's see how much he can sell his votes for if the bill passes without him and we take the Homeland Security chair away from him.

Snowe and Collins for Lieberman and Nelson would not necessarily be a bad trade.

And who are the people writing to TPM who don't understand that, in the current political age -- regardless of who is president -- nothing will come out of the Senate that is unacceptable to the senator needed for the 60th vote. This is especially true when dealing with people like Lieberman and Nelson who care more about themselves (Liberman) or their single issues (in the case of Nelson) than about health care for the people of the United States.

Finally, the Senate vote is not the last word. Something has to get out of the Senate now, and may be improved at least slightly through conference. That appears to be the best we can hope for.

C'mon folks, it is what it is. The ball has been moved forward, not forward enough for some but it has moved. Snowe wants to make sure this thing is affordable for those middle class folks who are being mandated to buy, leave her alone.

Snowe also has the competing issue of her caucus telling her not to vote for the bill, so she has to play the slow walking game for optics.

Snowe is just a tool (weapon) to slow down the reform bill debate enough for conservatives to be able to take aim and kill it.

She'd rather not vote for it and stay out of the spotlight because they do next to nothing in the Senate other than get paid. Iraq, "War on Terror" are all mirages. They cannot do it for the foreseeable future, the Obama administration is moving forward.