The headline in The Hill says it loud and clear:
Obama picks public option fight with liberals
Many people are rightly upset that the White House is sending stronger and stronger signals that they are willing to jettison a public option. What was once the defining feature of the Obama health care plan has now been dismissed with a bipartisan flourish. "[I]t's both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else," he says.
Here's Kent Conrad on Fox News:
The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option, there never have been, so to continue to chase that rabbit is just a wasted effort.
If Conrad could set aside his "More About Me" world view for a moment and do some second grade math, he'd see that there aren't enough votes for a health care bill without a public option in the House
There are 435 seats on the House. Of those, 257 are filled by Democrats and 178 by Republicans. Which means a majority is 218. The Republicans have vowed to vote against health care, period. The Democrats can pass health care on their own, but if they lose 40 of their own, they only have 217 votes.
There are 57 Democrats who signed the July 30 letter saying that they "simply cannot vote" for a bill that "at minimum" does not have a public plan (PDF). There are 7 more not listed on the letter who have pledged to vote against any bill that does not have a robust public plan. That makes 64 Democrats who won't vote for the "co-ops" that both Kathleen Sibelius and Robert Gibbs say the White House is "open" to.
Do the math: 257 - 64 = 193. They need 218 to pass the bill. They don't have the votes.
While everyone else was focused on the Senate, FDL Action has been whipping progressive members of the House to vote against any health care bill that doesn't have a public plan since June 23.
This effort represents the 76% of Americans who want a public plan, and since these members come from heavily Democratic-leaning districts, it undoubtedly reflects the wishes of an even greater percentage of their own constituents:
| Member Name | PVI | District |
| Corrine Brown | D+18 | FL-03 |
| Albio Sires | D+21 | NJ-13 |
| Alcee Hastings | D+28 | FL-23 |
| Andre Carson | D+14 | IN-07 |
| Barbara Lee | D+37 | CA-09 |
| Barney Frank | D+14 | MA-14 |
| Bennie Thompson | D+12 | MS-02 |
| Bill Delahunt | D+9 | MA-10 |
| Bill Pascrell | D+12 | NJ-08 |
| Bob Filner | D+8 | CA-51 |
| Carolyn Kilpatrick | D+31 | MI-13 |
| Carolyn Maloney | D+26 | NY-14 |
| Chaka Fattah | D+38 | PA-02 |
| Chellie Pingree | D+8 | MN-01 |
| Dennis Kucinich | D+8 | OH-10 |
| Diane Watson | D+35 | CA-33 |
| Donald Payne | D+33 | NJ-10 |
| Donna Edwards | D+31 | MD-04 |
| Earl Blumenauer | D+19 | OR-03 |
| Ed Towns | D+38 | NY-10 |
| Eddie Bernice Johnson | D+27 | TX-30 |
| Elijah Cummings | D+25 | MD-07 |
| Emanuel Cleaver | D+10 | MO-05 |
| Eric Massa | R+5 | NY-29 |
| Pete Stark | D+22 | CA-13 |
| Grace Napolitano | D+18 | CA-38 |
| Gwen Moore | D+22 | WI-04 |
| Hank Johnson | D+24 | GA-04 |
| Jackie Spier | D+23 | CA-12 |
| Jerry Nadler | D+22 | NY-08 |
| Jesse Jackson, Jr. | D+36 | IL-02 |
| Jim McDermott | D+31 | WA-07 |
| Jim McGovern | D+9 | MA-03 |
| John Conyers | D+34 | MI-14 |
| John Olver | D+14 | MA-01 |
| John Tierney | D+7 | MA-06 |
| John Yarmuth | D+2 | KY-03 |
| Jose Serrano | D+41 | NY-16 |
| Judy Chu | D+15 | CA-32 |
| Keith Ellison | D_23 | MN-05 |
| Laura Richardson | D+26 | CA-37 |
| Linda Sanchez | D+12 | CA-39 |
| Lloyd Doggett | D+6 | TX-25 |
| Lucille Roybal-Alard | D+22 | CA-34 |
| Luis Gutierrez | D+32 | IL-04 |
| Lynn Woolsey | D+38 | CA-06 |
| Marcia Fudge | D+32 | OH-11 |
| Marcy Kaptur | D+10 | OH-09 |
| Maurice Hinchey | D+6 | NY-22 |
| Maxine Waters | D+31 | CA-35 |
| Mazie Hirono | D+14 | HI-02 |
| Mel Watts | D+16 | NC-12 |
| Michael Honda | D+15 | CA-15 |
| Mike Capuano | D+32 | MA-08 |
| Nydia Valezquez | D+33 | NY-12 |
| Peter DeFazio | D+2 | OR-04 |
| Phil Hare | D+3 | IL-17 |
| Raul Grijalva | D+6 | AZ-07 |
| Robert Wexler | D+15 | FL-19 |
| Rush Holt | D+5 | NJ-12 |
| Sam Farr | D+19 | CA-17 |
| Sheila Jackson Lee | D+24 | TX-18 |
| William Lacy Clay | D+27 | M0-01 |
| Yvette Clarke | D+38 | NY-11 |
This morning, Anthony Weiner on CNBC says that the President will lose 100 votes in the House if a health care bill does not have a public plan, and Gerald Nadler on WNYC likewise says there will not be enough votes without one. These Members of Congress were overwhelmingly elected by Democrats. In voting against any bill that does not have a public plan they are voting their districts.
The White House shouldn't ask them to do otherwise in order to pander for Republican votes they are never going to get. If Rahm Emanuel wants to beat somebody into voting for something that their district doesn't want, let him go talk to the "centrists" he's been coddling.
Jane Hamsher blogs at firedoglake.com
Follow Jane Hamsher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/janehamsher
http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/HealthCare.htm
Some of the basics are Portability so my health care belongs to me!
They have a provision to protect providers from frivolous lawsuites
Interstate competition so I can buy the coverage I want from a different state, just like I can with auto and home owner's insurance.
Medicaid idea of allowing real choice insurance plans is a good idea.
Medicare improved with coordinated care.
All in all, I could completely accept "health care reform, as outlined in the Republican Plan. I'm and Independent so I look at both sides of an issue.
Are people really THAT stupid that we have to alphabetize by first name now?
This turns the entire catorizing and librarian system on its head.
Insurance companies are not subject to many provisions of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. Banks can be operated as holding companies....(remember Big Brother and the Holding Company - appropriately-named band from the Sixties?).
Americans are willing slaves to monopolies. Neither of these institutions produces a product. The idea of gaming came from England where gentlemen would gamble on any proposition - even the outcome of a proposition to a woman.
Corporate charters were a license to steal for the East India Company, a private imperial organ of the Oligarchy.
Health care has nothing to do with insurance traditionally; now it has everything to do with access. 30 - 40% is skimmed right off the top. Even more is skimmed of the top for medical malpractice coverage.
These are some of the reasons that the American colonists fought a revolution but it turned out to be more of a substitution of aristocracies.
We brought the best from Europe and wanted to leave behind the worst. But after two hundred plus years, we are the Empire controlled by an Oligarchy of corporate insiders who control our government.
There should have been a single-payer discussion. But we will slave to pay insurance companies premiums and interest to banks without even questioning why for most people.
1- Insurance across state line
2-No preconditions
3-Mandatory for business ( tax decrease or something like that)
4- No Illegal immingrants to recieve free health Ins ( card of some sort for people with health ins)
5-Increase age that parents can cover children on Family health insurance fro 18 to 25 ( my Idea) This should help with all the young adults with parents to be insured ( optional for parents with young adults)
so what do you think do you think we could agree on these
Case in point is the stimulus bill. They demanded less works project spending and more tax breaks. They got what they wanted and then almost unanimously voted against it in both branches. There is no logic from them, only potential political gain by misrepresenting bills and screaming.
Good-faith negotiations require BOTH parties operate in good faith - which is not true with the republicans.
The majority of regressives were against bailing out the automobile industry. Why? Because they had screwed up and didn't deserve to live, particularly via a taxpayer bailout.
Why do regressives feel that the health insurance industry deserves to live? They have screwed up our healthcare far worse than Chrysler and GM and Ford screwed their industry. We have government subsidized cars as alternatives. It just happens that the government doing the subsidizing is the Japanese.
The healthcare industry would not exist if not for the government's subsidy of allowing most private policies to be on untaxed dollars while Medicare is taxed.
The talk is of healthcare reform. In fact, all they are negotiating are ways of providing the insurance corporations more customers, more income, more profits.
They promised the Congress to work towards universal coverage and no pre-existing condition bars in 1993.
Get rid of the insurance corporations, the true villains, and give us HR 676, Medicare-For-All.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/18-5
in Europe the left are the socialist and the right the liberals.
I was in Germany and everyone was fine. People were working literally 24/7 on maintaining infrastructure. The people were fit and educated.
Even thought they were bombed out in WW II, the people picked up the pieces and rebuilt the entire country, including cathedrals and historic buildings. There were no hooligans or gang members on the streets.
Interestingly, there is no minimum wage law there, so calling it socialistic is a relative judgment. But you do not see the senseless violence and killings we see every day in the US.
Losing a war changes some core attitudes, values and beliefs. But the hard-working nature of these people and their refusal to allow low-lifes to junks cars in the front yards is amazing.
Above all, the physicians I met were very happy with the system.
We have not killed healthcare reform legislation. That is because they are not considering healthcare reform legislation. They are talking about a few changes in health insurance. There is a difference. Changing insurance is not healthcare reform. No insurance company has ever cured anyone, though their policies and actions have caused deaths. The only real reform is to jettison the insurance companies.
I thought that bean-counter were our friends. Don't you want rich insurance companies to take 30 - 40% right off the top?
Just like bankers issuing or currency and controlling our monetary policy, insurance companies have taken over the provision of health care. I have never talked to a single physican who wanted insurance companies to call the shots on their relationships with patients or their reimbursement.
Check out the abject failure of so-called legal insurance.
The administration is simultaneously kow-towing to Republicans whose support he'll NEVER get, and alienating their base which has been energized and ready to fight for this.
And Jane you were dead on in pointing the finger at Rahmbo at the end of your post. He's a nothing but a Washington deal maker whose sole purpose in life is to suck up and make nice to powerful Washington interests for the gratification of his own ego. He needs to be the first to go.
Either Obama grows a spine or he becomes Jimmy Carter. He's starting to behave like a battered spouse who can't figure out that THE RETHUGS WILL NEVER be nice to him.
I won't vote for a weakling twice.
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Go Jane! you rock!!!
Progressive caucus, stay strong?
Dont vote for any bill that is not what we asked for! No bailng out of the insurers
Progressive caucus, stay strong?
Dont vote for any bill that is not what we asked for! No bailng out of the insurers intheirwickedness.
Thug Obama has now escalated Afghanistan into a war of "necessity" -- just an absolute fantasy that the heavily Democratic Congress will now continue to pay for while claiming we can't afford a government option in health care.
Just as evolutionary science is theory instead of fact, so too is evolutionary medicine. Just as creationism is right-thinking American science, so too is faith-healing the choice for medical care by right-thinking Americans.
Republicans, who have not previously endorsed single-payer health plans, now do so as long as the single-payer is God (the bearded white male version).
"The single-payer faith-healing medical plan will save billions!" according to GOP caucus prayer group.
"Your friends on the right would like to thank you for holding the line against socialized medicine. We look forward to working with you in the future."
It might even have a gift card.
I called the White House, my two senators and my congressman.
I suggest that like minded folks do the same regardless of your legislator's current position.
CALL TODAY !