What did I tell you?:

…And it would appear that Senator Baucus’ health care bill is DOA everywhere but inside the beltway Washington and at old media corporate operations…

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) joins up with the few, the proud, the obstructionist:

September 17, 2009

SENATORS NELSON, SNOWE, LIEBERMAN, MCCASKILL COMMEND CHAIRMAN BAUCUS ON HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL

WASHINGTON, D.C. -Today, a bipartisan group of senators issued this joint statement about “The America’s Healthy Future Act” proposal for health care reform released by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana:

“We commend Chairman Baucus for his efforts to forge a health care reform proposal that has the potential to gain broad bipartisan support.  We are encouraged by his commitment to work with both Democrats and Republicans in the Finance Committee, and believe there is a responsibility for both sides of the aisle to work together to develop a bill that will earn strong support from the full Senate.

“Despite the differences that have emerged in this health care debate, there is much that we all agree on, including insurance market reforms that bar insurance companies from discriminating against people based on their health status or denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.  We also agree on prevention and wellness investments, critical delivery reforms like paying for quality rather than quantity, increasing access to care by improving health care provider training programs, and reducing uncompensated care by extending tax credits to American families to help pay for their health care coverage.

“Each of us has an obligation to put aside partisan views and to consider how health care reform addresses the needs and challenges faced by individual citizens and our economy as a whole.  While we each have outstanding concerns we wish to see addressed, Senator Baucus has taken an important and critical step forward with this legislation, which is budget neutral and reduces future health care costs according to CBO.  We will continue to work together in the full Senate on bipartisan health care reform that reduces costs, improves care, and expands access.”

Ben Nelson                                                                              Olympia J. Snowe

United States Senator, Nebraska                                              United States Senator, Maine

Joseph I. Lieberman                                                                 Claire McCaskill

United States Senator, Connecticut                                           United States Senator, Missouri

Olympia Snowe likes the Baucus bill? That’s news:

Snowe falls away, leaving Senate Dems without GOP support on healthcare

By Alexander Bolton and Jeffrey Young – 09/15/09 08:10 PM ET

Senate Democrats are going to have to move forward on healthcare without a single Republican supporter after Sen. Olympia Snowe said Tuesday she could not back the Finance Committee’s bill….

Yep, that’s inside the beltway Washington’s way of doing business. Thanks for playing their game and thanks for nothing, Claire.

What color is the sky in their world? Here’s the one the rest of us live in:

When Faced With A Parliament, Act Like A Parliament

…The truth is that one side acts like a Parliament while much of the other thinks we still live in the days of bipartisan consensus. Both parties have different visions of how to govern, and despite that giving Villagers the willies, it’s OK and expected. But if you have one side bending over backwards to work together, and the other side unyielding, the debate necessarily tips in favor of that unyielding side, as a matter of basic physics…

We’ve already compromised with the republicans:

No Snowe in the healthcare reform forecast

….So I have a question.  Since we are doing it without the heartless, soulless fiends that make up the GOP circa 2009 anyway – why not go balls to the wall and rewrite the legislation to pass a single payer plan?  And when they start wailing about how it’s unfair, we can remind them that they had a seat at the grown-ups table for months on end and they chose to throw their food and break the dishes and stab the adults with their fork.  

When they can exhibit some grown-up behavior, we’ll consider talking to them again.

But for now, since they can’t, we should do what parents do for kids all the time – make decisions and act on them, in the best interest of the entire family (in this case the family is the American citizenry) and let the kids wail about it all they want.  Competent adults know how to handle temper tantrums.  Let them scream until they wear themselves out, and if that fails, a glass of cold water in the face – in this case, the threat of single payer – never fails to stop the screaming.

The republicans won’t compromise? That makes it easy. Medicare for everyone.

Update:

Senator Claire McCaskill issued the following statement:

My continuing to work for bipartisanship should not signal that I am not firmly committed to health care reform this year.  The cost of doing nothing is too great and I will work with any and all of my colleagues to make it happen.

That’d be all well and good – if republicans weren’t so intent on doing nothing:

…Senator DeMint said this, I’m gonna quote what he said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo.” Well I don’t think this debate should be about President Obama. [applause] [cheers] It should be, it should be about the people who are going bankrupt because of the cost of health care, [applause] even when they have insurance. [applause]…

Wingnuts like Todd Akin may claim that all we have to do to solve our health care crisis is allow portability so that when workers change jobs, they can take their insurance with them. But with the latest NYT/CBS poll showing 72 percent of us in favor of a public option, his notions are out of touch to the point of being quaint. House Republicans have marginalized themselves, and House Democrats, more liberal than their Senate counterparts, will pass a strong public option. Last Friday:

Unified House Democrats unveiled a draft health care overhaul bill jointly endorsed by three powerful committee chairmen.

Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel and George Miller, chairs of the Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means and Education & Labor Committees, announced the result of six months of negotiations. The sight of three united committee chairmen in the turf-conscious House is a historically rare one.

…[T]he House version includes a robust public plan that would operate nationally and compete with private insurers on a level playing field to keep them honest.

The public plan would be self-sustaining and not subsidized by the federal government, although an upfront infusion of capital would be needed. It would initially be tied to Medicare reimbursement rates, to capitalize on the existing infrastructure, but would evolve into a separate plan that paid higher rates. Participation by doctors would be voluntary.

Rangel described the public plan as “the best of Medicaid, best of Medicare, then kick it up a notch.” The chairmen estimated the plan would cover 95 percent of Americans.

That’s in the House. Then there’s the Senate.

The Senate is where you’ll find the Democratic turncoats that might have the power to stop this. At the other end of the Democratic spectrum from Conyers, Waxman, Rangel, and Miller–it’s painful even to call them Democrats–we’ve got senators Max Baucus, MT; Evan Bayh, IN; Ben Nelson, NE; Kent Conrad, N.D.; Blanche Lincoln, AR; and Mary Landrieu LA. They’re all busy trying not to appear to be dragging their feet on a public option–while their heels are dug in an inch.

Take Bayh, for example, who this winter formed a Blue Dog caucus. His wife, Susan, sits on corporate boards for a living–fourteen at last count–and one of them is Wellpoint, the biggest health insurer in the country. But he says her activities are no reason for concern: “‘The reality is, we don’t talk about stuff that she’s involved with.'” Oh, thank goodness. Imagine how reassured I was to hear it.

It does us little good to have 59 Democrats, 60 if Franken gets seated by this fall, if six of them might vote the wrong way on a public option. In fact, one of those six is even in charge of a committee considering a health care bill. There are two committees creating such bills.

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Max Baucus will almost surely produce the one with the weaker public option. Baucus wavers on that issue depending on whether he’s just visited his home state and been flayed by constituents for keeping single-payer advocates out of committee meetings or whether he’s been in D.C. listening to insiders again for a few days.

Well might he be tempted to waver. He’s taken in more money from the health insurance industry than any other legislator.

“In the past six years, nearly one-fourth of every dime raised by Baucus and his political-action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical-supply firms, health-service companies and other health professionals.”

Then there’s Chris Dodd, D-CT, who, in Kennedy’s absence, chairs the other relevant committee, the Health Committee. On the one hand, 23 percent of his contributions have come from the health care industry. On the other hand:

“I happen to be very strong for a public option,” Dodd said. “I think we need a public option in this bill. I’m going to do everything I can to see to it that a public option is included.”

What that option might actually look like isn’t known yet, but remember that there’s 72% support for a public option. Hell, you couldn’t get three-fourths of Americans to support Mom and apple pie. So it’s gonna happen. The question is whether it will be strong enough to be worth having.

Dodd’s HELP committee should be releasing details on its proposal this week. No doubt it will provide a stronger public option than whatever Baucus’ committee produces. Negotiations over a compromise bill will ensue. That bill might be very weak on the public option.

The problem is that if it isn’t weak  enough to suit Baucus, Nelson, Bayh, et.al., they could refuse to vote for it before it even has a chance to go to conference with the House to resolve differences in the two chambers’ versions. Democrats will have to either keep most of their own in line and maybe sway a couple of moderate Republicans in hopes of getting the 60 votes for cloture. Even Democrats, with all the herd instinct of cats, might turn lemming-like at that point. Blue Dogs will be risking their political futures if they vote nay on the health care bill.

But if Senate Democrats fail to get the sixty, they’ll be forced to use a little known–but quickly getting known–tactic called reconciliation that allows budget bills to bypass the cloture requirement. The simple definition of reconciliation is: fifty votes. No filibuster. The problem is that reconciliation isn’t that simple. Since this bill isn’t purely a budget bill, parts of it would be damaged in the reconciliation process:

“If Democrats decide to go down the reconciliation route, some of the bill will pass and some of it won’t,” said former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove. “It will be a Swiss cheese bill, but it will be a bill.”

So the bottom line is that Democrats need to seat Al Franken, hold the Blue Dogs in line and maybe bring Olympia Snow and Susan Collins into the fold for that vote.

If they can do that, the bill goes to conference with the House, and since the House bill is going to be strong on the public option, the resulting bill will likely be stronger than what the Senate produced.

Which will bring on the final battle. The Senate, sometime this fall if the timetable holds, will vote on the conference bill. And all the same caveats about getting sixty votes or facing reconciliation will apply again. But this hurdle, for what may be a stronger bill, could be even tougher to clear. Then again, my other caveat will also obtain: that any Democrat who votes no will be risking his political future.

All that is still a ways off. Right now, we Missourians need to do our part to get our health care ducks in a row. We need to make sure that Claire McCaskill–Bond is a lost cause, of course–supports a strong public option. She has declared her support for the public option, so Clark urged us to go to her e-mail contact form, thank her for that support, and ask her these questions:

1–Do you support a public healthcare option as part of healt
hcare reform?

2–If so, do you support a public healthcare option that is available on day one?

3–Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to Congress?

4–Do you support a public healthcare option that can bargain for rates from providers and big drug companies?

I don’t assume she’ll write back and say that she thinks what the House is considering is just dandy. But it couldn’t hurt to hope.