What's stopping them now is their party's fierce allegiance to their corporate insurance benefactors and patrons.

If a few thousand more Americans die, so be it. At least the Senators will get their insurance company campaign bribes.

Follow the money.

So, should we conclude that the 51 Democrats in the Senate who said they support a public option when 60 votes were needed were all full of shit, now that the bar is down to 50 and they’re still not moving?

----------------------

Yes.

Next question.

Thanks for calling them to the carpet. I admire and support your position. Please keep trying. I would like to see John Kerry be a little more of a leader, especially now that he's the senior senator from Massachusetts.

If all Americans refused to pay these murderous vultures
their "premiums" and insisted upon paying doctors, hospitals and pharmacists fair market value for their goods and services; what would happen?

I realize that the "public option" is still valid and real in current political discourse, but that's about it. I view it as a "place holder", a marker, a chess or board-game piece to anchor superficial discussion.

I generally root for Ms. Hamsher, but I have a feeling that she still takes the term too seriously and literally.

Ever since the "robust public option" was introduced as the absolute minimum standard distinguishing true "health care reform" from mere tinkering around the edges, it has been whittled down to an eviscerated buzz-phrase in a death of a thousand cuts.

In a manner reminiscent of radioactive "half-life", but quicker, the Robust Public Option promptly deteriorated into a Not-So-Robust Public Option, on down through the Half-Assed Public Option and the rest of the *-Assed subdivisions, and now exists on an atomic level.

Now there is the prospect that the institutional political cyclotron may cough up a new, improved subatomic "Public Option".

I hope for her own sake that Ms. Hamsher hasn't backed herself into a corner in which she feels bound to champion any atrocious No Insurer Left Behind legislation that has something called a "public option" dragging from its bumper.

I hope she's fully aware that a "public option" is a Trojan Farce.

· Yr Obd't Servant

A trip to the WIKI shows that a simple Senate majority can change the rules for limiting filibusters. Why don't the Dems do it? They'd have no one to blame for betraying their progressive campaign promises.

Every Congressional session is one long corporate financed filibuster against any kind of real change. The only thing holding Obama back is his own debt to corporate America.

"What’s Stopping Them Now?"

It has been sooooooooo looooooooooong since they've done something only because it is right for the people and not because of some damn corporation and their damned lobbyists that they're afraid of doing the right thing. It's unbelievable, it's maddening! It's time to piss off the for profit special interests, It's time to piss off the conservative right, it's time to simply say ENOUGH! No more excuses!

Jacksonian

For that matter, couldn't they pass single payer too?

I've grown increasingly suspicious that some, perhaps many, of the alleged 51 "yes" votes are secretly using conservadems for cover.

Pols such as Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson can safely oppose a public option without too much to fear from their constituents. But that's not true for more moderate Dems in some states.

Also, we focus a lot on how much money people such as Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus get from insurance companies, but should we be following the money trail farther? It seems apparent that more than just a handful of our lawmakers are in the corporate hip pockets.

And President Obama's abject failure on any kind of public option completely belies his claim that he wants to create competition and make insurers more accountable. I've always been inclined to agree with Sen. Feingold that Obama got the bill he really preferred.

I suspect the same is true of many so-called progressive Dems busy hiding behind the actions of others.

They aren't voting according to their conscience or their electorate's wishes because the party apparatus has too strong a hold on them and the party leadership is in the pocket , nay , is the pocket!, of the insurors.

blame Bush! That is the state run media mantra! Plus Democrats are 99% talk anyway. They talk real good, that is why you progressives knock down the voting precinct door to vote Dem every 2 years!

Obama obviously has no allegiance to either those who voted for him or to members of his party. Today he was meeting with Republicans to determine what they will support going forward. Obama and his right wing advisor Emanuel are more concerned with what Republicans think than with what Democrats think. He doesn't care at all about what progressives (who don't have a party) think.

The health insurance deform that was heavily supported by Obama was right wing legislation that, to Obama's surprise, no Republican agreed to support because it wasn't far enough to the right for their extreme tastes. The Republicans may secretly favor the mandate but they don't support, for example, the government regulating the coverage details of private insurance policy contracts.

If passed, these health insurance proposals would hammer the already partially collapsed economy and the totally collapsed labor market and cause additional damage to both. It would be sort of like force feeding someone very sick a huge, multi-dish meal. Whereas single payer is the medicine needed.

The "public option" shrunk to the point where it was just a mockery of the original public option as proposed by Joseph Hacker. And even that one, with over 100 million enrollees, would fail to control costs to the extent necessary, although that one would probably be a little better than nothing.

Why make things more complicated than they are? It's single payer or nothing, especially with a collapsed labor market involved. Democrats, to avoid a total wipe-out in November and due to inability to agree with hard right provisions in the Senate bill, have apparently wisely decided to cut their losses on this effort, which was doomed to failure from the very start. Were these laws to pass, the damage would have been much more extensive. If the legislation passed, the losses would accrue not only to the Democrats but to the economy and the people in it.

In the end, the only strong support for the proposed health insurance laws came from those who would directly benefit the most: from those directly or at least indirectly working in the health related industries. That alone tells you the proposals were not going to help the economy or the health care of the people as a whole. The health sectors are acting as a severe drag on the economy that is left, and quite frankly they need to be hurt a little in the short run if the economy as a whole (including health) is going to be helped in the longer run.

The Democrats should attempt to pass certain components piece by piece. They could catch far right Republicans red handed for voting against the banning of pre-existing condition clauses and the like. That they won’t do that proves that it is not only Obama who favors the Republicans over 1930’s-1970’s grade Democrats, but it is also the current right wing Democratic legislators. Durbin, Hoyer, Pelosi, all of them are essentially Republicans by 1930-1980 standards, not Democrats.

25 Reasons why health proposals would fail, Haiti, 11 Million Jobs Missing and more
http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com

Personally, I can't quite see Max Baucus voting for a public option of any flavor. And, I question a few others on the list, too. More importantly, Obama has done everything but lead on this issue. (Although Obama has certainly led the corporate effort for an insurance mandate -- another upwards shift of wealth to the already massively wealthy!) So, who will twist the arms? -- Certainly NOT Rham!

However, I admire Jane Hamsher's work on this issue, and her persistence. Jane is tough!

"I realize that the "public option" is still valid and real in current political discourse, but that's about it. I view it as a "place holder", a marker, a chess or board-game piece to anchor superficial discussion." -- Obedient Servant

I view the public option in a very similar light.

Author Hamsher concludes, "So, should we conclude that the 51 Democrats in the Senate who said they support a public option when 60 votes were needed were all full of shit, now that the bar is down to 50 and they’re still not moving?" --The answer is "yes." The article's title: "List of 51 Senate Democrats Who Support A Public Option: What's Stopping Them Now?" The answer is "class allegiance"; specifically allegiance to our real rulers,the corporate capitalist/imperialist elite.

Do we have to wait for an earthquake to get healthcare for all ?

This has all been a song and dance. A public option is bunk, like the cash for clunkers, a bone tossed to the already comfortable. Universal Health Care is the only moral option. Anything else is a loss for the people that need it the most. All the talk is about the middle class. Millions can't afford food or housing or computers to blog. Does the lower class count?

No guts.

For those who still say "Vote all incumbents out" let's remember there are more democrats than rep in this category.
So, that's what reps are hoping we'll do.
Instead push progressive forward,including in primaries against blue dogs (reps in disguise) ask candidates to pledge on key issues.
Petition now for
- publicly only funded elections (a no-brainer)
- impeachment of the 5 supreme court judges (high treason)

Jane has a point "class loyalty" hmmm !How many Senators on this list are not millionaires? How many cannot afford health care? Who isn't running for re-election? Chris Dodd ...,Oh never mind.
Be well please.

So why don't we have Free Universal Healthcare now? Who is holding it up?
I notice that the President still has authority to 'terminate' any US citizen who gets in his way.

I am pleased that BOTH Oregon Senators support the public option.

Other states....get with the PROGRAM! Needle your senators. Call them. Email them. Peck at them. Don't let them escape!

Public option won't even come for a vote, what's the point of singling out these mobsters? This list's useless. Don't trust what Democrats say in public, watch what they do. Letters mean nothing. Their votes are what counts.

If it does come to a vote, which is highly doubtful, Democrats, like their conjoined twins the Republicans, will do whatever the corporations bribed them to do.

The sad thing is, those 51 Senators represent roughly 58 percent of the American population because of our disproportionate Senate.

When will we have a democracy? When will we fix our system?

Well, this is just a disaster. And you really can't shame the Democrats, especially when they support big pharma and the insurance companies over the people. The Dems, in that respect, are no different than the Repugs. They're just doing their real jobs, collecting campaign dollars.

No, let the so-called "public option" die, and let this horrible healthcare finance reform bill die with it. Let it blow up, like Bill Clinton's earlier disastrous try. Tell your Congress person to just vote "No" on the whole thing. Demand a single-payer system instead.

The Dem Party is not on your side. Jane Hamsher should just admit it and stop trying. Let's all unite behind a third party that doesn't depend on corporate largess. Take power. Smash corporate control over our lives. It's killing us, slowly but surely.

-TIA

With all due respect to Ms. Hamsher, what else could we expect?

The only "change" in "change we can believe in" is from an abuser clad in the wifebeater-shirt of pseudo-illiteracy to an abuser clad in the tuxedo of seductive eloquence.

All else remains the same: the unyielding solidarity of the aristocrats hidden behind the charade of hostile factions, GOPorker and DemocRat; the Big Business Big Plantation of the United Estates; the function of government and governance at every level narrowed to the single purpose of propagating capitalism -- absolute power and maximum profit for the Ruling Class, total subjugation and the bottomless poverty of everlasting jobless recovery for the Working Class, extermination by abandonment and neglect for all of us who are old or disabled and therefore no longer exploitable for profit (the REAL reason for the carefully orchestrated failure of "health care reform").

Wake up, people. The American Dream was always fed by the blood of its victims -- slaves, First Nations folk, other minorities whether ethnic or ideological -- and now with jobless recovery the Ruling Class has merely expanded its victim pool to include all of us who were brainwashed to such Moron Nation blindness we believed the truth of class-struggle a falsehood and imagined ourselves exempt from its savagery.

But now the pterodactyls are coming home to roost...

CHUBBY TED KENNEDY

Just like chubby Ted Kennedy, most of those in Congress suffer bad health and they know full well the root cause of it, a chubby diet. For their diet is the average American refined food diet which is:

50% fat, 40% protein and only 10% complex carbohydrates.

Whereas a healthy balanced diet is 10% fat, 10% protein and 80% complex carbohydrates.

So, do not those in Congress know that the only way to improve the health of America is to improve the health of our diet? Do they not know that both the processed food industry and medical industry would be driven into bankruptcy if Americans started to eat healthy?

And so, a defense economy dependent on wars, a high finance industry dependent on high imports, and a garbage medical industry dependent on our eating garbage.

Therefore, just as we run a police state in Palestine using Palestine police, so shall China do to us. Unless we start now, to organize against it somehow.