Health Care rally
27 Oct 09

speaker
MoveOn sponsored a rally next to the Liberty Bell going from 5:00am to 10:00pm (Military/European times: 0500 to 2200) where readers could read the entire HELP House health care bill aloud 10 minutes at a time.

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Howard Fineman, usually a "Villager" (Blogger term for members of the press corps) in good standing, goes off the reservation and talks about the prospects for a good health care bill in good, sound, common-sense terms:

[T]he pursuit of [Republican Senator Olympia] Snowe is pretty close to obsessive, which is not a good thing either for Democrats or for the prospects of health-care reform worthy of the name. First, Snowe's exaggerated prominence is both the result and symbol of Obama's quixotic and ultimately time--wasting pursuit of "bipartisanship."

The healh care bill is going well enough now that our only real concern is that President Obama might "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" by taking this bipartisanship thing too seriously.

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And the abuses of health care insurance companies continue apace:

Isn't that great? Because women are the ones who bear the physical burden of gestation and the responsibility that entails, they are paying up to 50% more in premiums. When [Senator] Jon Kyl whined about not wanting to pay for maternity benefits, he was defending that status quo.

And a very good question about how the Villagers have covered the "public option" question in the health care bill:

"I think we may have misstated the strength of the opposition to the public option in the first place," Well, that has been obvious for months.  What Bacon doesn't address, and should, is why the media overstated the strength of the opposition to the public option.  What could they do better the next time?  Does this indicate they listen to the wrong "experts"? 

Late-breaking update: Woo-hoo!!! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has included a strong public option with the preferable "opt-out" provision as opposed to the lesser "trigger" option!!!

Reid is sending several different versions of the total legislation to the CBO for scoring. But crucially, he’s ONLY sending the opt-out version of the public option to CBO, not the trigger provision or any other compromise.

The White House sends along its approval.