Public option out, Medicare buy-in out, Lieberman in

Joe Lieberman: Ready to vote for reform:

I am getting to that position to where I can say what I wanted to say all along, that I'm ready to vote for health care reform."

What reform?

No universal single-payer national health insurance. No public option. No Medicare buy-in. No repeal of ant-trust exemption. No divorce between health care and employment. No options for the self-employed, under-employed, or unemployed. Expansion of Medicaid on the backs of cash-strapped state governments (thus "proving" that government-run health care doesn't work and is doomed to fail).

Where's the reform?

I guess "regulating" the health insurance industry to eliminate exclusions and rescission is all the "reform" we're going to get. Plus a complicated new maze of expensive free-market, for-profit plans that the government will force people or their employers to buy and then tax. With lots of loopholes so the insurance companies to carry on their monopoly business as usual, exclusions and rescission and all.

UPDATE: Howard Dean: "This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate."

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I'm sorry. Did you say

Submitted by Sven on Tue, 2009/12/15 - 4:08pm.

I'm sorry. Did you say something? I was busy restoring my Facebook privacy settings. Social graph my ass, you greedy bastards.

Sarcasm. It's all I got left.

The Dems are performing a service

Submitted by Virgil Proudfoot on Tue, 2009/12/15 - 6:20pm.

Dean is right: It's time to kill this Senate monster, go back to the House version, and pass as much of it as possible in the Senate through the reconciliation process.

Of course, that presupposes that Obama and the congressional Dems wanted real reform to begin with, but I think that's now out of the question. The public option and Medicare buy-in were pretty objects dangled to gain liberal support. Now that a real vote is at hand, all the pretty objects disappear.

I'm beginning to think that the great service the Dems are providing is to make it unnecessary for the people who voted for them to ever bother voting again.

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems scary and weird. It'll happen to you." —Abraham Simpson

Campaign finance advocates have attacked Mr. Lieberman as “an insurance industry puppet,” suggesting that he wants to protect private health insurers from competition because he has received more than $1 million insurance company campaign contributions since 1998.

During his 2006 re-election campaign, Mr. Lieberman ranked second in the Senate in insurance industry contributions.

Calling him, Capitol Hill's master infuriator.

For the moment, he is at the center of everything — and he loves it.

As one person said on talk radio yesterday, it's not a 60/40 Senate, it's a 57/43 Senate, now let's adjust the campaign.