ObamaCare: All Bets Are Off. . .

By now you’ve all heard that Sen. Ben Nelson did what we all thought he would, he gave up his principles in exchange for a few favors for his constituents. . . the nation’s insurers. This means the rump-Baucus bill will pass the Senate. What does this mean? What happens next? Read on. . .

1. You’ve been tricked by your Senators.

The first thing to realize (and I hope the lousy people of Nebraska and Louisiana and the Democratic parts of Florida are listening) is that the Baucus bill and all of your ill-gotten gains and privileges are now likely worthless. Your Senators have played you for suckers.

How can I say this? Because there are at least 51 Senators who will vote for the final product even if it includes a nuclear strike on your home state. That means the Senate is now irrelevant. . . it will pass whatever comes out of the conference committee, no matter how much your Senator whines that it’s not fair.

The future of your special favors now rests in the hands of the liberal Democrats in the House. That means a likely return of the public option -- and Joe Lieberman can do nothing about it. That also means they can strip out the benefits for which Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Bill Nelson all sold their souls. That means they can ram through funding for abortion, coverage for illegal aliens, and taxes on you and yours. . . and there’s not a damn thing your Senator can do about it.

But they knew that. So when your Senate creature comes back to its home state on bended knee and it tells you through crocodile-tear-stained eyes that it thought it had a deal in place to protect you. . . don’t believe it. It’s lying.

2. What happens next?

What happens next is the bill goes to the conference committee made up of a group of Senators and a group of Representatives appointed by each chamber. They will argue over the final shape of the bill. They usually cannot add anything not already included in either the House or the Senate version (though this can be waived), but that’s not really relevant in this instance as the two bills together already cover everything the liberals in either chamber want.

In other words, even though the Senate stripped out the public option, the House included one. . . thus, the conference committee can put it back into the final bill, and Joe Lieberman can whine about being misled by Harry Reid.

3. Will the final bill pass?

Probably, but we’ll have to wait and see what format the bill ultimately takes. As I said above, don’t expect the Senate to do anything at this point except become a rubber stamp for the House. But the House hasn’t solved its own problems yet. The abortion people are furious on either side and finding a compromise that reconciles their polar opposite positions will be difficult. The immigrant groups are furious about the exclusion of illegal aliens. There is still anger, in both directions, about the inclusion/exclusion of the public option.

And the real winners right now are the insurance companies, which will upset House liberals to no end. Indeed, right now, insurers not only gained freedom from state regulation through this OPM plan, but 30 million more people will be forced to buy their products. Thank you Santa . . . or is it Satan?

In any event, this will be difficult to pass through the House. The House voted 220-215 to pass the bill originally. A loss of three additional votes would kill the bill. With Democrats talking openly about being willing to lose 20-40 seats to get this done, one has to wonder if more “moderate” Democrats won’t decide that their futures lie in opposing this bill? We’ll have to wait and see. . . just how suicidal are these Democrats?

4. What should the Republicans do now?

The Republicans have actually fought an extremely good fight on this. They deserve a ton of credit -- and let me add, the blame for not stopping this lies with the voters who thought they could trust the Democrats with a super-majority.

But now the game is changing. Any Republican who wants to lead the party in the future better start working language into their appearances about repealing this monster. That should become the leading issue in 2010 and 2012.

"Save HealthCare, Repeal PelosiCare"

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Fear and Loathing In D.C.

If there is one thing the Democrats are good at, it’s political theater. Watching them act is like melodrama of the highest order. . . or a low quality soap opera. Of all their recent fooling around, nothing approaches the drama they are generating with health care reform. Fear, hate and revenge fill the air of the Senate. . .

News Item: Dorgan Terrifies Democrats

After fourteen days of debate, the Senate has managed to vote on only eight amendments. Why has the process ground to a halt you ask? Because of little-known Senator Byron Dorgan, who, having fallen for an e-mail scam about a Mexican pharmacy, has introduced an amendment to allow the government to import prescription drugs from other countries.

This has frozen the Democrats with terror. Imagine Dorgan pulling this amendment from his briefcase as the other Democrats huddle together in a distant corner, afraid of the radioactive document. And why is it radioactive? Because this document puts them in a bind. Their idiot followers demand that they PUNISH the drug industry. But the drug industry has been bought off by the White House in a quasi-secret deal to support this reform. Passing this amendment would turn the pharma industry (and their powerful lobby) against them. Thus, they are frozen, unsure what to do.

News Item: Nelson II Terrifies Self

Meanwhile, Sen. Bill Nelson turns the Democratic position that $460 billion in Medicare cuts won’t hurt Medicare into farce. He’s decided that his political survival requires him to offer an amendment to the bill that will exempt three Democratic counties in South Florida with large retirement populations from Medicare cuts. So why would this bill hurt the oldsters in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward counties. . . but no one else in the country?

News Item: Howard Dean Suggests Billocide

A frustrated Howard Dean has told every camera he can find that this bill should be killed. “The Senate version is not worth passing,” growled an angry Howard Dean, a possible gun owner. “The insurance companies got to write this bill the way they wanted to. This isn’t health care reform, this isn’t even insurance reform.” He then noted, in a bizarre moment of honesty, that the bill “does nothing to reduce costs.” And he angrily poked fun at the idea that the bill would cover people with pre-existing conditions: “You can’t afford it, even if you are allowed to buy it.” I wonder if any of ObamaCare's utopian supporters heard those comments?

News Item: Nelson I Rediscovers Principles

Now that it appears the bill cannot pass, Sen. Ben Nelson has rediscovered his principles and states that he won’t support this bill unless the Stupak-like abortion language is inserted.

Meanwhile, the abortion lobby is gearing up to hunt Stupak.

News Item: Democrats Get Their Hate On For Lieberman

But the real hate this week has been aimed at Sen. Joe Lieberman. First, there were hints that Joe might lose his chairmanship. Then the Democrats went a little (lot) crazy. Screamed the shrill Ezra Klein of the Washington Post:

“And if there's a policy rationale here, it's not apparent to me, or to others who've interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”

And loony Klein is not alone. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, makes the same claim:

“He seems to view the prospect of sticking it to the liberals who supported his Democratic opponent in 2006 as a goal potentially worth sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of Americans to fulfill.”

Chait then gets his anti-Semitism on to explain Lieberman’s actions:

“[T]here's little evidence that he's a sharp or clear thinker, and certainly no evidence that he knows or cares about the details of health care reform. . . I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers. Trust me, it's not true.”

He finishes by accusing Lieberman of simply being anti-liberal:

“If the liberals like it, then he figures it's big government and he should oppose it. I think it's basically that simple.”

Hate-filled, leftist Huffington Post blogger (or is that redundant) Jane Hamsher has gotten out her long knives for Lieberman’s wife. She accuses Hadassah Lieberman of being a shill for the insurance industry (hmmm, didn’t Howard Dean mention insurance companies above?). Hamsher, thus, wants Mrs. Lieberman fired from being a spokesman for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which fights breast cancer. She also accuses Hadassah of “being instrumental” in killing HillaryCare.

No word yet on whether Hamsher is looking to injure Lieberman’s kids, but I haven’t read all of her diatribes.

But these are just bloggers and/or Howard Dean -- they don’t count. No real politician would act this way, right? Actually, they would. Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut is calling for Connecticut to recall Lieberman, even though Connecticut has no law to do this and even though the United States Constitution does not allow states to do this.

“No individual should hold health care hostage, including Joe Lieberman, and I’ll say it flat out, I think he out to be recalled.”

Added Connecticut Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy, “People are fed up in Connecticut, and it’s maddening to those of us who feel we have a pretty clear sense of where people in Connecticut are.”

Nice. So if you don’t toe the party line, you need to be removed from office. And these same little totalitarians had the nerve to blast the Republicans for suggesting that candidates who did not agree to 8 of 10 positions would not get financial assistance. Hypocrisy, thy name is “Democratic Party.”

So why did Lieberman do it? According to Lieberman, he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the Medicare proposal by liberals who had been championing the public option:

“Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare buy-in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer. Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’”

*** BREAKING NEWS ***

Finally, we predicted a few weeks ago, that liberals would soon begin throwing around the word “betrayal.” Guess what word The Politico used to describe how liberals feel about Obama’s behavior:

“And as Democrats tried to salvage health reform Tuesday, some liberals could barely hide their sense of betrayal that the White House and congressional Democrats have been willing to cut deals and water down what they consider the ideal vision of reform.”

and

“Progressives feel betrayed, but are not surprised, by the Senate’s move to drop the Medicare buy-in and the public option. They blame Reid and Obama for not exercising their power to fight for the provisions.”

Equally interesting, check out the conspiracy theory thinking being promoted by our old friend Jane Hamsher:

“They were very good at making it look like they wanted a public option in the final bill without actually doing anything to make it happen. It’s hard to believe that the two most powerful people in the country — arguably the world — could not do more to achieve their desired objective than to hand the keys over to Joe Lieberman. They would not be where they are if they are that bad at negotiation.”

Wow, so Obama didn't fail, he never really tried?! How about a tin-foil hat to go with your brown shirt Jane! It’s all a plot! The bells!! The bells!!!

If anyone ever needed proof that leftists are petulant and unbalanced, here it is.

Enjoy!

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Health Care Reform: No Deal??

This one’s interesting. Do you remember the big deal last week to get the Baucus bill through the Senate? Yeah, that one. . . with the liberals “giving up” the public option and the moderates agreeing to destroy Medicare sooner by letting people as young as 55 into Medicare? Well, apparently, that deal may not exist. Curious.

The first clue we had that there was no deal should have been the refusal of the Democrats to release the terms of the deal, while simultaneously crowing about "the deal" to any microphone they could find. And as the week went on, and no details of the deal emerged, people began to ask questions. That’s when the most fascinating thing happened, the admissions started coming out.

First came Sen. Bob Casey, who told the New York Times: “Any big agreement is progress, even if we do not know any of the details.” Read that again. How can there be an agreement with no details?

Maybe Casey is just out of the loop, being from a small, backwater state like Pennsylvania. Let’s listen to Dick Durbin, the Number 2 Democrat in the Senate respond to John McCain’s demand for information about the deal, i.e. the legislation, they’re supposed to be voting on. Surely he knows the details:

“I would say to the senator from Arizona that I’m in the dark almost as much as he is, and I’m in the leadership.”

*scratches head* Really? Hmm. How can this be?

McCain followed up on Durbin's admission with the following:

“Isn’t that a very unusual process? We are discussing one-sixth of the gross national product; the bill before us has been a product of almost a year of sausage-making. Yet here we are at a position on December 12, with a proposal that none of us, except, I understand, one person, the Majority Leader, knows what the final parameters are, much less informing the American people. I don't get it.”

And Durbin, of course, denied this, right? Actually, no. “I think the senator [from Arizona] is correct.” But Durbin did try to shift the blame to the CBO, arguing that the reason no one knew the details was that they awaited the big, bad, secretive CBO’s verdict: “We may find that something that was sent over there doesn’t work at all, doesn’t fly.”

You think? How about these two problems you face. First, the Democrats are counting on $25 billion in phantom savings from “competition created by the public option” to reduce the overall cost of the bill. No public option, no phantom savings. That means they now need to find an additional $25 billion to make their phony numbers appear to balance.

Secondly, nobody likes the plan to expand Medicare. Old people are freaked out that their health insurance is about to go away. Hospitals are freaked out that they cannot afford this (they lose nine cents on each dollar of health care they provide under Medicare already). Governors claim it’s breaking their budgets. Even those socialists at the Business Roundtable are backing off this turkey.

Various senators don’t like the plan either. Said Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida (not to be confused with Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska), this deal is a “non-starter.” That’s a strange thing to say for a man who just made an agreement.

And he’s not alone. Ten more Democrats wrote a letter this week complaining that this compromise would make it harder for seniors to get treatment under Medicare because “provider shortages in states with low reimbursement rates such as ours will make such a program ineffective, or even worsen the problems these states are experiencing.” These ten were: Sens. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Russ Feingold (Wisc.), Tim Johnson (S.D.), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Amy Klobuchar (MN), and Al Franken (SNL).

Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe also criticized the proposal. Lieberman indicated that he was growing “increasingly concerned” with the proposal:

“I am increasingly troubled about the proposal. I am worried about what impact it will have on the Medicare program’s fiscal viability and also what effect it will have on the premiums paid by people benefiting from Medicare now.”

Nelson stated that this could be an intermediate step to a public option “which I do not like.” He further stated, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing does not become a viable option. I think it is going to be the lesser of the popular things, but I am keeping an open mind.”

Olympia Snowe was not as optimistic. “I have serious concerns. I just think that is the wrong direction to take.” She further stated that she could not see a way to even tweak the proposal to win her vote. “I can’t see it.”

Maybe there was no deal after all? It’s sure starting to sound that way.

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