One more health care jerk around

The President today finally announced his health care plan. Why? Who the fuck knows. Sadly the plan wasn't "the House passes the Senate bill, the Senate passes the conference committee fixes through reconciliation." No, this is what the White House is calling the "opening bid for the health meeting". You know the one: where Democrats play school marm scold telling Republicans that they really, really need to help out on a health care bill for the good of the country and the Republicans tell the Democrats to cram it with walnuts, ugly. Except on TV this time, while they're all in the same room. You know, productive shit.

What is his "bill"? Well, it's not so much a bill as it is 11 pages of fixes to the Senate and House bills largely built on the framework of the Senate bill. The only new thing, I think, is a proposal federal oversight on the amount of money insurance companies can jack people for in rate hikes. It's all part of the plan.

"This package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform," said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. "That was certainly a factor that went in to how we put this proposal together."

Pfeiffer said the White House views this as "the opening bid," for the bipartisan health care summit scheduled for this Thursday. The hope--a long shot--is that one or more Republicans can agree to support this proposal, allowing Dems to pass it via more standard legislative channels. But if that fails, reconciliation can be used as a backstop.

"The president expects, and thinks the American people deserve, an up or down vote on health care reform," Pfeiffer said.

I don't want to claim to be able to read minds or see the future (not over the internet without you being able to see my professional tarot setup and crystal ball), but I don't think the Republicans are going to sign on. I think they're going to filibuster. You know, like they do on everything. I think you're going to have to get the House to pass the Senate bill, and have the Senate pass these fixes, some other fixes, that "no seriously, we'll do a public option through reconciliation" thing that I know is just going to be a big, fuck-off joke, or kidnap the family members of the GOP leadership and force them to conduct themselves as responsible leaders.

You might know this as stuff that people have been screaming at you to do since you all decided you had a 41-59 minority. So why do we have to go through this pathetic theater to come to an obvious conclusion everyone saw coming over a year ago? Why couldn't this have happened a month ago? Ah yes, there was that jobs bill to get to that still hasn't been passed and your frantic search for spines. Oh well.

So, the Democrats have a plan of action. The country just has to wait until the meaningless summit where nothing will be accomplished happens. But they have a plan and Harry Reid is promising reconciliation action within 60 days. It's time to get your minuscule hopes for timidly moderate reforms up. I'll see you again when 10 Democrats decide that they aren't able to support the drastic, unprecedented action of using reconciliation and vote to kill the bill. You all know that's where this is going, right?