These people are just really lame.

Invade Iraq?  Spend Trillions blowing up bridges and rebuilding them?  No problem!  

INVEST in the health and well being of Americans?  Can't.

The draft also would scale back Medicare payments to physicians, a long-promised but costly provision.

There are already enough doctors refusing Medicare patients because of the low percentage of billing they receive. I've seen bills on my mom that were billed out at $1500 and the doctor was paid less than $500 by Medicare.

But some liberal Democrats, like Senators John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, expressed reservations about concessions being made by Democrats to keep a few Republicans on board.

Mr. Rockefeller said he was unhappy that the legislation would end the Children's Health Insurance Program and could reduce the scope of benefits for 11 million children in the program. NYT - h/t Allege

"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program." (applause) "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003.

Now - in 2009 he sees the light. He sees why we cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody.

Now - a single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan is not what he would like to see.

I am so angry sometimes at this charade. It seems like a waste of time watching this farce go down. Like a corny soap opera. Worse.

In CA we passed a fabulous single payer bill through the legislature twice in 2005 and 2007. It was nixed twice by Arnold but it shows that single payer is not from Mars, squeaky. Several other states, including PA are also cooking SP bills. Kucinich did a great thing by getting that amendment in the door to get waivers for states to do their own SP systems. We should encourage our critters to keep that amendment in the final bill.

Wuda cuda shuda: Obama (or better yet so he doesn't take any political chances, I know how uncomfortable that is for him) his surrogates in Congress, not lefties like Kucinich or Conyers or Sanders but mainstreamers shuda championed single payer from the start, really gone to bat for it and educated the public (I personally would have promoted it as SP plus a robust private option to allow people to buy additional luxury insurance for single rooms or whatever they want). Eventually after the sausage-making process we would end up with a compromise in a robust public option, giving people a choice, while allowing SP to be aired out as a strongly championed policy (lots of good talking points) instead of being chased away from the table and treated like a hopeless, worthless cause. Bottom line: We likely wuld had a good public option instead of what looks like a ticket to hell with nothing much to protect us from being creamed by the private health insurance and drug industries.