Here are the FDL Action health care reform highlights for Tuesday, November 24.1. Jon Walker explains "the difference between really trying and pretending to try" by Majority Leader Harry Reid on the public option. Walker quotes Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal, who writes, "Maybe Mr. Reid plans to push as far as he can with a bill including a public option, to show his party he has done all humanly possible, before yanking the public option just before the whole effort goes off a cliff." The problem for Reid, though, is that such a maneuver is not likely to fool anyone. Or, as Walker puts it, "his party's base will not buy it." So much for that idea.
2. Jon Walker has the second part of his series on what the Senate health care bill does better: "the Cantwell basic health program," which Walker argues "is much closer to how sensible countries have designed their regulated health insurance marketplace or exchange." Wait, we're gonna start being "sensible" now? Ha.
3. David Dayen predicts that immigration could become a new sticking point for health care reform legislation, with "Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), a key ally of Barack Obama’s from Illinois, [saying] today that he would find it 'extremely difficult if not impossible' to vote for a health care bill that included the restrictive and discriminatory measure on undocumented immigrants that appears in the Senate’s version and has the White House’s support." If it's not one thing, it's another...
4. Scarecrow explains why there needs to be a viable public option, arguing that "[w]ithout it, health insurance reform will be just a very bad, very foolish, and very expensive experiment — and clearly not the platform Democrats should want in 2010."
5. Jon Walker asks, "Is PhRMA Afraid Of The Progressive Block?" The question is prompted by the fact that PhRMA is running ads in Connecticut urging Joe Lieberman to support the current Senate bill. Verrrry interesting.
6. Michael Whitney points to a powerful new video contrasting Blanche Lincoln vowing on the Senate floor to oppose a public option with thousands of uninsured Arkansans in Little Rock for a free health care clinic. It's powerful stuff, and if you'd like to help us run the ads, please click here. Thanks.
7. Finally, Jon Walker compares the Senate filibuster to a game of "Shoots and Ladders" with "made up rules." Walker concludes that "Senate Democrats have to decide if keeping their fun, made up rules is more important to them than helping millions of Americans in need." Why does something tell me they're going to go with the "fun, made up rules?" Sigh.
