Here are the FDL Action health care reform highlights for Wednesday, November 11.1. Jane Hamsher points us to Kagro's "excellent rundown of what happened on the public option fight," and also why abortion rights activists, with "an existing network of professional lobbyists and policy analysts, plus a multi-million dollar funding base," didn't see the Stupak amendment coming and work effectively to head it off. Simply bizarre.
2. Jon Walker reports on Sen. Tom Carper's "no good, super terrible, completely awful, new new new 'alternative' to the public option," namely "to take Olympia Snowe’s worthless trigger idea (which already should have 60 votes if no liberal Democratic senators bolt), and weaken it further for no reason." Brilliant!
3. Jon Walker writes that "if Harry Reid tries to go this route [e.g., "accept some worthless fig leaf like the Snowe’s trigger or Carper’s Plan B"] to get a watered-down compromise, it will not 'show the left that he did everything he could do.'" In the end, Walker concludes, "The left will not be 'placated' by a big show and half hearted measures." Sorry, but that's not what we've worked so hard for the last several years.
4. Jane Hamsher writes that "the absolute best, most optimistic outlook for passing a bill in the House without a public option means that 13 or fewer progressive votes could stop it." She then proceeds to list 16 progressives who have pledged that they'll vote against any bill without a public option. The result of this analysis is powerful: "no health care bill will pass without a public option. Period." Now that we've got that out of the way, how about the Senate stops wasting time and gets this thing done already?
5. Jon Walker says that "PolitiFact Is Wrong About Nita Lowey: Abortion Coverage Could Become Rare With Stupak Amendment." What's weird is that even after Walker contacted PolitiFact and told them exactly why they were wrong, they still would not correct their story, arguing that the possibility of abortion coverage becoming rare "seems remote." Based on this, Walker remarks, snarkily, "PolitiFact claims to be a 'fact checker,' not a 'in my opinion it seems like an unlikely outcome' checker." Heh.
6. Finally, Jon Walker reports that "since the House agreed to decouple the public option from Medicare rates, [Sen. Kent] Conrad has expressed some tepid openness to the public plan." True, it may not be a "ringing endorsement" of the public option by Conrad, but on the bright side he "does not sound like a man who is about to threaten to bring the whole bill down if it includes one." Hey, that almost makes me tepidly optimistic! LOL
