A look at recently passed health reform, growing momentum for the public option, and the movement for and future of single payer healthcare in America

It is clear that most of the evil in the bill is easily ameliorated by simply opening medicare to all as suggested by Representative Alan Grayson of Florida. Just barely twenty four hours old and not really even law yet why does it have everybody running around like their hair is on fire? Let’s just fix it.

It looks like the Democratic Leadership will get its wish, a sprawling “health care reform” bill, mostly focused on changes to the health insurance system that deliver many millions of new customers to the health insurance industry. The Democrats are making many upbeat claims about this bill, calling it historic and claiming that it will produce affordable “universal” health care coverage for Americans, and for 32 million more than are covered by insurance today, while blithely ignoring the contradiction between these two statements. There have been many recent analyses of these claims, and I won’t add another one here. The analysis of the FDL team authored by Jane Hamsher, contrasting mythical claims about the pending bill with “the truth,” is the best of the analyses of the bill I’ve seen in the past few days.

So, assuming that the Leadership’s HCR legislation passes the Senate and moves to the President’s desk for final approval, I’d now like to look forward and ask where the Democrats stand politically in the wake of their nearly one year investment in painstakingly crafting their “health care reform” bill. To put it crassly, what will they have to run on that means something to most, or, at least, a large number of voters?

I have now heard countless times that Democrats don’t have enough votes for the public option. Twenty-four senators and 120 representatives have signed a letter supporting the public option. Apparently, that’s still not enough. Serious people assure us that there just aren’t the votes, even to pass it through reconciliation where you only need a simple majority. You know, there is one way to find out.

Take the damn vote.

We have to do our part to return Obama to earth, where he can be held accountable for what he does and does not do.

Friday night Bill Moyers hosted a fascinating debate on the Senate’s health care bill between Matt Taibbi, contributing editor for Rolling Stone, and Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect. (The video can be viewed here: Bill Moyers Journal). Taibbi and Kuttner both describe the just-passed health care bill as disastrous. They outline how it is a complete giveaway to the health insurance industry, how it will do nothing to lower costs, and how it will be extremely unpopular to the American public once it’s implemented…

New results from a national poll, conducted by Research 2000 between December 16 and 17, reveal that a majority of American voters are now AGAINST each and every aspect of the Senate’s ‘Obama-Lieberman’ health care bill — which President Obama is now urging for a quick passage…

This entire legislative debacle is proving to be nothing more than inner-Beltway political gamesmanship where the peoples’ interests have been entirely ignored — subverted to the self-interests of politicians and parties…

The reaction to Obama’s Health Care Reform fiasco is getting rather explosive on the Left. There seems to be somewhat of a prevailing sentiment that Obama’s Administration bears the lions’ share of the blame for Lieberman and Blue Dog intransigence. Here’s some of the reactions:…