Health Wars (11/5/09)

I realize we're a week past Halloween, but take a deep breath and pretend you're Crazy Nancy Pelosi for a moment.  You've belched forth a 2,000-page communist health care monstrosity at the start of this week.  Then, on Tuesday, your party gets blown out of two gubernatorial elections by the GOP in a haplessly "blue" state (New Jersey) and one that was supposed to have become haplessly "blue" (Virginia).  This comes on the heels of the "August from town hall hell" in which the anti-BarryCare sentiments of the clear majority of the American people were made abundantly clear.  You finally admit to yourself what ought to have been obvious all along were it not for your impenetrable megalomania: that time to "transform" America into a gigantic Belarus is not on your side and the sooner you ram your bill through the House, the better your dwindling chances of making it come out the other side.

If you wait, it's dead.  The results of the '09 election harbinger will sink in with Blue Dogs, the momentum will founder further, November 2010 will come over the horizon, and the pawns will scatter to the four winds.  If you go for the jamdown - which worked on Hogzilla and cripple & tax but failed on BarryCare back in July - you run all the same risks plus saddle your majority-making buffer with the added liability of yet another statist behemoth that they never read before being forced to vote on it.  And if enough rank & file Dems balk over that, or the numerous issues that have them so divided, the bill may be rejected.

Okay, Granny almost certainly hasn't admitted to herself or anybody else the possibility of anything other than a thousand-year Donk Reich or House passage of full-frontal BarryCare.  But they do seem to be in a shit-fire hurry about it:

House Democratic leaders are pushing for a Saturday vote on their sweeping health-care bill, but they are struggling to win over shaky rank-and-file members who could hold up its passage.

Democrats tacked new provisions onto the legislation late Tuesday, clearing one of the final hurdles for bringing the bill to the floor. One of the additions would raise $24 billion for the bill by eliminating a biofuels tax break for pulp and paper companies. Another would place tighter restrictions on insurance companies to prevent them from increasing consumers’ premiums without cause.

But the changes didn’t resolve sharp differences among Democrats over how the bill handles funding for abortion, with some saying they won’t support the legislation until it addresses their concerns. Republican victories in two gubernatorial elections Tuesday night are also making some wavering members uneasy about voting for a $1.055 trillion bill.

As of Wednesday, House leaders didn’t appear to have secured the 218 votes they need to pass the bill. They were moving to quickly swear in two Democrats elected Tuesday, which would give the party 258 seats in the House and allow leaders to lose as many as 40 Democratic votes without losing their majority. No Republicans are expected to vote for the bill.

That's not the only headache the Politburo has to endure, as the American people are also turning the screws of opposition:

"Gangster government".  Gotta love that catchphrase.  Given that House BarryCare's fascist excesses include jailing American citizens for the "crime" of choosing not to purchase government-dictated health insurance, it may even be euphemizing it a bit.

And yes, Virginia, there is a vastly cheaper (by anywhere from twenty-fold to fifty-fold) and more effective Republican alternative that actually addresses the health care issues the public has and would be enormously more popular if the smiley-face storm troopers would give it the chance they dare not allow:

This evening, CBO released a preliminary analysis of a substitute amendment to H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, proposed by Representative John Boehner, the Republican Leader in the House of Representatives. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that the amendment would reduce federal deficits by $68 billion over the 2010-2019 period; it would also slightly reduce federal budget deficits in the following decade, relative to those projected under current law, with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of gross domestic product....

CBO anticipates that the combination of provisions in the amendment would reduce average private health insurance premiums per enrollee in the United States, relative to what they would be under current law-by 7% to 10% in the small group market, by 5 percent to 8 percent for individually purchased insurance, and by zero to 3% in the large group market.  Those are averages, however, and they are subject to a great deal of uncertainty; some individuals and families in each market would see different results.

The Dems dare not allow BoehnerCare to see the light of day because it is responsive to the health care concerns of the American people without nuking the deficit, while BarryCare uses those concerns as a pretext for nationalizing another sixth of the U.S. economy, which will destroy American health care and move the nation draconianly down the road to a functional one-party police state.  That cat left the PR bag three months ago and was confirmed on Tuesday.  Only question is how many Blue Dogs can be bullied or hornswaggled into commiting political suicide to give Shrieker Funbags her pyrrhic victory.

If it were a matter of a single issue, or the less-than-stalwart "moderate" Dem commitment to "fiscal responsibility," I'd say kiss this thing goodbye and put all your chips and hopes on Senate roadblocks to kill BarryCare.  But there are so many, at so many cross-purposes, that while one still can't really bet against House passage, there is a very real possibility that 218 votes may be like sand slipping through Crazy Nancy's gnarled fingers.