The Debate Rages On

Now that the debate is hot and engaged, it's interesting to see what's going on. Not by any stretch of the imagination can these failures be blamed on the Republicans anymore. No, the truth is that there are enough Dems to pass this thing, and everyone knows it. But they're still having problems rallying enough support. Hmmm...internal conflict, anyone?

Another side effect of this situation, though, is that we're seeing some seriously different methods of handling this conflict:

The White House ducks, dodges, bobs, weaves, flips and flops — all with great and wondrous conviction and oration. It is perfectly unclear where Obama is on the public option — he tells his own members of his party different things in public than he does the public.

The Speaker, meanwhile, has not budged in her repeated insistence that the House bill have a public option. Her public and private comments have been the same — and she over ruled a deal with the Blue Dogs made prior to the August recess which would have tempered the Public Option — she will not be denied, nor will the 83 signatories of the letter that threatens they will vote NO if there is not a robust public option.

Here's the danger of having wacko Nancy Pelosi running the House:

The Speaker can do what ever she wants with the merged bills from the three Committee’s of jurisdiction — not quite the same as the Senate bringing up a vapor-bill — but the Speaker can re-write ObamaCare in the House Rules Committee, and she can do whatever she pleases in the great “merge” process.

Change the taxes in the bill? No problem. Include Rep. Stupak’s explicit ban on abortion and iron-clad conscience protection for doctors and nurses, easy as pie. Write in language that prevents illegal aliens from being insured, OK. End the cuts to Medicare Advantage — can do. Stop the cuts to Medicare — YES WE CAN. Make sure the bill contains the public option — you bet. Raise or lower the spending levels — yep. Take a pound of flesh from the insurers — done. Change every American’s health plan within five years to fit the design specs of the Secretary of HHS and not allow any others — already happening.

The real problem is that Democratic members, like most who enter public life, actually care about some of these issues — and they are, in the main, binary yes/no issues. Yes or No on the Public Option — there is no gray or maybe, kinda, sorta, if it works like this it will be OK — there is or there isn’t. The same is true for the passion-infested issues of the tax structure and Medicare cuts to pay for ObamaCare, abortion and providing ObamaCare to illegal immigrants, and the overall spending levels of a trillion dollars.

And this is why the 72 hour — read the bill — movement is such a threat to ObamaCare.

Speaking of the White House hiding and dodging, we now know they did have their own health care reform plan...but they're not sharing what's in it:

The White House has been secretly drafting its own health care legislation that it may unveil at some point during the debate if officials believe it would help secure passage of a bill, according to sources familiar with the effort.

Sources differed on how far the process has gotten, with some saying a bill is basically finished and others saying they are aware only of a partially completed effort. White House officials, though they know their preferences, also appear to be constructing different options that could be thrown together depending on how the legislation is shaping up in Congress.

Hot Air analyzes:

This creates another problem for Democrats. Both moderates and progressives in their caucus need traction over some contentious points of the plan, especially the public option. With the White House super-secret plan known, members of both chambers may demand to see it to gauge where they stand with the administration. Both groups would also be concerned, as Roll Call notes, that Obama was preparing to “sell them out.”

No matter how one looks at it, though, it’s a strange notion of leadership. Barack Obama insisted that he had the “judgment to lead,” but on his highest priority domestic-agenda item, Obama leads by … hiding.

Nice leadership, huh?

Several key votes were held yesterday, including some amendments on the most contentious pieces of ObamaKennedyDeathCare:

Democrats on Senate Finance unanimously blocked an amendment to the Baucus bill which would require applicants for the healthcare exchanges or healthcare subsidies show a photo ID before receiving benefits.

The President and Democrats have claimed that illegal immigrants will not be eligible for Obamacare, but every time Republicans have sought to introduce language which would actually require applicants to prove their identity and lawful status the Democrats have voted it down.

Without that requirement, the bill "remains dearly lacking when it comes to identification," Grassley said. "Frankly, I'm very perplexed as to why anyone would oppose this amendment," he said.

But Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who represents the border state of New Mexico, said that the type of fraud Grassley said he wants to prevent is highly uncommon. "The way I see the amendment, it's a solution without a problem," Bingaman said.

"Highly uncommon." How would he know?

Related: When you have a second, there's an excellent op-ed over at the WSJ entitled "Why Obama Bombed on Health Care."

UPDATE [DrewM.]: The committee also rejected an amendment sponsored by Orin Hatch that would have prevented money provided via tax credits to be used for plans that included abortion services.

No money for abortion or illegal aliens? How about a bridge in Brooklyn, does Obama have any of those for sale?

Actions speak louder than words, don't they? The Democrats say they're opposed to illegal aliens getting ObamaKennedyDeathCare benefits and using taxpayer funding for abortions...but their actions prove otherwise.

Just because the debate is on doesn't mean that the Democrats are suddenly being nice or courteous. In fact, it's quite the opposite:

Classy. But it gets even worse. The next day this yahoo stood up to apologize, and...well, just watch this 'apology' for yourself to determine how serious he was:

Oh, boy. The obvious rebuttal is: so what if people don't have health insurance? They can get emergency health care at hospitals for anything and everything (and for free, too!). How can any study possibly say that simply not having health insurance kills people?

The references to the holocaust are, of course, completely tasteless and stupid, and only further Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the GOP is a bunch of Nazis for opposing ObamaKennedyDeathCare. What an apology.

Also as a rebuttal to Grayson's asinine remarks, Gateway Pundit helpfully provides this reminder:

...compared to the US, countries with nationalized health care see more women die from breast cancer, see more preemie deaths and see hundreds of patients die each year while waiting in line for treatment.
But, facts don't much matter to democrats and their insistence to nationalize health care.

That's very true. But for the rest of us, they work just fine.

Interestingly enough, I got another one of those Obama hoo-rah e-mails, and it contained a curious statistic:

The cavalry is here -- and they're in white coats and scrubs: More than a half a million doctors and millions of nurses are joining forces to help pass real health reform.

Americans listen to their nurses and doctors when it comes to health reform -- and for good reason. If we can help them amplify their voices, it'll be a huge boost to our campaign for change.

The American Medical Association, Doctors for America, and a dozen other physicians groups representing 500,000 doctors are endorsing reform. So are the American Nurses Association and other organizations representing millions of nurses.

They're speaking out because they see the shortcomings of our health care system firsthand, every day: patients denied the care they prescribe, families losing access to their doctors, and a system that forces them to spend more time with paperwork and less time with patients.

These voices need to be heard -- with so much deception out there clouding the debate, it's critical that medical professionals are able to focus the country on the simple fact that health reform is good medicine.

Hm. Half a million medical professionals support ObamaKennedyDeathCare, huh? That's really strange, because a survey of medical professionals -- not the unions 'representing' them, but the actual medical professionals themselves -- shows that 78% oppose it. When asked if a public option or co-op would address the rising costs of health care, 92% said no.

I have to agree with the President on this one. These voices do need to be heard. It's the unions that need to shut up and stop deceiving the country.

There's my two cents.