In a party line vote of 60-39, the Senate voted Saturday evening to proceed with debate on a health care reform bill. All 58 Democrats and both Independents voted in favor of the motion while Republicans voted against it. Senate Majority Harry Reid closed debate and urged Republicans to support debate of the bill arguing that the framers of the Constitution didn't intend for the rules to limit a healthy debate. Following the vote, Reid said the "finish line is in sight." He added "that while we don't all agree how to get there we all agree something must be done." Reid went on to say that the bill will "save lives, save money and save medicare." Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), told reporters that "everyone should have the right to quality health care" and that this bill will "move us down the path to health care for all Americans."

It appears as if the debate for Universal Healthcare will make it to the Senate floor. Blanche Lincoln recently announced she would cast a vote to allow debate. However, as always with a Corporate Democrat she has definately reserved her right to stab America in the back.

On the eve of a vote to move the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to the floor in the Senate, the Obama Administration has released a statement on the bill. Shockingly enough, they support it! The one interesting bit is that the statement of Administration policy specifically cites the public option as an important piece of the bill: "The Administration is pleased that the bill includes a public health insurance option offered in an Exchange. As the President has said throughout this process, a public option that competes with private insurers is one of the best ways to provide the choice and competition that are so badly needed in today’s market."

Many of us have argued against the Iraq War for some time now and more of the cost and scope of the failure in that war is emerging as it begins to come to an end. At a time when America is debating whether to invest in it's own people or not, I think we should remember that a great many of the Senators that will be debating Universal Healthcare if they even vote to do that were all for the extended war in Iraq and the wasted money invested there.

Progressives and ardent supporters of a healthcare public option are cheering the Senate version of health reform legislation to emerge Thursday. Social conservatives, meanwhile, are attacking the bill for lack of an anti-abortion amendment that had been included in the House version.

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)--- Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us. Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice -- dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don't take our calls.

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has recruited an all-star team of former senators — Vice President Joe Biden, Tom Daschle and Ken Salazar — to push healthcare reform over the finish line. Reid (D-Nev.) plotted strategy with the vice president, Interior Secretary Salazar and former Majority Leader Daschle (D-S.D.) on Wednesday, days ahead of a crucial vote to begin debate on the bill that needs every Democrat."

(VIDEO) In a speech broadcast on Canadian television, Michael Moore blasted the Democrats' healthcare bill as a gift to the health insurance industry, which he argued will make billions more as a result. "The health insurance companies are going to make an extra 70 billion dollars...What company wouldn't love this bill?"

After much waiting and gnashing of teeth Harry Reid is poised to introduce the Senate version of the Healthcare bill and try to garner the 60 votes that would even bring it up for debate. While Reid's bill seemingly left the public option entact and chose to tax those making over $250,000k AND tax so-called "Cadillac plans" it did not differ greatly from the House version of reform. However, even if this bill gets the 60 votes needed even to bring it to debate it is painfully apparent that many vultures await in the Senate to pick it apart for Corporate America.

"When it comes to paying for health overhaul, Americans see just one way to go: Tax the rich. ... Lawmakers also are looking at levying new taxes on insurance companies, drug companies and medical device makers. But the only approach that got majority support in the AP poll was a tax on upper-income Americans."

Neither the House health care reform bill nor the Senate Finance Committee bill eliminates Medicare Advantage, but both would reduce what the government is willing to pay. The boon for private insurers from higher premium subsidies has long been a prime target for budget savings, especially among Democrats in Congress. So – not surprisingly—cuts have turned up in the reform bills.

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years. In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992. The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year. Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years. [Note: And Congress is allowing all of the above to happen.]

A careful analysis of the bill shows that it is designed more for political goals than to eliminate financial barriers to health care. For example, the actual coverage doesn't even begin until 2013, opportunistically after the next presidential election, in 2012. Run on having accomplished "historic reform" but before anyone actually experiences how bad it is? How cynical is that?...The legislation institutionalizes permanent inequality in health care. Unlike Medicare where all beneficiaries have a single plan, this bill further divides the U.S. system into tiers based on ability to pay. It creates basic, enhanced, premium and premium-plus plans. A basic plan will provide only 70 percent of the coverage of a "reference benefit package," one that includes even fewer services than most insured people have today. The bill doesn't even mention coverage for essential services like vision and adult dental care except in the most costly premium-plus plan.

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years.

Democratic leaders have said that the turn-around on abortion contained in the House health-reform bill will not appear in the final version. The author, a Women’s Media Center board member and former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, explains here why voters who value women’s health cannot sit back and accept such assurances. House Democrats broke into a paroxysm of self-congratulation for passing a health reform bill. By embracing the Stupak-Pitts amendment, however, they entered the women’s hall of shame. They had promised no more limitations based on preexisting conditions. But House leadership allowed a codicil: Except if you are a woman.

As if the ideas being floated in the Senate were not bad enough, it appears as if even the "exchange" that they have adopted as one of their main components of healthcare reform will have an "escape clause" for Insurance companies. That is because Senators have let it be known that they would allow Insurance companies to operate outside of the "exchanges". This threatens to leave us right back where we started if the legislation that the Senate is considering right now is passed and signed.

Before opening your big mouth, sometimes it is best to know what the hell you are talking about. This is one lesson Republicans in Congress just refuse to learn. For so very long, they offered up no ideas for healthcare reform and when they did they offered TORT Reform and allowing insurance companies to prey upon consumers across state lines. As if that were not bad enough, now a Republican Congressman has opened his mouth and once again inserted his own foot in it.

I know you're in a tough spot. It would be bad enough if you only had to get Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln on board, but anyone who has to kiss Joe Lieberman's derriere deserves a congressional medal of honor. But Harry, you really need to take on future health-care costs. The House bill fails to do this. The public option in the House bill is open only to people without employer-provided health insurance. That will be too small a number to have bargaining clout to get good deals from drug companies and medical providers. And it will mainly attract people who have more expensive medical needs, which is why the Congressional Budget Office decided it would cost more than it would save. You also know a public insurance option that's open to everyone would cut future health costs dramatically by imposing real competition on private for-profit insurance plans. That's why the private insurers hate the idea. Even if states were allowed to opt out of this robust public option, the big states would almost certainly opt in, giving it the scale needed to negotiate great deals from drug companies and medical providers. This would put pressure on any state that opted out because their citizens would soon discover they're paying far more. [Note: Good suggestions, even if I don't agree with everything this author says.]

Now we know what the Obama administration means by “health care reform”. They mean guranteeing the rights of insurance and drug companies to their profits. They mean making health insurance like car insurance, with everyone compelled by law to purchase it from a private vendor, except for the very poorest among us, who will be offered a “public option” so limited and expensive as to discredit the word “public” when used in assocation with health care at all. There's no polite way to put it. If you're one of millions who voted Democrats into Congress and the White House last year to enact universal health care, you've been played and betrayed. The legislation squeezed out by the House on Saturday was a giant step away from ensuring the kind of quality, affordable, everybody in, nobody out health care that polling shows most Americans favor. Apologists for the White House and its party of course insist that while imperfect, it's a giant step forward, providing health insurance coverage to millions who didn't have it before, and that in any case it was the best they could do under the political circumstances. It's hard to see how anyone can believe this. Instead of recognizing a human right to health care, the White House and congressional Democrats have enshrined into law a corporate right to profit on the delivery or the non-delivery of health care. ---

“The Daily Show,” which has become one of the media’s prime monitors when it comes to calling out misuse or manipulation of video, caught the Fox News Channel and one of its hosts, Sean Hannity, Tuesday night, in what appeared to be a blatant example of doctoring a report with inappropriate video to enhance an argument. Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show,” presented excerpts from a segment of Mr. Hannity’s show in which he discussed the so-called tea party protests in Congress last Thursday with Representative Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota who had urged supporters to turn up at the Capitol to protest the health care bill. [Note: ROFLMAO!!!!!!!]