Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, asserted himself as a major voice in the debate over health care reform almost immediately after last November’s election. He has argued for cost containment and frugality throughout the intervening months and used his powerful position to make his arguments stick. Now, we learn that the Senator isn’t nearly so frugal as he would have us...

… about the public option:

Matthew Yglesias has a really good piece about morality and global warming:

By C. L. Smith aka “Leonidas”. C.L. Smith is a frequent right-of-center commenter here at The Moderate Voice and is a regular guest voice. ******************* Those of you who are interested in constitutionality issues and health care might find the following video interesting. It’s over an hour long so if you want to watch, make yourselves comfortable. http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1274179818?bctid=55710764001

If, like me, you’re not terribly happy about the (no public option) compromise Senate Democrats have worked out, make sure to read Chris Bowers’s post at Open Left on how there has actually been “real success” here: While it looks like we didn’t get a new public option program, we have received at least: 4 million more people covered by Medicaid, which is a public option, than...

Sen. Feinstein is the senator who spoke about the real-life examples of women whose health was endangered by pregnancy, and what can and does happen when the law demands a 100 percent guarantee that a woman will die before she can obtain an abortion, or be covered under provisions as draconian as the one defeated yesterday, which would deny federal funding for any insurance policy that includes abortion as a...

For those who have been patiently waiting for some scientific, authoritative vindication of their theories that homosexuality is immoral, a perversion or deviancy, not natural, etc., rejoice: Uganda’s ethics minister, James Nsaba Buturo, has just pronounced that homosexuality is “not natural in Uganda.” No doubt the rest of the civilized world will soon follow suit. To put teeth into this...

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

UPDATE BELOW More breaking news on health care: Keith Olbermann just reported a deal in the Senate worked out by the so-Called “Gang of Ten” (it’s five conservative Democrats and five progressive Democrats that got together to work on the public option). Here it is: In exchange for dropping the public option, the conservatives have agreed to a Medicare opt-in program that would expand Medicare...

As the public option starts to morph into an expansion of Medicare and Medicaid in the main tent, two Senate buffoons, Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman, are stepping up their side shows in the health care circus. The Majority Leader is dragging slavery and woman’s suffrage into the debate by invoking them as precedents for Republican resistance: “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery,...

The Senate has just voted, 54 to 45, to table the Nelson/Hatch amendment. It’s dead.

U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski is disgusted with the Nelson Amendment and she is letting everyone know it. “[This bill] allows women to purchase an abortion rider. Oh, boy. Is this supposed to be big deal? Is this supposed to be the kind of thing that’s supposed to make us happy? What an insulting, humiliating thing to say: if you want an abortion, go buy a rider.” Watch the videos for yourself: And...

The fetus fetishists in the Senate have come up with another amendment banning abortion — a medical procedure that saves women’s lives and protects their health — from coverage under pending health care reform legislation. Reportedly, the language is similar to the Stupak amendment and it’s not expected to pass.

So this is the editorial published today by 56 newspapers (all but one outside the United States) that is causing the right to self-immolate (emphasis is mine):

WASHINGTON — This is the paradox of the moment: President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan and his subsequent jobs summit underscored why it’s essential to get a health care bill done quickly. The calendar of politics has an urgency that the dilatory pace of the U.S. Senate doesn’t match. Here’s the deal. If Obama gets to sign a health care bill before he gives his State of the...

Fascinating: One quasi-hybrid insurance plan, however, has long tantalized policy makers as a potential model for expanding insurance coverage, and in recent days Democratic negotiators have returned to it as perhaps the last best hope of a deal: the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or F.E.H.B.P., which provides insurance coverage to more than eight million federal workers, including members of Congress...

This became something of a standard talking point during both the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. As the story went, Democrats cared about seniors and their particular needs. Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and were plotting to kill your grandparents. My, what a difference one election makes, eh? Check out one of the health care amendments which passed in the Senate over the weekend. By a vote of 53...

To public option or not to public option? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of the progressive blogosphere and liberal talk show hosts, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To upset your party’s base: to anger Nancy Pelosi; No more; and by avoiding bringing up the subject in a pep talk to Senate Democrats suffer The...

That would be one excuse a month, each one different, given by Sen. Joe Lieberman for opposing the public option. Steve Benen has been keeping a record:

It’s worth pointing out again — for the millionth time — the disconnect between Republicans’ and conservative Democrats’ constant yammering about deficits and budget-busters and spending us into bankruptcy, and those same lawmakers’ opposition to the public option — and their crusade to compromise it into nothing.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) signed on to an amendment written by Tom Coburn and David Vitter the sole purpose of which was to embarrass Democrats. The amendment would require members of Congress to use the public option themselves — the idea, of course, being that even Democrats don’t want the public option for their own health care.

Rural America is not served well by the medical profession because there is a lack of family practice doctors, a problem that could be addressed somewhat in the health reform bills now before Congress. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the reform package, if passed, would extend insurance coverage to millions more in areas where there are a lack of doctors to attend their illnesses. I have experienced...

The problem with health care reform is not public option versus no public option — it’s change versus no change. The difficulty with passing health care reform is not the size of the bill, or the price tag, or the specific provisions in it — well, it is to a point, but it’s not the heart of the problem. The real difficulty is Congress — Congress as an institution: the way it operates,...

By C. L. Smith aka “Leonidas”. C.L. Smith is a frequent right-of-center commenter here at The Moderate Voice and is a regular guest voice. *************** Not long ago an account of a sawmill worker named John was reported suggesting that he was doomed to death due to no healthcare based on a NYT op-ed by Nicholas Kristof entitled “Are we going to let John Die?” Well seems like this...

I meant to link to this post by Darren Hutchinson about the GOP’s fiscal priorities earlier, but it was just before Thanksgiving, and I wasn’t feeling that well, and… well… you know….