Health Wars (9/30/09)

Guess what? The Chucky-Rocky attempt to ram a public option into the BaucusCare bill....went down in flames:

Liberal Democrats failed Tuesday to inject a government-run insurance option into sweeping health care legislation taking shape in the Senate Finance Committee, despite widespread accusations that private insurers routinely deny coverage in pursuit of higher profits.

The 15-8 rejection marked a victory for Senator Max Baucus, D-MT, the committee chairman, who is hoping to push his middle-of-the-road measure through the panel by week’s end. It also kept alive the possibility that at least one Republican may yet swing behind the overhaul, a key goal of both Baucus and the White House.

“My job is to put together a bill that gets to sixty votes” in the full Senate, the Montana Democrat said shortly before he joined a majority on the committee in opposing the provision. “No one shows me how to get to sixty votes with a public option,” the term used to describe a new government role in health care. It takes sixty votes in the hundred-member Senate to overcome delaying actions that Republicans may attempt.

Undeterred, supporters of a new role for government in U.S. health coverage immediately launched a new attempt to prevail.

Of course they're undeterred. It's the far left that is now trying to torpedo BarryCare with an endless procession of public option poison pill amendments because they know they can't get their "everything-but-single-payer-outright" in one gulp. They want to hang that defeat around the GOP and go into next year's midterms on a campaign of political extermination. And they really, truly believe it's going to be a devastating weapon that will wipe out the Republican Party once and for all.

Rotsa ruck with that caper, douchbags.

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So let's see if I've got this straight: The Obama no-plan became the Obama promised-plan which became the Obama no-show-plan which has now become the Obama hidden-plan? Roll Call, take me away...:

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. …

“They are getting ready for a backup,” said one veteran observer of health care debates who was knowledgeable about the effort. “It will be parachuted in if necessary.”

The White House measure appears designed to entice moderate Democrats and perhaps even Republicans into supporting a health care overhaul if legislative efforts in Congress fail or if they move too far to the left. Sources said one possibility would be to invoke the measure if the Senate cannot rally sixty votes to break a filibuster. Another option may be to present details of what the White House wants during a conference between the House and the Senate.

Uhhhh....why? What's the point of drawing up your own plan if your whole modus operandi from the beginning has been to let Crazy Nancy and Dirty Harry be the architects? Does anybody believe that a White House-advanced bill would differ markedly from the hard-left BarryCare versions that are already doomed to filibustery death? For that matter, who on Capitol Hill still trusts anything Obama has to say on health care "reform" if both Blue Dogs and Obamunists fear being "sold out" by their god? Is the White House truly so deluded as to believe that its super-secret bill would "entice" BDs and GOPers into committing political suicide based on nothing but the Li'l President's assurances?

What's in the White House bill, assuming one actually exists? Something equivalent in sheer radicalness and Marxist extremism to its financial "reform" proposal:

White House Photo/Pete Souza

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's appearance in Congress last week to explain how President Barack Obama would overhaul financial regulation elicited the most striking sign yet that the wheels have come off the administration's economic-policy team.

The White House had proposed, and Geithner was ready to defend, such a radical expansion of government power that even Barney Frank, the ultra-liberal congressman from Massachusetts, felt compelled to object that it went too far.

When Barney Frank thinks that you are too liberal, you better check your medications.

I'd say that quote speaks for itself.

The details?:

The Obama plan for financial reform, outlined by Geithner at the September 23 hearing, contained two main components.

It would create a new government body, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), which would "write rules, oversee compliance and address violations by non-bank providers, as well as banking institutions." This agency would have to enforce its rules and would, according to the Obama design, be able to go after any firm that offers credit to consumers.

So if Sam Malone at the Cheers bar offers to run a tab for you, Geithner is on the case. Or if the furniture store on Main Street offers to let you have a couch without making a payment for a few months, Geithner is on the case. If a National Football League team lets customers pay for their season tickets on an installment plan, well, you get the picture.

Oh. My. God. They might as well have called this proposed bill the Credit Extinction Act of 2009. An economy already in the toilet, with runaway unemployment (add "underemployment" and the rate now tops 17%), spending its way towards bankruptcy from more directions than can scarcely be counted, cringing from crushing new and higher taxes, trying to provoke trade wars across the globe, and here would come the last piece of the Great Depression II puzzle: no more credit ANYWHERE, at ANY level, in ANY amount.

If you thought I was goofing on Hard Starboard Radio when I open segments on Obamanomics with the Life After People open and the line, "Welcome to Obamerika - gross domestic product: zero," this should correct your misconception. Think about what it says about Red Barry that the best spin you can put on his "financial reform" proposal that is that it was so sloppily, haphazardly, thoughtlessly, recklessly, stupidly, and incompetently compiled that Barney F'ing Frank had to clean up the mess?

And now the White House has - allegedly - written its own BarryCare bill.

Ten-to-one it's single-payer, and the idea is to "parachute it in" under cloak, with the presidential demand that it be rammed through the same day it's delivered to the Hill, sight unseen.

Wonder if My Boy Lollipop will tell him to go to hell on that one, too.

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What better way to celebrate the ridiculousness of this clusterbleep that will hand us back the House and and rebalance the Senate than by ridiculing the fully moronic: