Health Wars (11/3/09)

Granny Rictus McBotox claimed her version of BarryCare would "only" cost $894 billion.  Guess who's blowing the whistle on that whopper?  Would you believe...the Assholiated Press?:

The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.

While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.

Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.

Probably doesn't include the "doctors' Medicare fix," either, which would push the price tag toward a trillion and a half bucks.  Not that that really matters to Crazy Nancy, whose drones rejoinder to being exposed as lying hacks was to....maintain the bogus party line at all costs:

Asked about the higher estimate, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the measure not only insures thirty-six million more Americans, it provides critical health insurance reform in a way that is fiscally sound.

“It will not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the CBO said last week that it will reduce the deficit both in the first ten years and in the second ten years,” Daly said.

No, the CBO didn't say that; that's what Pelosi said the CBO said.  Which speaks to the unwisdom of taking at face value "information" one gets second- and third-hand.

Meanwhile, the travails of PelosiCare continue to multiply, as intra-Donk divisions on abortion....

House leaders were still negotiating Monday with the bloc of Democrats concerned about abortion provisions in the legislation, saying that they could lead to public funding of the procedure. After an evening meeting of top House Democrats, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Maryland) said, “We are making progress,” but added that they had not reached an agreement.

The outcome of those talks could be crucial in deciding the fate of the health-care bill. Democrats need the vast majority of their caucus to back the bill, since nearly all congressional Republicans have said they will oppose the legislation.

“I will continue whipping my colleagues to oppose bringing the bill to the floor for a vote until a clean vote against public funding for abortion is allowed,” Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) said Monday in a statement. He said last week that forty Democrats could vote with him to oppose the legislation — enough to derail the bill.

....and illegal immigration....

But immigration continues to dog House Democrats in their push to unveil a manager’s amendment today. The chairs of the Progressive, Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander caucuses sent a letter to House Speaker Pelosi Monday pushing back against attempts to exclude undocumented workers from buying insurance through the exchange even if they use their own money.

The caucuses want to “ensure that no citizenship or residency verification is required for purchase of insurance in the Health Insurance Exchange,” the letter says. They also want Pelosi to push for the House’s version of the public option in a conference with the Senate — and insist that it be included without a trigger or opt-out provision.

A group of House Democrats are working with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the assistant to the speaker, to add language that would bring the House’s treatment of the issue closer to the Senate. The Senate Finance Committee’s version of the bill prohibits undocumented workers from buying insurance through the exchange.

....threaten to torpedo the bill for good.

Not that any of us should be COUNTING on Blue Dogs to save the day or anything.  Remember that all Stupak wants is a floor vote on his pro-life amendment stripping federal funding for abortion out of the bill; he's not demanding passage, and otherwise he's hunky-dory with voting "yea".  But this is an epic conundrum for the Dems to have to confront.  Do they uphold the sacred sacrament of government subsidizing of infanticide even if it costs them their unholy domestic policy grail, or is that seventy-year ambition so important that Nance will give Stupak what he wants?  Particularly since it can easily be stripped back out of the conference report, assuming Dirty Harry can muster the mental wattage to overcome all the seemingly insuperable obstacles to getting some sort of bill out of the Senate.

Given the partisan alignment realities, you really can't assume the Shrieker won't cobble together some sort of patchwork scheme to get to 218 votes.  But what happens if the GOP captures the Virginia-New Jersey-NY23 trifecta tonight?  Will that tip the Azure Mutts into permanent opposition out of fear for their seats next year, or will it turn House libs even more rabidly fanatical in cramming through SOMETHING with the label "BarryCare" with electoral confirmation that it's pretty much now or never?

Exit vid (again, not that cautionary tales matter, or ever really did to these people): Learn from Europe's (permanent) mistakes.