Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

Let's just jump right in.

Grassley is being an absolute motherfucking idiot who doesn't want health care reform. If anyone is still in doubt about this, go here and here. For an explanation as to why Dems continue to put up with his bullshit, the best I can come up with is that they feel sorry for him because the Con party has his balls in a vise. But sympathy for one man is no reason to deny millions effective health care reform.

Let's see just how clear Cons can make their intentions. Sen. Bill Bennett says killing health care reform is their #1 priority. Cased fucking closed, people. Now let's stop using them as an excuse for watering down legislation in order to win bipartisan votes - we all know it's to win insurance industry money.

Speaking of the insurance industry, Wellpoint tries to sic their customers on Congress and ends up making a strong case against... Wellpoint. Oops. Insurer, pwn thyself.

Senator Harry Reid's come up with his own special definition of the public option. Sen. Reid needs a wake-up call from his constituents.

The difference between reform supporters and reform protestors is night-and-day. For one thing, supporters are nice. For the second, they can find Iraq on a map.

Mike Huckabee makes an utter ass of himself trying to grandstand on Kennedy's death.

And, finally, a burning question on many minds has been, What Would Teddy Do? Greg Sargent reminds us that we already have the answer - and it's not just H.E.L.P.:

But there’s another, oft-overlooked initiative Kennedy championed that makes the point even more strongly. I’m talking about the Medicare for All bill, which was wholly Kennedy’s baby.

Kennedy introduced Medicare for All in 2005 and 2007 and it never got voted out of committee. According to the Commonwealth Fund, a respected health care policy group, it was a “universal public insurance program” that would offer compulsory “Medicare type benefits” from cradle to grave. Public, government-run health care.

“It would have functioned similar to the way Medicare functions now,” Sarah Collins, a vice president at Commonwealth, told our reporter, Amanda Erickson. “It would have been basically a public health option, a single payer proposal.”

Ron Pollack, the head of Families USA (which favors a public plan), argues Kennedy’s embrace of Medicare for All confirms he would want a public option. Kennedy’s initiative, Pollack says, was government-run “single payer” health care — universal public health care.

With the “what would Kennedy want” storyline really about to gain steam, seems like Kennedy’s Medicare for All should be a big part of the discussion.

With that answered, the only question remaining is how we get it done.