Much better than a trigger:

Senate Majority Leader  Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Monday that the bill he will bring to the Senate floor will include a public health insurance option that individual states could decline to participate in.

“I’ve concluded –with the support of the White House, Senators Dodd and Baucus — that the best way to move forward is to include a public option with the opt-out provision for states,” said Reid, referring to the Senate health and finance committee representatives, respectively, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “The public option, with an opt-out, is the one that’s fair.”

via Reid: “The Public Option With An Opt-Out Is The One That’s Fair”.

Personally, I will take it. Its a start. Let’s see where it ends up after the most exclusive club gets done with it.
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Robert Reich wants to know what’s up with this Gang of Six foolishness. I’m with him. Why is the Obama Administration and/or Harry Reid comfortable with this “bi-partisan” kabuki

So, I repeat: Why has it come down to these six? Who anointed them? Apparently, the White House. At least that’s what I’m repeatedly being told by sources both on the Hill and in the administration. “The Finance Committee is where the action is. They’ll tee up the final bill,” says someone who should know.

via Why the Gang of Six is deciding healthcare for 300 million of us | Salon .

“And Democratic Party officials enlisted in the fight by the White House acknowledged in interviews that the growing intensity of the opposition to the president’s health care plans — within the last week likened on talk radio to something out of Hitler’s Germany, lampooned by protesters at Congressional town-hall-style meetings and vilified in television commercials — had caught them off guard and forced them to begin an August counteroffensive.”

via “We were a little surprised” | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/11/2009 [c/o Susie Madrak of CrooksAndLiars.com].

Many folks left of center are handwringing about Obama’s Administration “over learning” from the Clinton White House mistakes. Those on the right are gleefully happy that Obama had let the debate be pulled into, what they feel, is a leftist ideas graveyard by the “evil” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the wicked Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Now this may be the new theme: the insurance industry and drug companies end around lobbying has fooled poor naive Obama and his hapless administration.

I doubt the genuineness of this surprise expressed by an official in the President’s White House or rather that the entire team is stunned. Rather, I think the Obama White House is letting the crazies open their mouths and prove their craziness. Read the rest of this entry »