New York Times, Wednesday:

President Obama plans to address a joint session of Congress next week in an effort to rally support for health care legislation as White House officials look for ways to simplify and scale back the major Democratic bills, lower the cost and drop contentious but nonessential elements. Administration officials said Wednesday that Mr. Obama would be more specific than he has been to date about what he wants included in the plan. [...] And they insisted that Mr. Obama had not given up on the provision that has attracted the most fire from the right, a proposal for a government-run competitor to private insurers, although many Democrats say the proposal may eventually be jettisoned.

"Eventually" be jettisoned? Maybe sooner than "eventually". Boston Globe, Friday:

As President Obama prepares to deliver a make-or-break address on health care to a joint session of Congress next week, he is expected to turn the focus away from controversial issues such as the "public option’’ plan and toward key areas of bipartisan agreement, including enabling anyone to buy insurance regardless of preexisting conditions, according to White House and congressional officials.

So what counts as "bipartisan", in Washington? Take a wild guess: it's whatever the insurance industry says it is. After iterating just how much Republicans and Democrats have in common, in terms of really, really wanting to fix the U.S. healthcare system ("We all favor" making it possible for people with preexisting conditions to buy insurance "rather than be denied insurance," Lamar Alexandar is quoted as saying), we get to perhaps one of the most underreported but vitally important "bipartisan" solutions being peddled.

For years, the insurance industry has fought efforts to require them to insure anyone who seeks coverage, saying that it has the right to refuse coverage to a relatively small number of people with preexisting conditions that are expensive to treat. But in a landmark move in December 2008, the group that represents most of the nation’s health insurance companies said it would give up that right in exchange for assurance that the government would require and subsidize universal coverage, which would greatly expand the number of customers. The organization opposes a public option plan, which it views as unfair competition. "There is widespread agreement that we need to reform the insurance markets so that nobody falls through the cracks," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents 1,300 companies that insure 200 million Americans. "We have proposed guaranteed coverage, no preexisting condition exclusion, and no longer basing premiums on a person’s health status or gender."

This is likely exactly what we're going to see in a final bill. No public option. Weak regulation, in exchange for making it a United States law that every American has to buy the products of industry that has been unconscionably corrupt, a wildly profitable industry that has served as the defacto "death panel" of every American for the last generation. It would be like solving AIG's woes by mandating that every American give them several thousand dollars each year, or bailing out the domestic auto industry by making failure to buy a new car every year punishable by time in jail, or fighting organized crime by making the payment of "protection money" mandatory for every man, woman and child.

It is a stupid, asinine, corrupt, and spectacularly meanspirited proposal, which is exactly why our House, Senate and administration find it to be far less "controversial" than daring have government involvement with the physical health and well being of its own citizens.

It seems unremarkable to say that yes, the insurance industry would be willing to scrap preexisting condition denials -- in exchange for mandating that every single American in the nation purchase their product. That seems more than a fair trade, for an industry that values profits above all else. AHIP has been broadcasting television commercials touting that very point -- "if everyone is covered, we can make healthcare affordable" -- for at least the last month. And it seems obvious that our Senators, who are so beholden to the whims of lobbyists that they will do nothing, absolutely nothing, that it is not first proposed by those very same lobbyists, would eagerly go for such a thing.

Mark my words -- we are at the point where no legislation can be passed unless it benefits an American corporate sector more than it benefits anyone else. We are that corrupt, and our government is that beholden. No matter how hated an industry may be, or how many citizens of a nation it may have hurt, it will always receive the kind graces of the government that it has paid for.



The White House is all but explicitly saying that the public option is off the table. Leak after leak indicates that it is no longer the "focus" of the White House; Reid and others continue to minimalize its importance compared to the much less controversial task of trading away responsibility for American healthcare reform to the very groups that have gutted it in the first place.

At this point the battle seems to be not whether all Americans will eventually be able to get sick without going bankrupt, or even be treated except as indigents to be thrust out the door as soon as their money dries up: the major battle will simply to be to limit the extent of corporate giveaway that Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Enzi, Grassley, and all the other top industry cash-sucking pigs at the trough will be able to fork over to the people that have donated so very much cash to them. And they will do it with the full "bipartisan" support of nearly every well-dressed crook in Washington.