As we see in SusanG's front page story today, Obama is pushing back hard to get us to the finish line on health care reform.
The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.
And as bad as things are today, they’ll only get worse if we fail to act.
As we continue to see the catastrophe of our current health insurance system, the Republicants (h/t to Robinswing) can't seem to find their footing to provide any kind of constructive response other than No!
Even Laura Meckler at the Wall Street Journal gets it.
Next week's health summit offers perhaps the last chance for President Barack Obama to kick-start his languishing legislation. It will also put Republicans in a box.<...>
Republicans, aware of the strategy, are in a bind. Boycotting the summit would allow the Democrats to paint the party as obstructionist. Attending and rejecting a proposed compromise could have the same result.
So we've got the Republicans boxed in...that's just part of the good news however. Again, Meckler is spot on in her analysis about where their obstructionism leads.
If no deal is reached—a likely outcome given the entrenched positions of both sides—the White House wants Democrats to pass a bill without GOP support. That means using a parliamentary maneuver called "reconciliation" that requires 51 votes in the Senate, rather than the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.
So to the Republicans...get on board (yeah, right) or we'll do it without you. And the American electorate will see your strategies for what they are...a game to score political points while our health insurance system collapses.
But Meckler's kicker is saved for the very last sentence.
Senate leadership aides estimate they have slightly more than the 50 votes they need to pass a bill.
Coffin...meet nail.
We can do this! And as Obama said this morning, its not just about health care reform.
What’s being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem. Right now, Americans are understandably despairing about whether partisanship and the undue influence of special interests in Washington will make it impossible for us to deal with the big challenges that face our country. They want to see us focus not on scoring points, but on solving problems; not on the next election but on the next generation.
Update:
Thanks to jessica69 in the comments we learn this from The Hill.
Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.
Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster.<...>
"We'll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we've already done," Reid said, affirming that Democrats would use the reconciliation process. "We're going to have that done in the next 60 days."
If you're wondering why the 60 day wait - it might have something to do with the fact that reconciliation can only be used once in a budget cycle. So they might have decided to wait to have the opportunity to use it for fixes to other bills as well.
So let's keep our eyes on the prize and get this thing done!!!!!