"Here's what I don't get: The Senate version of the bill is a Republican bill. Am I right?"

Well none out of 41 Republican Senators will write in to disagree with you.

Now, I guess that we will see the President's bill that will be writen by the Emanuel brothers. After all, no one should listen to us liberals because our brains don't work right. If this were an ideal world, President Obama would morph into our Tommy Douglas and do what is best for all of the American people, Medicare for All. Instread we will probably see more of the Aetnas, the Wellpoints, the UHC's, the Cigna, etc, etc.!

"Thou shalt not tick of a tax protester?"

Team Obama finally has to lay it's cards on the table. All that stealthy dicking around so they could pass their agenda off a the product of congressional "compromise" finally resulted in the loss of a Senate seat. Now their choice is between making their own proposal, and getting it through reconciliation, or getting nothing and suffering the political backlash.

Here's the important point:

If Obama's proposal still contains all those items that were initially sold as "oh, we had to give that up to get (fill in the Blue Dog or Republican name here)", then you know that item was part of the White Houses' agenda, NOT a product of "compromise". They don't need 60 votes now, remember.

of what many in these threads would characterize as the prototypical Democrat in Congress. Here is the exact wording in the NYT:

“There has not been a collaborative process,” said a Congressional Democrat with decades of health care experience. “We have not been consulted. This is very much a White House proposal.”

Even I am forced to admit this is a fruitless invertebrate.

Here's what I don't get: The Senate version of the bill is a Republican bill. Am I right?

No, Susie, you're not right.

Is the Senate bill a Republican bill? No. It is definitely a bill that makes some significant concessions to Republicans, but is it a bill that Republican senators would sit down, write, and pass if they had the votes? I think it is pretty clear that it is not. While the bill should be an embarrassment for Democrats, it isn't anywhere near as bad as what we could expect the Republicans to pass if they had sixty votes.

If the Left is going to claim to be "reality based," then it seems reasonable to expect people claiming to speak for the Left to base their statements on reality. It may be that your age is showing, Susie. I don't say that to be offensive, because I think I'm older than you are. However, if one imagined that the Republican Party today were made up of people similar to those who were mainstream Republicans in the sixties, then the Senate bill might fairly be described as a Republican bill. But the Modern Republican Party is nothing like the Republican Party of fifty years ago. Today, the sixties Republicans are (virtually) all in the Democratic Party. Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and others could have been Republicans in the sixties and they probably wouldn't have been the most liberal members of that party.

So how much more Republican does Obama want this bill to be, and to what end?

I can't answer that, but based on his past behavior I don't think the most important thing to Obama is how Democratic or Republican the bill is, but rather how many votes it gets. If, at this point, he's willing to go the reconciliation route, then he may finally have given up on his fantasy of having Republicans on board. In that case, the bill doesn't have to be much more Republican, it only has to satisfy a bare majority of Democrats. It is an indication of how far to the Right both parties have moved that attracting 51 Democrats (or 50 + Biden) requires a bill with any concessions at all to Republicans. They ought to be able to get 51 votes for a bill that is less Republican than the Senate bill that has already passed.

We have to deal with the reality of the parties today -- as they are -- not as we remember them. I've had the same problem -- I remember the sixties Republicans well (hated them) and there are times when I mistakenly think of Republicans in that context. But that isn't the case anymore. The Modern Republican Party is a collection of incoherent bozos with no rational philosophy or program. Lower taxes. After that, most of their so-called beliefs center around things they don't like (immigrants, gays, climate change, etc.), but that don't translate meaningfully into policy prescriptions that will help this country in any way.

Obama framed the entire health care reform debate in such a way that a seriously progressive bill was never an option. That wasn't a mistake on his part -- he very clearly didn't want to upset the private insurance company apple cart. But to describe the preferences of a Democratic president as Republican is to deny how far to the right the Democratic Party has moved.

Note: Speaking from a historical context, the country today is very much a center-right country. The only question is does the word center even belong in the description.

I think I'd call the Senate bill more of an Insurance Corporation Bill then a Republican bill. Not that there's that much difference except that the Republicans would have included some amendments for abstinence "birth control" and evangelical healing. Or some such claptrap.

Reform in health care.

What happens if it fails? We have more people out of work than ever in my lifetime. Those are people whose families are now out of health care. One example...the woman forgoes the mammogram. She goes from a curable easy cancer to a serious one that needs Chemo to maybe give the woman a full life. This can happen in the course of two years.
How about the guy with high blood pressure who without his meds has a stroke?

Another example. The ill, those with manic depression or depression...what do they do without their meds? Many stop functioning.

We're talking about people living in desperate times. And we have got a segment in this society who are considered legitimate honorable people who really don't give a rip about the poor or disadvantaged. That is wrong. This country is better than who we are right now.