C&L sends our best wishes to the family and friends of Martin Bosworth, who passed away yesterday.

Martin was a strong and clear voice, gifted writer and valuable advocate in the progressive blogosphere. He was a founding member of Scholars&Rogues, Boztopia.com and the Managing Editor of ConsumerAffairs.com An official cause of death has not been announced, but it is believed he died of a heart attack. Martin was just 35.

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal and Elana Levin at Daily Kos honor Martin's memory. He will be missed by many.

One of Martin's more recent posts speak to the urgency of fixing our broken health care system after a health scare of his own pointed out its glaring deficiencies:

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Digby turned me on to this interesting chat in the NY Times Opinionator between David Brooks and Gail Collins. Brooks was snowed in and suddenly found himself enthralled with Paul Ryan's insane budget proposal:

David Brooks: I actually find myself warming, unexpectedly, to Paul Ryan’s vision of government. Ryan, as you know is the Wisconsin House Republican who recently laid out a “Roadmap for America’s Future.” It is the most intellectually honest budget proposal I’ve seen. It really would produce a balanced budget. The Congressional Budget Office even says so.

It is also a vision for a voucher state. Government would have very few decision-making powers. Instead it would essentially redistribute money so that individuals could better secure their own welfare provision. Medicare and Social Security would essentially be turned into cash programs. The elderly would receive $11,000 a year to purchase insurance. The tax code would be radically simplified.

It's honest in the sense that Ryan wants to basically destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and he isn't afraid to say it. Republicans didn't get his back either because they know seniors do not like these entitlments f*&ked with.

Digby retorts:

Have these Republicans dealt with any elderly people recently? Do they know how much medical care they receive? Dealing with the health care system becomes the focus of their entire lives at some point. Yet, with out of pocket expenses, many people my age pay at least that much per year without even being seriously ill. The elderly, most of whom are dealing with both chronic and acute illness and injury, would be completely screwed with that small stipend. Even the more wealthy ones would quickly run out of money.

--

Oh, and by the way, it turns out that Ryan's budget wouldn't eliminate the deficit after all.

Oh no he didn't! What happened to "every day we delay, Americans are dying"?

What the hell is wrong with Obama? Why does he always choose accommodation over moral action?

And his lack of leadership is getting downright scary. Congress is fumbling through a game of charades, trying to figure out the clues, while it becomes increasingly clear: There's no game plan.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says "we should take our time" getting to a final health care bill.

He said Thursday he wants to go through the legislation in detail with Republicans to examine their ideas and Democratic ideas to see whether there are better ways to improve the nation's health care system than have already been proposed.

Sure. Because those dying people? They're not going anywhere!

Obama said that letting some time pass before calling for a vote also will allow "everybody to get the real facts."

Or, as is more likely, it will give the insurance industry time to gather their forces for one final game-winning attack.

The president spoke to donors and supporters of his political organization, Organizing for America, one of a handful of fundraisers he was headlining Thursday for Democrats.

Obama said it is most urgent to focus now on a jobs package, but that health care must be addressed afterward.

But a fed-up Sen. Al Franken (who's getting a reputation for being "difficult," bless his heart) took David Axelrod to task at a "tense" closed-door meeting with the Democratic caucus today:

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

“There was a lot of frustration in there,” said a Democratic senator who declined to be identified.

“People were hot,” another Democratic senator said.

Democratic senators are frustrated that the White House hasn’t done more to win over the public on health care reform and other aspects of its ambitious agenda — and angry that, in the wake of Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts Senate race, the White House hasn’t done more to chart a course for getting a health care bill to the president’s desk.

In his public session with the senators Wednesday, Obama urged them to “finish the job” on health care but did not lay out a path for doing so. That uncertainty appeared to trigger Franken’s wrath, and the sources in the room said he laid out his concerns much more directly than any senator did in the earlier public session.

Remember Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR)? It's run by the icky Rick Scott and represented by the public relations firm behind the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth. And boy, are they happy over the president's lack of leadership and the refusal by Congress to offer them an alternative to the insurance monopoly:

Today, CPR has a large, nearly full-page ad in the Washington Post cheering the public option’s death. The top of the ad has a tombstone reading, “PUBLIC OPTION PLAN R.I.P. January 27, 2010.” More text from the ad:

In his State of the Union Address, the President didn’t doom his Public Option health care plan with faint praise, he simply BURIED it with deafening silence. [...]

Finally, those of us who opposed your government-run Public Option plan can close this chapter.

By educating on the perils of your government-run Public Option plan, we achieved our goals to protect patients’ rights and stop a government takeover of our health care choices. Today, we join with our fellow Americans concerned with protecting patients’ rights to celebrate that our months of hard work finally paid off.

ThinkProgress spoke to CPR spokesman Brian Burgess of CRC Public Relations, who said that the ad was running only in the Washington Post.

CPR was not reflecting the views of most “fellow Americans” in its campaign. Over the summer, there was actually strong public support for the public option. Through an aggressive campaign, the health care industry spread misinformation to create opposition.

First of all, this isn't all that unusual - the Republicans used this exact same procedure more times than I can count during the Bush administration - and no, they didn't allow Democrats to take part. (I guess it's just that Selective Media Amnesia that sets in whenever the Democrats are in control.)

But using the tactic known as "ping ponging" is going to minimize formal input from the liberal House side, and for that, Reid is going to have to cough up some kind of significant concession.

And just to make things interesting, C-SPAN is asking Congress to open the meetings to live coverage - something I'd love to see:

WASHINGTON - House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses.

The unofficial timetable calls for final passage of the measure to remake the nation's health care system by the time President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, probably in early February.

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors.

In this case, the plan is to skip the formal meetings, reach an agreement, then have the two houses vote as quickly as possible. A 60-vote Senate majority would be required in advance of final passage.

"I look forward to working with members of the House, the Senate and President Obama to reconcile our bills and send the final legislation to the president's desk as soon as possible," Pelosi said late last year as the Senate approved its version of the legislation.

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(h/t David)

David Axelrod discusses the healthcare bill on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, David, the public seems to have questions as well. We did a poll this week, ABC News/Washington Post poll, that showed that 53 percent of the public think their own health care will cost more if this passes, 55 percent think the health care system overall will cost more, and only 37 percent think their own quality of care will be better.

In the face of this kind of skepticism, is it wise to ram through legislation like this, such a huge piece of legislation on a party-line vote?

AXELROD: Well, I would say a few things, George. First of all, you say this is what people think, I think when people see what actually happens after these reforms are passed, those concerns are going to be allayed, and they're going to realize that if they have insurance, they're more secure in their relationship with their insurance company, their costs are going to go down.

If they don't have insurance, they can get it at a price they can afford. It's going to reduce our deficit. It's going to extend the life of Medicare. Medicare recipients are going to get a better deal on prescription drugs and better care. So the reality I think will trump polls numbers in the dead of winter as this debate is going on.

In terms of ramming it through, we've been talking about this, we've been debating it and considering it for eight months. The Republican Party has spent a month engaged in parliamentary maneuvers and dilatory tactics to try and prevent and vote.

Understand, the big question here isn't whether or not we're going to get a vote, whether this will pass or not, the big question is whether the Republican Party will allow a vote. A majority of senators support this reform, and the Republican Party wants to prevent it from coming up for a vote. I think the American people are entitled to a vote.

If you are a person with pre-existing conditions, if you're a small business person who can't afford health care, if you are a person who became seriously ill and was thrown off your insurance -- their insurance because of that, if you're going bankrupt because of out-of-pocket expenses, you need the United States Senate to act.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But most of the changes, even if the bill passes won't be instituted until after the next presidential election, so you're asking people to take an awful lot on faith.

AXELROD: George, that's not really true, almost all of these insurance protections, the things that will protect people in terms of out-of-pocket costs, the pre -- children...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: (INAUDIBLE).

AXELROD: The day the president signs the bill, children with pre-existing conditions will now be -- an insurance company can't keep them from joining their parents' insurance policy. People with pre-existing conditions will have a catastrophic plan they can join.

And then, of course, when the thing goes fully into effect, everyone will be on insurance, insurance companies can't ban anyone with pre-existing conditions. But there are number of insurance protections that go into effect as soon as the president signs the bill. And not to mention, will begin reducing that gap in Medicare prescription coverage. So there...

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How well did that work out the first time?

Paul Krugman:

Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago - and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Mr Deregulator would destroy what's left of our health care system. For those who have it at this point and can barely afford it, that is.

Health Care: Garden State example

Big Media Ezra says:

"I tend to go with the Garden State example: At the end the movie, it's clear that Natalie Portman (Sam) and Zach Braff (Andrew) are screwed. As an actor, Andrew needs to live in Los Angeles. As an epileptic paralegal in a firm with an "amazing" health plan, Sam can't afford to lose her insurance. So she can't move to be with him and he'd have to give up his profession to be with her. And all because of the employer-based health care system. Not only is it an impediment to economic efficiency on both the worker and employer side, but it obstructs true love...read on

"More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights. About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and "morning-after" pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy....read on"

I agree with Cole's opinion that: "There is little room for nuance in my opinion on this. If your religious beliefs interfere with your job providing any and all desired or required care for a patient, you have several options- change your job, change your religion, suck it up and hope yours is a forgiving God."

These people are a danger to our health care system.

I've been sick for over a week so I haven't been posting or reading as much lately, but suddenly I'm hearing rumblings about the possibility that the left could win over the teabaggers because they are angry too.

This tea party movement, this seething anger, is being driven and co-opted by Republicans. But at its core, the outrage isn’t ideological. It isn’t even necessarily anti-government. It’s just anti-this-government.

Those caught up in tea party hysteria are the kind of voters Ross Perot captured in 1992. Two years later, without Perot, these foaming, vaguely culturally conservative, middle-income voters went Republican.

But these voters, unlike their tea party activist manipulators, don’t give a damn about Edmund Burke, Ludwig Von Mises or Ayn Rand. They want jobs and a government that makes sense to them — that’s it. As long as Democratic candidates don’t explicitly agitate their culturally conservative sensibilities and can deflect the appeals Republicans make on those hot-button social issues, these voters can be won over with economic arguments.

Can we dispel that notion forever please?

Nearly 350 right-wing protestors crowded a New Mexico town’s busiest intersection yesterday to protest President Obama’s supposed anti-gun agenda and the “government takeover of our health care system.” While the event mostly looked like any other recent right-wing rally — complete with signs reading “replace the communists in DC” and “the sky is falling! A black man is president!” — what set this protest apart was that there “were plenty of handguns and rifles displayed.”

The local Tea Party and a group called the Second Amendment Task Force (2ATF, a reference to the ATF, which enforces gun laws) encouraged people to bring guns to the event in Alamogordo, NM, in order to “put a positive light on gun ownership,” said 2ATF’s founder Dan Woodruff. While the two protests were technically separate, they were planned together for the same day in adjacent locations. Otero Tea Party Patriots coordinator Don Omey said he was “proud” of the gun-toters. “That’s what we need to turn some minds around,” Omey said. Under New Mexico law, it’s legal for anyone over the age of 19 to open-carry a holstered firearm in most public places. And while there was no violence during the event, one protestor wearing a Tea Party shirt said his loaded gun was a “very open threat” to anyone who might “try to take over the country completely as a socialist communist [state].”

They want jobs for sure, but they think that any government which is led by a Democratic politician wants to destroy their freedoms and as we see, take away their guns. The tea party crowds are a FOX News/corporatist-led movement. What comes out of their mouths is mostly gibberish promoted by right wing talkies and not based in reality.

Has President Obama even mentioned anything about guns in the last six months? Michele Bachmann believes the GOP should be redefined by the teabaggers. Here's a hint for Michele. A good portion of teabaggers are made up of the farthest right-wing fringe elements in America. That includes the militia movement and white supremacists. They already are part of the GOP's base for the most part, only they want to take it as far right as possible. Since Gingrich endorsed Scozzafava, teabaggers and conservative bloggers distrust him so he's out there doing his best to suck up to them now, but Dick Armey already has his hands deep inside their pants already.