In a party line vote of 60-39, the Senate voted Saturday evening to proceed with debate on a health care reform bill. All 58 Democrats and both Independents voted in favor of the motion while Republicans voted against it. Senate Majority Harry Reid closed debate and urged Republicans to support debate of the bill arguing that the framers of the Constitution didn't intend for the rules to limit a healthy debate. Following the vote, Reid said the "finish line is in sight." He added "that while we don't all agree how to get there we all agree something must be done." Reid went on to say that the bill will "save lives, save money and save medicare." Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), told reporters that "everyone should have the right to quality health care" and that this bill will "move us down the path to health care for all Americans."

http://www.truthout.org/1028095 Jim Hightower sums up the stunning hypocrisy of Congress over what they themselves enjoy and what they withhold from the rest of us in terms of healh care: "Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who have risen up on their hind legs in recent weeks to snarl and howl at any mention of a government role in meeting America’s health care needs. "Socialism," they bark — we won’t allow Barack Obama and the liberals to create a Washington-run, big-government intrusion into the hallowed private market. Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, even pledged to fight so ferociously that the health care battle would be Obama’s "Waterloo." [snip] What these bellicose market-purists hope you don’t discover is that they are closet socialists. As members of the congressional elite, they and their families are governmentally blessed with their very own gold-plated, taxpayer-financed, Washington-run health care system. And, they loooove it. Theirs is such an effective system that not a single member of the hypocongress has been willing to give it up — even though they surely realize the political peril of being exposed as rank hypocrites for enjoying the very program they so adamantly reject for you."

For decades, I've heard that one big reason drug companies charge so much for their products is that they need plenty of money for R&D (research and development). Staying on the pharmaceutical cutting edge, the argument goes, is part of what has given America "the greatest health care system in the world." Yeah, it works just great -- for CEOs, stockholders and wealthy people in general. The difference between what the drug companies are charging and what Americans pay for most other products is astonishing.

Many of you are too young to remember the span of Arlen Specter’s career as a DC politician. In 1964 Specter was serving as junior counsel for the Warren Commission , the investigative body established after John Kennedy’s assassination to contain and spin that horrific event.

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas. Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system. Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.---

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/november/squandered_a_golden_.php Dr. Carol Paris, in an irate letter to a Maryland newspaper editor, writes of the newly passed House health care bill: I agree with Wendell Potter, the former head of public relations for CIGNA, that this legislation could more accurately be titled “The Private Health Insurance Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.” The readers should know that this legislation was written by the insurance industry, for the insurance industry. We are being mandated to purchase a defective product from an industry that has demonstrated for the past 60 years that it puts profits before patients. Even the so-called public option will be administered by the private insurance industry and will enroll, at most, 6 million people in a multitude of anemic markets; it will not be a robust Medicare-like market at all. This public option is like sending in a peewee football team to compete with the NFL. It will not compete with the private insurance industry; it will become the default insurer for our sickest, least profitable citizens, leaving the younger, mandated, profitable citizens to enroll in the private plans provided in the exchange.

“Many years ago, people in states across America planted the seeds of single payer health care. Those seeds have sprouted and borne fruit where powerful state citizens’ movements exist to create not-for-profit health care. This led to passage of an amendment to the Health Care bill which protected the rights of states to pursue single payer. Unfortunately that amendment was taken out of the bill, and we must try to get it into the conference report."

"We're waiting to see if the senator for Aetna is ready to be the senator for the people," explained one protester. Capitol police dragged away nine protesters. After the arrests, five of the remaining protesters stood in the back of the chamber and quietly held up signs reading "Patients Not Profits" and "Insurance $$$ Makes Me Sick." "It's ironic Lieberman is chairing this meeting on corporate crimes," said Medea Benjamin, who characterized the practice of accepting campaign donations from health insurance companies as criminal.

Around 3PM this afternoon I was one of 12 single payer activists who were escorted from the reception area of Nancy Pelosi's office in the San Francisco Federal Building and arrested by members of the Federal Protection Service of U.S. Homeland Security. Just before noon we went to Pelosi's office to ask Dan Bernal, the district director, make a phone call either to Pelosi herself or Terri McCullough, Pelosi's chief of staff in Washington. We wanted to directly communicate two demands: that the Kucinich amendment be included in the health care bill that will soon be brought to a vote in the House and that the Weiner amendment be voted on by the House, as previously promised by Pelosi.

Plus video. "Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the House health care plan on the floor of the House of Representatives: “Even though insurance companies make money not providing health care, the so-called reform bill gives so much power and money to the insurance companies that we are giving far too much for the few benefits which the bill may confer. “The insurance companies get at least another 26 million customers."

"Three single-payer health care supporters were arrested Monday after protesting outside the Mission Valley office of Blue Shield of California. Click here to find out more! The protest was a part of a nationwide campaign to dispute health care companies, who demonstrators claim have been raising premiums throughout the recession and have lobbied against the single-payer system."

Do you know what the “public option” does or who it covers? If you’ve had trouble finding out, it’s not your fault. If you think that the current version of the public option will provide a choice for a government administered health program, you’re right. If you think that this option was designed for the general public, then you’re wrong. It will apply to only some of the uninsured, possibly as few as six million citizens.

It occurred to me yesterday that when the new health care system kicks in, it will be AFTER the 2012 election. Obama’s re-election won’t be all that dependent on the actual outcome of his health care reform. This revelation makes me all the more cynical about the health care bait-and-switching and in-your-face pro-corporate cronyism we have been witnessing since Obama’s election. My broken, bitter, single-payer-loving heart concludes the appearance of achieving reform seems to be a greater priority with Obama than the quality of said reform. How frustrating for him when those darn obstructionist Republicans robbed him of the "appearance" of bipartisanship reform, too. Nevertheless, there will be celebratory spinning by many when all is said and done soon. And those representatives railing the loudest against the new bill will be from the Right. They will not be the sad moralists, but even harsher saboteurs to the basic needs of a desperate citizenry.