55 Democrats plus Sanders want a public option in the final bill. We are going to get a bill with a public option. I'm very optimistic about that.

I want the public option, but I just don't know how we will get it with Nelson, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Lieberdick. Maybe reconciliation, but I doubt it. Indeed, it might be too late for that. I think we will have to settle for triggers this time, and try to revise the legislation in the next Congress, hopefully with new Democrats in office from NH, OH, and MO. I wish I were more hopeful, but I'm not.

I find it very interesting that alot of these same senators had no problem voting for tax cuts that pad the pockets of the wealthy investors but vote against saving thousands of American lives. Let's just boil this down brass tacks.

They include Nelson, Landrieu, and Lincloln. I wonder how their constituents feel about that. And by the way those tax cuts were passed through the dreaded reconciliation process.

Not to mention all of the Republican enablers that worked behind close doors to make sure the bigotry against the wealthy was stopped. I think we need to remind people of recent history.

Those tax cuts not only inflated the massive bubble we are trying to recover from but it also was meant to destroy future spending programs. I sure would love to see Jon Stewart dig out some old video of Republicans lamenting about the poor, exploited Wall Street types. Choke on that teabaggers.

I want Bernie to be MY senator! But I'm stuck in Nebraska. :-(

Bernie is the best Senator in the United States. He is the only one, as far as I can see, who has the best interest of the people at heart. However, even with a public option both the House and Senate bills stink. The mandate/subsidy program is a horrible idea. Fundamentally neither of the two bills, even with a "strong" public option does much to change our current rotten system. Unless this legislation changes in fundamental ways that really change how we do healthcare in the country then it isn't worth passing and I hoe that Bernie will keep his implied word here not to vote for the bill if it isn't substantially altered.

What other progressives might vote no? Have Brown or Rocky made any signs they might vote against this bill? It's extremely hard to do this by yourself, even for someone like Sanders. Senators like to do things in small groups. They have to work together. Very rare that a lone Senator will take a principled stand. And I hope he's not alone.

Someone should force the CBO to score Single Payer. They should have done that months ago. It would have changed the goal posts dramatically, cuz the whole country would see that a Single Payer program would save THEM trillions over the course of the next decade. The tea baggers wouldn't have had a prayer to counter that.

Our current system of private insurance, plus public insurance, farming out to private insurance companies, costs an extra 300-400 billion each year just in overhead. Taxpayers and customers pay for that.

If we went to a true Single Payer system, where government acted as the only insurance agent, and did not use ANY private sector companies in the process, Americans would save hundreds of billions of dollars a year, every year.

After getting CBO to score that, the Dems should have and could have talked in terms, NOT of costs, but of trillions of dollars in savings, and then they could have sealed the deal with the humanitarian side of things (which is more important, of course).

Single Payer would all but eliminate those 45,000 deaths a year. It would all but eliminate those million bankruptcies a year. It would cover EVERYONE for less than we pay now NOT to cover 45 million.

It's beyond crazy that Single Payer was never on the table.

i live in Europe, where we all have free state-run health care. it works, it's great. the reason you can't get that in usa is that 1) politicians talk too much about jesus
2) congressmen are paid by the big corporations to vote their way and 3) the voters are too dumb to understand this.
after all, people in usa voted for dumbya bush, not once, but twice! wake up americans!
if any politico over here talked about jeebus and opposed our health care system, he would soon be unemployed.