Tales from the Trail

Republican Senator Tom Coburn doesn’t mince words. He was crystal clear about what he thinks of healthcare reform being debated in the Senate, saying to seniors: “I have a message for you: You’re going to die sooner.”

Senators are debating an amendment by Republican Senator John McCain that would send the bill back to the Senate Finance Committee with instructions to strike the Medicare cuts from the bill.  Democrats defended the legislation saying the proposed spending cuts would not reduce seniors’ health benefits.

“I’d like to once and for all lay to rest this false claim that the pending bill is going to ‘hurt seniors’ and it is going to hurt providers and it’s going to be this long parade of horribles that the other side likes to mention,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said.

“It is totally, patently untrue, the claims that they are making,” he argued.

The bill calls for more than $400 billion in spending cuts for Medicare over 10 years. A big chunk of the money comes from reducing subsidies for Medicare Advantage, which provides health services for the elderly through private insurers.

The healthcare “public option” was dealt a blow by the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, so now the question is whether it can be resuscitated when the legislation hits the Senate floor.

The Senate Finance Committee was always going to be the hardest sell.

The government insurance option will get another shot when the healthcare overhaul bill goes to the Senate floor, and let’s not forget the House of Representatives which is likely to pass a public option in its version of the legislation.

A Thomson Reuters poll found that 63 percent of Americans surveyed were willing to pay for healthcare reform. But only 35 percent of them said President Barack Obama’s reform agenda and the debate in Congress would lead to better health service.

It’s been likened to watching paint dry – the long-awaited debate in the Senate Finance Committee over a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.

The panel, which prides itself as one of a few in Congress that operates in a bipartisan atmosphere, is in its third day of deliberations. But it has dispensed with only a few of the more than 500 amendments proposed to the legislation put forward by Committee Chairman Max Baucus.

After a delay at the start of Thursday’s session as Baucus waited for senators to arrive to present their amendments, things started to heat up in the freezing cold hearing room.

President Barack Obama advised children who want to be president to beware of Facebook.

“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook,” Obama told a group of ninth graders before making a back-to-school speech at Wakefield High School in Virginia.

“Because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.  And when you’re young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. ”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put the insurance industry on notice that if congressional Democrats are forced to compromise on a government-run health insurance plan and accept a “trigger” proposed by Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, get ready for some major fire power.

Snowe has proposed a compromise that would “trigger” the creation of a new public plan should insurance market reforms fail to meet affordability and quality benchmarks.

At a news conference in San Francisco, Pelosi was asked about the “trigger” idea that has gained new strength in recent days as the White House looks for a potential compromise that would help get President Barack Obama’s proposed healthcare overhaul through Congress.

The healthcare debate that turned so temperamental during the summer when critics let loose during town hall meetings around the country is about to get a cool splash of reality.

The summer of running around, blowing off steam and releasing hot air is coming to a close. And soon it will be what every student dreads — a time for tests.

The White House has signaled that it is going to go to the drawing table and come up with  specific areas where compromise can be had, and President Barack Obama will lay it all out in a major speech in the next week or two.

The healthcare fight has turned into a power struggle over names.

Conservatives have the sirens out warning about the “Wellstone effect” in a jab at trying to knock out any inclination Liberals may have to capitalize on the Kennedy name in pursuing healthcare overhaul, one of  Senator Edward Kennedy’s signature issues.

Trouble is that the Wellstone analogy doesn’t automatically jump out for everyone.

It takes a bit of digging into the memory banks (or perhaps Googling) to refresh the brain cells that the reference is to the 2002 memorial service for Democrat Senator Paul Wellstone which was criticized for turning into a political event. Backlash contributed to Democrats losing that Senate seat.

The Obamas may be on vacation this week, but the news hasn’t taken a break.

The Justice Department is expected to release a report Monday disclosing details of prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the CIA’s inspector general but never before made public. According to published reports, the department has recommended re-opening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases.

A review of the cases threatens to weigh down the Obama administration, which is already involved in deeply partisan battles over healthcare and climate change legislation.

It doesn’t matter that the healthcare debate has picked apart every argument from every side until nobody knows what actually is going to happen on that front. There are still fresh opinions to be found every day.

Pointing out Paul Krugman in The New York Times today saying “It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.”

Don’t miss the exchange between host Jon Stewart and Betsy McCaughey, who started the saber-rattling on what later became known as death panels, last night on “The DailyShow”.

Washington is watching the election in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama, who has ordered a troop build-up to fight the Taliban, is almost certainly  keeping a close eye on the election which brought millions of voters to the polls across Afghanistan despite threats of violence. It remains to be seen whether the president will be picked in one round.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who voted at a school near his palace in Kabul, faces a strong challenge from former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and must win more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round. Not easy when  there are about 30 challengers.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 51 percent of Americans see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting, that’s up 6 percentage points from last month.