In the end, it won't really matter whether Lieberman "flip-flops" on the vote. This health insurance reform debacle doesn't really do anything for 99% of Americans (the 1% it does help happen to work for pharmaceutical or insurance companies). My patients will still not have access to vital preventive healthcare services, and they will still die because of the capitalistic greed that underscores our nation's politics.

Welcome back, Bil.

There really isn't much of value to hold hostage.

What's needed at a minimum is something much better than Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders Amendment No. 2837 but Reid seems reluctant to allow discussion on that amendment. The House version of the Obama/Democrat health care package parcels out a few minor reforms and adds to it a huge attack on the right to choice and a racist decision to exclude immigrant and imported workers from any coverage. It's a disaster.

The only part of the health care bill that has any real advances for working people is Amendment No. 2837 by Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Yey even Amendment No. 2837 is a compromise because it falls short of full federal coverage and only allows states to enact federally funded Medicare for health, mental, dental, vision, and long-term care. It does nothing to provide for full cost coverage, Medicare's worst flaw.

But even something as inadequate as Amendment No. 2837 is going to be blocked because key players in the health care debate in both parties were long ago bought off by pharmaceutical companies, HMOs and the insurance industry. The owner/managers of those industries are slamming it to us sans lube as they've done every time this subject came up for the last 60 years. The Democrats, especially Obama, want Congress to compromise until the objections of Lieberman, far right wing Democrats and the Republicans are satisfied.

But, led by Lieberman, that may take awhile. Lieberman and his rightist accomplices have no problems voting trillions for buyouts and wars. Lieberman says that even a minor non-reform like allowing people to buy into Medicare "... will add taxpayer costs. It will add to the deficit. It's unnecessary..."

What we really need is socialized Medicine.

"What we really need is socialized Medicine."

New York City rescue workers got better medical care in Cuba than they did in NY. That's embarrassing.

If you ever get a chance to see !Salud! the movie, take the opportunity.

Very honestly, at this point the bill needs to fail. No bill is better than this palliative opiate to the American people.

I just watched Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden sell us out on cable television in order to appease Holy Joe Lieberman. It's a tribute to the progress I've made in serenity and temper control that my television and remote control are still both intact.

The Democrats seem to be doing the only thing that could possibly make the already fractured conservatives relevant in 2010 and 2012: proving that they are just as incapable of letting go of their greed long enough to legislate as the Republicans.

This all makes me so mad. Why don't the ego issues ever cause people to flip flop from anti-health care reform to pro-health care reform? They always send people to the right!

It almost feels like a conspiracy! As if people don't want us to get health care! And I'll keep on writing in exclamation points!