The statements from many Republicans these days about health care are unnerving. Governor Pawlenty says that maybe hospitals should be able to turn away indigent people who need treatment. Earlier, he vetoes a reasonable GAMC extension, and Republicans in the House vow to uphold his veto despite overwhelmingly voting for the extension in the first place. At the Health Care Summit in DC, Republicans don’t seem to care about people who can’t afford health insurance; it’s “their problem“. When Representative Louise Slaughter told a story about a woman being forced to use her dead sister’s ill-fitting dentures because she couldn’t afford dentures on her own, Republicans mocked the story. Rush Limbaugh, scum that he is, says that Democrats should be thrilled with that, because Democrats love recycling, after all. He also tells a person who broke their wrist and can’t pay $6,000 to fix it, “Well, you shouldn’t have broken your wrist“.

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• Current Mood: Walking Subcaucus Time!
• Currently Listening To: "Girl With No Eyes", It's A Beautiful Day
• Just Watched: Into The Wild

If Democrats aren’t providing voters with a great message, are they providing voters with something of substance? Good question. It usually helps your reelection chances if you can provide voters with accomplishments that make them want to vote for you again. What’s the Democratic majority’s track record when it comes to niceties that Congress has given voters? It’s not insubstantial, but not great.

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• Current Mood: Worn out
• Currently Listening To: "Let It Rain", Eric Clapton

Democrats have long had a messaging problem, especially at the national level. Sadly, in the past few days it’s become clear that Congressional Democrats have a brain function problem as well, one that is a lot more worrisome than mere issues with messaging, but in the off chance that they stop being afraid of their shadows and piddling all over the floor of the House of Representatives they may need to get back to messaging one day. Despite being told over and over, election after election, that they need to get a message in gear, they still haven’t done it. Maybe this time will be different, if there is a party left.

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• Current Mood: Goodbye CoCo!
• Currently Listening To: "Free Bird", Lynyrd Skynyrd

I don’t think President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or other Democratic leaders in Congress are poker players. I think they’d be much better politicians if they were. If they were regular poker players, they’d understand that Obama and Democrats are now “pot-committed”, and folding their hand is the worst mistake they can make. Sadly, early reaction from the election yesterday seems to indicate they are all too willing to get up and walk away, guaranteeing defeat.

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• Current Mood: Befuddled
• Currently Listening To: "Sheep", Pink Floyd
• Currently Reading: "What Americans Really Want...Really", Frank Luntz

Tracking what is in and out of the health care bill at this point is a pretty hard task, with closed-door negotiations and compromises everywhere. But one thing is clearly evident: Joe Lieberman is a terrible, terrible human being.

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• Current Mood: Busy
• Currently Reading: "Influence", Robert Cialdini

A lot of people who are opposed to the current health care reform bill in Congress believe that it focuses on the wrong priority: instead of working to cover everybody with insurance, as the current bill attempts, more effort should be put into lowering costs first.

I agree that lowering health care costs is just as important, and probably more so, than providing everybody with health coverage. But in my opinion, the administration is doing this in the right order by focusing on coverage first. Why? Because reducing costs will ultimately require at minimum two things: paying doctors less, and no longer paying for unnecessary tests and treatments that have no medical merit.

Remember, “reducing health care costs” directly translates into somebody, be it doctor, lab tech, administrator, and even facility support staff getting a salary cut or losing their job entirely. If the pushback against this reform bill seems bad now, just wait until the goal of reform becomes to literally put people out of work.

Given those facts, tackling coverage instead of cost first seems like the right way to go. First, it’s easier, and it at least gets the reform ball rolling. Second, you have to give people something (universal coverage they don’t have to worry about) before you can take away something else, such as the ability to have every test and treatment they think they deserve because they saw an ad for it on TV or read about it on the internet. Taking things away first is not a political winner.

• Current Mood: Monday

Ask anybody who has had their house foreclosed upon if the government guarantees a place to live.

Ask anybody who has lost their job if the government guarantees employment.

Ask anybody visiting a food shelf if the government even guarantees a minimum amount of food on the table.

In the U.S., the government guarantees next to nothing. A lot of people have a problem with this, but given the lack of serious attempts to change this in decades, it seems that people in the U.S. accept this situation as just fine.

So it’s pretty hard for me to take people seriously when they say that health care reform and a public option is a major blow against “freedom”, that such government intrusion is a takeover.

If we are going to have just one guarantee in this country, let it be this: that a person who has lost their home, lost their job, or even doesn’t have enough money to eat can still get access to the health care and prescription drugs that keep them alive.

I don’t think that is too much to ask.

• Current Mood: Garlicky
• Currently Listening To: "White Summer/Black Mountain Side", Led Zeppelin

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that there is currently a shortage of H1N1 flu vaccine, and that as a result receivers of the vaccine are being prioritized. High-risk groups, such as young children and health care workers, are getting it ahead of other groups. Even with this prioritization, clinics and phone lines are being overwhelmed by people looking for the vaccine, and shortages have canceled some planned clinics.

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• Current Mood: Educated

I’m sure everybody’s heard the old joke that goes along the lines of "Your ideal spouse: Rich, Educated, Beautiful. Choose Two" or "Computer software: Fast, Easy, Affordable. Choose Two". No matter how much we want everything, it’s almost impossible to find something that has every positive aspect you are looking for. The same goes for health care reform.

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Yesterday Julia and I had the exciting pleasure of volunteering at President Obama’s first White House rally at the Target Center in Minneapolis to argue for health care reform. We we asked to volunteer on Wednesday shortly after the visit was announced, and we jumped at the chance. Following a training session on Friday night, where we learned that we would be volunteer captains for the VIP section on the floor of the Target Center close to the podium, the rally left us tired, sore, and fired up. Here are a few of our experiences at that rally…

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