Today at 3:15.

I got this from Michelle but she doesn't have a post up yet.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "will announce this afternoon that he plans to push ahead with a public option vote -- one that includes an opt-out provision for states -- even though he's currently short several votes for passage, according to people close to the situation," Politico reports.

Reid has 3:15 p.m. press conference to discuss details.

"Leadership sources tell me that Reid, who spoke with virtually every member of his 60-member caucus this weekend, currently has between 56 and 57 votes for the opt-out, which is being pushed by Sen. Charles Schumer, according to Democratic aides."

So here we go.

Opt-out provisions typically are mere fodder for the opposition to sell bad legislation. I can guarantee you that the opt-out will come with penalties to the states, or in the alternative there will be hard to pass up incentives for staying in the game. The Supreme Court has tackled this issue repeatedly and come away with mushy justifications for what amounts in reality to outright coercion.

Basically, you'd be hard pressed to find a State with the wherewithal to pass up enormous subsidies or other goodies to remain ideologically pure and reject the public option.

Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota has said he would lead a campaign to do just that, however. And I have to say I can see other states piggybacking on Minnesota's lead should they decide to do so. A move like that would also catapult Pawlenty into the short list of GOP contenders for 2012.

I don’t know if we would opt out, but I personally would like to opt out because I don’t like government-run health care,” Pawlenty said. “And we shouldn’t call it the public option; we should call it what it is, which is government-run health care. They are desperate -- the Democrats are thrashing about trying to find some way to get government-run health care into the final package, to embed it in the final package.”

And the rationale is, ‘We have to keep the private sector honest.’ So what’s next then? If you don’t like the price of toilet paper and toothpaste, are we going to have a government-run Target or Wal-Mart to keep the private sector honest?” Pawlenty said. “I mean, it’s a ludicrous proposition that government’s going to come in in this space and compete directly with the private sector. Whether it’s opt in, opt out, trigger -- I don’t care. I don’t like the idea.”

Those are sharp words and I concur with the sentiment that we should stop calling it a "public option". So in that vein, from now on yours truly will use Pawlenty's "government-run health care" in place of the public option everytime it comes up.

If the presser is available online I'll see if I can stream it here.

Russ

Update on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:14PM by Russ

C-Span has streaming video here.

Update on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:31PM by Russ

That was the most completely useless 10 minutes of video I've ever seen.

Basically Reid is happy with the "consensus" he achieved in molding the government-run health care provision into a state opt-out. How he acheived "consensus" with nobody else in the room but Democrat ideologues is beyond me.

Then he complained about being able to count "moderate" republicans on "two fingers". Guess which two he's talking about. I'll give you a second.

So yeh, that was a complete waste of time. He answered nothing regarding the specifics of the opt-out procedure or why it was chosen instead of an opt-in or anything else. Of course he can't because he doesn't know...because he's an idiot.

Who do I sue for those 10 minutes of my life back? Where can I send the bill?

Russ

 

Update on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:36PM by Russ

Oh one more thing I forgot, apparently "all the major polls show wide majorities of Americans support the public option."

So there.

See America? It's what we want, whether we know it yet or not.

Russ

Update on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 9:04PM by Russ

Looks like Nancy's got her own ideas about calling government-run health care something else as well.

Behold the "Competitive option".

This woman would be a gift that keeps on giving if the gift weren't consistently crap in a bag.

Russ