Apparently the secret to passing ObamaCare is for the President to acknowledge that all Members of Congress have something they don’t like about the bill, but to vote for it regardless:

AP reports the President said in New York yesterday:

“The bill you least like” improves coverage for millions, he said in New York. “Let’s make sure that we keep our eye on the prize.”

Seems a little strange to announce this in New York, a blue state, that members need to hold their nose and vote for health care reform. Is this the winning formula? Is holding New York members of Congress becoming tough? And if the President needed to say this in New York, what does this mean for the rest of the country?

The roll call vote on the motion to proceed to S. 1776 is instructive of what happens to a bill that cannot stop the filibuster on the motion to proceed. President Obama and the White House asked Senator Reid to put $247 billion in new spending off budget to buy off the American Medical Association. Majority Leader Reid was embarrassed. The White House, Senator Reid said, wanted him to bring the bill up. He needed 60 votes to stop the filibuster. He got 47 votes. Missed the mark by 13 votes. Here is the simple filibuster math (60 minus 13 = 47.)

Perhaps this is why President Obama did not go public on the vote, he did not want to risk a Chicago is knocked out in the first round of voting despite his personal lobbying for the Olympics type experience.

This is a lesson for everyone: no cloture, no laundry. And 60 votes in the Senate is a tough number to hit, even with 60 Democratic voting Senators (58 Dems and two independents). S. 1776 is dead. The bill did not even make it past the motion to proceed.

Today, AP ran a story questioning whether President Obama has the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster on ObamaCare. Really? Really, really. Here is some of Charles Babington’s piece:

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Call your Senator and Representative — particularly those of you in Republican states and districts — and tell them to oppose S. 1776, a $247 billion doc fix that isn’t paid for and enables the passage of Obamacare. 

Click the link to go to our action center.

Not all the action on healthcare reform is happening in smoke filled rooms. 
 
This week the Senate is considering its next payoff to a powerful lobbying group—a $247 billion package for the American Medical Association.  The funding is not offset and would dramatically increase the deficit.  Harry Reid is betting that the bill will prove politically impossible for most Senators, including Republicans, to oppose as it addresses the number one priority for most doctors over the years—the fact that Medicare doesn’t reimburse them enough.  By considering the “doc fix” apart from overall healthcare reform, he and Max Baucus remove a major cost to that package.  As Senator McConnell said, “This is so transparent. They’re taking this issue out of health care, suggesting that we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars, not pay for it, so that they can then argue, the very next week potentially, that this trillion-dollar health care bill is paid for.” 

Even the media is reporting this is a bribe. Harry Reid will pay off the doctors’ lobby and in exchange the doctors lobby will support Obamacare.
 
The strategy is simple.

• Payoff the docs;
• Make your bill appear to cost less; and,
• Force Republicans to choose between their doctors and the fiscal health of the nation.

 
Now to be fair even many conservatives agree that Medicare’s physician reimbursements are set ridiculously low, amounting to a form of price controls on the system.  And since doctors don’t have to participate in Medicare or take new seniors on as patients, if reimbursements are set too low, it creates access problems.  That has led many to support short-term fixes that are often paid for with other spending reductions as stop-gaps until the overall system could be reformed.  But let’s remember something folks.  Medicare is a government-run healthcare program—the fact that it proves so costly that price controls are adopted is exactly what we’ve been arguing the future holds if Obamacare gets passed.  Making it work right is not something that Republicans in Congress should sell their soul to fix and its certainly not something that should be allowed to enable a government takeover of the health care system. 
 
Republicans need to fight this for what it is—a quarter of a trillion dollar payoff to the AMA to get them to keep supporting Obamacare.  This will be a great litmus test of whether Republican claims of fiscal responsibility have any merit whatsoever.  It’s easy to oppose a nearly trillion dollar stimulus and a nearly trillion dollar health takeover.  It’s hard to tell your doctors back home, in the words of the immortal Meatloaf, that you’d do anything for love but won’t you do that.  But that is exactly how we activists will ever know that Republicans have gotten our message—when they learn to say no to their voters when it comes to spending. 
 
A brief message to you doctors out there, many of you good Republicans.  Seriously, chill out.  Congress is not going to let your reimbursements get cut so stop believing your AMA spam—from the same people who are no doubt enjoying their coffee and donuts over in Rahm Emmanuel’s office.  These people (at least their lobbyists in DC) don’t want you to be free; they want you to be slaves to government in as much as many of you are already to Medicare.  Don’t let that happen on your watch and with your dues and don’t be fooled by this shell game happening in the Senate and presumably soon in the House of Representatives. 
 
Call your Senator and Representative — particularly those of you in Republican states and districts — and tell them to oppose S. 1776, a $247 billion doc fix that isn’t paid for and enables the passage of Obamacare.