Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), predicted the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) “could inject Democrats with a necessary dose of adrenaline” to rally around a health care “reform” bill that includes the divisive public insurance option, but his crystal ball appears as clouded as the prospects of “the troubled bill,” reports The Washington Times [emphasis throughout, The Stiletto]:

Conservative opponents of President Obama's health care proposal said the death of Mr. Kennedy will not greatly alter the debate over the Democratic proposals before Congress. And, despite the respect Mr. Kennedy earned over nearly a half-century in the Senate, there were no signs of a shift among skeptical Democrats on an issue Mr. Kennedy called the "cause of my life." …

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, a moderate Louisiana Democrat, speaking to a local chamber of commerce in Monroe, La., said the day after Mr. Kennedy's death that she remained deeply resistant to the public insurance option, which many liberal Democrats insist must be a part of the final bill.

There were "very few, if any" circumstances under which she could support a public option, Mrs. Landrieu said, according to the local Monroe News Star.

"I'd like to cover everyone - that would be the moral thing to do - but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so," she said.

Mr. Kennedy's passing also did not diminish the infighting among wings of the Democratic Party over the fate of health care reform.

In the weekly round-up of his company’s poll results, Scott Rasmussen writes that Kennedy’s death “means one of two things for the troubled health care reform plan proposed by President Barack Hussein Obama: Either the plan has lost one of its most powerful advocates or now its supporters have an emotional rallying point to successfully push for passage. Only time will tell.”

Um, if the health-care town hall at Sachem East High School in Brookhaven, Long Island, is any indication, we might not have to wait too long to find out whether the “Kennedy mystique” still has any pull with voters who will pull the levers for or against their Congressional representatives in 2010. When the town supervisor asked for a moment of silence in honor of the newly departed Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), one man shouted, “We don’t give a sh*t about Kennedy!”

For his part, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer declares “Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead … You don't need a Ph.D. to see that the promise to expand coverage and reduce costs is a crude deception, or that cutting $500 billion from Medicare without affecting care is a fiction.” The new-and-improved - that is, politically palatable - Obamacare 2.0 would start with “universal and permanently protected” health insurance, he adds:

Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one … promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick, and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement. …

The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.

But here’s the catch to transforming insurance companies into “government utilities”:

Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.

However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. …

But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.

Obama likes to ridicule senior citizens who want government to keep its mitts off Medicare:

"I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare,'" Obama said at an AARP-hosted town hall on health care. The crowd laughed.

"I wanted to say, you know, that's what Medicare is: a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with," Obama said, smiling, as he made the case for a public option to compete with private insurance plans.

Yes, they’re happy with Medicare - or, “hooked” as Krauthammer puts it - and very quickly figured out that the amount and quality of healthcare upon which they rely is at risk by Obama’s threats to cut the government program’s funding.

Many seniors who depend on Medicare couldn’t find a private Medicare Advantage plan that meets their financial and health needs - there are 7,000 plans, and they vary widely in coverage and co-pays, reports The Associated Press in an article that compares the government-provided Medicare (“good”) with private plans (“bad”). And Obama wants to trim Medicare Advantage funding by roughly $177 billion over 10 years, which would limit options for seniors even more.

With no viable alternative to traditional Medicare, our seniors will be completely at Obama’s mercy. And in Krauthammer’s dystopia, so shall we all be - sooner or later.

Richardson Has Friends In High Places

NM Gov. Bill Richardson gets his reward for ditching Hillary and supporting Obama during their to-the-bitter-end primary race?

Three sources familiar with the case” told The Washington Post that the the criminal "pay to play" investigation that forced Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) to drop out of consideration as President Barack Hussein Obama's commerce secretary is winding down with no indictments being handed down after Justice Department officials quietly allowed the statute of limitations on the allegations to expire:

The FBI and a grand jury in Albuquerque have been investigating whether CDR Financial Products, a Beverly Hills-based company, received a contract with the New Mexico Finance Authority because of pressure from Richardson or other state employees. CDR was paid $1.48 million for advising the authority on investment decisions in 2004.

The firm and its president, David Rubin, together gave $100,000 to Sí Se Puede and Moving America Forward, both PACs started by Richardson, shortly before winning the state contract. …

The inquiry was part of a nationwide federal investigation of alleged pay-to-play practices in local government bond markets. Federal investigators have been trying to build cases against financial firms and political figures who may have accepted gifts in exchange for high fees on work advising municipal and local governments on investments.

“A person familiar with the investigation” told The Associated Press that the investigation “was killed in Washington.”

Liberal blog Talking Points Memo asks the obvious question: “So, did politics play a role in the decision to quash the probe?”:

It would be a mistake, of course, to put too much weight on the off-the-record word of one anonymous source. Still, Richardson, a former Energy Secretary, UN ambassador, and chair of the Democratic Governor's Association, is about as well-connected as they come in Democratic circles, and his endorsement of Obama last year came at a critical time in the campaign. So it's not far-fetched to think that higher-ups at DOJ could have intervened for reasons that went beyond the impartial administration of justice.

But right now, we need to know a lot more before jumping to any conclusions.

Just so. It is permissible for journos and pundits to jump to conclusions only when Repubs and conservatives are in the crosshairs.

In Memoriam

Ellie Greenwich, Oct. 23, 1940 – August 26, 2009