Laredo, Texas to become the largest city in the USA without a bookstore, nearest one will be 150 miles away.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says that he won't vote for a health care reform bill in its present state.

As of this point, I’m not voting for the bill. ... I’m going to do my best to make this bill a better bill, a bill that I can vote for, but I’ve indicated both to the White House and the Democratic leadership that my vote is not secure at this point. And here is the reason. When the public option was withdrawn, because of Lieberman’s action, what I worry about is how do you control escalating health care costs?

Check it out here. This echos similar statements made by Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) (more here).

Yes, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is now ready to sink health care reform a la Joseph Lieberman. From our point of view, this move only makes sense, both from a policy standpoint and from an electoral standpoint. Kos, in an unusually observant post for his site, makes the case for this position here. It basically comes down to four points:

• Progressives don't trust that insurance companies won't raise rates through the roof once the government mandates that they buy health insurance. (This was one of my problems with Hillary Clinton's health care plan, as espoused during the 2008 primary season; Obama's position, which did not include a mandate, was far more attractive to me. Oh how times have changed.)


• Nor do progressives trust that a government oversight panel, as provided in the bill, will be sufficient to prevent such a rate increase. (Portlanders will remember how well that worked out when PGE increased their rates 25% in what turned out to be part of a larger scam by parent company Enron. Did the CUB stand in the way of that? Nope!) Therefore, some other mechanism must be in place. Premium caps, public option, medicare buy-in, whatever.


• Simply throwing more money at the bill will not solve the problem. Insurance companies will just suck up the additional funds and continue to screw policy holders. The progressive fight is for more effective dynamics.


• There is much more to gain, at least politically, by fighting hard for a public option and blowing up health care reform entirely than by passing the bill as it stands.

Personally, I would prefer it if we just had Medicare For Everyone, but we don't. The Democrats negotiated that away to appease the Corporate wing of the Party, and Lieberman and Dorgan and Lincoln fought and fought and fought some more to turn this from a genuine reform effort to a massive payout to insurance companies. The unfortunate result is a shit sandwich that has 32 percent support and a lot of progressive disapproval.

It seemed certain that this shit sandwich would pass, but now with Burris and Sanders taking this stand, the shit sandwich is almost certainly dead. Sanders and Burris, much like Lieberman, can't be pressured. Sanders isn't up for re-election until 2012 and his seat is as safe as could be. Burris isn't running again. At this point, the worst case scenario is that this bill is dead, and that's better than things looked 24 hours ago. The best case scenario is that they work out some way -- perhaps through reconciliation, maybe by working out a deal that both Sanders and Lieberman will like -- to pass a health care reform bill that doesn't suck.