[insulting teh kittehz] but i had the exact same reaction as jawbone when i saw this one.

Just this alone from her 1993 effort on health care seems to suggest that:

In September 1993, as Hillary Clinton lobbied Congress to pass her health-reform bill, she plainly addressed the looming controversy over reproductive care. "It will include pregnancy-related services, and that will include abortion, as insurance policies currently do," she told the Senate Finance Committee. Conservatives were incensed. But as the history books record, it was industry pressure and legislative malaise that killed Hillarycare, not debate over women's rights.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/...

That said, I always felt Hillary blew what could have been a clear primary victory when she didn't advocate Medicare for All. And, I told her staff as much. And, if she were Pres. and trying to pass this craptastic plan, I'd still be fighting tooth and nail for Medicare for All.

because any thing appropriate to the "NOW can I haz single payer" would have not been very nice on the kitteh's behalf, in fact really unfitting. After you put that up, I tried to think what kind of photo might have worked, and, well, I couldn't come up with anything either. The options were just too grim.

I kept asking myself, "Why were they, the establishment, so utterly desperate not just to knock out Clinton, but to have Obama be the nominee? What's so special about Obama, that they would disenfranchise MI and FL, and seemed even willing to risk losing the GE (At the time Obama wasn't cruising in the polls, but sputtering)?" Why would they turn down a lock landslide win with a solid, though corporate, Democrat who knows policy inside and out, particularly on the economy, pulls together a formidable coalition of working class whites, Latinos, and women for a weak novice who prefers bio to substance, bashes other Democrats with right-wing tropes, and praises Reagan? It was so bizarre.

Some could say, "Well, they were afraid of being perceived as racist since Clinton was smeared as exploiting it." The Democrats could have knocked that media narrative down but they chose not to. Remember how Dean stood up for Obama on perceived racism, and yet incredibly claimed he hadn't seen any misogynistic coverage because he didn't get cable? And then there was the likes of Dodd and Leahy demanding that she, a "first" herself, drop out? It was a choice on the part of the Party leaders to leverage (corporate media) hate against Clinton with their silence on it or giving the impression Clinton was doing wrong by simply staying in the race. They allowed her to be seen as a villain.

Considering that Durbin said Wall Street "own" Washington, the TARP fiasco, Paulson's increasingly disturbing role in Lehman's fall, and now the health insurance bailout, I think my (tinfoily) fears might be correct: that last year, from the primaries to the GE, was about Wall Street and Obama was their man from the very beginning.

2009:
kill the present legislation. pass legislation to raise taxes and put all medicaid/schip/uninsured into medicare on jan 1 2010.

2010:
put all medicaid/schip/uninsured into medicare and abolish the state-based and means-tested structure. you automatically stay there unless you deliberately opt out to join an employer's plan [must provide proof of insurance]. allow cobra recipients the option of keeping their cobra coverage or joining medicare.

2011:
start legislation for medicare reforms [abolish the donut hole, abolish part c, fix part d, etc]

2012, or maybe later:
start a national conversation on whether to convert to medicare for all.

I don't think for one second that they believe they are "doing the right thing." What they are doing is playing simple politics. Many of them feel that they are so far into this that it'd be bad for appearances if it failed. It's what they believe to be an act of political self-preservation.

I knew this shit was absolutely toast when the president legitimized the bat-shit insane wingnuts shouting at the rallies. He'd have been better of ramming through single-payer. He and the rest were stone-cold fools to believe that he could rationally debate and discuss health care with people who don't just want his plan dead, but him as well if they could get away with it.

No, this is much closer to spinelessness or naivete than it is to them believing they are doing the right thing. We don't even have anything close to saints and nobleness, here.

I didn't think that the administration could make an already unacceptable plan even worse, but they proved me wrong. There has to be some kind of an award for such a horrible talent.