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In a stunning reversal of fortune for President Barack Obama, top progressives are attacking the health-reform plan moving through the Senate as “hollow,” “unsupportable” and a sellout to corporate interests. Republicans, after plotting for months to sink the signature legislation of Obama’s first year, suddenly think that Democrats might wind up doing it for them. Most dangerously for White House chances of assembling 60 Senate votes, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean launched a third day of attacks on the emerging bill, arguing in a Washington Post op-ed that it meets none of his benchmarks for “real reform

In a stunning reversal of fortune for President Barack Obama, top progressives are attacking the health-reform plan moving through the Senate as “hollow,” “unsupportable” and a sellout to corporate interests. Republicans, after plotting for months to sink the signature legislation of Obama’s first year, suddenly think that Democrats might wind up doing it for them. Most dangerously for White House chances of assembling 60 Senate votes, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean launched a third day of attacks on the emerging bill, arguing in a Washington Post op-ed that it meets none of his benchmarks for “real reform.” “[A]s it stands,...

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

WASHINGTON -The liberals' longtime dream of a government-run health care system for all died Wednesday in the Senate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed it will return when the realization dawns that private insurance companies "are no longer needed." Sanders, an independent and socialist, said his approach is the only one "which eliminates the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, administrative costs, bureaucracy and profiteering that is engendered by the private insurance companies." His remarks drew handshakes and even a hug or two from Democrats who had filed into the Senate to hear him. Sanders acknowledged the proposal...

The scuttling of the public option from the Senate health care bill has infuriated organized labor and left their leaders in a bind about how to proceed. Top labor officials of several unions are meeting with their executives today, and some plan to meet on Thursday, to devise their strategies, now that the Senate has dropped the public option, a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It was the central provision for which labor has been fighting. A sense of urgency was building, as a deadline bears down on the Senate. In order to pass a bill...

"If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,"

President Obama pushed back against critics, including the former head of the Democratic Party, who have said that the health care bill in the Senate is fatally flawed and should be scrapped altogether. In an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson, the president said he laid out for Congress specific things he wanted to see in the health care legislation -- including providing insurance for millions of uninsured and not driving up the deficit -- and that the current bill still has those benefits. "Now, if you can tell me that those things are not worth it, then you and...

You would think that during the Holiday Season politicians would try to have the Christmas "Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Man" spirit, but not this year. The fighting going on in the Beltway is totally disgusting. I am not talking about the traditional Democrat vs. Republican Partisanship, no this is all about the brewing Democrat vs. Democrat Civil War. The anger over the recent dropping of the medicare and public options is real, extreme and very public. "Insurance companies win," DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas declared Tuesday. "Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate." If healthcare reform ultimately...

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs fired back at Howard Dean today for encouraging progressives to kill the health care reform bill. Dean thinks the bill, without a public option, is now too compromised to deserve further support. "I would ask Dr. Dean, how better do you address those who don't have insurance: passing a bill that will cover 30 million who don't currently have it or killing the bill?" "I don't think any rational person would say killing the bill makes a whole lot of sense at this point," Gibbs continued, notes the Huffington Post. Dean called the bill's...

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) backed out of an event with other organizations promoting the Senate healthcare reform bill Wednesday over concerns about changes made to the legislation to accommodate centrist Democrats. The SEIU had planned to participate in a Capitol Hill press conference along with the AARP, the liberal advocacy group Families USA, Consumers Union and the American Cancer Society Action Network. As recently as Tuesday morning, the organizations distributed an advisory to the news media that included the SEIU. But the move by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to excise provisions of the healthcare reform bill...

"This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG," former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today. "A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works."

In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me. Dean said the removal of the Medicare buy-in made the bill not worth supporting, and urged Dem leaders to start over with the process of reconciliation in the interview, which is set to air at 5:50 PM today on Vermont Public Radio, political reporter Bob Kinzel confirms to...

Politico: “The Senate version is not worth passing,” former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told POLITICO, referring to plans to strip the latest compromise from the bill, a Medicare buy-in. “I think in this particular iteration, this is the end of the road for reform.” Is this for real folks? Has Deam turned from the dark side into the light or are they up to something else? Rest assured, no and yes! Dean's comments are about four minutes into this clip:

Howard Dean had a rare Lucid Moment during an interview on the Liberal Air America Network's Bill Press Show on Tuesday. He Said that Obamacare was a lousy bill that wouldn't help reduce the cost of health care. The only good thing about it is the public option which will put America on the road to a single payer system. This is a harmful bill to the nation without a public option, because it’s going to take trillions of dollars, billions, well, trillions over several decades from our kids. The Republicans are right about the rhetoric of the bill. But...

Here is video of NBC's Savannah Guthrie saying today that a senior White House official is calling Howard Dean "irrelevant" in his views on Health Care because he is calling for liberal Democrats to "kill the bill" because it does not have a "Public Option." They also are apparently characterizing Dean as "having a tantrum." Howard Dean is the former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. . . . . (VIDEO)

The only thing that can save us from final passage now is the insane bitterness of “principled liberals” at seeing their dream of true socialized medicine smashed. Help us, Dean-o, you’re our only hope! The gauntlet from Dean — whose voice on health care is well respsected among liberals — will energize those on the left who are mobilizing against the bill, and make it tougher for liberals to embrace the emerging proposal. In an excerpt Kinzel gave me, Dean says: “This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to...

But the coup de grâce may happen very soon and may be coming from the left, not the right. Howard Dean will be dropping this bombshell today. In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me. Dean said the removal of the Medicare buy-in made the bill not worth supporting, and urged Dem leaders to start over...

In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me. Dean said the removal of the Medicare buy-in made the bill not worth supporting, and urged Dem leaders to start over with the process of reconciliation in the interview, which is set to air at 5:50 PM today on Vermont Public Radio, political reporter Bob Kinzel confirms to...

Here is video of Howard Dean on CBS This Morning saying it is really "irrelevant" whether or not the Senate Health Care Bill has a "public option." For Dean, what matters is that it "moves things forward," and moves in the right direction. Essentially, Dean admits he does care whether this bill has a "public option" because the passage of any kind of Democrat Health Care Bill will eventually lead to what they really are after - a Government takeover of Health Care. They just want to get the "foot in the door," and later they can add to it...