Nancy Pelosi: World's worst haggler (Added material)

This is mind-boggling. Blue Lyon quotes an email from HealthJustice, which was sent out in response to the withdrawal of the Kucinich amendment before yesterday's vote:

Speaker Pelosi felt that offering a single-payer amendment would open the floodgates to amendments proposed to limit abortion funds, restrict immigrant access to healthcare, and other regressive legislation.

And in the end...? To get her bill passed, Nancy Pelosi agreed to an amendment that would prevent women from paying for abortions with private insurance procured through their employers. And the legislation will likely become even tougher on immigrants in conference.

If I offered Nancy Pelosi ten bucks for her car, she'd give it to me for eight. If I were a Republican.

Update -- same planet, different universes: Indiana Republican congressman Mark Souder opposes the Pelosi Bill because

It is only a matter of time before the public option drives out private insurance and government becomes the sole bill-payer for health care services.

Oh, if only! The vampire squids of the insurance industry contribute nothing. That is the very reason why, on the other side of the aisle, Dennis Kucinich opposed the same bill:

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies — a bailout under a blue cross.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The “robust public option” which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Let's repeat: The public option applies to only 6 million Americans. Meanwhile, 25 million Americans require some sort of assistance in order to have enough to eat. Pelosi expects them to pay for insurance premiums -- and if they don't, they could go to jail for five years.