Recently Senate Republicans put forward another Republican health care bill. This isn’t the first one; GOP lawmakers trot out bills from time to time that are mostly word salad meant to serve as props at press conferences.

The newest one is supposed to be a real health care bill. As I understand it, provisions include limits on medical malpractice awards, incentives for states to reduce the number of uninsured, and a program to allow small businesses to band together and buy insurance exempt from most state regulation. (Translation: The policies won’t cover whatever it is you have.)

I have read that the bill also allows people to purchase insurance across state lines. The bill does not require insurance companies to insure people with pre-existing conditions, nor would it stop them from dumping policyholders. It does allow states to create high-risk pools for people who are hard to insure, meaning only the wealthy in those high-risk pools could afford to purchase the insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office gave it a D, however. Ezra Klein explains,

CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that …17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.

But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP’s alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.

However, in Wingnutland, these statistics don’t matter. The GOP bill is only 230 pages long, while the Democrats’ bill comes in at around 1,990 pages. That makes the GOP bill better, because (as we shall see) big stacks of paper with lots of writing on them are inherently evil.

So yesteday the insurance industry and other parts of the medical-industrial complex funneled money through Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the corporate front group founded by Koch Industries billionaire David Koch, to bring busloads of hysterical people to Washington to demonstrate. Most accounts put the crowd at between 3,000 and 5,000, although a producer of G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show estimated the crowd at “about one million,” proving that wingnuts count about as well as they can read.

A spokesperson for Americans for Prosperity put the number at 20,000, meaning that the 3,000 to 5,000 estimate is correct.

This massive throng came with the usual clever signs comparing health care to the holocaust and calling for an investigation into President Obama’s place of birth.

Christina Bellantoni reported for Talking Points Memo that ten teabaggers were arrested after they stormed into Congressional office buildings and behaved badly. The ten were charged with unlawful entry into legislative offices (they did not leave when asked to do so) and/or disorderly conduct.

Teabaggers who saw the ten being taken away by police were furious. Rumors quickly formed that the ten had been arrested for praying (they were not) or for ripping up pages of the Democratic health care bill (I told you paper was inherently evil). Some in the crowd began to rip up paper in defiance of the imagined paper ripping arrests, which must have baffled the police.

Did I mention these people are hysterical? Not to mention dim?

Dana Milbank’s description makes the demonstrators sound like inmates at a 19th century insane asylum.

In the front of the protest, a sign showed President Obama in white coat, his face painted to look like the Joker. The sign, visible to the lawmakers as they looked into the cameras, carried a plea to “Stop Obamunism.” A few steps farther was the guy holding a sign announcing “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds” [sic], accusing Obama of being part of a Jewish plot to introduce the antichrist.

But the best of Bachmann’s recruits were a few rows into the crowd, holding aloft a pair of 5-by-8-foot banners proclaiming “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945.” Both banners showed close-up photographs of Holocaust victims, many of them children.

I like this part:

Immediately in front of this colorful scenery, various House Republicans signed autographs and shook hands with the demonstrators. Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), who recently said the health-care bill is more dangerous than terrorists, gave out stickers saying “Govt Run Healthcare Makes Me Sick!”

Rep. Foxx must not like the government run health care she gets as a member of Congress. Also:

By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.

No one says this crew is overcrowded with smarts.

Let’s not speculate on motive until we know more. All we know about the Fort Hood Shooting is that 12 are dead (as of now). Initial reports indicated there were multiple shooters, but only one has been identified, Army Major Malike Nadal Hasan, who is dead. Two other soldiers are suspects. Terrible news.

Update: McClatchy Newspapers reports the shooter may still be alive.

Judy Dugan writes in the Los Angeles Times that foreign hospitals and medical centers are wooing U.S. insurance companies and major employers. The goal? To make “medical tourism” a regular part of America’s market-driven health care system.

Right now, medical tourism is an individual choice. People who have been dumped out of the U.S. health care system but who have the money to travel can get their hip replacements and cancer treatments in another country at the fraction of the cost.

But unless Congress gets its act together and takes the insurance industry into hand, soon “American workers may find themselves facing ‘incentives’ for overseas surgery that border on coercion,” says Dugan.

For insurers and employers looking at a $45,000 hip replacement in the U.S., the lure of a $5,400 hip replacement in India — even with $10,000 or $12,000 in travel and lodging costs added on — is hard to resist. So what if there’s a lack of public, comparative data on outcomes, complications and long-term recovery?

Doctors in other countries make a fraction of what U.S. doctors do. U.S. physicians may find themselves in the same fix as U.S. garment workers, competing with workers in the Third World. Patients also may have to sign waivers that free their foreign health care providers from any liability for error or malpractice.

Here are a few early indicators of insurer interest: The Blue Cross Blue Shield website touts “Blue Cross’ Companion Global Healthcare,” a wraparound travel planner and network of overseas providers, selling to individuals and to employers in South Carolina. In California, Blue Shield and HealthNet offer plans for employers of Mexican immigrants that cover treatment in Mexico. And United Health Group, the parent of PacifiCare, sent a speaker to the medical tourism conference to advise on how to get employers to include overseas surgery in health plan networks.

Conservatives want to de-subsidize health care and allow the magical free market to determine cost and delivery. Outsourcing overseas is a logical consequence.

Update: However, as Nicholas Kristof points out — we may get better care by going overseas. Our health care system, in spite of being the best health care system in the world, isn’t that great.

Some local bloggers at the Watertown Daily Times provide insight into the teabaggers’ loss in NY congressional district 23. Bob Gorman writes,

The delicate dance of dips and faints that Republicans perform to keep some semblance of a two-party system in New York was turned into a chicken-fried square dance in which everybody does whatever the caller says. And the caller was far, far away in a radio studio well to the west, but really the right, of New York state.

Gorman goes on to talk about the ham-handed way “national conservative talk show hosts” with no respect whatsoever for local sensibilities hijacked the local election. Another local blogger, Jeffrey Savitskie, refers to Hoffman as the “carpetbagger candidate.”

More evidence the teabaggers are channeling the spirit of Robespierre — RedState’s Erick Erickson says that Americans for Tax Reform is no longer an organization in good standing with the Jacobins tea party patriots. And why not? Because the Tax Policy Director of ATR supported Dede Scozzafava, who had signed a “no new taxes” pledge.

ATR is a group organized and run by Grover Norquist, dedicated to the deification of Ronald Reagan and the drowning of government in a bathtub. Yet ATR is apostate, to Erickson. No longer pure.

The Terror eventually turned on Robespierre himself, remember.

Local politics really is local, most of the time, and it’s perilous to draw conclusions about a local election when you’re watching from a distance. I’ve seen far-away pundits and hacks draw boneheaded conclusions about elections in my locality. Often, in a local or state election, there are things going on that have nothing to do with national issues.

That said, I think Mike Madden is right about incumbents being blamed for the economy. He is also right that Chris Christie ran in New Jersey as a moderate, not a movement conservative. There wasn’t a hint of guns, God or gays in Christie’s television ads; he talked only about taxes and the economy. He ran as a RINO, in other words. I think Corzine made a huge mistake by not emphasizing Christie’s past as a movement conservative wise guy.

Nate Silver says:

Obama approval was actually pretty strong in New Jersey, at 57 percent, but 27 percent of those who approved of Obama nevertheless voted for someone other than Corzine. This one really does appear to be mostly about Corzine being an unappealing candidate, as the Democrats look like they’ll lose just one or two seats in the state legislature in Trenton. Corzine compounded his problems by staying negative until the bitter end of the campaign rather than rounding out his portfolio after having closed the margin with Christie.

But that’s water under the bridge now. Good luck, New Jersey. You’ll need it.

I would love to talk to people who live in New York’s 23rd congressional district about why they think the district elected its first Democrat, probably ever. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of CD 23 voters were spooked away from voting for Hoffman by the wingnuts who showed up to campaign for him. Upstate New York may be more conservative than Manhattan, but neither is it Mississippi.

It is not always a good idea to bring in busloads of people from distant places to work local elections. The style of campaigning that works well in the deep South is a big turnoff to the damnyankees in these parts, and vice versa.

To the wingnuts, the real prize in NY 23 was defeating the moderate Republican Scozzafava. They believe they have taught the national GOP a lesson. However, the lesson the national GOP might really have learned is that the far right base cannot win elections. The Teabaggers threw everything they had at New York 23, and they lost to a Democrat.

“Will Republicans do Obama a big favor by nominating a crop of Hoffmans for 2010?” Josh Marshall asks. We’ll see.

It’s been about ten years since I’ve lived in New Jersey, although I see it frequently. I assume Jon Corzine’s defeat came about because New Jersey voters were unhappy with him. However, I think the people of New Jersey possibly don’t understand how far right Christie is. New Jersey has had Republican governors in recent memory, but not crazy hard-right ideological Republican governors. New Jersey likes governors who cut taxes, but if Christie pushes a hard-right social agenda, he will be a one-term governor.

Bloomberg narrowly was re-elected mayor of New York. I’m surprised the vote was a close as it seems to be; the other candidate ran a weak campaign, I thought.

I’m not going to wait up for the New York 23 or Maine “gay marriage” results. Those will take a while, I suspect.

Election day is lively — in NY 23, there are reports police are being called to polling places to settle down overzealous Hoffman supporters, who seem mostly from out of town. They’re standing too close to the polling places and screaming anti-choice slogans at people going to vote.

Polls indicate that Hoffman should win fairly easily. It wouldn’t surprise me if this sort of behavior causes some people to switch their votes to someone else, however.

In New Jersey, in spite of some predictions of a Christie win, the GOP seems to be bracing for defeat. They’re already making up stories about voter fraud.

There’s word today that Senator Lieberman is saying he won’t join a Republican filibuster of the health care bill after all. Harry Reid and Lieberman have reached a “private understanding” on the matter, Alexander Bolton says at The Hill. Steve Benen says that in fact Senate Democrats and the White House never thought he would support the filibuster, even when he was saying he would, because they believe Lieberman to be totally insincere.

So how do they know he’s not lying now?

And what would the “private understanding” be? Nice little chairmanship you’ve got there, Senator. I’d hate to see anything happen to it.

That leaves us with wondering what Senator Lieberman was trying to accomplish by saying he would support the filibuster. The consensus seems to be he was just trying to get attention.

The weekend polling for New York’s 23rd district congressional race is, um, inconsistent. Hoffman is ahead by either a landslide or a hair. One poll says independents favor Hoffman, 52-30; another says independents favor Owens, 43-37.

Nate Silver says there are a large number of unpollable factors that could push the race either way. “Not only will I not be surprised if either Democrat Bill Owens or Conservative Doug Hoffman wins on Tuesday — I will not be surprised if one of them wins by a substantial, possibly even double-digit margin,” he says.

But see also this chart on who is contributing to what candidate in NY-23. Owens is getting campaign money from contributors within the district; Hoffman is not. Interesting.

The New Jersey Corzine-Christie race is supposed to be too close to call. Nate Silver says he has a “relatively clear answer” for New Jersey, but as of this writing he hasn’t said what it is. Stay tuned.

This is fun — Scozzafava is telling her supporters to vote for the Democrat, Owens, instead of the wingnut, Hoffman. The Watertown Daily Times has endorsed Owens and says Hoffman would be bad for the district:

Mr. Hoffman is running as an ideologue. If he carries out his pledges on earmarks, taxation, labor law reform and other inflexible positions, Northern New York will suffer. This rural district depends on the federal government for an investment in Fort Drum and its soldiers, environmental protection of our international waterway and the Adirondack Park, and the livelihood of all our dairy farmers across the district, among other support. Our representative cannot be locked into rigid promises and policies that would jeopardize these critical sectors of our economy.

Frank Rich spoke to this also:

Last week it turned out that Hoffman’s prime attribute to the radical right — as a take-no-prisoners fiscal conservative — was bogus. In fact he’s on the finance committee of a hospital that happily helped itself to a $479,000 federal earmark. Then again, without the federal government largess that the tea party crowd so deplores, New York’s 23rd would be a Siberia of joblessness. The biggest local employer is the pork-dependent military base, Fort Drum.

Little Lulu says Rich is “spooked” and has the “heebie-jeebies” about “mainstream conservatives asserting themselves in the NY-23 congressional race.” “Mainstream conservatives” is, of course, a euphemism for “nuttier than a peanut farm.” But you can tell how “spooked” Rich is:

No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

Yeah, Rich is quaking in his boots.

I don’t know who’s going to win that election, but I predict that if Hoffman wins the emboldened tea partiers will embark on the bloodiest purge since Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. If Owens wins, after a period of self-indulgent whining the tea partiers will identify some scapegoats and then will embark on the bloodiest purge since Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.

Don’t forget the popcorn.