House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday and weighed in on everything from Bart Stupak’s threats to derail health care reform, to Eric Massa’s resignation, and Republican obstructionism in the Senate.

While agree…

Health reform is back from the dead. Many Democrats have realized that their electoral prospects will be better if they can point to a real accomplishment. Polling on reform — which was never as negative as portrayed — shows signs of improvi…

In the best news all day category, House leadership has washed their hands of Stupak. There really wasn’t any way around it, since he refused to budge. But it also suggests that leadership doesn’t think the 12 supporters Stupak has claimed are firm in their support of him.

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the leadership will press ahead without reworking the abortion provision adopted by the Senate. Abortion opponents say the provision falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., has been pushing for stricter provisions and says he and a dozen or so abortion opponents would vote against the health care bill if the Senate’s version is retained. Leaders will try to peel off some of those lawmakers and make up for any remaining deficit with Democrats who opposed the health care legislation on the first round, when it passed 220-215.

“Many of the pro-life members are going to support passage of the health care bill,” Waxman predicted. “They’re either satisfied enough with the Senate provision, or they decide that that’s as much as they’re going to get and they don’t want to defeat health care.”

Dday has been keeping a whip count and has the current numbers at 189 yes, 202 no. With Massa’s resignation, the magic number in the House is 216.

CBO has updated its assessment of the Senate-passed health care bill that will form the basis of the final health care package once the reconciliation package of ‘fixes’ is complete:

Obama health bill gets boost from budget office

WASHINGTON (AFP) – In a boost to President Barack Obama’s flagship reform drive, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday a Senate health care bill would cut the deficit by 118 billion dollars.

The release of the report thickened the intrigue in a tense period of vote hunting for Obama’s Democratic allies in the House of Representatives, with the White House pushing for a crucial vote on the measure within a week.

The non-partisan CBO said in its updated assessment that the Senate bill would cost 875 billion dollars over 10 years and reduce projected budget deficits by 118 billion dollars.

In a bid to thwart Republican obstruction tactics, Obama wants the House to pass the Senate bill along with a package of “fixes” in a delicate political maneuver that represents the last hope for his key domestic priority.

As it currently stands, the legislation would cover 31 million Americans and offer consumer protections to all Americans, eliminating the ability of insurance companies to deny people for pre-existing conditions or to rescind coverage to people who get sick. Its ten-year $875 billion price tag would be funded by Medicare cost-savings (without jeopardizing benefits) and a mixture of new taxes. It would reduce the deficit by $118 billion in the first ten years.

Remember, these budget numbers represent a baseline, and will likely change (presumably for the better) once the reconciliation package is complete. But it’s an important reminder that the net financial impact of reform will be a reduction in the budget deficit.

If Republicans want to argue that government should not provide a safety net insuring that all Americans have health insurance, that’s their right — but for them to argue that this bill is a fiscal calamity just isn’t grounded in reality.

Join the discussion in Bensonola’s recommended diary, CBO: Senate HCR Bill Reduces the Deficit by 118 Billion!.

Here are 12 suggestions for preventing the devastating depression that often accompanies divorce, and techniques that you can use to keep your happiness level steady or maybe even higher!

Last night on Countdown, Markos joined Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the current state of play on health care reform, including Rush Limbaugh’s hilarious claim that if reform passes, he’ll move to Costa Rica.

As Markos pointed out, if Rush really wants a libertarian health care system, he oughta give that libertarian paradise of Somalia a shot. Costa Rica, after all, has a ’socialized’ system…and for Rush, that just won’t do.

Markos also took on Dennis Kucinich for opposing health care reform, comparing Kucinich’s brand of politics to that of Ralph Nader, summing it up in just one damning word: ineffective.

Watch:

I’m loving the new and aggressive labor approach to primaries.

As health care reform enters its do-or-die stage in Congress, union leaders on Tuesday began threatening that they will work to ‘take out’ Democratic lawmakers who vote against the bill [...]

In a series of conversations with the Huffington Post, many of labor’s leading voices pledged to launch a massive, arm-twisting effort to help persuade skeptical lawmakers to pass health care legislation into law. And in addition to their traditional ammunition — from email campaigns to town hall events — talk also centered on exacting electoral revenge against those who end up voting against reform.

“I hope this sends a message to Congress,” Gerald McEntee, president of 1.6-million-member AFSCME, told the Huffington Post. “I think we have to demonstrate that we are not going to stand aside, that we are going to take them out if they don’t help us at all.”

We spent the last several months fighting for improvements to existing legislation. We were successful in some instances, not so successful in others. However, the clock has run out on the base legislation. It’s either we take this important first step toward a truly equitable health care system, or the GOP and the insurance industry wins, and we see nothing for the next generation or two.

I’m not particularly happy with the Senate bill or its modest reconciliation fixes. But it is a foot in the door, and it will help millions of Americans get the health care they are currently denied.

I’m convinced that the insurance companies are too greedy and corrupt to play nice. And every time they violate the spirit of the new regulations, it’ll provide added impetus for the kind of true systemic change that will fix our broken system. Remember, Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts had all but killed the impetus for health care reform, until Wellpoint-Anthem announced their ill-timed (for them) double-digit premium increases.

I still want to see a separate Senate vote on the public option — we currently have 40 signatures on letter demanding the vote. One way to hold our party accountable and identify the roadblocks is by forcing these elected officials to go on the record with their votes. Those who vote against the public option will have a big, fat target painted on their backs in 2012. Absent a vote, I’m happy to consider the public option letter evidence enough.

And that target will be whale-sized for any Democrat who votes with the GOP and insurance industries against final passage of this legislation. It’s not just me making idle threats. Otherwise Democratic health care reform opponents could justifiably laugh it off. It’s the heavy hitters of the progressive movement, finally tired of the Democratic Party’s inability to govern thanks to insidious internal obstructionists. Blanche Lincoln is getting a taste of it right now, and plenty more should expect that treatment in 2012.

Vote, fix, and keep fixing. But there will be nothing to fix, only the status quo, if we come out of this battle with nothing on the books.

3 pm ET, 90 minutes!

As you can see in the video above, it turns out that Eric Massa, the right-wing media’s newest darling, hasn’t exactly managed to tell a consistent story on health care reform. In just a few months, he’s gone from supporting single-payer even if opinion were 80-20 against it to saying he opposes reform because Democrats haven’t done enough to forge popular consensus.

Yesterday, he said he was being forced out of Congress because he opposed efforts to “ram this [health care reform] down the throats of the American people” when “the entire nation has said let’s rewrite the health care bill. Let’s find what we can agree on.”

But last August, speaking at Netroots Nation, Massa said on health care legislation, members of Congress should vote for reforms like single-payer even if they are deeply unpopular — as long as they believe those reforms will be good for their constituents. “Sometimes members of Congress must vote against popular opinion because they know what is in the interest of their districts and the country,” he said. “I will vote against their [his constituents] opinion if I actually believe it will help them.”

So even though Massa now says he is the target of a conspiracy because he believes we need to “rewrite the health care bill” to find a popular consensus, just a few months ago, he said he would vote for a single-payer system even if 80% of the public was against it. Now that’s change Fox can believe in.

Socialist. Death panels. Downright evil. Those are just some of the talking points Sarah Palin uses to describe the Democrat’s health care plan. Well, I…

Additional motivation:

CALLER: If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself? And the second part of that is, what would happen to the doctors, do they have to participate in the federal program, or could they opt out of it? [...]

LIMBAUGH: My guess in even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. And once they’ve opted, they can’t see anybody Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer and it’ll be a very small practice. I don’t know if that’s been outlawed in the Senate bill. I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

Any chance they can move up implementation of most reforms to next year?

Then again, what will happen when Rush realizes that Costa Rica has universal health care?

A primary contributor to Costa Rica’s success has been its focus on the well being of its people.  For Costa Rica, health and education are priorities for the success of their nation.  The World Bank highlights this priority:

“The Government of Costa Rica sees the health sector as an essential determinant of the country’s economic and social development, giving it a priority that is manifested in sustained high levels of spending and active policy attention at the highest levels.”

The attention to health has brought this middle-wealth country’s health indicators in line with those of OECD countries. In 2001 the average life expectancy at birth in Costa Rica was 76.6 years. In 2000, 97% of births were attended by skilled professionals, 89% of the pregnant women were given prenatal care, and 93% of children under 1 had health insurance. From 1990 to 2000 life expectancy increased by 0.8 years, the fertility rate dropped, and the population grew due to an influx of Nicaraguan immigrants. In 2000 there were 16 physicians and 3.2 nurses per 10,000 population. In 1999 there were 12,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, giving an adult prevalence rate of 0.54%. However, Costa is the only Central American country to provide antiretroviral treatment to all patients through its social security system. The leading causes of death were cardiovascular disease and neoplasms, which is comparable to many OECD countries. Spending on health care has increased steadily over recent years, and in 2000 it composed 9% of the national GDP.

These outcomes are the result of one of the world’s most successful “universal” health care systems.  “Universality” in the Costa Rican system means that 100% of the population is given equal comprehensive public health insurance with equal access to services.

Given Costa Rica’s successful “cradle to grave” universal health care system is not just for Costa Ricans, but even for foreigners in the country, I’d like to suggest Rush try Somalia instead. I’m pretty sure Somalia doesn’t suffer from the evils of socialized medicine.

I’m down in DC’s Dupont Circle for the start of the “Citizen’s Posse” march, ostensibly to make a “citizens’ arrest” of health insurance CEOs meeting (appropriately) at the nearby Ritz-Carlton hotel.

I make the crowd out to be 2,000+ and growing, by what I think is a rather conservative estimate. The Circle itself is jammed, and contingets numbering in the hundreds are arriving from staging areas in all directions.

Howard Dean is on hand under the auspices of Americans United for Change, and I’ve made visual confirmation on that.

CORRECTION: Credit for organizing the event belongs to Health Care for America Now!

Clever use of signage here, with several dozen folks carrying customizable signs that read, “Another ____ for the Public Option,” the blank having been filled in with everything from “healthy voter” to “bleeding heart commie”. Also on hand, of course, drummers, since no protest would be complete without them.

News coverage is sparse, but I’ve seen at least one ABC camera crew, and someone — news, police or otherwise — has deemed it worthy of a chopper overhead.  

Pics, via iPhone as I can manage:

Howard Dean on hand

Crowd sets off

UPDATE: The networks went bonkers for teabagger protests of maybe a tenth this size, but word is there’s almost zero coverage for this rally, which is shoulder to shoulder for a full city block.

Why? I don’t know. It ain’t for lack of cameras. Here’s ABC’s Jonathan Karl on the spot, conducting interviews. Was ABC showing footage? You tell me.

U.S. researchers estimate that an 18 percent tax on pizza and soda can push down U.S. adults’ calorie intake enough to lower their average weight by 5 pounds (2 kg) per year.

The researchers, writing in the journal Archives of Internal Medici…

GLENSIDE, Pa. — Stirring memories of his campaign for the White House, President Barack Obama made a spirited, shirt-sleeved appeal for passage of long-stalled health care changes Monday as Democratic congressional leaders worked behind …