This post is meant to be saved as a draft. It shouldn't be posted yet.

Will this app listen to me?

Edit: It can be posted now. Now, I'm going to try a long post and see how the app handles this use case.



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 09, 2009 5:14 p.m.
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WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama as well as Democratic liberals and moderates all found something to like Wednesday in an emerging compromise to expand the role of government in the nation's health care system, raising hopes inside the party that passage of legislation might finally be within reach after a struggle lasting decades.

The same plan drew critics, though - and the threat of more once closely held details of the plan became widely known.

Obama hailed "a creative new framework that I believe will help pave the way for final passage of legislation and a historic achievement for the American people. I support this effort, especially since it's aimed at increasing choice and competition and lowering cost," he said.

The president has made health care reform the top domestic priority of his first term in office and is anxious to get a bill passed soon so the issue does not became embroiled in next year's political campaigns leading up to November elections. Obama's Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress that they are anxious to protect.

Even if the compromise plan were to pass in the Senate, it remained very uncertain that the House of Representatives, which has already passed a version of the bill, would agree to the Senate compromise in bicameral negotiations to meld the two bills.

The Senate is in its second week of debate on the 10-year, nearly $1 trillion legislation that would dramatically remake the U.S. health care system and extend coverage to millions.

Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance or are underinsured, either because their employers do not provide it or they are out of work. The United States is the only developed industrialized nation that does not have a comprehensive national health care plan.

A provision in the Senate bill opening Medicare to uninsured Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 drew praise from some liberals. Medicare is the government-run health care program for the elderly that starts at 65.

Howard Dean, the former Democratic party chairman and an advocate of a government-run insurance option, told CBS, "Using Medicare makes more sense than reinventing more bureaucracy."

The government-run option would be jettisoned under the tentative agreement reached by Senate Democratic liberals and moderates and announced Tuesday night. In its place would be the expansion of Medicare, as well as new nationwide private plans to be run by the same agency that oversees the system that lawmakers use for themselves and their families.

The House bill contains the government-run option.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, described the Senate agreement as a significant step forward in the struggle to round up the votes to pass legislation.

That would leave only a final compromise before legislation could go to Obama for his signature. Congress has spent months trying to deliver a bill to the White House by Dec. 25 that would expand health care coverage, ban insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions, and generally reduce the skyrocketing growth of medical spending nationwide.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who has vowed to fight any government-run insurance option, issued a statement saying he was "encouraged by the progress toward a consensus."

Lieberman's vote is one of 60 Democrats would need to enact the legislation in the 100-member Senate over unanimous 40-member Republican opposition, and he and Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat, are viewed as among the shakiest supporters of the bill.