It wasn’t enough to protect insurers’ anti-trust exemption — Ben Nelson is ensuring that none of this monopoly-busting worms its way into anything — not even watered down, useless compromises:

[Florida Senator Tom] Carper is meeting with centrists such as Joe Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln asking them what kind of a trigger they might vote for. “What we’re asking centrists is: ‘What concerns do you need to have addressed to vote for cloture?’” Carper said. “And the two concerns that we hear over and over again is government run and government financed.” Both the hair trigger –which measures market penetration (an idea panned by at least one centrist, Nelson) — and Snowe’s trigger would institute government run public options on a state-by-state basis.

More on triggers here.

Senator Ben Nelson on a meeting he had with President Obama earlier this year: (emphasis added)

“I also assured him that I am working to be constructive and to move the process forward, so we can develop bipartisan reform that reduces the cost of health care, raises the quality, expands choices and extends coverage to those who cannot attain it today.”

This week:

Buckling to demands from Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the Senate bill does not end anti-trust exemptions for the insurance industry.

He’s lied about the public option, tried to scare people that it wouldn’t work, then tried to scare people that it would work too well. None of Ben Nelson’s excuses for opposing a public option hold up to scrutiny, and none of his theatrics stopped Harry Reid from including a public option in the merged Finance / HELP healthcare bill.

But now Ben Nelson may have figured out how to finally kill it — with the abortion debate. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly noted how Nelson has gone back and forth on making the healthcare bill abortion neutral:

First, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said he liked the Stupak amendment and would be “highly unlikely” to vote for health care reform unless it included the language, or something very close to it, in the final bill. Then, Nelson shifted gears, saying he misunderstood a reporter’s questions the first time, and is satisfied with Senate Dems’ restrictions on public funding of abortion.

Now, Nelson has moved back in the other direction again.

[…]

Nelson wants to kill the public option once and for all. In fact, Nelson said today, “If there’s no public option, perhaps some of the [abortion] problem goes away.”

The problem, then, isn’t with the abortion-related language — Nelson is just looking for leverage. The message to Reid, in effect, is, “You get rid of the public option and I’ll accept your provisions on abortion.”

This is on top of how Nelson has also decided the Senate needs to preserve insurance companies’ anti-trust exemption. He’s not even trying to hide who he’s working for anymore.

UPDATE: Ben Nelson has released a statement saying that he will not join the Republican filibuster attempting to prevent debate on the Senate healthcare bill, stating “Throughout my Senate career I have consistently rejected efforts to obstruct.” But then he turns around and quite clearly states that he will join a filibuster against a bill that he doesn’t support, thus preventing a vote and embracing efforts to obstruct:

“In my first reading, I support parts of the bill and oppose others I will work to fix. If that’s not possible, I will oppose the second cloture motion—needing 60 votes—to end debate, and oppose the final bill.

Healthcare for America Now just released a poll showing that 80% of Nebraskans think the bill deserves an up-or-down vote, regardless of whether they support it.

Typically around this time of the year, I start gathering up my favorite rejects to prepare for the Top Rejected Cartoons of the Year. But this year, since I’ve been doing a top 10 each month, and you folks have already seen all of them, I kind of feel like I need to do something a little different. I don’t really know yet what that something different would be, though, so I’m totally open to suggestions.

The only idea I had so far was to maybe make some kind of poll to have people vote on their favorite rejects, and then maybe I’d do finished versions of the top 5 or something. I don’t know if there’s necessarily any appeal to that, though, because I think part of the charm of the rejects is their rough and unfinished nature, so it’d be like “Here is a less interesting version of the winner!” Would a poll be good enough, just for the sake of interactivity?

Any thoughts?

I dropped the ball on compiling a list of Top 10 Rejects of September, but I don’t want to rank 10 rejects from then and post it now or nobody will see it. So instead, I give you the Top 20 Rejects from September and October.

20.

19.

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