Written By: Garry Cooper Opponents of health care reform suffered two significant blows last night. The first came when the House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill. The second came just seconds later, when the chin of House Minority leader John (Don't Call me Robert Mitchum) Boehner (R-OH) dropped suddenly and thousands of dollars in insurance company payoffs, stashed into its cleft, fluttered to the ground.
An embarrassed Boehner remarked afterward that he had not intended to put the money into his chin cleft but that his pockets had already been stuffed to capacity. "I had no other option," said Boehner, "I prefer to not wear my money belt in public."
Republican reaction to the passage of health care reform was bitter. "Apparently the House of Representatives has lost sight of exactly who it's supposed to be representing," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), "If the House wishes to abdicate its responsibility to speak for the underdog minorities at a time when the increasingly marginalized insurance companies are fighting for their very existence, who will be left to protect them? I want to assure our friends in the insurance industry tonight that the Republican Party will not abandon them."
Meanwhile in the Senate, which will soon vote on its own health care reform bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) proposed including a magnifying glass with each copy of the proposed bill. "This will help people find the public option we fully intend to include somewhere in some form in the bill," he told reporters. Reid insisted that a provision in his bill will ensure that it does not add one penny to the deficit. "As part of our health care reform bill," he said, "We are going to hold a nationwide lottery, and the lucky 250 winners will comprise the pool of people eligible for the public option."
