You'd think Obama wrote the damned bill

Not to be subtle, here's the keynote of Obama's re-presentation of the Democrats' health care plan, boldfaced below.

Now, the proposal I put forward gives Americans more control over their health insurance and their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable...

 Essentially, my proposal would change three things about the current health care system... 

Second, my proposal would give uninsured individuals and small business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves...


And my proposal says that if you still can’t afford the insurance in this new marketplace, even though it's going to provide better deals for people than they can get right now in the individual marketplace, then we'll offer you tax credits to do so -- tax credits that add up to the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history...

Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions -- families, businesses, and the federal government.  We have now incorporated most of the serious ideas from across the political spectrum about how to contain the rising cost of health care...

Speaking literally, everything Obama says that "my proposal" would do is in the bill that passed the Senate -- except perhaps a few of the cost controls that Obama threw in yesterday, in his post-summit package of adjustments to the Senate bill. Obama's proposal, speaking literally, is that series of tweaks, designed to be passed via reconciliation as a "sidecar" while the House passes the Senate bill. 

No matter. The whole package is his proposal now. He has vouched for it to the entire nation.  Since the day after the Massachusetts election, he has argued with increasing force and clarity for the necessity, integrity and efficacy of the series of mutually dependent "core elements" of the Senate bill outlined above.  He has moved deliberately, systematically, to cleanse the bill of the (ridiculously overblown) bad odor of the single-state giveaways that got it through the Senate; to highlight its centrist pedigree; and to coopt the few scraps of rational thinking contributed by the Republicans in a summit designed to expose their callous disregard for the uninsured and the underinsured. No one can say that he's not leading, or fighting for comprehensive health care reform now