Opinion: Cast your own vote on Obama’s healthcare plan

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You may have heard some mention now and then and around the clock during the last year of some very lengthy piece of healthcare legislation that President Obama wants very badly. You can tell the smoker wants it. Just look at him.

Well, here’s your chance to cast your own vote below. And the healthcare bill is pretty much the only thing he’s talked about in town halls -- not counting his NCAA picks and one or two mentions of his war in Afghanistan.

The nifty healthcare bill won’t cover Obama and his family; government folks are exempt from the legislation that they’ve decided is just right for the rest of us.

Anyway, over these past way too many months you may have also noticed a little bit of debate over this bill that would cost $940 billion, according to current estimates and you know how dead-on those always are.

During this healthcare debate unemployment rates went up and Obama’s approval rating has now slipped below his disapproval rating. Additionally, Americans’ opinion of the....

...Democratic-controlled Congress is now only about half that of Darth Cheney, if you can conceive of anything so low.

But the healthcare bill is such a good idea that even though Democrats overwhelmingly control both houses of Congress with Speaker Nancy Gimme the Wheel Pelosi and Sen. Harry No Dialect Reid at the helm, the Democrats didn’t have enough votes to pass the final package without a whole bunch of special, not-exactly-transparent deals.

There’s some new kind of purchase for Louisiana and there was a whopping special deal for the vote of Nebraska’s Ben Nelson that got leaked. So it had to be scrapped. And Cleveland Rep. Dennis Kucinich presumably got something more than a whee ride on Air Force One the other day. Because he announced soon after that he’d seen the president’s light and had become a Yay vote.

Since the American voters and adverse polls don’t count anymore on this one, Saturday the president traveled to Capitol Hill to give House Democrats a last last-minute sales pitch, which we published over here. Don’t do it for me, he said, meaning something else.

So Sunday, for those who live that long, all these shenanigans will theoretically come to an end with a House vote on the Senate bill.

But why should the 535 members of Congress have all the fun?

As a refreshing change, we thought it might be a good idea -- quaint, but good -- to allow Americans themselves to vote on the issue. So we have assembled a simple ballot below. We hope you’ll participate.

And if you do, we will officially deem it a success. Whatever the outcomes.

So, vote here now:

-- Andrew Malcolm

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