All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

A group called the Tea Party Patriots, which is affiliated with the Dick Armey-backed lobbying group FreedomWorks, is calling on supporters to "storm Senate offices" on December 15th in order to "to flex our muscle and exert that influence to hold the line in our fight against the government takeover of healthcare."

"The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities," according to a message on the group's Web site. "As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave."

"We know it’s a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas," continues the message. "But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us."

The "tea party" movement is energized and making plans for 2010, as the Washington Post reports, and it represents both a challenge and opportunity for Republicans.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has strongly supported the proposal to create a government-run health insurance option, but she left the door open on Thursday to accepting a health reform compromise from the Senate that does not include a public option.

"We in the House believe that the public option is the best way to hold insurance companies honest -- to keep them honest and also to increase competition," Pelosi said at a press conference today, reports CBS News Capitol Hill Producer Evelyn Thomas. "If there is a better way, put it on the table. As soon as we see something in writing from the Senate, we will be able to make a judgment about that."

Senate Democrats are currently considering a set of proposals -- including expanding Medicare and creating national, private plans for consumers -- in lieu of a public option. Some of the public option's strongest advocates, like former Democratic leader Howard Dean, have said they like the Senate plan. Liberal grassroots groups, however, are adamantly opposed to it.

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), the one Republican who may vote for the health care overhaul, told reporters Thursday she could not support the plan to expand Medicare because the government program pays hospitals and doctors lower reimbursement rates than private insurers.

Even though the House bill passed with a public option, Pelosi said today the bills are "probably 75 percent compatible."

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A new strategy memo from Republican party leader Michael Steele urges Republicans to do everything in their power to block the Democrats' health care bill from moving forward in the Senate.

"I urge everyone to spend every bit of capital and energy you have to stop this health care reform," Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele wrote in the memo, obtained by CBS News. "The Democrats have accused us of trying to delay, stall, slow down and stop this bill. They are right. We do want to delay, stall, slow down and ultimately stop them from experimenting on our nation's health care. And guess what, so do a majority of Americans."

In fact, Steele's last point may be up for debate. A CBS News/ New York Times poll released last night shows that while most Americans are skeptical of the impact the Democrats' overall health care package will have, 60 percent of Americans still support the Democrats' proposal for a government-run health insurance option, or "public option."

One thing is certain, however: There is a segment of the conservative base that thinks the Republican party has not done enough to block health care reform.

"It's clear that the Senate Republican leadership doesn't know how to deal with this in the health care fight," conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh recently said on his show. "I'm not a parliamentary expert. But I know a disaster when I see it. And I know that it's gotta be stopped, and whatever parliamentary steps are available to people who do know what they are should have been taken, every blocking tactic they had at this."

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Perhaps the only thing more challenging for Congress this year than passing health care legislation has been trying to explain it to the American people. Lies, distortions and a lack of understanding of the facts have all muddied the debate.

So of course, for those trying to understand health care reform, there's an app for that. More specifically, there is a new iPhone application that plays off one of the most notorious lies to come out of the health care debate: death panels.

The free iPhone and iPod Touch game "Death Panel" is "100 percent nonpolitical, nonpartisan," according to People Operating Technology, the iPhone application company that made the game.

The game puts the user in the role of a local office holder. To build a strong constituency and progress in the game, the user must stand on a virtual platform and answer questions correctly about health care from an anxious public. Hundreds of questions are incorporated into the game based off of facts from sources such as WhiteHouse.gov, StateHealthFacts.org, the bipartisan National Coalition on Health Care and FactCheck.org.

Users of the game can also learn about the funding their real-life congressional representatives have taken from health care lobbyists on the "players" feature, which uses data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

When the game is over, users can share their scores online via Facebook or Twitter, "in hopes of driving awareness and comprehension to the most important social and economic issue today," according to a statement announcing the game's launch.

The American public's outlook on the economy continues to inch up, according to a new CBS News/ New York Times poll, even though their overall assessment of it remains grim.

Americans continue to volunteer the economy and jobs as the nation's top problem, far outdistancing their second most pressing issue – health care.

As many as 47 percent of Americans say the economy and jobs are the country's most important problem, and 77 percent say the economy is in bad shape. By contrast, only 12 percent say health care is the nation's most serious problem.

Just 29 percent of Americans think the economy is getting better, while 23 percent think it is getting worse. Most people – 47 percent – say the economy is staying the same.

Even though the public's outlook for the economy isn't especially hopeful, it is significantly more optimistic than earlier this year. In February, just 5 percent of Americans thought the economy was improving.

The struggling economy has an impact on how Americans view the overall direction of the country. This month, 37 percent of Americans say the nation is headed in the right direction – down slightly from September. Fifty-six percent think the country is on the wrong track.

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Updated at 2:45 p.m. ET with remarks from President Obama.

After months of demanding a government-run health insurance option from Democrats, health care reform supporters are still pushing for the "public option" in the wake of an announcement of an agreement by Senate Democrat to forgo the plan.

The Health Care For America Now Campaign (HCAN), comprised of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states, sent an e-mail to its supporters Tuesday night asking them to oppose the compromise devised by a group of five liberal Democrats and five conservative Democrats. More than 40,000 people have signed on so far, the group reports.

"All of this points to a fact those in the Senate considering this 'compromise' would do well to remember: The public option is extremely popular in America, and a significant portion of those who say they oppose health reform say so because this plan does not go far enough," Jason Rosenbaum wrote in the HCAN blog.

FDL Action, the political action committee associated with the liberal blog network FireDogLake, is running a similar petition calling on President Obama to keep the public option alive.

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Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in politics, written by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:

** Democrats strike a deal on health care...

** Obama looks to past Nobel Peace Prize winners for inspiration for his speech...

** Martha Coakley gets the Democratic nomination for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat...

HEALTH CARE: "Senate Democrats reached what Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called a 'broad agreement' Tuesday night that could remove a major obstacle to the massive healthcare bill," report the Los Angeles Times' Janet Hook and Noam N. Levey.

"Under the compromise developed by a group of conservative and liberal Democrats, the Senate legislation would no longer include a new government-run insurance program, or 'public option,' for Americans who do not get coverage through their employers.

"Instead, the government would essentially contract with a nonprofit insurer to provide a nationwide plan that would serve as the public option, according to officials briefed on the discussions. Combined with a vote earlier in the day that rejected efforts to tighten restrictions on public money for abortion, the compromise kept the Senate moving toward Reid's goal of voting on the healthcare bill before Christmas.

"Reid's office issued a statement saying he was 'confident' that he could sell the plan to the Democratic caucus. 'This has been a long journey,' he said. 'We have confronted many hurdles, and tonight I believe we have overcome yet another one.'"

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The new health care compromise hammered out among Senate Democrats isn't perfect but it represents a "positive step forward," former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said on CBS' "The Early Show" Wednesday.

Liberals appear ready to drop their demands for a public option in order to assuage moderate Democrats and get the 60 votes needed to avoid a Republican filibuster. The revamped legislation would reportedly set up a private insurance plan overseen by the same government agency that controls lawmakers' insurance. It would also expand Medicare, lowering the qualifying age from 65 to 55.

Dean, who previously chaired the Democratic National Committee, said Medicare expansion "makes a lot of sense because you don't have to reinvent another bureaucracy to do it."

CBSNews.com Special Report: Health Care Reform

"This is what should have been done in the first place," he told "Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez, who noted that Dean had insisted in August that reform must include a public option.

Dean said the compromise solution still represents "real reform."

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One contentious element of the health care reform debate still under discussion in the Senate is whether or not the legislation should cover abortions. More than half of the public told a CBS News Poll conducted last month that health care reform should not cover abortions, while just 34% thought it should.

Americans' views about the government funding abortions, and about abortion itself, have remained stable for many years.

In 1994, CBS and the New York Times found 53 percent of Americans thought abortion should not be part of any government health care plan. In CBS News Polls conducted in the late 1970s, about half felt the government should not "help a poor woman with her medical bills if she wants an abortion."

Views have also been remarkably steady on the issue of abortion itself. In a CBS News Poll conducted in November, 34 percent felt abortion should be generally available to those who want it, 40 percent felt it should be available but under stricter limits than it is now, and 23 percent felt it should not be permitted at all.

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Democrats in the Senate are on the verge of agreeing to a plan that would essentially extend federal employee health insurance options to the rest of the country. But just as the federal health insurance network could become the national model, labor unions are warning it could also be unreasonably taxed under the Senate plan.

A group of unions released a report (PDF) today showing that the so-called "Cadillac" tax on higher-cost health insurance plans would, after three years, begin to hit the most popular health care plan within the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) -- ultimately impacting 48 percent of all federal employees and nearly 3.8 million people.

"I never really thought that our Chevy of a plan for federal employee health benefits would be a Cadillac plan," John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said on a conference call today.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the health benefits tax goes back on President Obama's promise not to tax the middle class.

"The Senate has gone into territory that most certainly will affect the middle class," he said.

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