Morning Must Reads

But the real goal here is to find a way to get the guts of a health care plan through the Senate without sweating out a filibuster vote. If the With House can whip up enough alleged savings to make a plan revenue neutral on paper, it can be done as a budget item with 51 votes. Other pieces would still have to pass the 60-vote hurdle, but the administration could get the mechanism in place without the help of moderate Democrats.

Plus, breathless, credulous coverage from reporters like Connolly and Shear helps along the way.

“A source close to the negotiations said a deal was struck after discussions about the ‘shared responsibility’ of the entire health-care system — including doctors, insurers, individuals and the government — and an understanding that each part of the system would sacrifice to make it work.

‘The assumption is that everyone has got to do it,’ the source said.’”
 
Wall Street Journal — Zelaya to Meet Hillary Clinton, Try Second Return

The United States will continue working to do what it can to restore former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya – exiled for an unconstitutional power grab – to office.

Zelaya, flying on a plane provided by Hugo Chavez, couldn’t land in Tegucigalpa on Monday. So after a refueling stop, he headed back to Washington for another round of talks with the Obama administration before trying again.

Writer Jay Solomon explains that with Zelaya’s supporters warning of a return by “land, sea or air” and his comrades in Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador offering their assistance, it puts the U.S. in a pretty uneasy position.
“U.S. officials also want Mr. Zelaya to avoid further confrontations over re-entering his country, to prevent further bloodshed and encourage the provisional government there to negotiate. But they said it is his choice what to do, given the U.S. view that he was illegally forced from office.

In the Honduran capital, the airport remained closed Monday following the death of at least one protester during demonstrations over Mr. Zelaya’s attempt to land in Honduras on Sunday. The protester, whom national police identified as a 19-year-old man, was killed in clashes with soldiers and police, who held off stone-throwing demonstrators as they tried to take over the airport shortly before Mr. Zelaya’s plane flew over the field. Earlier reports had suggested there were two dead.  
 
New York Times — U.S.-Russia Nuclear Agreement Is First Step in Broad Effort
 
President Barack Obama is touting the first step in a long process of reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals as part of goal to stop nuclear testing and eventually banish all nuclear weapons.

Writers Clifford Levy and Peter Baker, though, explain that the real issue has nothing is the proposed missile defense shield for Eastern Europe to protect against Iranian attacks on Europe and the Middle East. The Russians, prime enablers of the regime in Tehran, don’t want us to have it and President Bush insisted we would need it as Iran lurched toward being a nuclear-powered theocratic dictatorship.

President Obama wants instead to make Russia part of the process in bringing peace, democracy and self-determination in Iran – which would make the Iranian missle shield a moot point. No word on whether Vladimir Putin was able to keep a straight face during his breakfast with Obama.

“Most of the one-on-one talks between the presidents were consumed by Iran and missile defense, American officials said. Mr. Obama later told reporters that it was “entirely legitimate for our discussions to talk not only about offensive weapon systems, but also defensive weapon systems,” a statement that pleased the Russians, who have sought to link missile defense to arms cuts.

But Obama aides later said he still refused to link the new arms control treaty to any compromise on the missile defense project, begun by President Bush, which is under review by the new administration.” 
 
New York Times — Health Co-op Offers Model for Overhaul
 
With more than half-a-million members and a huge network of clinics and specialty care centers, the Group Health medial insurance cooperative in Washington State is one of the prime examples of the kinds of programs that the Senate is considering in looking for a bipartisan alternative to the Kennedy/Obama plan for a government-run health plan.

Writer Kevin Sack finds that the 62-year-old program offers good care for patients and that doctors like the arrangement. But it isn’t much cheaper and only covers about 9 percent of Washingtonians. Sack finds problems the fact that patients elect the board that runs the co-op since patients vote for good care, which doesn’t allow for the sort of cheap, warehouse care for poor people that the Obama/Kennedy plan envisions. Poor folks still need Medicaid in Washington, and Group Health hasn’t forced overall prices down because people are willing to pay for good care.

But like all microcosmic models for national health reform – whether it is this one or the Wisconsin death-with-dignity program the president touted last month – what works in one region may not work in another.

And what it means to be a cooperative will also help shape the Senate debate this week. Does a national entity with policies set, board members picked and startup budget provided by the federal government count as a cooperative? Will liberals accept the localized Group Health model?

“Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who first proposed cooperatives as a compromise last month, said the Finance Committee was debating how a national network might be structured and how much seed money would be needed for state and regional branches. Mr. Conrad has said it would take up to $4 billion, while others have projected $10 billion.

Mr. Conrad estimates that cooperatives would need at least half a million members, about the size of Group Health in its 62nd year, to wield meaningful leverage. That scale will be possible, he said, if the Democrats succeed in bringing tens of millions of the uninsured into the market by mandating coverage and subsidizing premiums.

But supporters of a public plan argue that it will be a challenge to form pools that large any time soon. They predict that cooperatives will become dumping grounds for the sickest patients, and that they will have difficulty forming networks of physicians.”
 
Wall Street Journal — Is a Stimulus Sequel in the Offing?

Some Democrats are panicking about the rising unemployment numbers and already clamoring for a second round of stimulus spending to juice the economy. Republicans, meanwhile, are hammering round one, the largest-ever spending bill passed in February, as a flop and calling for the remaining money to be either returned to voters in the form of tax rebates or be used to pay back some of the debt incurred to issue it.

Writer Gerald Seib looks at the political landscape and sees that with moderates already weary of the president’s big-spending ways, another round of attempted economic shock and awe like Obama tried in February seems unlikely. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be something this fall as double-digit unemployment digs in.

“Yet there may be room for a middle ground. Let’s say, for example, that the administration pushed later this year for a bill extending unemployment benefits that otherwise would expire. That would be a form of stimulus. And perhaps lawmakers would choose to attach a few additional doses of fiscal or tax stimulus to that bill. Whether that amounted to Stimulus II would be a question of labeling, but the effect would be pretty much the same.”