Your Feel-Good Guide to the Senate Health Care Compromise

Harry Reid and his Gang of 10, the notorious hitmen who terrorized the Five Points section of New York, have reached agreements on various controversies in the Senate health care bill! Let's review what this means for you, the consumer:

* The public option is "sidelined," but not "killed." Maybe it will just bleed to death on its own, there on the sidelines.

* Older-Americans over the age of 55 could buy in to Medicare, the magic government-run health care plan that is not a government-run health care plan in the minds of angry Older-Americans who hate government-run health care plans.

* "A federal agency, the Office of Personnel Management, would negotiate with insurance companies to offer national health benefit plans, similar to those offered to federal employees." Countdown to Michele Bachmann calling this a plan to make us all work for the federal government: 5, 4, 3…

* In the highly unlikely event that private health insurance companies don't look at all this and immediately lower rates and expand coverage, the government will step in with an insurance plan of its own.

* People will be angry about this: "The Senate rejected a proposal to ban coverage of abortion by health plans that would insure millions of Americans under the Democrats’ bill. The vote was 54 to 45." Only two Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, joined the Democrats in rejecting the abortion coverage ban. Don't worry, liberals, these ladies will not be pelted with moose dung when they go home for Christmas — moose droppings are too small to be effective for pelting purposes.

* President Obama is very happy with the Senate's work.

* It remains to be seen what the Congressional Budget Office thinks of the Senate's work.

There, now, don't you feel better for having learned all this? I know I do! That's because I've developed a "health care plan" of my own: Simply drink one (1) shot of whiskey for every health care bullet-point you encounter. If that doesn't work, a tequila shot is 'triggered.' Try it yourself and see! This plan is budget neutral, provided you don't eat too much food.