THE OLD MATH DOESN'T ADD UP – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  The health-care summit at the White House will be held tomorrow.  Aren't you excited?  Do you feel better already?  Throw away those pills.  You are healed!

But you probably won't be healed by Obamacare, the Toyota of health plans – zipping ahead with no one in control.  That's because, according to the count rendered by Byron York at the Washington Examiner, Obamacare may go terminal in the House:

So where are the votes? Start in the House. House Democrats have to do two things. First, they have to pass the health care bill that Senate Democrats passed on December 24 -- Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase and all. They could stop there and send the bill to the president's desk, but that, of course, is not going to happen. So they then have to pass a set of agreed-upon "fixes" to the Senate bill that the Senate would then pass by using the reconciliation process. (The fixes will start in the House; reconciliation bills have to originate in the House because all revenue measures have to originate in the House.)

And now for the math problems:

The original House health care bill passed last November by a 220 to 215 margin. But supporters have lost four votes since then.

Deaths, resignations, and one switcheroo.

In addition, it's thought that some number of Democrats who voted for the original bill will likely vote against the Senate version because it lacks the House bill's language on the subject of abortion (the president's proposed compromise doesn't help on that subject, either). Republicans estimate there may be 11 such Democrats. If there are, that takes the number down to 205, which means Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need to find a dozen "yes" votes to make up the difference.

And there's this reality:

And that doesn't begin to consider the Democrats who voted in favor of the House bill last November but have now finally been persuaded, by continued public opposition in the polls, the Senate election in Massachusetts, and the generally worsening political climate for Democrats, that another vote in favor of the wildly unpopular health bill would be suicidal.

Finally...

The bottom line: Pelosi is probably many votes short of being able to pass the Senate bill, along with the still-unwritten fixes. In public Democrats are trying to create a sense of inevitability about the bill -- they've tried to do that at various times during the year-long process -- but there is absolutely nothing inevitable about the passage of their national health care plan.

COMMENT:  Don't tear up your insurance card just yet. 

But the sound you'll hear will be Democrats in the House screaming in pain as their arms are twisted by Queen Nancy and her court.  They may endure the pain this time.  Being defeated in November is worse.

February 24, 2010