Rep. Cao (R-LA) was the only Republican to vote for reform the first time in the House. He’s been saying he was going to vote no this time. But President Obama has been lobbying him. So CNN just asked him where he stood after Rep. Cantor, the Minority Whip, said Cao was a “firm no.” Cao responded: “Right now, I’m a firm no.”

Watch the video here.

A bit of background is necessary on the ‘doc fix’, starting even with just what it is. To greatly simplify, standing law has reimbursements to doctors under Medicare being slowly shaved down over time. But Congress sets the cuts aside every year. So it’s one of these things that is already a reality. It’s just that the government and its accounting pretends this cut law is in effect, when in fact Congress always votes not to enforce it.

Democrats have made no secret of the fact that they want to change the law outright — which is little more than making the current reality official. And pretty reasonably they say that it doesn’t have anything to do with the Health Care Reform legislation since it’s not like something that makes this bill cost more.

So what does that tell us about the disputed memo? Hard to say. One thing that’s weird is that the memo seems to buy into the idea that the ‘doc fix’ is part of the Health Reform legislation, which does not sound like something a Democratic aide would say But again, very hard to draw any conclusions. All we know is that Dems are furiously denying its theirs.

There’s a certain choreographed drama to the way everyone, or almost everyone, falls into line when it comes time to finally vote on a big bill like the Health Care Reform legislation. But one flip that genuinely surprised me was Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL). Boyd is an extremely conservative Democrat. And, for those of you with somewhat long memories, was the only House Democrat to consistently support President Bush’s push for partially phasing out Social Security in 2005.

Protestor outside Obama rally in Virginia says if Health Care Reform passes there will be a civil war.

Earlier this week I mentioned the man suffering from Parkinson’s disease who was yelled at by anti-reform protesters during a rally outside the office of Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) in Columbus. They also dismissively threw dollar bills his way. TPM interviewed the man today. His name is Bob Letcher, and he’s a disabled 60-year-old former instructor at Ohio State. Here’s his story.

It can be very difficult to discern genuine momentum in politics. You have so many cross currents and variables, plus there’s often concerted efforts from various sides to create the misimpressions of momentum. So we’ve been careful this week in reporting on the push to pass health care reform. We’ve tried to try to limit ourselves to reporting on what we can actually document and observe, rather than characterizing it more broadly or predicting the outcome.

That being said, there’s been a decided shift in favor of reform over the course of the day today, especially late this afternoon. Most of the lawmakers who announced their decisions earlier this week had gone in the direction they were expected to go in. Today, however, some of the tougher eggs cracked, and there was at least one big surprise. Brian Beutler brings us up to speed on the day’s late developments.

Christina Bellantoni has the tick tock on how an obscurely sourced (at best) memo purporting to detail Democrats’ messaging plan on health care reform traveled in just a few hours this afternoon from a Republican lobbyist to political reporters to Hill aides and onto high-profile news websites before Democrats beat the story back with cries that the memo was a “hoax.”

Good piece by David Remnick in The New Yorker on the current spat between the US and Israel. Really worth reading.

TPM Reader HW has a question …

From my point of view, it’s hard for me to understand why any Democrat is opposing this bill, but the ones I really have trouble understanding are the two NY Dems in opposition: Michael McMahon (NY-13) and Arcuri (NY-24). The laws in NY are such that a challenge from the left doesn’t simply mean having to survive a tough primary, which may be eminently doable, it means a third party challenge on the Working Families ballot line that would sink any Democrat in a swing district, which would describe both McMahon and Arcuri’s districts. What am I missing here? It seems to me that both of these guys just signed their guaranteed political death warrants, and in Arcuri’s case, he’s already voted for a very similar bill. What could these two possibly be thinking? I just can’t understand it. Would love to get some perspective on this from a TPM reporter in the know.

Not sure I have a good answer. Read More

Our team will be on through the weekend bringing you all the details on the final lap toward the big vote on Health Care Reform.

And for the very latest developments keep checking in to our auto-updating Countdown to Reform Wire.