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With the President looking to shift gears to focus on jobs, the economy, education, and a host of other issues, the signature priority of his first year, health care reform, appears stalled -- or at least idling. Slate’s Timothy Noah invited his readers to figure out how to get it going again.

Inviting readers to submit their thoughts on how to pass comprehensive reform, Noah set a few ground rules (Snowe’s a no, so is revoking the filibuster), but mostly he was looking for fresh thinking. The results are in! Combing through some 570 submissions, Noah picked his top eight. The whole list's worth a read running the gamut from time machines that could take us back to 1974 to a well placed ambassadorship for a certain senator from Iowa. Our personal favorite was probably No. 6

As the world continues to wait for the dust to settle from Massachusetts’ special election, two pieces from last week are worth reading. First, Time’s Karen Tumulty provides an excellent narrative of how the longshot from Wrentham became the Scott heard round the world. Commenting specifically on how Massachusetts could elect a man who pledged to be the 41st vote against health reform to fill the late Edward Kennedy’s seat, Tumulty writes:

As I talked with voters braving the snow to get a glimpse of Brown in the days leading up to the election, the health care issue came up again and again. They were unsettled by the mounting costs of their state's program and even more so by the process they saw going on in Washington. Rather than being drafted with the common good in mind, they said, the health bill was turning into a series of backroom deals -- a Medicaid exemption for Senator Ben Nelson's Nebraska, tax breaks for unions, sweeteners for the hospital and drug industries. As a veteran of the Kennedy political operation put it, "They think there's a lot coming out of Washington -- and none of it is for them."

Second, The Washington Post, in collaboration with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health, takes a look at the numbers behind Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts, and particularly the impact of health reform in voters’ decisions.

Well not quite yet, but Jaan Sidorov hosts an Avatar-inspired edition of Health Wonk Review over at the Disease Management Care Blog.

They changed the tires, tweaked the engine and added some leg room, but at the end of the day, the new and improved 2010 Cadillac tax that emerged from negotiations between the White House, Congressional leaders and labor unions still has the features that made the 2009 model an attractive financing option.

The details of the revised excise tax on high-premium plans are as follows:

Karen, you’ve got some ‘splainin to do.

In an op-ed this past October in the Washington Post, Karen Ignagni, the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans defended her group’s commitment to reform. Now, a piece in the National Journal reveals her organization was already channeling millions of dollars to help fund anti-reform ads. Peter Stone writes:

Follow the money.

It’s one of the most famous lines in journalistic lore, and The Washington Post's Dan Eggen takes us on that chase in his reporting on interest group financing that seeks to shape the health reform debate.

The New Year’s just begun and already the crowd inside the Beltway has shifted its focus to the 2010 midterm elections, some 301 days away. One key question for political palm readers is how health reform will play at the polls.

Many on the Republican side believe health reform is their ticket back to power, an issue that can mobilize their base while keeping liberals and progressives at home. As Politico reports, many Congressional candidates are campaigning on a pledge to repeal the bill, and even gubernatorial candidates like John Oxedine in Georgia are getting in on the action. (Personally, we prefer some of the Ox’s other forays into new media.)

Democrats, meanwhile, worry that a disgruntled base and wary center could produce some nasty results come November. The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, however, doesn't believe Dems are destined for a repeat of 1994, not if they strike the right tone on health reform:

The calendar says December, but the polls on health reform are beginning to look a lot like August.

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows public views on the positive impact of reform have dropped to their lowest levels since late summer. While a majority of respondents (54 percent) continued to believe it was more important than ever that Congress pass legislation, a declining number believe reform will benefit them (35 percent) or the country as a whole (45 percent).

Three-quarters of Democrats want reform now; two-thirds of Republicans oppose it; and a slim majority (53 percent) of Independents favor it. Seniors continue to be one of the most skeptical groups, and were twice as likely to believe they’d be worse off under reform.

Legislative sausage making is never pretty, but a plurality of respondents believe Congress is functioning as usual. Partisan rancor tends to produce negative results in the polls about any issue, and we’ll be interested to see where these figures stand after Christmas and into the new year.

Health care reform is beginning to feel like a season of Project Runway. What’s true on the catwalk also holds on the Senate floor, where one day you’re in and the next day you’re out.

Julie Ferguson hosts the latest edition of Health Wonk Review over at Worker's Comp Insider. Tom Emswiler's post on the impressive quality improvements made by Premier Inc.'s QUEST initiative. Check it out!

Yesterday a group of 11 freshmen Democratic senators released a package of amendments designed to strengthen payment reforms in Medicare and Medicaid, expand the scope of reforms to include the public and private sector, and reduce the legal and administrative barriers to high quality care.

You can watch highlights from the press conference in the video on the right (Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) claims the amendments are to the legislation what the iPhone is to cellphones), and read a section-by-section summary of the proposals here.

Health CEOs for Health reform announced its support for the amendments, as has a long list of stakeholders including AARP, AFL-CIO, National Partnership for Women and Families, Small Business Majority, and the experts at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. See the full list from Sen Warner’s website after the break: