So the Health Plan is stalled on committee while the moderates - who appear to have never taken much time to think about health care before this - air their questions and concerns. David M. Herzenson and Robert Pear report on this in the Times. Meanwhile the Democratic leadership is scrambling to make changes that will please this group of oddly colored canines and others.

Which would be easier if they had some agreed upon list of demands, even one that was logically inconsistent.

They do not. The Blue dogs, who hail from rural areas, want to see Medicare payments to those areas increased:

Representative Mike Ross, Democrat of Arkansas, wants to reduce or eliminate the disparities in what Medicare pays for health services in rural areas versus urban centers, a gap that he says has forced hospitals to close and doctors to move away.

Which would likely increase federal health care spending unless we cut rates that doctors and hospitals get in urban areas.

Susan Collins is concerned about making employers pay for health insurance or contribute to a fund for insuring the uninsured:

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, worries about requiring employers to provide insurance to workers. Without categorically rejecting the idea, she said: “My inclination is to oppose an employer mandate. Employers want to provide health insurance and do so if they can afford it.”

Max Baucus in the Senate wants to tax employer provided health care which, in Wonks Anonymous humble opinion, will likely cause some people to lose their current health insurance. At the same time:

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, expresses fears that the health care legislation could inadvertently cause some Americans to lose their existing coverage. And he wants to be sure that any bill includes new “incentives for healthy lifestyles.”

They are all over the map, united only by pious desires:

In many cases, the concerns of centrist lawmakers reflect conflicting goals: to expand health coverage to nearly all Americans while reducing the growth of health spending, cutting the cost of the bill and minimizing new taxes.

It reminds Wonks Anonymous of the folks who came to the seminar without reading the discussion paper and then proceeded to hold forth at length about stuff almost, but not entirely, unrelated to the topic. Unfortunately the press seems to share their enthusiasm for the sound of their own voices.