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( . . .speaking of buying elections)

Quick - who remembers California's Prop 186 in 1994? No? Anybody? Since history has been relegated in some sectors to selective memory, it's good to be reminded that 1994 was not only not a good year for Democrats, it wasn't a very good year for people living in California (again!).

On the 1994 ballot was a measure that proposed a Universal Healthcare plan for the people of California patterned much in the same fashion as the Canadian Healthcare system. It was co-authored by Dr. Kevin Grumbach, who saw the then-current state of affairs with private insurance as a disaster, and since any thought of a National Healthcare plan was pretty much dead in the water, California would at least do it on a statewide level. NPR aired a report and an interview with Grumbach on September 20, 1994.

Dr. Kevin Grumbach: “I was seeing kids coming in with Meningitis because they didn’t get vaccinated in a timely fashion. I was seeing patients showing up in the emergency room with Cancer who had just lost their health insurance and lost their personal physician at a time they’re needed the most and at the time it just seemed such an irrational system that wasn’t working the way it should.

* * *

Grumbach: “Medicare has never refused a patient coverage because they have a catastrophic illness. Private insurance does that all the time. Medicare never tells somebody ‘oh, you have AIDS we’re now going to limit your coverage to $5,000’ which happened again recently in Texas to a person who is employed and had insurance and got AIDS and they changed the policy so they’d only cover $5,000 of expenses. Public programs never say ‘you’ve gotta prove that you can afford to pay your premium before we will cover you.”

But then the Insurance companies quickly mobilized and pumped millions of dollars into attack ads, smear campaigns and mouthpiece doctors to spread a tidalwave of fear throughout the state (we're talking 1994 here, not 2010 . . .supposedly).

The end result was, of course a stunning defeat for the proposition (72% to 27%) and a return to business as usual.

Anyone who thinks Big Insurance isn't up to their eyeballs in the current, or any proposal on Healthcare reform is badly deluded. Anyone who thinks their "wonderful insurance policy" will happily take care of them when their own catastrophic illness arrives is not living in anything remotely resembling the real world.

And for your ignorance we're all at risk.

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Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner joined Bill Moyers to discuss the health care bill which appears to be on its way to passing the Senate now and what lessons the Obama administration took away from Bill Clinton's failure to get a health care bill passed. Robert Kuttner explained why even though he thinks this is an awful bill, if he were in the Senate, he'd vote for it. You can watch the rest of the interview at Bill Moyers Journal.

BILL MOYERS: Let's start with some news. Some of the big insurance companies, Well Point, Cigna, United Health, all surged to a 52 week high in their share prices this week when it was clear there'd be no public option in the health care bill going through Congress right now. What does that tell you, Matt?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, I think what most people should take away from this is that the massive subsidies for health insurance companies have been preserved while it's also expanded their customer base because there's an individual mandate in the bill that's going to provide all these companies with the, you know, 25 or 30 million new people who are going to be paying for health insurance. So, it's, obviously, a huge boon to that industry. And I think Wall Street correctly read what the health care effort is all about.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff, was Bill Clinton's Political Director. And Rahm Emanuel's take away from Bill Clinton's failure to get health insurance passed was 'don't get on the wrong side of the insurance companies.' So their strategy was cut a deal with the insurance companies, the drug industry going in. And the deal was, we're not going to attack your customer base, we're going to subsidize a new customer base. And that script was pre-cooked so it's not surprising that this is what comes out the other side.

BILL MOYERS: So are you saying that this, what some call a sweetheart deal between the pharmaceutical industry and the White House, done many months ago before this fight really began, was because the drug company money in the Democratic Party?

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Ed Schultz pretty well lays it in the line with what a whole lot of the progressive community thinks about President Obama right now. Katrina Vanden Heuvel from The Nation weighs in on how "angry, infuriated and heartbroken" the base is and that they need to stand up if they don't want things to be very ugly in 2010. As Ed notes, the President needs to quit listening to Rahm Emanuel and the insurance lobby and start paying attention to those that got him elected.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

ED SCHULTZ: Good evening, Americans. And welcome to THE ED SHOW from New York.

Mr. President, pull that chair up in front of the fireplace here. What you say we sit down and have a little talk here tonight? What do you think, huh?

The base is restless. They are wandering in the wilderness, Mr. President. They are looking for your GPS coordinates.

They want to know, where are you? They think we can do a heck of a lot better. Liberals and progressives think that they`re not being treated properly.

Right now, Mr. President, your base thinks you`re nothing but a sellout, a corporate sellout, out that. I know it`s tough audio, but I`m your buddy Ed. I`ve got to tell you this. I don`t think anybody else is.

You aren`t listening to the very people who put you in office, Mr. President. This isn`t about your legacy. It`s about the people in America who need health care now.

Mr. President, I don`t know if you`ve noticed or not, but you have carved out the most important elements of reform. The only people who like this current bill right now, Mr. President, is the insurance industry. They get a bunch of new customers.

Here is what Wendell Potter, a friend of mine, told me on the program last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WENDELL POTTER: The Senate bill is full of loopholes, and the insurance industry knows that. In fact, they`ve made sure that they are in there.

One in particular will allow employers to charge certain workers thousands of dollars more just based on health factors. And it can be obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol.

The insurance industry will be able to write the rules. They are not being set in the legislation as currently written.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: Mr. President, don`t leave the room. We`ve got some more talking to do. You can`t make it?

Apparently none of that matters. You see, at the White House, not long ago, the president told liberal Democrats to suck it up and listen to Joe Lieberman`s version on health care.

Now, here`s what gets me. The guy standing behind Obama is the biggest taker from big pharma and the insurance industry. Our old buddy, Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, is taking $3.4 million from the health industry over the last six years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That`s an average of $1,500 a day to Baucus from big health care.

Now, the travesty continues. Last night, 30 Democrats voted against an amendment that would help you and me, the consumers -- the drug importation bill.

It would let consumers buy prescription drugs from overseas at a fraction of the price that we pay right now. But you see, voting for it would have really endangered the deal that the White House cut with big pharma.

Mr. Personality, Rahm Emanuel, he must have gotten a hell of a deal. So, the Democrats got together and they killed it. So much for change we can believe in.

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Howard Dean reiterates what he said in an earlier interview today--Howard Dean: "Kill the Senate Bill":

In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me.

Dean said the removal of the Medicare buy-in made the bill not worth supporting, and urged Dem leaders to start over with the process of reconciliation in the interview, which is set to air at 5:50 PM today on Vermont Public Radio, political reporter Bob Kinzel confirms to me.

The gauntlet from Dean — whose voice on health care is well respsected among liberals — will energize those on the left who are mobilizing against the bill, and make it tougher for liberals to embrace the emerging proposal. In an excerpt Kinzel gave me, Dean says:

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

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Ed Schultz talks to United Steel Workers President about the mood of union leaders right now after Joe Lieberman torpedoed the health care bill. Gerard points out that it's not just Joe Lieberman but also what he calls the "insurance company Democrats", Nelson, Lincoln and Landrieu. Schultz asked if the unions would work against them.

Gerard: I can tell you this, point blank. If we don't get a meaningful health care bill that reduces costs and has everybody in and doesn't have an excise tax, has a pay or play for employers, has a public option or Medicare buy-in, we're not going to campaign for any Democrat that voted against this bill and we're going to go out and try and defeat them.

I agree with Gerard on that move. I think he gave the President way too big of a pass here.

Recently the Senate passed Sen. Barbara Mikulski's Women's Health Amendment, which requires health insurance companies to provide free mammograms and other preventive health services for women. Sounds good, doesn't it? Women's health needs have traditionally been underserved by the insurance system. But, ironically, the Senate's excise tax will force many women to pay indirectly for these "free" services.

Here's how: For one thing, the cost of the services mandated in the Mikulski Amendment will cause even more health plans to exceed the cost cap for the excise tax. And it's expected that 20% of plans will already be over the limit when the tax takes effect. In practical terms, any added costs for new services provided by these plans (like those mammograms) will be taxable. So, in one very real sense, the Senate plans to tax some of this preventive care for women - at a staggering 40% of cost.

The Mikulski Amendment looks like a step forward, but many women will pay for these services indirectly - in the form of higher premiums or increased out-of-pocket costs. One hand giveth and the other taketh away. And speaking of irony ...

Guess who voted for the Mikulski amendment? Some Senators who haven't even committed themselves to voting for the final bill, including Lieberman, Landrieu, and Snowe (who even cosponsored the amendment. Here's an idea: They can make sure these women's services really remain "free" by supporting the Sanders-Franken-Brown Amendment, which would replace the excise tax with a tax on the extremely wealthy (the way the house does it.)

That would remove the irony in the Senate's actions and replace it with fairness.

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Markos Moulitsas joined Keith Olbermann to discuss the President's decision to escalate troops in Afghanistan and the political implications if he does not start to withdraw troops before 2011. Keith asked Kos for his reaction on the latest news that the Senate has finally come to a tentative agreement on the health care bill and the AP report that the public option is out, the Medicare buy-in is in and the bill is being scored by the CBO.

Moulitsas: I think I would have to see the details to really have a full understanding of what's going on but I've been under the assumption for a while that the Senate is the non-functioning governmental body. It cannot do its job which is to reform and improve the lives of Americans.

It is broken and it's completely bought and paid for by the insurance companies and I think it's indicative that we just found out today that the insurance companies are claiming victory on this battle --supposedly not over -- they're already claiming victory because they're going to have a mandate forcing people to buy their crappy products with few restrictions on their ability to do the sort of business practices, the unethical business practices that have created this problem in the first place.

Olbermann: Any hope in that Medicare buy-in?

Moulitsas: Well the initial reports are that it's what, 50, 55?

Olbermann: 55.

Moulitsas: Yeah, 55. It doesn't do anybody under 55 any good and in fact what it seems to do is it takes away some of the most expensive potential customers from the insurance companies, the older, and gives them, basically off to the government. So we need something that applies to all Americans, not just the elderly.

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During their discussion on the health care bill moving through the Senate, Sen. John Cornyn calls Medicaid a "health care gulag" and plays concern troll for the insurance industry as Dick Durbin points out with his defense of Medicare Advantage.

WALLACE: Let's turn to health care reform. President Obama is making an unusual visit to Capitol Hill today to meet, Senator Durbin, with you and your fellow Democrats. Is that a sign that debate on the Senate floor has stalled and that Democrats need another presidential pep talk?

DURBIN: Not at all. We are down -- thanks to Senator Harry Reid's leadership, we're down to two major issues, abortion and public option. And I think we're coming to closure on those issues. We're likely to come to a vote on the abortion question maybe by tomorrow.

The president is going to come in and urge us to bring this ball across the line, to finish this, as he should. This is an historic opportunity. You have to go back four decades or more to a time when we addressed an issue which has such importance to every family, every business, every individual in America.

And I'm glad the president's coming. It's always good to see him. He's a former colleague of many of us in the Senate, and his counsel and encouragement, I think, will be appropriate.

WALLACE: Senator Cornyn, are Republicans succeeding in dragging out this debate? And what do you think that's accomplishing?

CORNYN: Well, Chris, I regret that the president is going to continue what has been a partisan approach to health care reform.

Obviously, the president and Senate Democrats have made a decision to do it their way without accepting input from Republicans both at the committee level and in the Senate.

And our goal is not just to deal with things only like the public option and the abortion issue, but also to point out that this cuts a half a trillion dollars in Medicare and people cannot on Medicare Advantage, for example, keep what they have as the president promised, that it will actually raise taxes on small businesses during a recession, and it will -- it will limit people's choices to -- in many cases, to a government-run program like Medicaid, which is essentially a health care gulag, because people will not have any choices but to take that poorly performing government-run plan.

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Sen. Al Franken during the health care bill debate taking on Republican talking points on rationing, tort reform, taxes on CEO compensation and the need for reforming our health care system.

Steve Benen with the story about the Republican plan to obstruct health-care reform:

We learned yesterday that Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has distributed a three-page memo to his Republican colleagues, reminding them of various procedural tactics they can utilize to obstruct, delay, and undermine the debate on health care. Sam Stein called it "the equivalent of an obstruction manual -- a how-to for holding up health care reform."

This morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seized on the document: "The good news is that Senate Republicans finally, at long last, have put a detailed plan down on paper. The bad news is that it's not, as we'd hoped, a plan to make health care insurance more affordable; it's not one to make health insurance companies more accountable; and it's certainly not a plan to reverse rapidly rising health care costs and draw down our deficit.

"The Republican plan we've waited weeks and months to see ... [is] not even about health care at all. The first and only plan Senate Republicans could be bothered to write up is an instructional manual on how to bring the Senate to a screeching halt. We knew that was happening anyway, but they had the audacity to put it in writing."

The Democrats are finally starting to take a look at changing procedural rules.

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We can all thank Ben Nelson for trying to get this killed in the health care bill. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio makes a great case for why we need to get rid of the anti-trust exemptions for the insurance industry and how the lack of regulation over the industry is harming small businesses in the United States. Of course good little wingnut S. E. Cupp plays concern troll for the insurance industry with her B.S. about having more competition across state lines, which would only mean a race to the bottom to the states with the least regulations.

Fox Host: Instead of worrying about the cash registers today, are retailers more worried about Washington? The industry reportedly fighting the Senate health care bill saying it is going to hurt retail jobs. But will it? Conservative columnist S. E. Cupp says you bet it will. Radio talk show host Mike Papantonio disagrees. We’ll start with you Mike. Why do you disagree?

Papantonio: Well every economist in the universe will tell you that the way to increase employment is increase competition. The insurance industry has been treated like a special prima donna since 1945 with this McCarran–Ferguson Pre-emption Act and here’s the problem; when you don’t have free competition, you’re going to…it affects jobs. There’s no secret here. The anti-trust laws would prevent the industry from charging small business anything they want to charge for employee policies.

So what ends up happening Brian is small business has to pay these exorbitant premiums—by the way, the insurance industry has increased those premiums 400% in the last ten years. McCarran–Ferguson would never allow that to happen because there would be transparency. So where’s the first place they cut? They cut jobs, they cut R&D, they cut expansion, they cut new risks. That’s exactly what’s happened because we treat this industry like they’re a prima donna. They’re the only industry besides baseball that is not subject to anti-trust laws and it’s killing employers.

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During the Senate floor debate on the health care bill, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse calls out Republican hyprocrisy on their feigned concern for deficits and spending.

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Keith talks to Wendell Potter about the health care bill that came out of the Senate and how the insurance and pharmaceutical companies fared. Jon Walker has more over at FDL and expressed some similar concerns to those of Potter's with the bill-- Pretty Bad So Far: Eight Things Wrong With The Senate Health Bill.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was heckled by someone with a loudspeaker while announcing details of the House health care reform bill. It was not immediately clear what the hecklers were saying or who they represented but Pelosi seemed to have an idea. She turned to the protesters and replied, "Thank you insurance companies of America."

Talking Points Memo talked to some of the demonstrators outside the capital. All of them denied the protest was organized:

Joann Abbott, a grandmother from Northern Virginia, made the drive to the protest this morning after seeing the email sent by Tea Party leaders last night. When asked if she was part of the "flash mob," she laughed. "I'm here on my own," she said, looking around at the scattered protesters around her. "If this is organized, we suck."

Lisa Miller, another protestor, said she was an organizer with a D.C. tea party group. She insisted that the event wasn't organized by a national organization, despite yesterday's email which was signed by a group calling itself "Your Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Team."

"People keep reporting we're a single group," she said. "But we're not -- we're all separate."

"It's like we're in different cars but we're all going in the same direction," Abbott explained.

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After defending the profits of the health care industry when a previous caller asked him if he thought health care should be a human right, Rep. Issa is then asked who his biggest individual campaign contributor is.

Issa: Ah, boy that's a good question. Ah...I guess I am. I put several million dollars of my own money over the years into my campaigns for the Senate, the House and recalling the Governor, so I'm probably at $11 or $12 million of my own money. After that there's probably somebody that's given me $20,000 or $30,000 over ten elections.

Here are some of Darrell Issa's recent top campaign contributors from from OpenSecrets.org.

2009-2010

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