It got a brief mention on some of the cable channels, but the only major TV network that carried live coverage of this healthcare reform rally in D.C. yesterday was Fox - and then, only to ridicule it:

The reason? AHIP, the health insurance lobbying organization, was meeting in (where else?) the Ritz-Carlton. A coalition of groups led by unions including SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW and Health Care for American Now declared the meeting site a "corporate crime scene" and attempted to make a citizens' arrest:

In a reverse twist on the old protestors' tactic of getting arrested to make a point, union leaders and other backers of President Obama's healthcare plan issued "citizen's arrest" warrants for health insurance executives Tuesday – accusing them of exploiting consumers.

The "warrants," delivered to police during a demonstration outside an insurance industry meeting at a Washington hotel, were an attempt to dramatize protestors' call for insurance reform – and to build public support for the Democrats' healthcare legislation.

The demonstration, which drew several thousand protestors from as far away as Illinois and California, was organized by groups that for more than a year have pushed Congress to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of national healthcare overhaul.

While that policy objective, known as the public option, is not part of the healthcare legislation pending in Congress, the groups are nonetheless mounting a multi-million dollar campaign to promote the bill. The effort will continue in coming weeks, with more demonstrations, paid advertising and other events, including a hearing to take place Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Boy, there was a time when you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing someone about Tea Party rallies. I guess the only way you can get on TV these days is to be on the side of the insurance companies.

I was out all day and missed most of the reaction to Obama's suggested health-care plan. (Although I did learn from the Washington Post that this reheated version of the Senate bill is the White House team's idea of "going big." Heaven help us, I'd hate to see what "going small" looks like.)

From jumping around the blogs tonight, here's a roundup of some of the more interesting stuff.
From Think Progress:

The Obama plan maintains key elements of the Senate proposal but also incorporates stronger anti-fraud provisions and allows the federal government to review insurance rate hikes. On a call with reporters Pfeiffer insisted that the administration has not determined “on which path to move forward with”, but the bill’s substance suggests that Obama is hoping to bypass a prolonged-Senate debate and use the reconciliation process to fix the Senate bill and convince reluctant House progressives to pass the Senate legislation. “The American people deserve up or down vote on health reform,”Pfeiffer said. “We can get an up or down vote if opposition decides to take extraordinary steps of filibustering health reforms.”

But it’s unclear if progressive House members will embrace the new compromise. While the bill addresses House members’ affordability concerns, increases the excise tax thresholds and completely closes the donut hole in Medicare Part D, the legislation does not include a public option, retains the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges and keeps the start date for most reforms at 2014. (Obama’s plan also retains the Senate’s abortion compromise and most other core provisions).

And I know you're dying to read the reaction from the National Right to Life committee, right?

In its statement, the National Right to Life committee said that the president’s proposal “limits rights of Americans of all ages to use their own money to save their own lives.”

Burke Balch, the director of the National Right to Life Committee’s Powell Center of Ethics, likened the president’s plan to imposing a limit on the cost of restaurant meals.

“It is as though a government, concerned about the high cost of restaurant food, imposed a price limit of $5 per meal, and then asserted that for those who like their restaurant food, nothing will force them to change their eating habits,” the statement said. “The reality, of course, is that restaurants would be unable to afford to offer meals at prices below the cost of their ingredients. Consequently, about all restaurant-goers would be able to get would be fast food.”

Yes, because unlike health care, it's not as if you couldn't buy food and cook it yourself. (Try not to think about it, it'll just make your head hurt.)

Lambert, as usual, cuts to the chase:

NOTE: And this part is truly weird. You know the 31 million number that keeps getting tossed around? I always that was due mostly to Medicaid expansion --- moving the opportunity to get medical care after losing all your assets, like your house, up the income ladder -- but no. Right in the first paragraph:

"The President's [cough] Option" -- sorry, "Proposal" -- makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.

It's a tax cut!? Are Republican talking points truly the only ponies left in the stable?

I'm not even gonna try to gild that particular lily.

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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.

Via Raw Story, some news that really isn't such a big deal. Third-party administrators are already a cash cow for the insurance industry, but my guess is that this contract will have a lot of built-in cost controls:

A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday's Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat.

The public-option debate is frustrating some Democrats, who have come to believe that a government-run plan is neither as radical as its conservative critics have portrayed, nor as important as its liberal supporters contend. Any public plan is likely to have a relatively narrow scope, as it would be offered only to people who don't have access to coverage through an employer.

The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market. It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy. In an early estimate of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that fewer than 12 million people would buy insurance through the government plan.

The problem with insurance companies isn't the third-party administrators - they simply administer claims decisions on the basis of what the client pays for. (Although their administration fees are so often heavily padded, and the feds will have to watch them closely.) This is commonly done with so-called "self-insured" plans.

This is one of the reasons why it won't happen overnight. Someone's going to have to come up with the oversight structure.

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(Then - as now, only there's an Albatross in the living room)

(Note: This is a repost from July 7th in answer to several inquiries as to just how long this thing has been going on.)

Continuing the history of Public Healthcare, I ran across this panel discussion and Q&A from December 4,1941, featuring Dr. SS. Goldwater, City Hospital commissioner for New York, Margaret Bourke-White, the photographer/social chronicler. Howard Cumley from the Association of Manufacturers, and Eleanor Roosevelt, first Lady.

The panel, from the radio program "America's Town Hall of The Air" centered mostly on the state of health of most Americans. Seems we were a rather flabby bunch in 1941, judging from the large number of rejects from the Draft Board (remember, this is 3 days before Pearl Harbor and the start of our involvement in World War 2). But the subject was also health care for everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

The first half of the program (a little over 30 minutes) is given over to statements by the panel, but the second half is a question and answer period from members of the audience.

Goldwater skirts the issue, not saying if he is for a Universal Healthcare plan or not. Bourke-White is a little more forthcoming (at around 40 minutes):

Question: Do you feel Socialized Medicine would benefit the American public?

Bourke-White: Yes, I feel it would. I know there are many objections, sometimes from private physicians who don't wish to lose their practice. Sometimes from private hospitals who don't wish to lose their clients. But I see no reason why some form, at least from Medical Insurance or Hospitalization Insurance can't be put into effect. And people who can afford to go to their own physician, people who can afford to go to their own hospitals, still can continue to do so. The people who can't possibly afford treatment or perhaps could afford it at one time, can still be taken care of.

Roosevelt is staunchly for some form of Universal Healthcare, but in lieu of the fact that war was literally days away, it was an idea that had to be shelved until it was over.

By then of course, the albatross had grown.

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Rachel Maddow calls out Judd Gregg for his 180 on the filibuster rule and his threat to stall healthcare bill in the Senate. As Rachel noted, the one point of consistency... I.O.K.W.A.R.D.I.

Sen. Judd Gregg has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a healthcare plan Democrats want to speed through the Senate.

Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, told The Hill in a recent interview that Republicans will wage a vicious fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget maneuver to pass a trillion-dollar healthcare plan with a simple majority.

The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) leaves Democrats with 59 Senate seats — one shy of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. That, combined with the pushback from Republican negotiators, has prompted Democratic leaders to look more closely at using budget reconciliation to push a healthcare overhaul through.

The maneuver was originally intended to help reduce the federal deficit by allowing spending cuts and tax increases to pass by majority vote, but it has since been used to fast-track wider-scope legislation, such as former President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.

Republicans, however, warn that if Democrats attempt the maneuver, their healthcare bill will end up looking like Swiss cheese.

Gregg said that Republicans could file “hundreds” of points-of-order objections to the bill, each one requiring 60 votes to waive.

“We are very much engaged in taking a hard look at our rights under reconciliation,” Gregg said. “It would be very contentious.”

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All this talk about socialized healthcare! Michael Steele says it's socialism, although he admits he doesn't know a thing about the actual policy.

And as Rachel Maddow points out, have you ever noticed that the more beautiful a politican's hair, the more likely he is to be completely full of crap? Case in point: Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Maddow really lets him have it because Perry is talking about "seceding" from any national healthcare plan, reminding him (and us) that he's been governor for nine years. As she points out, one in four Texans lack health insurance, giving Texas the title for highest number of uninsured citizens in the entire country.

As Washington Spectator editor and political author Lou Dubose pointed out to Maddow, the Texas governorship is "a ribbon-cutting position." Good thing, because he's not too bright, is he?

(Here's some info on the ads by OFA)

Those poor poor Democrats in Congress who want to block the public option. They can't face the heat so they are whining to Harry Reid. And Reid then scolds the DNC for "wasting their money" on ads that target them.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) slammed the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Thursday for running ads designed to pressure centrist Democrats into supporting the president’s healthcare plan, calling the effort a “waste of money.”
Reid’s comments sent his staff into damage control mode, as they sought to clarify his remarks, but also reflect a growing frustration among those centrists who have been reluctant to back a government-run health insurance plan at the center of President Obama’s healthcare proposal. Liberals have been urging centrists to support such a plan for months, using various television and radio campaigns to try to force their hand. This week a wing of the DNC announced it would run television ads in states represented by centrist senators.

Reid slammed the DNC for targeting Democrats instead of Republicans or special interest groups that traditionally oppose Democratic policies.
“I think it’s a waste of money,” Reid said when asked about the ads. “Democrats running ads against Democrats?”

First of all they are not centrist. That's a bogus word to try and muddle the issue. Dems like Blue America's target Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and all the rest are Conservative Dems. Health care is not a right/left issue, but an American issue. Standing in the way of real reform makes one a republican obstructionist at this time and not a centrist. And Harry Reid should be careful who he backs in this fight. These ads came with a blessing from the White House so is he going against the President now? You're supposed to be the majority leader so if they come whining to you again just tell them to act like Democrats.
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