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Unbelievable. Everyone knows the Republicans think we need absolutely no regulation of anything what so ever but they generally don't say it out loud this bluntly. Of course we didn't get any follow up from David Gregory asking him how being smart has anything to do with making insurance companies behave.

Gregory: You don't want government in charge of health care, yet you're a supporter of portable health insurance; the ability to take health insurance across state lines, but I thought the Republicans were states' rights guys and didn't want -- because you'd have to have some kind of Federal regulatory agency to monitor that kind of portability, wouldn't you?

Boehner: No, you wouldn't have to. What we're saying is the American people ought to buy health insurance across state lines. They ought to buy health insurance where they get the policy that they need for themselves and their family at the best price.

Gregory: And there wouldn't have to be some sort of Federal regulatory agency...

Boehner: Well no! That's the whole point. The President said I'm for that but you know there has to be some bureaucrat in Washington that needs to make sure that this is done fairly. The American people are smart enough to do this on their own.

Lost in Tarnation: Talking to your children about Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts. Now, how do we talk to WATB Dems?

Advice Unasked: Hillary Clinton's primary voters went for Brown?

First Draft: What a dick

Rumproast: Good for Cindy McCain

MediaBloodhound: My interview with Health Insurance whistleblower, Wendell Potter

The Sardonic Sideshow: The MSM doesn't exist...not anymore

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(Sam Gibbons - God knows he tried)

When Congressman Sam Gibbons took over the Ways and Means Tax writing Panel from Dan Rostenkowski in June of 1994, he immediately introduced a bill for Universal Healthcare.

Brian Naylor (NPR News): “Florida Democrat Sam Gibbons, now the acting Chairman of the tax writing Ways and Means panel is wasting no time in trying to have an impact on the Healthcare Reform debate. Gibbons has temporarily taken the reigns of the committee from Dan Rostenkowski, w ho was forced to step aside last week after his indictment. Gibbons plan would insure all Americans would have Health Insurance by 1998”.

So naturally the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich launched an instant attack on the bill, urging it's early death.

From The Boston Globe - June 17, 1994

WASHINGTON -- The House Republican whip, Newt Gingrich, acknowledged yesterday that he has told GOP members of a key committee considering health care reform to do whatever they can to kill the bill.

"My advice to the Ways and Means Republicans is they should do what they think is effective in keeping the Gibbons bill from passing," Gingrich said, referring to legislation offered by the House Ways and Means chairman, Sam M. Gibbons. "It's a bad bill. Why offer amendments to improve it?"

The Party of No rears its historic head . . .yet again!

Watch the video - it's short, and it sums up why Krugman so often has a fresh perspective on issues, rather than an insular academic bent.

And speaking of, Krugman weighs in on the excise tax question in the healthcare reform bill, asking whether the tax-deductions for employer-provided health insurance should be limited:

The counter-arguments seem to run along three lines.

First, there’s the argument that many “Cadillac” plans aren’t really luxurious — they reflect genuinely high costs. That’s surely true. A flat dollar limit to tax deductibility has real problems. At the very least, the limit should reflect the same factors insurers will be allowed to take into account in setting premiums: age and region.

Second, there’s the argument that any reductions in premiums won’t be passed through into wages. I just don’t buy that. It’s true that the importance of changing premiums in past wage changes has been exaggerated by many people. But I’m enough of a card-carrying economist to believe that there’s a real tradeoff between benefits and wages.

Maybe it will help the plausibility of this case to notice that we’re not actually asking whether a fall in premiums would be passed on to workers. Even with the excise tax, premiums are likely to rise over time — just more slowly than they would have otherwise. So what we’re really asking is whether slowing the growth of premiums would reduce the squeeze rising health costs would otherwise have placed on wages. Surely the answer is yes.

He's right. When you put it that way, it's a lot more plausible.

The last argument is that this hurts unions which have traded off lower wages for better benefits. This would be a bigger issue than I think it is if the excise tax were going to kick in instantly. But it won’t, giving time to renegotiate those bargains. And bear in mind that this kind of renegotiation is exactly what the tax is supposed to accomplish.

A last general point: we really don’t know what it will take to rein in health costs, but that’s a reason to try every plausible idea that experts have proposed. Limiting tax deductibility is definitely one of those ideas.

Bottom line: the details of the excise tax should be fixed, but it’s on balance a good idea.

I'm not getting my hopes up. But it sure would be nice if the House started thinking more about those of us who are hurting instead of their own reelections:

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--U.S. House leaders signaled Tuesday they are willing to agree to a final health overhaul bill without a government-run health insurance option if other parts of the bill would fulfill the same goals.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said after meeting with senior House Democrats that the bill must meet the test of "holding insurance companies accountable," whether or not it includes a public option.

"There are other ways to do that, and I look forward to discussing those other ways. ... We will have what we need to hold the insurance companies accountable," Pelosi said.

Pelosi huddled with House committee chairmen as talks between the House and Senate on reconciling competing versions of the health care overhaul bill got underway Tuesday. House leaders are to meet with Senate leaders via teleconference at the White House on Tuesday evening. They are aiming to strike a deal by early February.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), one of Pelosi's top lieutenants, said House leaders will expect concessions from Senate Democrats, including possibly a repeal of the antitrust exemption for insurance companies, if the public option is absent.

"Especially if you were not to have a public option, that would be important," Van Hollen told reporters. "The whole purpose of getting rid of the exemption would be to make sure you police competition so you cannot collude."

And on the more candid side:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi had little to say this afternoon at a press conference following a meeting between House leaders and health care principals. She and other members acknowledged that a number of differences must be resolved between House and Senate bills before a final reform package can be signed in to law--and all are aware that too much tinkering could upset a delicate balance in the Senate, where legislation often must meet a supermajority threshold.

But Pelosi did toss a jab President Obama's way.

Referring explicitly to one of Obama's campaign pledges, a reporter asked Pelosi whether C-SPAN cameras would be allowed to film the House-Senate negotiations.

"There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail," she said, without addressing the question.

Oh, snap!

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("All the seasons changed and all the reasons changed")

"Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange -- a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, costs, and track records of a variety of plans -- including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest."

- President Obama - Weekly Radio Address - July 17, 2009

So . . . what happened?

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At the end of separate interviews on Hardball, Chris Matthews gives Howard Dean a chance to respond to Mary Landrieu's statements and he comes at her hard for forcing everyone into private insurance by not allowing other choices in the bill. I'd call that a smack down for sure.

John Amato:

Sen. Landrieu drones on and on about her blind love and devotion to the insurance industry that has been a nightmare for many Americans. Why does she hate the idea that Americans deserve to have a choice about who they buy their health care from?

Dean: Mary, I'd like to know why you deny my people of the choice to sign up for an alternative? You are forcing us in to insurance companies. You took away our choice.

You would not let us choose another program. You forced us into the insurance industry and we don't want to be forced into the insurance industry and you took away our choice. That is wrong.

Landrieu: That is not true. You never had that choice to begin with.

Dean: The president campaigned on it, Mary...

Landrieu: No, he didn't. He did not campaign for a public option.

Dean: ...He most certainly did. He absolutely did, you are not accurate. He campaigned for a federal employee benefit with a public option. That's what he campaigned for.

Landrieu obviously never bothered to read the health care bill that President Obama ran on in the general election.

The Rude Pundit: Dick Cheney hates you

Whiskey Fire: The stupidest and most contemptible Politico story ever

Making Light: Trauma and Insurance

Infrastructurist: Superproject Void Redux

The Poor Man Institute: Keeping it Realist

Norwegianity: The linkcetera you've been waiting for

Larger image here.

If Republicans want it: fifty votes plus one gets you a big tax cut.

If Democrats want it: sixty votes isn't enough to provide health insurance to every American, plus you have to give Lieberman a pony.

More at Alan Grayson's website "Stop Senate Stalling".

Open Thread below.

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From This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz get into one of those discussions over this week's breast screening recommendations in which the Republican simply constructs an alternate reality:

BLACKBURN: ... Debbie is right when she says they forgot about people. Indeed, they did. But we have to realize, this group that made this recommendation, this isn't some outside group. This is a part of HHS. And when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's an independent group. That is not accurate.

BLACKBURN: ... 118 -- when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It is not a part of HHS.

BLACKBURN: No, it is a part of HHS.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, it is not.

BLACKBURN: And when you look at what is going to happen with these 118 new bureaucracies with 62 directives that are given by the health choices commissioner on what insurance can be offered in this country after 2013 and what is going to be paid, you know that this is the bureaucrat in the exam room. This is how it's going to happen.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha...

BLACKBURN: And this is the first step.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha, there's an insurance company bureaucrat in the -- in between the patient and her doctor right now.

BLACKBURN: This is breast cancer. Well, and people don't like that, and we need to get rid of...

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And your bill -- your -- your alternative...

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: We need to get rid of all of those insurance bureaucrats.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: ... does nothing to...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop this right now.

Yes, George. Because your job is to provide a showcase. You're not supposed to confront the guests when they make things up.

Nate Silver on why we shouldn't celebrate just yet:

Needless to say, it would have been very, very bad news for the Democrats if the motion to proceed to debate on their health care plan had failed tonight. But I'm not sure how newsworthy this really is. The potential hold-outs, like Lincoln and Ben Nelson, are going to have much greater leverage later on, when the bill nears its second major procedural hurdle: the cloture motion to proceed to the final vote.

And there's some bad news for Democrats too: Lincoln has joined Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman in making a fairly explicit threat to filibuster a bill that contains a public option. Mary Landrieu, on the other hand, sounds a little bit more open to compromise. But this impromptu Gang of 3 -- Lincoln, Nelson, Lieberman -- could be a tough one for progressives to penetrate.

Yeah, it's going to be ugly by the time they get done dealing away any real hope of competition for the insurance companies. I'm not optimistic about the short-term results here and I have to keep muttering to myself that this will be good for our children and grandchildren - probably.

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(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)

Rich Stockwell, senior producer at MSNBC's "Countdown", writes about his experiences at the free clinic funded by viewer contributions:

New Orleans, La. — - It happened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending several hours being attended to by volunteer doctors. "She's decided against treatment. A reasonable decision under the circumstances," the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient. The president of the board of the National Association of Free Health Clinics tells me why: "It's stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors." I don't know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insurance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an earlier diagnosis and treatment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.
Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

Health reform is not about Democrats or Republicans or who can score political points for the next election, it's about people. It's about fairness and justice in a system that knows none. I'd defy even the most hardened capitalist-loving-conservative to do what I did on Saturday and continue to pretend that the system in place right now is working.

Countdown chose to highlight and raise money for the Association of Free Clinics because we knew the work they do is so vitally important and we wanted to show in real terms how great the need is. We invited several politicians to attend so they could see first hand how critical the situation is. All declined. Some explained that they talk with constituents all the time and know very well of the need for reform.

I have news for them, these people didn't need to speak. Their actions spoke far louder than any words. Having to get a check up and diagnosis at a free clinic because they have no other option tells you all you need to know. There are no words that can accurately describe the quiet desperation on the faces of the patients. Every single one I spoke to, and every one I heard talking with doctors, expressed their gratitude for the event and wished that they were held more often.

Mike Stark catches up with Blanche Lincoln in Congress and asks her if she'll join the Republican filibuster. She has been virtually silent throughout the whole health care debate and Mike does a great job of getting her to say something on the record. What she said of course was nothing.

Stark: Can you see yourself filibustering or joining a filibuster?

Lincoln: I don't even know what the bill is going to be and I'm going to do what I think is most important for Arkansans and that is to look at the bill, to see if it's going to be helpful to Arkansans and the country in expanding health care...

She knows what's going on in this debate and gives a typical non-answer about supporting the public option like many have given up to this point. We at Blue America are running a brand new ad all over her state starting today so we can help her decide that filibustering health care is not in any one's best interests except the health insurance corporations that she's taken huge contributions from.

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post writes:

The squeeze is on for Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) on health care in the form of a new series of ads paid for by the liberal Blue America PAC that cast the Arkansas Democrat as bought and paid for by insurers. "Blanche Lincoln claims to fight for health care reform but whose interests does she really represent," asks the ad's narrator before noting that Lincoln has taken more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the health and insurance industries. The narrator concludes the ad by asking viewers to call Lincoln and "demand she allow an up or down vote on the public option." (This is the fourth ad paid for by Blue America targeting Lincoln this year.)

Polling shows Lincoln, who is up for re-election in 2010, holding relatively slim margins over a series of unknown Republican candidates. Lincoln's dilemma? How to walk the line between the conservative leanings of the Razorback State -- Obama took just 39 percent there in 2009 -- and the increasingly vocal and well-funded left within her own party who see the inclusion of a public option as a sine qua non for health care reform.

Her primary is the reason we targeted her originally and it's worked out very well so far.

Please help us continue running this ad and many more to come and join in on Blue America's Campaign for Health Care Choice. Donations are much appreciated.

And Digby writes:

Perhaps Lincoln should start worrying just a bit about what will happen if her Democratic base stays home. The numbers aren't looking all that good for her right now.

She's between little rock and a hard place but it seems to me that's easily solved at this point. She should vote for cloture, thus appeasing her base and then she can vote against the bill if she needs to appeal to neanderthals who want people to die quickly.

Believe me, none of her constituents will hold it against her. Most people think cloture is unpasteurized sour cream. And they like it.

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What a week. We've already seen Blue Dogs take women to the back of the bus (or was it the alley?) with Stupak's impressively Stupid Amendment. Now we're hearing that those who supposedly worry about "too much spending" when it comes to health care--you know, the meatloaf-brains who rejected the public option, which would create competition and actually bring down costs--are now blathering on about embracing "tort reform."

Because you'd really want to take away the rights of victims in a democracy to lower the health care costs by...wait for it...wait for it... ".5%" (according to the CBO).

All you really need to know is that Blue Dogs/GOPers (is there any difference?) are those in favor of this counterproductive course of action, yet if you do indeed need more, watch the heart wrenching videos recounting the tragic results of medical malpractice. To learn more about the 98,000 lives lost due to medical error each year--or 268 every day--go to 98,000 reasons, a website set up by the American Association for Justice. Once there send a message to your Senator: Remind them you won't have your rights further stripped away so they can scarf down more caviar with their contributors at Big Insurance.

More videos below the fold:

Continue reading »

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(Mildred Younger campaigned for California State Senate - Doing it the old Fashioned way)

Coming up on the off-year elections in 2010 I ran across a documentary produced in 1954 about the off-year elections of that particular year.

Alben Barkley(former Vice-President to Truman): “Finally I said to him ‘how’s politics?’ – ‘well, he said, ‘it’s pretty badly mixed’. That created some suspicion in my mind, well I said ‘well, how am I running?’ ‘Well, he said ‘it’s gonna be pretty close’. Well I said ‘you’re for me aren’t you?’ Well, he said ‘I thought I’d vote for Chandler’. Well, I said ‘my friend, how can you do that? Now don’t you remember that when you couldn’t get your allotment fixed up that I did it? ‘ He said, ‘yes you did’. ‘And when you couldn’t get your insurance I got that straightened out”’ He said ‘yes, you did’. And I said ‘and when you were injured over there in France didn’t I sit on the bed with you for an hour?’ And he said ‘yes, and I never enjoyed a mans visit in my life like I did yours.’ And I said ‘ when I came home and the Armistice came didn’t you want to get home at once and didn’t you write to me and didn’t I write General Pershing and weren’t you on your way home in a month?’ And he said ‘yes, you did that.’ And I said ‘didn’t you want a loan on your farm, and didn’t I help you?’ And he said ‘yes.’ ‘Didn’t you have a loan on your property when the flood washed it away?’ He said ‘yes, you did that’. I said ‘well, how can you vote against me?’ Well he said ‘my friend, what in the thunder have done for me lately?’

Seems the styles have changed, the methods, the dirt - but then as now, it's all about politics and the art of the horse race.