toniD's Ya Think?

Pelosi takes on Eric Cantor's Remarks About the "Occupy" Protests

2011-10-09T12:56:00.002-05:00

Nancy Pelosi Backs Occupy Wall Street Message, Tells Eric Cantor To Shove It
Zeke Miller

In an interview with ABC News' Christiane Amanpour, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she supports the message of the Occupy Wall Street protesters that "change has to happen."

PELOSI: "Well, I support the message to the establishment — whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest — that change has to happen. We cannot continue in a way that is not relevant to their lives. I think one of the most angry responses I've seen to actions in Washington came after we passed the TARP bill. And that was the bill that pulled us back from a financial crisis — and this was during the Presidency of President Bush. The thought was that once we did that, there would be capital available and Main Street would benefit from the resources that went largely to people on Wall Street. That didn't happen and people are angry.

I think people are angry that they don't have jobs — by and large. There's nothing that makes you angrier than not being able to provide for your family or understand what your prospects are for the future. And I do think that, from what we saw after TARP, that the focus on Wall Street was one that they thought was a legitimate place to go: 'Don't do this again. Don't put Main Street at the mercy of Wall Street.' And again, not to paint everyone on Wall Street with the same brush. That would not be fair. But actions were taken that risked our economy, and that shouldn't happen again."

Updates on the "Occupy" Movement

2011-10-09T11:13:00.004-05:00

Occupy Wall Street fervor growing in South Florida
Hundreds mobilize to motivate change

Several hundred people gathered to voice their opinions on government and corporate policies.

October 08, 2011|By Wayne K. Roustan, Sun Sentinel

LAKE WORTH — Despite the stormy weather, hundreds of people showed up at Bryant Park in Lake Worth and Stranahan Park in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday to add their voices to the grass-roots chorus echoing from protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement in recent weeks.

Dispensing with the traditional organizational structure, this South Florida Occupy gathering had no leaders, no spokespeople, no organized agenda http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand no relationship with any other established group such as the Tea Party.

Many participants said they simply came to share opinions, trade information and express outrage just like you might do on Facebook or Twitter only in a live, face-to-face social network, according to attendee Rachel Shidaker.

"We're trying to create a platform for people to voice their opinions and concerns about their government to create and implement goals to better their national and local governments," she said.

The crowd in Lake Worth grew to more than 200 from 19 at the first meeting a week earlier. About 150 people showed up in Fort Lauderdale.

Read More

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Back From A Long Hiatus

2011-10-09T09:43:00.000-05:00

Back with coverage of some of the same problems and many new problems in our Nation and the World.

* Our Economy is still hanging on by a thread as is many in the world.* The GOP is still holding up everything in Congress. * We are still in Afghanistan and somewhat still in Iraq., and have taken part in the UN's action in Libya.* There has been an Arab Spring that has changed, for the moment, many North African Arab Nations with a populist movement.* We have our own populist movement that has started recently, just less than a month old, here in the United States called Occupy Wall Street which has quickly spread across the Nation and many parts of the World.* President Obama is trying to pass a much needed Jobs Bill which includes help for our crumbling Infrastructure and Tax help for Small Businesses and it's being blocked by the GOP which because of the Corporate backed Tea Party has turned extremely Right Wing.

And there's a lot more, so lets get started with news stories and comment.
"We Are The 99%" The chant from all the Occupy groups across the Nation.
Here's a video from The Rachel Maddow Show where Ezra Klein was subbing for Rachel, and his guest Naomi Klein who wrote the book "Shock Doctrine":'The Sky's The Limit' A interview with Naomi Klein on Occupy Wall Street

Mad as Hell Doctors in Chicago (Video)

2009-09-28T13:42:00.002-05:00

Seniors....this is a must read

2009-09-20T13:24:00.004-05:00

If a good Health Care Reform gets voted in, Seniors have more to win than lose. That won't be what happens if we don't get a good Health Care Bill.

Why seniors would be health reform winners, not losers

HOWARD GLECKMAN
Last updated: September 3rd, 2009 12:26 AM (PDT)

Opponents of health reform have targeted seniors with a blunt message: You will be big losers if “Obama-care” is enacted. In the words of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele: “Senior citizens will pay a steeper price and will have their treatment options reduced or rationed.”

Scary words. But, in truth, seniors are likely to be big winners if responsible health reform passes and prime victims if it fails. The casualties will not only be today’s elders, but the Baby Boomers, who are the next generation of seniors. They will all pay the price if the existing health system is allowed to fester.

It is true that, today, seniors have a pretty good deal. Nearly all those over 65 already have insurance through Medicare — a government program. Seniors and younger people with disabilities who are both very poor and unable to care for themselves are also eligible for long-term care benefits through Medicaid, which is run jointly by the federal government and the states.

So if seniors already have coverage, don’t they have everything to lose from change? Isn’t cost control just a fancy euphemism for cutting benefits? And what about those bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t?

These claims are both irresponsible and wrong. But their biggest flaw is that they ignore the real problem: Without fundamental changes, Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable. Like a poorly built house that has gone too long without repairs, they will soon collapse without major renovations. And seniors will face both massive tax hikes and huge increases in their monthly insurance premiums.

To understand why, remember that Medicaid and Medicare Part A hospital insurance are funded with tax revenues. Medicare Part B coverage for doctor visits and Part D drug coverage are financed through a combination of taxes and premiums. Many seniors also pay extra for Medicare Supplement (Medigap) insurance.

In just 10 years, according to the Medicare trustees, Part B premiums are expected to increase from about $96 a month to more than $130, while Part D premiums will rise to $50. Add a few hundred dollars more each month for Medigap coverage and many seniors will be spending $5,000 annually on Medicare. Higher-income seniors will pay far more — as much as $420 a month for Part B alone.

That is the future seniors face if we do nothing.

The pressure on taxes will be even greater. In a decade, nearly 30 cents of every federal tax dollar will go to Medicare and Medicaid. By 2035, these two programs will spend more than 40 percent of our taxes. That means we’ll need huge tax hikes to pay for these programs and keep the rest of the government running,

As for rationing, Medicare already decides what to cover. Nobody seriously expects it to pay for any treatment patients want. It also rations by deciding how it pays physicians and hospitals. For instance, doctors are paid more for tests than office visits, so patients get more MRIs and less face time with physicians.

Health reform is not about choosing between rationing or not. Rather, it is about whether we will continue to spend health dollars in the crazy way we do now or find a better way. Done right, it can mean less treatment but better health.

One example: Critics of reform call “comparative effectiveness research” a backdoor trick to deny care for the frail elderly. They are wrong. Done well, it can improve care at less cost.

Today we know very little about how medications affect seniors. So they often get too many drugs that can make them ill, or even kill them. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a research program to tell us what drugs work best for the elderly?

How about Medicaid? Today, because the program is required to pay only for nursing home care, beneficiaries are more likely to get their assistance in a facility than at home.

Health reform could give consumers more choice. Instead of a government bureaucrat saying you must move into a nursing home to get benefits, seniors would have more opportunity to decide where they want to live. It is hard to see how that makes them worse off.

Critics are right to say that poorly designed could put seniors’ health at risk. But with well-structured reforms, seniors would get better medical and long-term term care, and get it in a way they and the nation can afford. That’s why they, as much as anyone, should be supporting health reform.

Howard Gleckman, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, is author of “Caring for Our Parents” and a frequent writer and speaker on long-term care issues. He wrote this for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

So before you believe what one party or the other tells you, check for yourselves. Do the work of research! Don't just believe what you hear. Your life and health depends on it!

Robert Reich On The Public Option

2009-09-08T15:25:00.003-05:00

h/t to 60th Street from the Sam Seder Show Blog

Robert Reich explains the Public Option in easy to understand terms and explains why we need it as an option.

I only hope that Pres. Obama can explain it as well in his speech to Congress tomorrow night!

GOP make it sound like they're all for Medicare

2009-09-06T14:21:00.004-05:00

They are whipping up the simple people and the politically disengaged people to think that Obama and the Congress will take away or at the least weaken Medicare when they are putting together Health Care Reform.

But, like me, I bet you didn't know that as recently as this past April the GOP in the House tried to weaken Medicare by allowing private insurance companies to take it over. It was part of the GOP Health Care Reform bill they proposed.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

House, Senate budget plans boost Obama agenda but expose vulnerabilities
At the same time, the debate also exposed
political weaknesses in his House GOP rivals.
Republicans in the House had even more
defections on their alternative budget, losing
37 of the chamber's more moderate members
in a 293-137 tally that rejected cuts to
Medicare and the Medicaid health care
program for the poor and disabled.

What is more, GOP leaders are clearly
nervous that votes in favor of the GOP
alternative have exposed their members to
political danger.

The plan, drafted by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, top Republican on the House Budget Committee, called for eventually replacing the traditional Medicare program with subsidies to help retirees enroll in private health care plans. Current beneficiaries would keep their coverage and those 55 and older also would go into the current system.

Critics of the plan said the Medicare subsidies would inevitably not keep pace with inflation and that people in poor health might end up uninsured, while many needy people on Medicaid could lose coverage.

And from the Washington Monthly:

But did Republicans vote to "end," "abolish," and "kill" Medicare? It's provocative, but it's a supportable claim. In April, 137 Republicans voted in support of a GOP alternative budget. It didn't generate a lot of attention, but the plan, drafted by the House Budget Committee's Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called for "replacing the traditional Medicare program with subsidies to help retirees enroll in private health care plans."

The AP noted at the time that Republican leaders were "clearly nervous that votes in favor of the GOP alternative have exposed their members to political danger."

So as much as the GOP say they won't touch Medicare, they already tried to. So far it was a dirty secret that the Media hasn't put out there. But I'm passing this along and hope that others will too. Hypocrisy, they name is GOP!

The more Republicans press Dems on Medicare, the more we're likely to hear about the fact that a majority of the House Republican Caucus voted this year to kill Medicare as we know it, privatizing it out of existence.

Canadians Compare our Health Care to Theirs. They're Happy with Theirs

2009-08-27T12:21:00.003-05:00

Canadian Doctors for Medicare hosted a celebration of Medicare in Canada. The speakers included Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan Premiere and Commissioner on Health Care in Canada. They tell Americans that Canadian universal health care works and encourage Americans to implement a single payer universal health care systems.

Medicare for all would cost less in the long run and can be cost controlled much more easily than monitoring all the Insurance companies. Our health is not a commodity to be traded on the Market and it shouldn't be a for profit business to insure our health.

Why We Need Government Run Health Insurance

2009-08-27T11:28:00.001-05:00

The Lion of the Senate. We will greatly miss you

2009-08-26T09:28:00.004-05:00

My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause.

I'm asking you -- I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.

I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.

This is the cause that brought me into the campaign and that sustained me for nine months across a 100,000 miles in 40 different states. We had our losses, but the pain of our defeats is far, far less than the pain of the people that I have met.

We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.

The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political Party in this republic and the longest lasting political Party on this planet.

Our cause has been, since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the cause of the common man and the common woman.

Our commitment has been, since the days of Andrew Jackson, to all those he called "the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers." On this foundation we have defined our values, refined our policies, and refreshed our faith.

Now I take the unusual step of carrying the cause and the commitment of my campaign personally to our national convention. I speak out of a deep sense of urgency about the anguish and anxiety I have seen across America.

I speak out of a deep belief in the ideals of the Democratic Party, and in the potential of that Party and of a President to make a difference. And I speak out of a deep trust in our capacity to proceed with boldness and a common vision that will feel and heal the suffering of our time and the divisions of our Party.

The economic plank of this platform on its face concerns only material things, but it is also a moral issue that I raise tonight. It has taken many forms over many years. In this campaign and in this country that we seek to lead, the challenge in 1980 is to give our voice and our vote for these fundamental democratic principles.

Let us pledge that we will never misuse unemployment, high interest rates, and human misery as false weapons against inflation.

Let us pledge that employment will be the first priority of our economic policy.

Let us pledge that there will be security for all those who are now at work, and let us pledge that there will be jobs for all who are out of work; and we will not compromise on the issues of jobs.

These are not simplistic pledges. Simply put, they are the heart of our tradition, and they have been the soul of our Party across the generations. It is the glory and the greatness of our tradition to speak for those who have no voice, to remember those who are forgotten, to respond to the frustrations and fulfill the aspirations of all Americans seeking a better life in a better land.

We dare not forsake that tradition.

We cannot let the great purposes of the Democratic Party become the bygone passages of history.

We must not permit the Republicans to seize and run on the slogans of prosperity. We heard the orators at their convention all trying to talk like Democrats. They proved that even Republican nominees can quote Franklin Roosevelt to their own purpose.

The Grand Old Party thinks it has found a great new trick, but 40 years ago an earlier generation of Republicans attempted the same trick. And Franklin Roosevelt himself replied, "Most Republican leaders have bitterly fought and blocked the forward surge of average men and women in their pursuit of happiness. Let us not be deluded that overnight those leaders have suddenly become the friends of average men and women."

"You know," he continued, "very few of us are that gullible." And four years later when the Republicans tried that trick again, Franklin Roosevelt asked, "Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not. We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus, but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on its back."

The 1980 Republican convention was awash with crocodile tears for our economic distress, but it is by their long record and not their recent words that you shall know them.

The same Republicans who are talking about the crisis of unemployment have nominated a man who once said, and I quote, "Unemployment insurance is a prepaid vacation plan for freeloaders." And that nominee is no friend of labor.

The same Republicans who are talking about the problems of the inner cities have nominated a man who said, and I quote, "I have included in my morning and evening prayers every day the prayer that the Federal Government not bail out New York." And that nominee is no friend of this city and our great urban centers across this nation.

The same Republicans who are talking about security for the elderly have nominated a man who said just four years ago that "Participation in social security should be made voluntary." And that nominee is no friend of the senior citizens of this nation.

The same Republicans who are talking about preserving the environment have nominated a man who last year made the preposterous statement, and I quote, "Eighty percent of our air pollution comes from plants and trees." And that nominee is no friend of the environment.

And the same Republicans who are invoking Franklin Roosevelt have nominated a man who said in 1976, and these are his exact words, "Fascism was really the basis of the New Deal." And that nominee whose name is Ronald Reagan has no right to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The great adventures which our opponents offer is a voyage into the past. Progress is our heritage, not theirs. What is right for us as Democrats is also the right way for Democrats to win.

The commitment I seek is not to outworn views but to old values that will never wear out. Programs may sometimes become obsolete, but the ideal of fairness always endures. Circumstances may change, but the work of compassion must continue. It is surely correct that we cannot solve problems by throwing money at them, but it is also correct that we dare not throw out our national problems onto a scrap heap of inattention and indifference. The poor may be out of political fashion, but they are not without human needs. The middle class may be angry, but they have not lost the dream that all Americans can advance together.

The demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government. Some say that government is always bad and that spending for basic social programs is the root of our economic evils. But we reply: The present inflation and recession cost our economy 200 billion dollars a year. We reply: Inflation and unemployment are the biggest spenders of all.

The task of leadership in 1980 is not to parade scapegoats or to seek refuge in reaction, but to match our power to the possibilities of progress. While others talked of free enterprise, it was the Democratic Party that acted and we ended excessive regulation in the airline and trucking industry, and we restored competition to the marketplace. And I take some satisfaction that this deregulation legislation that I sponsored and passed in the Congress of the United States.

As Democrats we recognize that each generation of Americans has a rendezvous with a different reality. The answers of one generation become the questions of the next generation. But there is a guiding star in the American firmament. It is as old as the revolutionary belief that all people are created equal, and as clear as the contemporary condition of Liberty City and the South Bronx. Again and again Democratic leaders have followed that star and they have given new meaning to the old values of liberty and justice for all.

We are the Party -- We are the Party of the New Freedom, the New Deal, and the New Frontier. We have always been the Party of hope. So this year let us offer new hope, new hope to an America uncertain about the present, but unsurpassed in its potential for the future.

To all those who are idle in the cities and industries of America let us provide new hope for the dignity of useful work. Democrats have always believed that a basic civil right of all Americans is that their right to earn their own way. The Party of the people must always be the Party of full employment.

To all those who doubt the future of our economy, let us provide new hope for the reindustrialization of America. And let our vision reach beyond the next election or the next year to a new generation of prosperity. If we could rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II, then surely we can reindustrialize our own nation and revive our inner cities in the 1980's.

To all those who work hard for a living wage let us provide new hope that their price of their employment shall not be an unsafe workplace and a death at an earlier age.

To all those who inhabit our land from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf stream waters, let us provide new hope that prosperity shall not be purchased by poisoning the air, the rivers, and the natural resources that are the greatest gift of this continent. We must insist that our children and our grandchildren shall inherit a land which they can truly call America the beautiful.

To all those who see the worth of their work and their savings taken by inflation, let us offer new hope for a stable economy. We must meet the pressures of the present by invoking the full power of government to master increasing prices. In candor, we must say that the Federal budget can be balanced only by policies that bring us to a balanced prosperity of full employment and price restraint.

And to all those overburdened by an unfair tax structure, let us provide new hope for real tax reform. Instead of shutting down classrooms, let us shut off tax shelters. Instead of cutting out school lunches, let us cut off tax subsidies for expensive business lunches that are nothing more than food stamps for the rich.

The tax cut of our Republican opponents takes the name of tax reform in vain. It is a wonderfully Republican idea that would redistribute income in the wrong direction. It's good news for any of you with incomes over 200,000 dollars a year. For the few of you, it offers a pot of gold worth 14,000 dollars. But the Republican tax cut is bad news for the middle income families. For the many of you, they plan a pittance of 200 dollars a year, and that is not what the Democratic Party means when we say tax reform.

The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt -- that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay. Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform.

Finally, we cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance. We must -- We must not surrender -- We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real controls over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family's health shall never depend on the size of a family's wealth.

The President, the Vice President, the members of Congress have a medical plan that meets their needs in full, and whenever senators and representatives catch a little cold, the Capitol physician will see them immediately, treat them promptly, fill a prescription on the spot. We do not get a bill even if we ask for it, and when do you think was the last time a member of Congress asked for a bill from the Federal Government? And I say again, as I have before, if health insurance is good enough for the President, the Vice President, the Congress of the United States, then it's good enough for you and every family in America.

There were some -- There were some who said we should be silent about our differences on issues during this convention, but the heritage of the Democratic Party has been a history of democracy. We fight hard because we care deeply about our principles and purposes. We did not flee this struggle. We welcome the contrast with the empty and expedient spectacle last month in Detroit where no nomination was contested, no question was debated, and no one dared to raise any doubt or dissent.

Democrats can be proud that we chose a different course and a different platform.

We can be proud that our Party stands for investment in safe energy, instead of a nuclear future that may threaten the future itself. We must not permit the neighborhoods of America to be permanently shadowed by the fear of another Three Mile Island.

We can be proud that our Party stands for a fair housing law to unlock the doors of discrimination once and for all. The American house will be divided against itself so long as there is prejudice against any American buying or renting a home.

And we can be proud that our Party stands plainly and publicly and persistently for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Women hold their rightful place at our convention, and women must have their rightful place in the Constitution of the United States. On this issue we will not yield; we will not equivocate; we will not rationalize, explain, or excuse. We will stand for E.R.A. and for the recognition at long last that our nation was made up of founding mothers as well as founding fathers.

A fair prosperity and a just society are within our vision and our grasp, and we do not have every answer. There are questions not yet asked, waiting for us in the recesses of the future. But of this much we can be certain because it is the lesson of all of our history: Together a President and the people can make a difference. I have found that faith still alive wherever I have traveled across this land. So let us reject the counsel of retreat and the call to reaction. Let us go forward in the knowledge that history only helps those who help themselves.

There will be setbacks and sacrifices in the years ahead; but I am convinced that we as a people are ready to give something back to our country in return for all it has given to us.

Let this -- Let this be our commitment: Whatever sacrifices must be made will be shared and shared fairly. And let this be our confidence: At the end of our journey and always before us shines that ideal of liberty and justice for all.

From Ted Kennedy's 1980 Democratic Convention Speech

In Loving Memory

2009-08-26T07:13:00.002-05:00

Thank you Teddy

Things you need to know

2009-08-17T09:11:00.004-05:00

Knowledge is Power. So here's a bit of education for you about Health Insurance Companies.

First, from NavyBlueWife at Fire Dog Lake telling me something I didn't know:

The Sunday morning political talk programs were filled to the brim with health care reform discussions, and central to these discussions is the idea that the insurance industry needs competition. Competition, in the form of a public option or in health care cooperatives, is supposed to level the playing field and bring down premiums for all Americans while providing as close to universal coverage as we can do right now.

There's just one itty bitty, teeny weeny problem. The insurance industry has federal IMMUNITY from competition!

The federal government has not been able to attack the insurance companies through federal anti-trust laws for over 60 years. Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act passed in 1945, insurance companies (and Major League Baseball!) are specifically excluded from federal anti-trust laws as long as the state regulates in that area, and federal anti-trust laws will apply ONLY in cases of boycott, coercion, and intimidation.

Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, Big Insurance is allowed to collect and SHARE data with each other about claims. With this information, Big Insurance can fix prices, set coverage requirements, outline conditions for coverage denials (like pre-existing conditions), and many, many more.

That's right, folks! Big Insurance can plot together to bring us all down!
This problem is one of the biggest when it comes to creating insurance industry competition, and not one single major news outlet, pundit or other talking head has covered it as of my publishing. In fact, the only time where I saw anti-trust regulation brought up was a minor squawking by Big Insurance. They claimed that they actually would be in trouble under the anti-trust laws if they were forced to work together to reduce costs to consumers. But the laws don't apply, so what's the problem, Big Insurance?? Read more at link

This is information on how Blue Cross/Blue Shield was formed and how it became a for profit company. h/t to Crank Bait at Sam Seder Show Blog:

Dr. Justin Ford Kimball, a Baylor University administrator, is generally recognized as the originator of Blue Cross. Kimball noticed that among the university hospital's unpaid bills were those of a disproportionate number of local school teachers. In 1929, he addressed this problem by organizing a plan in which teachers could be covered for a three-week hospital stay in a semi-private room by prepaying as little as 50 cents a month. The first group health plan was off the ground when 1,250 Dallas-area teachers enrolled at once.

Other groups of Dallas employees joined the program, and it began to attract attention across the United States. Similar plans sprang up in Iowa and Illinois. Like the Dallas prototype, those plans involved only one hospital. In the early 1930s, plans were created that offered customers a choice of different hospitals in their communities. California, New Jersey, and New York were among the first locations for programs of that type. The Blue Cross name and symbol were developed in 1934 by E. A. van Steenwyk, a pioneer of St. Paul, Minnesota's group health plan. By 1935, there were 15 Blue Cross plans in 11 states. The following year, the American Hospital Association (AHA) created the Committee on Hospital Services to oversee the growing batch of Blue Cross organizations nationwide. The Committee's early leader was C. Rufus Rorem, who had been involved with the AHA for several years. By 1938, there were 38 Blue Cross plans in the United States, with a total enrollment of 1.4 million. In comparison, only about 100,000 people were covered for hospitalization by private insurance companies at that time.

Meanwhile, a similar movement had begun for covering the costs of physicians' services. In the Pacific Northwest, a few lumber and mining companies had begun making arrangements to pay doctors a monthly fee for providing their employees with health care services. The first of these plans appeared in Tacoma, Washington, in 1917. The first modern Blue Shield plan was established in 1939 in California. Modeled on the earlier programs, the California Plan enabled its customers to receive physician services for $1.70 a month. Only those with income under $3,000 a year were eligible for the program. The medical societies of other states began to develop similar programs, and in 1946 the first handful of such plans banded into a national group called the Associated Medical Care Plans, overseen by the American Medical Association (AMA). This group informally adopted the Blue Shield as its symbol two years later, and it eventually became known as the Blue Shield Association.

Between 1940 and 1945, the number of Blue Cross plans operating nationwide grew from 56 to 80, and enrollment increased from 6 million to 19 million. Blue Shield's enrollment was approximately 3 million. This growth was largely due to the wartime emphasis on fringe benefits as a way to increase wages without boosting salaries. In 1946, Rorem resigned as executive director of the AHA commission overseeing Blue Cross plans, and was replaced by Richard M. Jones, whom Rorem had hired as head of public relations. The organization's name was then changed to the Blue Cross Commission.

In 1948, Blue Cross and Blue Shield agreed to merge. The move was blocked by the AMA, however, on the grounds that such cooperation between hospitals and physicians could lead to actions in restraint of trade. Nevertheless, the Blues began working together around that time on public policy issues, while remaining independent, competing entities. To facilitate their continued growth, both Blues set up nonprofit agencies to coordinate the activities of their member plans. The Blue Cross Commission established Health Services, Inc. (HSI), a stock insurance company, to coordinate national enrollment in Blue Cross plans and to act as an underwriter to make up for differences in benefits between member plans when national contracts made it necessary. The Blue Cross Association was created as a holding company for HSI stock, which was actually owned by the plans themselves. Blue Shield set up a similar structure, establishing Medical Indemnity of America (MIA) as its counterpart to HSI. Read more at link.

So the Insurance Companies have a law in place to help them take advantage of us. All of us!

And you learned how a non profit Insurance turned into a for profit.

So now you know a bit more to form a good decision about Health Care Reform.

Obama's Op Ed in the NY Times - Must Read

2009-08-16T08:06:00.002-05:00

WHY WE NEED HEALTH CARE REFORM

BARACK OBAMA

Published: August 15, 2009

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.

First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.

Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits.

Third, by making Medicare more efficient, we’ll be able to ensure that more tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors instead of enriching insurance companies. This will not only help provide today’s seniors with the benefits they’ve been promised; it will also ensure the long-term health of Medicare for tomorrow’s seniors. And our reforms will also reduce the amount our seniors pay for their prescription drugs.

Lastly, reform will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable. A 2007 national survey actually shows that insurance companies discriminated against more than 12 million Americans in the previous three years because they had a pre-existing illness or condition. The companies either refused to cover the person, refused to cover a specific illness or condition or charged a higher premium.

We will put an end to these practices. Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.

Most important, we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. It makes sense, it saves lives and it can also save money.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

Despite what we’ve seen on television, I believe that serious debate is taking place at kitchen tables all across America. In the past few years, I’ve received countless letters and questions about health care. Some people are in favor of reform, and others have concerns. But almost everyone understands that something must be done. Almost everyone knows that we must start holding insurance companies accountable and give Americans a greater sense of stability and security when it comes to their health care.

I am confident that when all is said and done, we can forge the consensus we need to achieve this goal. We are already closer to achieving health-insurance reform than we have ever been. We have the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association on board, because our nation’s nurses and doctors know firsthand how badly we need reform. We have broad agreement in Congress on about 80 percent of what we’re trying to do. And we have an agreement from the drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. The AARP supports this policy, and agrees with us that reform must happen this year.

But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing.In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.

That is not a future I want for my children, or for yours. And that is not a future I want for the United States of America.

In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods. This is about people’s businesses. This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back years from now and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed, and gave our children a better life. I believe we can, and I believe we will.

Two Issues hurting Health Care Reform

2009-08-13T08:38:00.006-05:00

The first Issue is that we don't know what we are fighting for. There is no actual bill and we really don't know if we will like the bill yet.

Robert Reich points this out:

Why are these meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

But why are they getting away with it? Why aren't progressives -- indeed, why aren't ordinary citizens -- taking the meetings back?

Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

But that's the problem: It's always easier to stir up fear and anger against something that's amorphous than to stir up enthusiasm for it.
The White House has just announced a web page designed to rebut some of the insane charges that the right is instigating. That won't be enough. The President has to be more specific about what he's for and what he's against. Without these specifics, the right can conjure up every demon in its arsenal while the middle and left can only shrug their shoulders.

snip

Now's the time for specifics. It's impossible to fight fearmongering lies about specifics with nothing but positive principles.

And the second Issue is what Seniors are hearing about reform.

Rick Ungar from the Policy page explains:

A CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll published last week reveals that a majority of voters over 50 oppose the healthcare overhaul effort, while most voters under 50 support it.

No shock there. The reality of growing older is such that change becomes more difficult to assimilate- particularly when it involves the number one concern of the elderly, their health. As a result, they are highly unlikely to take a leap of faith without feeling comfortable that they understand what change means to them. Unfortunately, proponents of health care don’t seem particularly interested in telling them.

The White House has said that they are counting on about $500 billion in savings from Medicare and Medicaid to finance reform. The President claims this will be done by cutting waste out of these federal programs including getting rid of testing and treatments that don’t result in improving care.

What does a senior hear in all of this? They hear the word “cut” – and that means getting less.

Here is what seniors are not hearing because nobody is telling them. Hopefully, they will not suffer any reduction in available health care because we intend to succeed in more efficiently controlling these government programs. But, if we remain true to form and fail to better control the programs, the results may, in fact, lead to some lessening in health care benefits or cause seniors to pay just a bit more to effectively stay “even.” Not great news but a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Because if we don’t make changes in Medicare, it will run out of money and may very well do so during our current crop of seniors’ lifetime. It most certainly can happen to those over 50 who are not yet participants but are depending upon Medicare to get them through their sunset years.

Not only are we not explaining this to the elderly in a direct and honest fashion, we aren’t directing the conversation to them in any meaningful way whatsoever. Where are the Obama town meetings at a nursing home, or an assisted living center?

When there is a gaping void in the information flow, all our seniors can do is listen to the information that is being provided to them. And the opponents of reform have been all too happy to oblige. Do most of our 65 plus citizens believe that Congress and the President want to create death panels and euthanize people when we don’t want to pay for their care any longer? I doubt it. But when this is all they are hearing, they are highly likely to think that while it may not be death panels, there may very likely be things in the legislation that are not in their best interest.
If you think avoidance of the seniors is a political calculation, you would be wrong. The senior voting block is deeply significant and getting larger every day. They register and they vote!

This shows how much work is needed by Obama and the House and Senate. They must address these two issues if they want to pass a great Health Care Reform Bill. And at this point I don't find the need for it to be bi-partisan. It seems that the GOP doesn't want to reform health care at all. They are just giving lip service to what they see the nation wants.

The question is: Why don't we have Single Payer?

2009-08-12T08:41:00.006-05:00

If Insurance Companies can do this, why are we allowing them to exist? Not to mention the billions of dollars they make from us.

From the Washington Post:

HHS: Insurance Companies Encourage Employees to "Revoke Sick People's Health Coverage"

By David S. Hilzenrath

You might have known that insurers can deny health coverage based on preexisting medical conditions, but here’s something else to worry about: They can take away the coverage you thought you had when actually need it, the government says.

The Department of Health and Human Services put a spotlight on that practice Tuesday in its continuing campaign to build support for an overhaul of health insurance.
“When a person is diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer, some insurance companies review his/her initial health status questionnaire,” the HHS said in a posting at HealthReform.Gov. In most states, insurance companies can retroactively cancel individuals' policies if any condition was not disclosed when the policy was obtained, "even if the medical condition is unrelated, and even if the person was not aware of the condition at the time.”

“Coverage can also be revoked for all members of a family, even if only one family member failed to disclose a medical condition,” HHS said.

The department cited recent research by the staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which found that three large insurers rescinded almost 20,000 policies over five years, saving $300 million in medical claims.

At least one insurer included such savings in an employee performance evaluation.

“Simply put, these insurance company employees are encouraged to revoke sick people’s health coverage," HHS said. more at the link

It's time to educate yourselves instead of believing what you hear or read. Research!

China's doing it, why can't we????

2009-08-10T19:26:00.003-05:00

China is overtaking our country in so many ways. Here's one more!

From the NY Times:

BEIJING — China announced that it intended to spend $123 billion by 2011 to establish universal health care for the country's 1.3 billion people.

The plan was passed Wednesday at a session of the State Council, the Chinese cabinet. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao presided.

Xinhua, the state news agency, said the authorities would "take measures within three years to provide basic medical security to all Chinese in urban and rural areas, improve the quality of medical services and make medical services more accessible and affordable for ordinary people."

Providing universal health care is seen by some economists as a way to stimulate domestic spending during the current economic downturn. The Chinese have a high savings rate, and one of the reasons usually cited is their concern about possible medical expenses.

Bai Zhongen, chairman of the economics department at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing, said that establishing universal health care with government-financed insurance would increase general consumer spending. He said the school did a survey in 2007 about the effect of rural health insurance on consumer behavior and "found that in government-sponsored health insurance areas, people are spending more."

The government already gives many people a small subsidy to help pay for health care, but more government financing for individual health care would strengthen the economy, Bai said.

Xinhua reported that the plan approved Wednesday would aim to provide some form of medical insurance for 90 percent of the population by 2011. Each person covered by the system would receive an annual subsidy of 120 yuan, or more than $17, starting in 2010. Medicine would also be covered by the insurance, and the government would begin a system of producing and distributing necessary drugs this year.

The plan also aims to improve health centers in rural and remote areas as well as equalize health services between urban and rural areas, Xinhua reported. Furthermore, the government would begin this year to reform the operations of public hospitals.

"Growing public criticism of soaring medical fees, a lack of access to affordable medical services, poor doctor-patient relationship and low medical insurance coverage compelled the government to launch the new round of reforms," Xinhua reported.

If they can do it with Billinons of people, we can do it with Millions of people, and we should be able to do it better.

I'd like some comments on this one on why we are now lagging on this.

The Danger of the Health Care Protesterss

2009-08-09T20:34:00.004-05:00

Rachel Maddow had Frank Schaeffer on her show to talk about these protesters and the people behind them.

Watch:

Rick Scott, the man behind the Town Hall Teabaggers

2009-08-07T06:12:00.004-05:00

Rick Sanchez of CNN takes on Rick Scott.

Watch it:

Rick Scott, from the Nation:

A Texas lawyer who shared a business partner with George W. Bush, Scott started his health company, Columbia Hospital Corporation, in 1987. Its growth was meteoric, expanding from just a few hospitals to more than 1,000 facilities in thirty-eight states and three other countries in 1997. As his firm gobbled up chains, like the Frist family's Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), it became the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country. By 1994, Columbia/HCA was one of the forty largest corporations in America, and Scott had acquired a reputation as the Gordon Gecko of the healthcare world. "Whose patients are you stealing?" he would ask employees at his newly acquired hospitals.

He promised to put nonprofit hospitals--which he insisted on referring to as "nontaxpaying" hospitals--out of business and touted his company's single-minded pursuit of profit as a model for the nation's entire healthcare system. "What's happening in Washington is not healthcare reform," he told the New York Times in 1994. "Healthcare reform is happening in the marketplace."

The press portrayed Scott as a guru to be admired and feared, "a private capitalist dictator," in the words of one Princeton health economist. "Probably the lowest body fat of anybody I've been in business with," his partner told the Times.

"Other hospitals were intimidated," recalls John Schilling, who worked for Columbia/HCA in the 1990s. Scott was "like the bully that would come into town and if you didn't sell to him or partner with him, he would open up shop across the street from you and put you out of business."

Not long after joining the company in 1993 as the supervisor of reimbursement for the Fort Myers, Florida, office, Schilling noticed things weren't quite kosher. "They were looking for ways to maximize reimbursement...which ultimately would improve the bottom line."

One way they did this was to fudge the costs on their Medicare expense reports. They were "basically keeping two sets of books," says Schilling. The company would maintain an internal expense report, what it called a "reserve" report, which accurately tallied its expenses. "And then they would have a second report, which...they would file with the government, which was more aggressive." That report would "include inflated costs and expenses they knew weren't allowable or reimbursable. The one they filed with government might claim $5 million and the reserve would claim $4.5." Columbia/HCA would pocket the difference.

It wasn't just happening in Florida, and it wasn't just fraudulent Medicare expense reports. Around the country, dozens of whistle-blowers like Schilling stepped forward to file lawsuits under the False Claims Act, charging the company with sundry forms of chicanery: kickbacks to doctors in exchange for referrals, illegal deals with homecare agencies and filing false data about the use of hospital space.

By 1997 the FBI was investigating Columbia/HCA. Days after agents raided company facilities armed with search warrants, Scott was forced to resign. In 2000 the company pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to pay the government $840 million. Other civil settlements would follow, ultimately totaling a staggering $1.7 billion, making it the largest fraud case in American history.

(Scott was never criminally charged and continues to deny wrongdoing. His spokesperson did not respond to repeated interview requests.)

And this is the man behind the organization to disrupt these Town Hall meetings. What surprises me are all the people falling all over themselves to come to these town hall meetings from other areas to disrupt them. Why? What is the real reason?

For Mr. Scott, it's to protect his Business which is walk-in Health Clinics, most of which are in Wal Marts. For the people he's recruiting? With a true bill from Congress not even out yet, people like Scott are scaring these simple people with all kinds of misinformation. And these simple people, deep down, don't trust a Black President. That's the whole thing right there. They want to believe that this president will do them wrong. What a sad world we live in!

Rachel Maddow Exposes Fake Protesters at Town Hall Meetings

2009-08-06T18:06:00.002-05:00

Rachel, as usual, does a great job exposing who is really behind these Fake Town Hall meeting protesters.

The rich want to remain rich and will do anything to stay that way. Open yours eye people and see what is really going on. These people don't want you to have good, affordable health care!

Denied Health Care by Insurance Companies?

2009-08-06T17:41:00.003-05:00

Watch this and tell me if there is any morality left in the United States of America:

How do they sleep at night? It's easy when you are filled with greed and have no soul!

But answer me this, why do people keep voting against their best interest and how can they believe that these corporations, be it health care or financials or telecoms, will treat them fairly?

Please people, open your eyes, get answers, seek information so that you are not fooled by those who want to scam you. You are easy prey to them.

I was on Humana Advantage and dropped it

2009-08-03T17:12:00.005-05:00

My Insurance kept going up every year. But they are making money hand over fist with the Medicare Advantage programs because the Government subsidies it but you still have to pay your share that goes up every year.

Humana Second Quarter profit jumps 34% as premiums rise

Health insurer Humana Inc. said Monday its second-quarter profit rose 34 percent on the strength its robust government business, led by Medicare Advantage offerings, easily offsetting a sluggish commercial segment hamstrung by the recession.
The results for the three months ended June 30 beat Wall Street estimates. The Louisville, Ky.-based company stuck with its previous projection of a full-year profit between $6.10 and $6.20 per share, while analysts expect $6.12 per share.

Its shares rose 91 cents, or 2.8 percent, to close at $33.76.

Humana posted net income of $281.8 million, or $1.67 per share, for the quarter, compared with earnings of $209.9 million, or $1.24 per share, a year ago.

Revenue jumped 8 percent to just under $7.9 billion from $7.35 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected profit of $1.64 per share on $7.77 billion in revenue.

"Our second quarter results confirm our 2009 financial performance is on track despite pressures from the overall economy," Humana President and CEO Michael B. McCallister said in a statement. "We're making progress reducing costs and investing in improved health outcomes for our members while we closely monitor events in Washington."

Humana's pretax income from its vast government segment surged by 62 percent to $404.7 million in the second quarter. The company attributed the upswing to lower claim expenses in its Medicare drug plans, a 13 percent increase in average Medicare Advantage membership and the introduction of member premiums for most of the company's Medicare Advantage products.

Medicare Advantage plans are government-sponsored, privately run programs for seniors that offer comprehensive health coverage.
The company said its Medicare Advantage membership grew to nearly 1.5 million members as of June 30, up 12 percent from a year ago and a 4 percent increase since the end of 2008. The year-over-year increase included 54,200 members added through acquisitions completed during the second half of 2008.
Medicare Advantage premiums of $4.15 billion rose 19 percent in the quarter versus a year ago.

Wait til these people that have Humana have to use this insurance. The next year their insurance rate will go up and they will be turned down on needed tests and procedures.

Letters to the President

2009-08-03T16:08:00.003-05:00

Here's a video that describes the amount of mail the White House gets. A lot of it about Health Care Reform and the problems people have been having with Insurance Companies.

Pres. Obama reads 10 letters a day about these problems. The video is about how they are chosen.

What To Do About The Enemy Within-- Conservatives Wrecking Progressive Initiatives In Congress

2009-07-30T11:24:00.002-05:00

Of the 51 Blue Dogs, only 19 represent districts that Obama won in 2008. Most of those 19 are not among the really outright reactionary neo-Confederates and Republican-oriented, anti-family Blue Dogs making all the trouble, your Mike Rosses, Baron Hills and Heath Shulers. Most but not all. Below is a list of all the Blue Dogs, starting with their 4 right-wing leaders, that shows which presidential candidate won each of their districts in 2008:

• Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)- McCain 53%
• Rep. Baron Hill (IN)- McCain 50%
• Rep. Charlie Melancon (LA)- McCain 61%
• Rep. Heath Shuler (NC)- McCain 52%

• Rep. Jason Altmire (PA)- McCain 55%
• Rep. Mike Arcuri (NY)- Obama 51%
• Rep. Joe Baca (CA)- Obama 68%
• Rep. John Barrow (GA)- Obama 54%
• Rep. Marion Berry (AR)- McCain 59%
• Rep. Sanford Bishop (GA)- Obama 54%
• Rep. Dan Boren (OK)- McCain 66%
• Rep. Leonard Boswell (IA)- Obama 54%
• Rep. Allen Boyd (FL)- McCain 54%
• Rep. Bobby Bright (AL)- McCain 63%
• Rep. Dennis Cardoza (CA)- Obama 59%
• Rep. Chris Carney (PA)- McCain 54%
• Rep. Ben Chandler (KY)- McCain 55%
• Rep. Travis Childers (MS)- McCain 62%
• Rep. Jim Cooper (TN)- Obama 56%
• Rep. Jim Costa (CA)- Obama 60%
• Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX)- Obama 56%
• Rep. Lincoln Davis (TN)- McCain 64%
• Rep. Joe Donnelly (IN)- Obama 54%
• Rep. Brad Ellsworth (IN)- McCain 51%
• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (AZ)- McCain 52%
• Rep. Bart Gordon (TN)- McCain 62%
• Rep. Parker Griffith (AL)- McCain 61%
• Rep. Jane Harman (CA)- Obama 64%
• Rep. Tim Holden (PA)- McCain 51%
• Rep. Frank Kratovil, Jr. (MD)- McCain 58%
• Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC)- McCain 52%
• Rep. Jim Marshall (GA)- McCain 56%
• Rep. Jim Matheson (UT)- McCain 57%
• Rep. Mike Michaud (ME)- Obama 55%
• Rep. Walt Minnick (ID)- McCain 62%
• Rep. Harry Mitchell (AZ)- McCain 52%
• Rep. Dennis Moore (KS)- Obama 51%
• Rep. Patrick Murphy (PA)- Obama 54%
• Rep. Glenn Nye (VA)- Obama 51%
• Rep. Collin Peterson (MN)- McCain 50%
• Rep. Earl Pomeroy (ND)- McCain 53%
• Rep. Mike Ross (AR)- McCain 58%
• Rep. John Salazar (CO)- McCain 50%
• Rep. Loretta Sanchez (CA)- Obama 60%
• Rep. Adam Schiff (CA)- Obama 68%
• Rep. David Scott (GA)- Obama 71%
• Rep. Zack Space (OH)- McCain 52%
• Rep. John Tanner (TN)- McCain 56%
• Rep. Gene Taylor (MS)- McCain 68%
• Rep. Mike Thompson (CA)- Obama 66%
• Rep. Charles Wilson (OH)- McCain 50%

This is just a piece of the story from downwithtyranny. The story is not that old but that blog is quick to load new posts so you might have to scroll a bit to find the title (same as this post). Really makes you wonder how BlueDogs from districts that voted heavily for Obama would not be on board with a strong public option bill. Hint: Follow the money.

From the Gavel - Speaker of the House - Fact Check

2009-07-29T21:23:00.001-05:00

Health Insurance Reform Daily Mythbuster: Impact on Seniors

July 29th, 2009 by Karina

Myth: “Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.” – Betsy McCaughey, former Republican lieutenant governor of New York

Fact: The provision extends Medicare coverage to cover the cost of patients voluntarily speaking with their doctors about their values and preferences regarding end-of-life care—empowering older Americans on this critical issue. These are deeply personal decisions that take thoughtful consideration, and it is only appropriate that doctors be compensated for their time.

Independent analysis by Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com judged the comment a “Pants on Fire” “outright distortion”, writing:

McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would “tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner” is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn’t just wrong, she’s spreading a ridiculous falsehood.

Doctors trying to Bilk Medicare

2009-07-29T18:06:00.006-05:00

Dozens arrested in health care fraud scheme

Doctors among those accused in scam to bilk Medicare through false claims

MIAMI - Federal authorities arrested 32 people, including doctors, in a major health care fraud bust Wednesday in New York, Louisiana, Boston and Houston, targeting scams such as "arthritis kits" — expensive braces that many patients never used.
It's the third major sweep since Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced in May they were adding millions of dollars and dozens of agents to combat a problem that costs the U.S. billions each year.
Using about a dozen agents in targeted cities, including Miami, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, has recovered $371 million in false Medicare claims and charged 145 people across the country in just two months. Medicare is the federal health care program for the elderly. More at link.

How long has this been happening and who is the watch dog for this program?

The first task force started in 2007 in Miami, a city authorities say alone is responsible for more than $3 billion a year in Medicare fraud. Clinic owners there would bill Medicare dozens of times for the same wheelchair, while never giving the medical equipment to patients.

Here's an article from 2008. The problem was the same then but nothing was done.

Congress tight with Medicare anti-fraud funds

For years, Medicare has begged Congress to help stop the loss of billions of dollars to healthcare scams from Miami to Los Angeles.
Congress' blunt response: Forgetaboutit.
Since 2006, Medicare administrators have asked Congress for $300 million to fight fraud, but Congress has refused to give them any money.

Why? Distrust of the agency that runs the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. Political indifference to the Medicare fraud crisis itself. Plus, influential lobbyists and campaign donors who dislike government meddling in the huge healthcare industry.
All have undermined any attempts to cure what ails Medicare -- a 43-year-old program threatened by not only runaway costs but also unbridled fraud, as a Miami Herald series documented last week. It exposed rampant corruption in two regional healthcare fields -- medical equipment suppliers and HIV-infusion clinics -- which fuels South Florida's reputation as the nation's capital of Medicare fraud.

The fraud has to be addressed in Health Care Reform. How much of the increases in Medicare are do to fraud? Double and triple billing! And I blame both parties for this. They dropped the ball here!

Paul Krugman ...

2009-07-29T17:47:00.003-05:00

"We don’t have a Medicare problem — we have a health care problem."

Medicare versus insurers

I notice from comments that a fair number of readers think that Medicare has had runaway costs. What you need to ask is, runaway compared to what?

Here’s the raw fact, from the National Health Expenditure data: since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.

Of course rates go up when expenses increase. The idea is to cut expenses and eliminate the cheats which are the providers who are double billing and charging more for test and proceedures.

I'm on Medicare and my rate has gone up each year since I've had it. The next to years my Social Security will remain the same, no cost of living increase but my monthly will be lower because Medicare will go up. Which means Medigap insurance which covers "some" of the 20% that medicare doesn't pay will also go up.

If Health Care is fixed, it will also help Medicare.

Step it up, Obama!

2009-07-29T15:51:00.003-05:00

Senator Durbin asks Obama to get involved while Congress is in recess.

"I say this as a member of Congress who's been an observer: The president is in the driver's seat in August," Durbin told reporters Wednesday. "Congress is gone and scattered to the winds with personal family and constituent service. And the White House is still there, generating a message and activity. So I think the president will have a chance to tell the American people a little bit more about why this process is so important."

Progressive Obama supporters are beginning to worry that a public health care option is doomed. Democratic senators have begun voicing skepticism about the direction the debate is going.
But some liberal Democrats, like Senators John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, expressed reservations about concessions being made by Democrats to keep a few Republicans on board.

Mr. Rockefeller said he was unhappy that the legislation would end the Children's Health Insurance Program and could reduce the scope of benefits for 11 million children in the program.

Asked if he would support the bill, Mr. Rockefeller shot back a somber, stony look. "Can't you see the joy on my face?" he asked.

The president had wanted legislation before recess, but negotiations in the Senate have made it unlikely. And in the House, conservative Blue Dogs made a deal with leadership that there will not be a vote until after the break.

From the NY Times:

Mr. Rockefeller said he was unhappy that the legislation would end the Children’s Health Insurance Program and could reduce the scope of benefits for 11 million children in the program.
Asked if he would support the bill, Mr. Rockefeller shot back a somber, stony look. “Can’t you see the joy on my face?” he asked.

snip

Democrats in Congress plan to finance about half the cost of the legislation by squeezing savings from Medicare. The White House says benefits will not be cut and beneficiaries will not be hurt.
“Nobody is talking about cutting Medicare benefits,” Mr. Obama said.
But Representative G. K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, said he heard many expressions of concern from constituents when he answered telephone calls to his office on Tuesday.
“The longer we wait to vote,” Mr. Butterfield said, “the more opportunity our opponents have to put out false messages. Seniors fear they will lose Medicare. They worry they will have to discuss plans for end-of-life care every five years.”
A provision of the House bill would provide Medicare coverage for the work of doctors who advise patients on life-sustaining treatment and “end-of-life services,” including hospice care.
Conservative groups have seized on this provision as evidence that the bill could encourage the rationing of health care. The Family Research Council, for example, said the bill would “limit end-of-life care.”
The House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, said, “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”
Representative Robert E. Andrews, Democrat of New Jersey, said, “I have met seniors who think their Medicare will be taken away, which is false.”

So the Republicans, like the Iraq war, are trying to scare people into voting against theor best interest again. Why do people still believe these Republicans after all that has happened in the past 8 years. Everything they put in place or took away, like regulations for our banks and financial, have crashed. And yet these people still believe these idiots!

Blue Dogs were able to Water Down House Health Care Bill

2009-07-29T15:37:00.003-05:00

From Jeff Muskus at Huffungton Post:

Conservative Blue Dog Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are celebrating their success in delaying a full floor vote on health care legislation past the August recess and in weakening two key provisions during their negotiations with committee Chairman Henry Waxman.
"We have successfully pushed a floor vote to September," Mike Ross (D-Ark.) told reporters Wednesday afternoon. "The American people want us to slow down, and that's what we're doing here."

The Blue Dogs wrestled major concessions out of Waxman (D-Calif.), particularly related to a public health care option and employer mandates. The committee's current version of the public option now more closely resembles that of the health committee in the Senate, Ross proudly announced.

For instance, rather than linking the public option to the rates enjoyed by Medicare, the new language would require a separate agreement with significantly higher charges, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius would also have to sign off on any deal between the public option and service providers, while the plan would lack Medicare's bargaining power.

"The public option must go out and negotiate with providers, just like private health insurance companies do," Ross said. "It's strictly optional. It won't be mandated on anyone. It will not be based on Medicare rates."

Close to 86 percent of small businesses -- those with an annual payroll of $500,000 or less -- will be exempt from the mandate to provide employees with health insurance, according to the terms of the compromise. Those with an annual payroll between $500,000 and $750,000 must provide graduated partial assistance.

"That's as close as you can get to totally removing the mandate without removing it," Ross said. "Quite frankly, once you get up to three-quarter million a year in annual payroll, as a former small business owner myself, most of them are already providing health insurance, and if they're not, they should."

Under the original draft legislation, Ross said, barely one-fifth the number of businesses would have been exempted.
The Blue Dog negotiators -- Ross, Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), Baron Hill (D-Ind.) and Zack Space (D-Ohio) -- account for a majority of the seven swing Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and their approval marks a big step toward passing the bill out of committee and onto the floor, where it will be reconciled with the two other health reform bills from the Ways and Means and Education and Labor committees.

Ross said he and the other committee Blue Dogs are determined to keep the cost of the final bill under $1 trillion over 10 years. He stumbled a bit, however, on the question of how many Americans he expects a weaker bill to cover.
"As many as when we went into these -- our objective has always been to make health insurance affordable for as many people as we can in this country," he said, but estimated another 10 steps between the current bill and the one that will reach President Obama's desk. "There's going to be a lot of changes between now and then." more at link.

Lets hope there will be alot of changes for the better because we can't afford not to have a good bill with a good Public Option. I am hoping more people will demand that of their Senators and Reps. If not, we are doomed to a bad bill like Medicare part D.

Hope for Health Reform? Push Single-Payer Now

2009-07-27T10:51:00.001-05:00

posted by JOHN NICHOLS on 07/26/2009 @ 9:11pm

The Nation

It is unsettling to listen as President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi talk up a health-care reform "plan" that has yet to take shape in any realistic form.

The vagueness on the part of the president and the speaker is, of course, intentional.

Obama and Pelosi are still pushing the notion that they can get some version of their public-private stew cooked up before the year is done -- although not, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, before the president and the Congress take the extended summer vacations that will kill whatever sense of official urgency might have existed.
Reid has taken some hits for suggesting that it would be a good idea to try and get health-care reform right, rather than just rush through a plan that fails to cover all Americans or control costs.

But that requires details. And neither Obama nor Pelosi is dealing in details right now because that's where the devil resides.
Here is the truth they tend to avoid mentioning: A robust public plan, with the quality and flexibility that is required to make it appealing to all Americans, would wipe out its insurance-industry competitors in short order. Why would anyone opt for more of the profiteering, restrictions and actual denials of needed treatment -- especially for people with pre-existing conditions -- that the insurance industry uses to make money rather than provide Americans with the medical care they require? And why would any employer choose to subsidize the stock value of health-care conglomerates when it is possible to opt for the better care and controlled costs of a public plan?

Unfortunately, the creation of a robust public plan, one that can compete on the basis of quality and affordability, will require a significant federal expenditure in the form of start-up money as well as regulatory protection for the program. That's where the devil comes in.

The powerful insurance and private health-care lobbies, which fear honest competition as the vampire does the stake, are going to do everything in their power to accomplish three things:

...continued here

2 Great Articles on Health Care and Blue Dogs

2009-07-27T07:39:00.004-05:00

The first is from one of my favorite economists, Paul Krugman of the NY Times. He titles this article An Incoherent Truth....

Right now the fate of health care reform seems to rest in the hands of relatively conservative Democrats — mainly members of the Blue Dog Coalition, created in 1995. And you might be tempted to say that President Obama needs to give those Democrats what they want.

But he can’t — because the Blue Dogs aren’t making sense.

To grasp the problem, you need to understand the outline of the proposed reform (all of the Democratic plans on the table agree on the essentials.)

Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition.

Read more at the link

And the second article is by Harold Meyerson of the Washngton Post who titles his article
The Can't-Do Blue Dogs:

Watching the centrist Democrats in Congress create more and more reasons why health care can't be fixed, I've been struck by a disquieting thought: Suppose our collective lack of response to Hurricane Katrina wasn't exceptional but, rather, the new normal in America. Suppose we can no longer address the major challenges confronting the nation. Suppose America is now the world's leading can't-do country.

Every other nation with an advanced economy long ago secured universal health care for its citizens -- an achievement that the United States alone finds beyond the capacities of mortal man. It wasn't ever thus. Time was when Democratic Congresses enacted Social Security and Medicare over the opposition of powerful interests and Republican ideologues. In fact, our government used to actually pave roads, build bridges and allow for secure retirements by levying taxes on those who could afford to pay them.

To today's centrist Democrats, this has become a distant memory, a history lesson they cannot grasp. The notion that actual individuals might have to pay to secure the national interest appalls them. In the House, the Blue Dogs doggedly oppose proposals to fund universal coverage by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of the nation's households. Their deference to wealth -- whether the consequence of our system of funding elections or a byproduct of the Internet generation's experience of free access to information and entertainment -- is not to be trifled with.

Meyerson goes even further in his article to address Manufacturing:

But the big picture here, of which the resistance to reforming health care is just one element, is our growing inability to meet our national challenges. Almost all of the major nations with which we trade, for instance, have quasi-mercantilist policies that lead them to champion their own higher-wage growth industries, often in manufacturing. In America alone are such policies considered anathema. In consequence, as the Alliance for American Manufacturing reports in a new book, we shuttered 40,000 factories from 2001 through 2007 -- the years, ostensibly of prosperity, between the past two downturns. The diminution of manufacturing, which employs just 11 percent of the U.S. workforce, may please Wall Street, which looks with disfavor on decent-wage domestic production, and Wal-Mart, which tripled its purchases from China (from $9 billion to $27 billion annually) during roughly the same years those American factories closed, but it poses a clear threat to the nation's economic, and even military, power.

Meyerson brings up the major problem in the United States that is the crux of our economic problems and that is our loss of manufacturing. Most economists say we have been running our country on borrowed money because of this shrinking manufacturing base since the Reagan years. We are now buying things we used to manufacture from other countries that can produce it for less money than we can and one of the main reasons is that our health care is so expensive.

Salaries have stayed stagnant because employers are having to pay more to provide health insurance and even they have passed alot of the expense on to the employee. The problems are deep and the Blue Dogs seem to want to sit back and collect the lobbyist funds and everyone else be damned.

Watch the New Ad for a Public Option by Act Blue

2009-07-26T21:09:00.003-05:00

If you're interested in putting your name--literally--on this ad, please go to WeWantThePublicOption.com and add your name to the list. The people need all the voices we can get on the public option and I applaud BoldProgressives for making this great ad and allowing citizens to get involved.

The Great Preventer

2009-07-26T20:30:00.001-05:00

By NOURIEL ROUBINI
Published: July 25, 2009

LAST week Ben Bernanke appeared before Congress, setting off a discussion over whether the president should reappoint him as chairman of the Federal Reserve when his term ends next January. Mr. Bernanke deserves to be reappointed. Both the conventional and unconventional decisions made by this scholar of the Great Depression prevented the Great Recession of 2008-2009 from turning into the Great Depression 2.0.

Mr. Bernanke understands that in the Great Depression, the collapse of the money supply and the lack of monetary stimulus during contractions worsened the country’s economic free fall. This lesson has paid off. Mr. Bernanke’s decision to keep interest rates low and encourage lending has, for now, averted the L-shaped near depression that seemed highly likely after the financial collapse last fall.

To be sure, an endorsement of Mr. Bernanke’s reappointment comes with many caveats. Mr. Bernanke, a Fed governor in the early part of this decade, supported flawed policies when Alan Greenspan pushed the federal funds rate (the policy rate set by the Fed as its main tool of monetary policy) too low for too long and failed to monitor mortgage lending properly, thus creating the housing and credit and mortgage bubbles.

He and the Fed made three major mistakes when the subprime mortgage crisis began. First, he kept arguing that the housing recession would bottom out soon (it has not bottomed out even three years later). Second, he argued that the subprime problem was a contained problem when in reality it was a symptom of the biggest leverage and credit bubble in American history. Third, he argued that the collapse in the housing market would not lead to a recession, even though about one-third of jobs created in the latest economic recovery were directly or indirectly related to housing. Mr. Bernanke’s analysis was mistaken in several other important ways. He argued that monetary policy should not be used to control asset bubbles. He attributed the large United States current account deficits to a savings glut in China and emerging markets, understating the role that excessive fiscal deficits and debt accumulation by American households and the financial system played.

Still, when a liquidity and credit crunch emerged in the summer of 2007, Mr. Bernanke engineered a U-turn in Fed policy that prevented the crisis from turning into a near depression. He did this largely with actions and programs that were not in the traditional toolbox of monetary policy. The federal funds rate was effectively pushed down to zero to reduce borrowing costs and prevent the collapse of consumer demand and capital spending by business. New programs encouraged skittish institutions to resume lending. For the first time since the Great Depression, the Fed’s role as lender of last resort was extended to investment banks.

Mr. Bernanke also introduced a wide range of other programs, like those to maintain the functioning of the commercial paper market (which makes short-term loans to companies so they can cover operating expenses like payrolls). The Fed was involved directly in the rescue of financial institutions like Bear Stearns and American International Group. It lent money to foreign central banks to ease a global shortage of dollars. The Fed even committed to purchasing up to $1.7 trillion of Treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities and agency debt to reduce market rates. These are all radical actions that had almost never been undertaken before.

Some of these moves have raised important questions: Did the Fed help bail out institutions that should have been allowed to fail? Did it cause moral hazard as reckless lenders and investors were effectively bailed out? How and when will the Fed mop up the excess liquidity that its actions have created? Will these actions eventually cause inflation and a sharp fall of the value of the dollar? Has the Fed lost its independence as it has accommodated the fiscal needs of the government by bailing out banks and printing money to cover large fiscal deficits?

Still, the basic point remains: The Fed’s creative and aggressive actions have significantly reduced the risks of a near depression. For this reason alone Mr. Bernanke deserves to be reappointed so that he can manage the Fed’s exit from its most radical economic intervention since its creation in 1913.

Nouriel Roubini is a professor of economics at the New York University Stern School of Business and the chairman of an economic consulting firm.

Hey Blue Dogs: It's Time For The Rich To Pay Back Those Tax Loans

2009-07-26T13:15:00.002-05:00

By: masaccio Sunday July 26, 2009 10:30 am

The whiny rich and their toadies, especially the Blue Dogs, don’t want a tax increase. I say it’s time for them to pay back the enormous loans they have gotten over the last 30 years. Everyone knows that tax cuts in times of deficits are just loans. Eventually they have to be paid back. We can do it with tax hikes, or by running surpluses, or by cutting expenditures, but they have to be paid. Otherwise, we run up our interest expense, and crowd out private borrowers. For years, the US has been running huge deficits (except for a year under Clinton), all the while cutting taxes for the rich.

The rationale for those tax cuts was that rich people would use that money for investment in productive enterprise, directing it as only they with all their personal brilliance and their genius advisors can do. Then there would be all these new jobs in these new industries, ordinary people would have income and there would be capital gains and more taxes paid, so the tax cuts would pay for themselves. This absurd theory had the obvious outcome: staggering increases in the national debt.

...Read the rest at FDL and don't skip the links! Great stuff

Illinois Political News, Gov. Quinn

2009-07-26T11:41:00.005-05:00

From David Ormsby at Huffington Post:

Gov. Pat Quinn's office said the widely reported 86 percent funding level for state human services in the new Illinois budget signed by Quinn is purely "speculative."
Elizabeth Austin, the communications director at the Governor's Office of Management and Budget, said Friday the 86% figure -- which is currently swirling and bobbing in the media -- is only speculative because in addition to the $2.3 billion the legislature committed to human services, there is $1.2 billion available to the Quinn to spend at his "discretion."

Moreover, Austin noted that agency directors were still preparing budget plans for submission to the governor's office, so the funding level is unknown.

Austin refused to speculate on whether any of the $1.2 billion may be allocated to human services, only to repeat that the governor could spend that dough at his "discretion."

That emphasis on "discretion" is enough of a signal, however, to human service lobbyists: start your engines boys and girls.

Additionally, Austin was unable to clarify whether and what portion the $1.1 billion in budget reserves -- which House Democrat budget documents refer to as "mandated" reserves until new revenue materializes this year (cue the flying pigs) -- are included in the estimated 86% human services funding level, except to reiterate that agency budget plans were in formation.

What Austin could confirm, however, is that the state -- with a $3.9 billion bill backlog from last year -- is now on six-month bill payment cycle. Submit a bill on July 17, 2009; expect payment on January 17, 2010. Ouch.

With those financial institutions formerly known as banks shrinking and shriveling credit lines, that six-month stretch will almost certainly drive many social service agencies into bankruptcy. Poof.

Of the new Illinois budget's plan to push $3 billion in money owed to state service-provider payments into next year, one state human services association estimated that of that amount, $1.5 billion would be money owed to human-services providers. Austin was unable to confirm that number.

Whatever the human services spending percentage may be, Quinn's real -- and thankless -- job is to cut the budget. A lot. More at link.

There are many people in Illinois sweating out this budget on Humane Services. I called my State Representative's office to give them my view and was told that I was on a long list of people concerned about this issue. I'm hoping for the best because many people will suffer if this issue isn't funded.

Ted Kennedy still pushing for Health Care Bill from his Sick bed

2009-07-26T07:49:00.003-05:00

Ted Kennedy's passion to pass a bill for health care for everyone is keeping him alive right now. He's working from his home in Cape Cod and directing his Aides by phone. But his influence is sorely missed on the Hill.

From the LA Tiimes:

As Congress wrestles with legislation to give Americans access to quality care, which the Democrat worked toward for 46 years, the senator is sidelined with brain cancer, but not out of the game.

Reporting from Washington -- Ted Kennedy wakes up mornings in his house on Cape Cod to a packet of news clippings put together by his wife. If there's a hearing going on in Washington, he watches on his computer.

Five hundred miles away, Congress is wrestling with historic legislation to give every American access to quality healthcare. It is the moment the Massachusetts Democrat has worked toward for 46 years. But instead of marshaling the crowning achievement of his political career, he is sidelined, battling brain cancer.

"He has lived for this day when America would finally extend this right to every citizen. There's no doubt if he could, he would be here in the thick of this," Kennedy's son Patrick, a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, said in a recent interview, sitting on a bench on the Capitol grounds with tears in his eyes.

But history's third-longest-serving senator isn't out of the game yet. Exerting what influence he can from his sickbed, he advises his aides in Washington over the phone. He has made himself the poster child of what he calls "my life's cause," and is using his illness in a final press for universal healthcare.

Kennedy, 77, seems determined not to miss this. He has outlasted medical expectations since doctors diagnosed a malignant tumor last spring, and is not above expending every last bit of his political capital to deliver the bill he will be most remembered for. Democratic leaders plan to bring him back to the Senate floor later this year in a wheelchair, or a bed if necessary, to cast his vote for healthcare reform.

"I have enjoyed the best medical care money (and a good insurance policy) can buy. . . . Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to," Kennedy wrote in an unusually personal essay published in this week's Newsweek, adding near the end of the article: "We're almost there."

snip

"One of the things Teddy has going for him is the remarkable caliber of staff. Arguably they may be one of the best, if not the best, staff on the Hill. The staff's professionalism and reputation and credibility also go a long way to helping fill the void," said Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader and an informal White House advisor on healthcare issues.

But Kennedy's aides, who have fiercely defended their boss' bill, have not been in a position to broker compromises and have caused tension at times, trying to carry on in Kennedy's stead while lacking his stature.

Few senators possess the types of friendships that have brought Republicans to the table or the gravitas that holds the party rank and file in line.

"He's the only Democrat who really has the sway with the unions, the trial lawyers, gays and lesbians, environmentalists, feminists," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a conservative Republican who has teamed with Kennedy on healthcare legislation for three decades. "We've linked arms on a lot of things for the good of the country. And I give him a lot of credit because it hasn't always been easy to link arms with me."

snip

Now an overhaul seems more possible than it has in years, and Kennedy's absence is keenly felt on both sides.

Life is strange. He has fought all of his political life for a good health care bill and just when it could very well happen, he is having health problems himself. And what he has fought for is the opportunity for everyone to have the good care he is getting. And he believes it is a right for all Americans, not just the privileged.

THE COST OF DOING NOTHING

2009-07-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

Rahm Emanuel meets with Blue Dogs

2009-07-24T13:48:00.005-05:00

Rham Emanuel had a meeting with the House Blue Dogs and Huffington Post is reporting that Rahm said there could be a vote next week.

"I can tell you what I know, which is that the speaker today announced to the caucus that their intention is to go next week, and she is working toward that goal," Emanuel said.

Emanuel also said he was pleased by Republicans' vows to obstruct the bill.

Emanuel shrugged off Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) comments Wednesday that health care is Obama's "Waterloo" and remarks Thursday by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) that Republicans are plotting the bill's demise on a "week by week" basis.

"At least they're honest about their motivation. Their view about health care is about defeating President Obama," he said. "Politically, I actually appreciate what they said."

I don't know how to take this view by Emanuel. I am hoping he is being facetious. I am still very leary of Emanuel.

Also in the article was a blurb about Waxman that maggiesboy already reported:

Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) announced that he may let the health care bill bypass his Energy and Commerce Committee, saying there is "no alternative" if Blue Dog Democrats don't accept a deal worked out Friday.
"I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans," Waxman told reporters.

Asked about Waxman's suggestion, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told the Huffington Post that he'd prefer at this point to go through the regular committee process.

I'd like to see the House bill on the floor and voted on before the recess so that the Senate would be forced to keep it as a priority after recess.

UPDATE: From Huffington Post:

Health care reform negotiations between conservative Democrats and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) collapsed Friday afternoon, a leading Blue Dog Democrat said.

"It pretty much fell apart this afternoon," Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) told reporters just off the House floor. Ross has been the lead Blue Dog negotiator in the committee.

Waxman met with Blue Dogs this afternoon and took a hard line, Ross said. The Blue Dogs thought they had agreement on an independent commission to reduce Medicare reimbursement rates and on using Senate HELP Committee language to create a public option that Americans could buy in to.

Waxman, said Ross, came into a meeting with Blue Dogs this afternoon and said both were off the table.

"That leaves the chairman with not enough votes to get the bill out of committee," said Ross.

Earlier Friday, Waxman suggested he was willing to go around the Blue Dogs in his committee if need be.

Ross had little hope of reaching an agreement any time soon. "It's my understanding that will be the last meeting we have. He's talking about a full meeting of the full Democratic caucus of Energy and Commerce," said Ross. "It's a Friday afternoon. We've got about an hour's worth of votes. I have no idea if it's actually going to happen or not."

A reporter asked Ross as he walked on to the House floor: "So there's no possibility of a deal now?"

"No," he said firmly.

Doesn't look good. Hope they can pull something off.

UPDATE II: From TPM:

Earlier today, Waxman lashed out at the conservative Democrats for trying to "eviscerate" house health care legislation, and threatened to bypass their concerns completely in order to get a timely floor vote on a healthy bill. That seems to have sent tempers flaring.

"It pretty much fell apart this afternoon," said key Blue Dog Mike Ross (D-AR), who called Waxman's rhetoric "not helpful," according to Congressional Quarterly.

"It's my understanding that will be the last meeting we have," Ross said.

Now the ball is in Waxman's court. Will he try to mark the bill up anyhow? Or will he freeze them out completely. Democratic leaders will host a caucus meeting on Monday to address all members' concerns about the bill--a sign, perhaps, that they aren't going to wait for this intra-panel tiff to be resolved. If that's the case, all eyes will return again to the Blue Dogs to see whether they'll revolt against the bill. Showdown!

Go Waxman!!!

Waxman: Blue Dogs Trying To “Eviscerate” Health Care

2009-07-24T11:36:00.001-05:00

By: Jane Hamsher Friday July 24, 2009 9:27 am

Waxman says Blue Dogs are trying to hand over control of Energy & Commerce to the Republicans, and is threatening to let the health care bill bypass the committee:

House Energy and Commerce chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) says his panel's Blue Dogs must relent, or he and leaders will move health care legislation directly to the floor, bypassing the committee altogether.

This morning, he told reporters that Blue Dogs are trying to "eviscerate" the landmark legislation. "I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans," Waxman said.

"I dont see what other alternative we have, because we're not going to let them empower Republicans on the committee."

All that claptrap about "fiscal responsibility" is bullshit --

...more (and it gets a lot better!)

Editorial Cartoon on CREW's Suit on WH Visitor Logs

2009-07-24T10:09:00.003-05:00

Click title to see cartoon. I can't believe he's not up front on this. I'm all for giving the benefit of the doubt but given recent events, I needs me some sunshine! Below is the CREW story

22 Jul 2009 // Washington, D.C. - Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is filing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security based on the refusal of the Secret Service to provide CREW with White House visitor records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). CREW is seeking records of visits by top health care executives in an effort to learn the extent to which these industry players may have influenced the administration’s health care policy. Simultaneously, CREW is requesting emergency relief in the form of a preliminary injunction compelling the Secret Service to process the request on an expedited basis, in view of the great public interest and debate on health care policy and the pressure on Congress to pass legislation before the August recess.

In response to CREW’s FOIA request, the Obama administration has taken the same position as the Bush administration that the records are presidential, not agency records, and that they are exempt from release because of the possibility in some instances they could reveal information protected by the presidential communications privilege. Although the White House suggested it was reviewing its policy on the release of visitor logs last month when CREW filed a similar complaint based on its request for records of visits by top coal company executives, it has to date refused to make even a discretionary release of any of the requested records. Every court to rule on the issue so far has concluded the visitor records are agency records that must be disclosed under the FOIA.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, “Right now, the White House and Congress are debating colossal changes to the American health care system and taxpayers have a right to know who is sitting at the table influencing decision-makers. Unfortunately, the administration is refusing to release the names, preferring backroom politicking to transparency.”

Read CREW's complaint and request for a preliminary injuction in the Related Documents section on the right. Click here to read the original FOIA request to the Secret Service.

Link to article

Blue Dogs raking in the Lobbyists Cash

2009-07-23T13:37:00.003-05:00

From Faiz Shakir at Thnik Progress:

The 52-member Blog Dog Coalition has been constantly attempting to weaken President Obama’s efforts to pass progressive health care, clean energy, and economic recovery legislation through Congress. According to a new report by the Center for Public Integrity, many of the industries that are opposing Obama’s agenda are now contributing heavily to the Blue Dogs:
So far this year, the political action committee attached to the fiscally conservative House Democratic voting bloc is on track to shatter all its fundraising records, raising more in the first six months of 2009 — more than $1.1 million — than it did in the entire 2003-04 fundraising cycle.

Nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s haul this year comes from the energy, financial services and health care industries, up from 45 percent in 2004, according to analysis of CQ MoneyLine data by the Center for Public Integrity.

And from Politico:

Whether the subject is health care reform, climate change or pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, almost everyone, it seems, suddenly wants to talk with the Blue Dogs.

And they’re willing to pay handsomely for the opportunity.

So far this year, the political action committee attached to the fiscally conservative House Democratic voting bloc is on track to shatter all its fundraising records, raising more in the first six months of 2009 — more than $1.1 million — than it did in the entire 2003-04 fundraising cycle.

Nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s haul this year comes from the energy, financial services and health care industries, up from 45 percent in 2004, according to analysis of CQ MoneyLine data by the Center for Public Integrity.

These contributions poured in as President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress have been making a major push to reform health care, develop a new energy policy and restructure oversight of the banking sector.

Clearly, these Dogs are having their day.

Clearly we have a fight ahead of us to discount these Blue Dogs and show people that they are in it for their money. Remember, House terms, unlike the Senate, are two years. The way to get these Blue Dogs in line is to run against them and get behind the Progressive candidates. And another way is to embarrass them in their own Districts and States.

Tally Ho Progressives! Keep on fighting!

Reid Confirms no Health Care bill til after Recess

2009-07-23T13:00:00.003-05:00

The decision was made to give them more time,' says majority leader

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official word on what had been expected for weeks, saying, "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."

Well that's that for the Senate! Will the House follow suite? This puts pressure on the President to keep up the momentum for the Public Option.

The process will be difficult since Finance, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is seeking a bipartisan deal while the health committee bill was passed by Democrats on a party-line vote.
Reid said the decision to delay a vote was made Wednesday night in the hopes of getting a final bill that can win at least 60 votes in the Senate.
Reid said he had listened to the requests from senior Republicans working with Baucus to allow more time for a compromise to emerge.
"The decision was made to give them more time and I don't think it's unreasonable," he said.
The news of the delay came just hours before the president's appearance at a health care forum in Ohio.

Recess time means the Senators will be in their home districts and States. Lets get to work and confront them in their own States! We, the people, have to keep up the momentum.

GOP pushing to delay Health Care Bill

2009-07-23T09:23:00.003-05:00

The AP has an article out this morning saying:

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor charged on Thursday that too much of the burden of bankrolling a new health care system would fall on small businesses at a time when job creation is virtually nonexistent.
At the same time, the Virginia Republican said he doubts that a version of the plan in the House can win passage before members of Congress leave for their August recess. "If they're going to get this passed next week, it's going to have to be a changed bill," he said.

Rep. Eric Cantor was on c-span this AM touting his and the GOP stance on this. Will it work? Will the Blue Dogs hold up the bill helping the GOP postpone the bill until after the August Recess?

The article goes on to quote David Axelrod:

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod reiterated President Barack Obama's plea for lawmakers to act now.

"The bottom line here is right now health care premiums have doubled over the last decade. Out-of-pocket costs up by a third," he said. "Health care costs are growing three times the rate of wages."

"It's an unsustainable path," Axelrod added, "and the government is being crunched by it, businesses are being crushed by it. We have to respond."

And the moderates (Blue Dogs) are holding up the works:

In the House, Democratic leaders struggled to win over rebellious moderates and conservative rank-and-file party members who are demanding changes to the bill. The dispute has forced Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to postpone work on the legislation for three straight days while he negotiates.

Waxman's committee is the last of three panels trying to finish the legislation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Wednesday she has the votes to pass a bill in the House, which is scheduled to break for its monthlong recess at the end of next week. However, the Speaker hasn't scheduled a vote.

So what is the solution? We need to get at least one Bill passed before the break. It would be good if it were the House bill.

FireDogLake is circulating a petition. Here's their email about it and a link to sign the petition:

Great news - in just one day, more than 17,000 people signed our petition to tell the House to not go on vacation until it passes health care reform. Thank you for your support!
Can we make it to 25,000 by tomorrow? Forward this email to your friends and ask them to sign our petition

.
Tomorrow we'll deliver your signature to the Representatives who'd rather go on vacation than pass health care reform - and we'll show you what happens afterward.

Thanks for your help,

We have to get moving on this or, as Obama said, we will lose the opportunity "The Stars are aligned".

What are your thoughts?

Obama Engages Deeper

2009-07-22T08:13:00.002-05:00

Hard to admit, but not all Blue Dog proposals are bad. This piece from Time has some good reference links like this one on an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission

Is Barack Obama finally channeling LBJ to save his health reform initiative? As we've noted before, the President until now has stayed away from the nitty-gritty of the negotiations on Capitol Hill, largely because he wants to avoid the mistakes that the Clintons made in 1993, when they tried to dictate to Congress precisely how to transform the health system. His role, as he saw it, was to make the case on the outside, with the public, to convince Americans that health reform is needed--and needed now.

Rest of article with reference links here

Health Insurance Lobby Spins Data

2009-07-22T07:13:00.004-05:00

Like we didn't know they would try this. The Health Insurance Industry are rubbing their hands together waiting for mandated health care.

From the Washington Post:

The industry that helped scuttle health reform 15 years ago with its "Harry and Louise" ads is back, voicing support for a central element of the Obama administration's plans: making sure everyone is covered.
That does not mean the industry is backing the administration. Indeed, the leader of the insurance lobby has sent lawmakers a message: Be careful what you change, because "77 percent of Americans are satisfied with their existing health insurance coverage."

Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), invoked the statistic to argue against the creation of a government-run insurance option. But the polls are not that simple, and her assertion reveals how the industry's effort to defend its turf has led it to cherry-pick the facts.

The poll Ignagni was citing actually undercuts her position: By 72 to 20 percent, Americans favor the creation of a public plan, the June survey by the New York Times and CBS News found. People also said that they thought government would do a better job than private insurers of holding down health-care costs and providing coverage.

In addition, data from a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last year, compiled at the request of The Washington Post, suggest that the people who like their health plans the most are the people who use them the least.

Those who described their health as "excellent" -- people who presumably had relatively little experience pursuing medical care or submitting claims -- were almost twice as likely as those in good, fair or poor health to rate their private health insurance as excellent.

The level of satisfaction expressed with private insurance was essentially the same as that with Medicare, the government program for the elderly and disabled.
snip
"A government-run plan would turn back the clock on efforts to improve the quality and safety of patient care," AHIP has argued. Such a plan "will ultimately limit choices and access," the big insurer WellPoint contends.

But systemic problems have persisted for 15 years, and it is not clear how much private insurers have done, or can do, to solve them.

"Insurers promise choice, they promise innovation, they promise a lot of things, but I think they've delivered very little," said Alan Sager, professor of health policy and management at Boston University. "I think net they give us very bad value for the 10 to 20 percent share of the health dollar they skim off the top."

Instead of choice, they offer "the illusion of choice," he said.

Illusion. That is how any big business sells it's product. Just watch the TV ads.

Health-care costs have continued to rise faster than personal incomes and economic growth. Even the industry agrees that much of the spending is wasted, exposing patients to unnecessary risk.

Insurers argue that a government plan could dominate the market, reducing consumers' options. But in the private market, options are limited by employers who restrict employees' choice of insurers and by insurers who restrict their choice of doctors.

Cigna, one of the nation's largest insurers, took away its own employees' alternatives in 2006 and left them with only high-deductible coverage.

"There were a lot of unhappy people," said Wendell Potter, who until last year was Cigna's head of corporate communications. For many people enrolled in such plans, "the deductibles are so high that they forgo care," he said.

Here is another Illusion. People are canceling appointments with their doctors because they can't afford it. But you don't hear about that. The argument you hear is that doctors liability insurance is too high. You don't hear about the people who can't afford quality care even with insurance. And why is their liability insurance too high? Because insurance companies make lots of money selling liability. How much of that insurance is really used? How often do doctors get sued? I'd like to see those numbers! And if a doctor makes a mistake, they should pay!

AHIP has produced a stack of glossy reports describing health insurers' efforts to improve care. In recent testimony, Ignagni said private health plans serving the elderly have been highly successful in reducing hospital admissions and readmissions for patients with diabetes and heart disease.
Yet one of the AHIP reports says that in an Aetna Pathways to Excellence hospital incentive program, "readmission rates did not improve significantly."

Opponents of a public option argue that it could put government bureaucrats between patients and doctors. Today, for people with commercial or employer-sponsored coverage, care is overseen by private bureaucracies. Where government bureaucracies answer to the body politic, the corporate versions answer to Wall Street.

The issue of whether a public plan would be more successful at bringing costs under control is harder to evaluate. As a prototype for government-run health care, Medicare has failed to control costs and makes little effort to restrict care.

Economists generally agree that if costs are to be brought under control, someone must say no to care that doctors propose and patients demand. So far, that role has fallen primarily to insurers.

"Private insurers have effectively engaged in rationing, so they're doing the dirty work for everybody else," said Jeff D. Emerson, a former health plan chief executive. "It's a thankless job . . . but somebody has to do it or health care will be even more expensive than it is now."

This writer started out so good but had to throw this little gem in. And it's the last paragraph of the article.

Private insurers might be better situated than the government to do the unpopular work of saying no, said Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, because they are less susceptible to political pressure.

Really Smart Facebook Campaign to Kick Some Blue Dogs

2009-07-21T17:34:00.002-05:00

By: Jane Hamsher Tuesday July 21, 2009 2:00 pm

Max Bernstein and James Boyce of dotPAC are running a campaign of facebook ads in the districts of the 7 Blue Dog obstructionists , asking people who are constituents to call or leave messages on their Facebook walls.

I asked the dotPAC folks how much it would cost to run these ads effectively, and they said $35 per day per representative.

As someone who looks constantly for effective ways to build pressure within the districts of people who can be awfully hard to target, this is really smart, microtargeted and cost-effective effort.

People around here know that I don't jump on campaigns lightly -- most of the traditional ways that liberals do advocacy are in need of serious re-examination because they just plain don't work. But I gave $100 myself to this one. I think it's a great idea and recommend it highly.

Get the links 'n stuff here

Elizabeth Warren on the Consumer Protection Agency

2009-07-21T16:11:00.001-05:00

The Consumer Financial Product Protection Agency would shield consumers against exotic mortgages and confusing credit card offers. As Warren describes it, creating a new agency would, in fact, simplify the current regulatory structure:

Rationing Health Care

2009-07-21T12:58:00.003-05:00

Think Progress links to this great article on Health Care Rationing. This is one of the big discussions going on today in our illustrious media. Here's the article by GoozNews on Health:

Rationing of Health Care -- Will It Be Just 15 Minutes of Fame?

by GoozNews ~ 20 Jul 2009 11:09am

One can only hope that Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer's article in the Sunday New York Times magazine will trigger a mature national discussion about rationing health care resources. When and how should we pay for wildly expensive medical technologies, needlessly complicated end-of-life care, heroic interventions in terminal diseases and the other drivers of ever rising health care costs?

It has already kicked off a healthy discussion on many blogs, including this excellent historical overview of the "R-word" from Bob Wachter on The Health Care Blog. I would be remiss if I also didn't remind readers that Henry Aaron and some of his colleagues at the Brookings Institution have been raising this issue publicly for many years, encapsulated in "Can We Say No?", which came out in 2005. It would have been nice if Singer had at least quoted some of the intellectual sources of his own work.

Since this blog has been a consistent voice for using comparative effectiveness research and applying cost-effectiveness analysis to medical technology as a way of properly rationing limited health care dollars, I will refrain from rethumping the tub. The reality is that rationing has always been with us in the U.S., as Singer points out in his article. We ration through price and through limiting access to care.

The question on the table now is whether it will continue that way. Or will rationing become rational by using the best medical science to ensure that limited resources are used to provide the greatest health for the greatest number. If we continue to ration through price, we will simply be allowing the growing split between rich and poor in the U.S., which is already reflected in the relative ill-health of the lower classes, to continue.

When I rail against price-driven mechanisms for lowering costs like high deductible insurance plans or taxing health benefits, it's because I believe greater reliance on rationing through price will create an environment where patients will increase their use of short-term economic considerations to decide what's best for their own health. Yet every study on that subject has shown that when faced with a price-driven choice, patients as often as not eliminate useful care that may not be cost-effective for the system as a whole. Indeed, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to make the wrong choice. So if health care reform legislation uses price mechanisms to control costs, the system will wind up with the worst of all possible worlds: even worse health outcomes than we already have, and more expensive health care down the road.

So, rationing? Yes. But rational rationing, not rationing borne of some ideological fascination with free market ideology inappropriately applied to health care. In the end, health care isn't a private good. It's a public good like public education, fighting fires, providing police protection or the common defense. And like any public good, relying on sovereign consumers wielding their own dollars to deliver the desired outcome will never work.

Here's another thing we have to watch for in these bills coming out of congress.

Pres. Jimmy Carter and his stance for Women

2009-07-21T12:16:00.004-05:00

Jimmy Carter is the first and so far the only President I've seen in person. At the time I saw him he was running for his 2nd term and was in the middle of an oil crisis and huge interest rates. But I liked him then and still do because I sensed the humanity in this man.

He announced recently that he was leaving his religion which is Southern Baptist and the reason he was leaving he spelled out in this op ed:

Losing my religion for equality

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.
In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

snip

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy. Read more at link.

I now respect him more than ever and his humanity shines through in this piece.

There is still a fight by women world wide for equality and the prejudice is still shown through many religions against women. It is time that women come into their own around the world!

Keep it in the "Family"

2009-07-21T11:32:00.002-05:00

21 Jul 2009 // Manu Raju and John Bresnahan // Politico - Rep. Zach Wamp took a $5,000 campaign contribution from Sen. John Ensign — a fellow Republican and fellow resident of a Capitol Hill Christian fellowship house — eight days after Ensign admitted publicly that he’d had an affair with a former staffer.

The contribution, from Ensign’s Battle Born PAC to Wamp’s Tennessee gubernatorial campaign, shows up on Ensign’s latest FEC filing — and there’s no indication that Wamp has tried to return it.
Wamp did not respond to questions about the contribution Monday; his congressional office referred POLITICO to his gubernatorial campaign, and the campaign did not respond to several messages.

Although Wamp and Ensign live together at the C Street Christian group house, Wamp, a Tennessee Republican, has said little about Ensign’s affair except to suggest that he’ll abide by the code of silence that covers whatever happens in the home.

Two weeks after taking the $5,000 from Ensign, Wamp told the Knoxville News Sentinel: “I hate it that John Ensign lives in the house and this happened, because it opens up all of these kinds of questions.” But, he added, “I’m not going to be the guy who goes out and talks.”

...More at C.R.E.W.

A Personal Story involving Big Pharma

2009-07-21T09:01:00.005-05:00

I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. What is Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Definition
By Mayo Clinic staff
Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory form of arthritis that causes joint pain and damage. Rheumatoid arthritis attacks the lining of your joints (synovium) causing swelling that can result in aching and throbbing and eventually deformity. Sometimes rheumatoid arthritis symptoms make even the simplest activities — such as opening a jar or taking a walk — difficult to manage.

Rheumatoid arthritis is two to three times more common in women than in men and generally occurs between the ages of 40 and 60. But rheumatoid arthritis can also affect young children and older adults.

There's no cure for rheumatoid arthritis. With proper treatment, a strategy for joint protection and changes in lifestyle, you can live a long, productive life with rheumatoid arthritis.

Because of this condition my rheumatologist put me on a drug called Vioxx from the drug maker Merck. Vioxx was a wonder drug that helped the symptoms of the arthritis. And it did. But the deadly secret was that this wonder drug had serious side effects.

Vioxx Recall and Vioxx Side Effects

All About Vioxx and the Vioxx Global Recall

Vioxx Consumer Guide provides information about the Vioxx recall and the significant heart attack and other cardiovascular side effects of Vioxx. The Vioxx recall was a landmark event amidst many safety warnings during 2004 and 2005 about Vioxx side effects and the side effects of other COX-2 inhibitor drugs.

Rofecoxib, commercially known as Vioxx, is a pain reliever developed and produced by the pharmaceutical giant Merck and Co.

From taking this drug, I developed Atrial Fibrillation...

What Is Atrial Fibrillation?

Atrial fibrillation (A-tre-al fi-bri-LA-shun), or AF, is the most common arrhythmia (ah-RITH-me-ah). An arrhythmia is a problem with the speed or rhythm of the heartbeat. A disorder in the heart’s electrical system causes AF and other types of arrhythmia.

AF occurs when rapid, disorganized electrical signals in the heart’s two upper chambers, called the atria (AY-tree-uh), cause them to contract very fast and irregularly (this is called fibrillation). As a result, blood pools in the atria and isn’t pumped completely into the heart’s two lower chambers, called the ventricles (VEN-trih-kuls). When this happens, the heart’s upper and lower chambers don’t work together as they should.

Because of this secondary condition I developed after taking the drug, I was transported by ambulance to the hospital emergency room approximately 20 times in 5 years. I had no heart problem prior to taking this drug and always had low blood pressure.

So because of this I joined many who were suing Merck because they failed to disclose this side effect when they put this drug on the market. They also failed to disclose this to the FDA. There have been many stories about this and how Merck didn't provide the findings of cardiovascular problems while taking Vioxx. The internet is full of articles.

Merck put together a committee called the Vioxx Gates Committee and would hear and decide each suit. So in essence they took away are day in court. And our government went along with this.

My claim has finally been decided and this is what was sent to me by the law firm that supposedly was fighting for us.

I regret to inform you that after reviewing your Vioxx claim, the Vioxx Gates Committee has determined that your claim fails one or more of the necessary criteria and does not meet the Eligibility Requirements to participate in the Vioxx Settlement Program. In particular, your claim failed to pass the injury gate as there is no record of an actual heart attack; the injury your records indicate , an atrial fibrillation, falls short of the injury requirement.

So because I got help right away and was given medication to prevent the atrial fib from going into a full heart attack or stroke, I was refused. So my day in court was really not a day in court. It was decided by people that work for Merck who found a way to limit their liability with the help of our Government.

Health Care Firms drop money on Baucus

2009-07-21T08:02:00.003-05:00

Baucus is making out like a bandit! With all this money coming in, will he have our best interests at the table for Health Care Reform?

From the Washington Post:

As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation under consideration by his Senate Finance Committee.

At the table on May 26 were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms.

"Most people there had an agenda; they wanted the ear of a senator, and they got it," said Aaron Roland, a San Francisco health-care activist who paid half price to attend the gathering. "Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside."

As his committee has taken center stage in the battle over health-care reform, Chairman Baucus (D-Mont.) has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.

Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500. Later this month comes "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that adds horseback riding and hiking to the list of activities.
To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continued to make donations, disclosure records show.

Sen. Baucus has some "splainin" to do! Does he really have the best interest for the American people or his pocket book?

Everyone is so worried about how to pay for this and many that I have talked to about healthcare would rather pay a tax than give money to an insurance company. And why don't they bring up more often that insurance companies do get in between you and your doctor and refuse necessary tests and operations often.

The Family - C Street, is it a cult?

2009-07-21T06:08:00.004-05:00

This Story has spiked my interest. Not so much the sex scandals but the Christian cult like story behind the story that interests me.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has been focusing on this as well. Here's one of her video segments:

Some of the back story from David Caroll:

Described as a Church or Christian Fellowship House, this place on "C Street" in Washington D.C. also serves as a residence for numerous members of Congress. The members of this organization tagged as "The Family" regard it as Refuge; a place to be able to, be their self, and get relief from the aggressive agendas of Washington, D.C. Evidently having been in existence for quite some time, outside of public knowledge, Secrecy seems to be a critical component of this organization. Strangely, it is also rumored that the Members believe that they are "Chosen Ones" appointed by God to see over the rest of us peons or "less than", people of the United States and maybe even the entire world.

Several extra-marital affairs of Congressional leaders, that have recently made the news, were reportedly disclosed to the members of The Family, long before becoming public knowledge. The way that they handled the cover-up and the disclosure of their inequities, was with counsel from The Family. This in itself brings question to what the philosophy and general beliefs of this "Covert" Klan may be. Some with knowledge of the inner workings of The Family declare that it is structured like a "Mafia". This meaning that loyalty to The Family comes before job, career or even blood family, and that the members are bound by oaths of Secrecy. It also implicates, for lack of better words, that this could be considered a pseudo-religious "Cult", mostly consisting of the wealthy, public figures, and government officials.

snip

This seems to be the realization of the greatest fears of some. By and large, as best we know at this time, these "Family" members are largely followers of the far-right faction of the Republican Party and their political agenda. As knowledge of this organization becomes public, its very existence is a rather troubling story. Just how off track with our Democracy is this group? How many elected officials are parts of this "cult"? To what extent is the Secrecy Oath binding? Would they hide a crime committed by a member? Is there an agenda in regard to the future of our country? How much influence on our governing has this group already had? Who, by name, are its members? I expect that the cat may be out of the bag and we will be finding out a lot about them in the future. I have just ordered the book by Jeff from Amazon.com, where you also can find it at a very modest price. Maybe we all need to know what's up with The Family and the secretive "C Street" complex.

A Mafia type cult? And these are some of our representatives in Congress?

And there is a female group as well that you can read about at Roll Call.

The History from Wikipedia:

The movement was founded in Seattle in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and traveling preacher who had been working with the city's poor. He opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and was worried that socialist politicians were about to take over Seattle's municipal government.^[3]^[5] Prominent members of Seattle's business community recognized his success with those who were "down and out" and asked him to give spiritual direction to their group who were "up and out." He organized prayer breakfasts for politicians and businessmen that included anti-Communism and anti-union discussions. Vereide was subsequently invited to set up similar meetings among political and business leaders in San Francisco and Chicago.

Vereide's principal collaborator in France was Edmond Michelet, five-time minister under President Charles de Gaulle.

By 1942, the organization had moved headquarters to Washington, D.C., where it helped create breakfast groups in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. In 1944, the organization's name was changed to International Christian Leadership, then in 1972, to The Fellowship Foundation. It was at this time that the group's leaders decided to lower the Fellowship's public profile by decentralizing its leadership. snip
The movement in the U.S. is incorporated in the United States as a tax-free 501(c)(3) organization operating under the name The Fellowship Foundation. While they conduct no fundraising operations, they reported revenues of more than $12 million in 2003 from donations. Its mission statement is:

To develop and maintain an informal association of people banded together, to go out as "ambassadors of reconciliation," modeling the principles of Jesus, based on loving God and loving others. To work with the leaders of other nations, and as their hearts are touched, the poor, the oppressed, the widows and the youth of their country will be impacted in a positive manner. It is said that youth groups will be developed under the thoughts of Jesus, including loving others as you want to be loved.

Their primary activity is to develop small support groups for members of Congress, businesspersons, and anyone else who is interested in the teachings of Jesus. Prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense.[

And the participants are many government officials:

A large number of members of the United States Senate and Congress, mostly Republicans, are resident or non-resident members of the Family or are associated with it. Boarders at the Family's house on C Street currently include Senators Tom Coburn, R-Okla., John Ensign, R-Nev., Don Nickles, R-OK, Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan. and Representatives Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Bart Stupak, D-Mich., Joseph Pitts, R-Pa, Heath Shuler, D-N.C., and Mike Doyle, D-Pa.^[8]^[9]^[10]

Other members include Senators Charles Grassley, R.-Iowa, Pete Domenici, R.-N.Mex., James Inhofe, R.-Okla., and Bill Nelson, D.-Fla.; Representatives Frank Wolf, R.-Va., and Todd Tiahrt, R-KS, as well as former Senators Don Nickles, R.-Okla., George Allen, R-Va., Conrad Burns, R.-Mont, and Mark O. Hatfield, R.-Or., and former Representatives Steve Largent, R-Okla., Mark Sanford, R-S.C., Chip Pickering, R.-Miss., Ed Bryant, R-TN, John E. Baldacci, R.-Me., and J.C. Watts, R-OK.^[6] Former Attorney General Ed Meese under Ronald Reagan regularly presides over prayer breakfasts.^[6] Senator Susan Collins, R-ME, regularly attends Wednesday morning meetings at the C Street Center.

The group's leader, Doug Coe, has been a spiritual mentor for Hillary Clinton.^[11]^[12] When asked about Doug Coe’s influence on Hillary Clinton, however, people close to her told NBC News in 2008 that she does not consider him one of her leading spiritual advisors and that Senator Clinton has never contributed to Coe’s group, is not a member of The Fellowship, had never heard of any of the controversial sermons obtained by NBC News, and does not consider Doug Coe to be her minister.^[13]

Doug Coe's son, David Coe, also works for the organization and is considered the presumptive heir. David Coe has suggested that members of The Family "are here to learn how to rule the world."^[6]
The Fellowship also has ties to "The Falls Church," whose members include Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, and Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush and a Washington Post columnist. Falls Church Anglican split from the Episcopal Church in December 2006. The Prime Minister of Australia was hosted at the C Street Center in 2009.

When you read all this, with all the connections, it is very scary. That this "Family presumes to want to take over our government and how far back it goes. Cult? Why do I think of the Da Vinci Code?

GRITtv for Monday

2009-07-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

Will natural gas solve our energy problems? The oil and gas industry has been making their case that natural gas is a clean alternative to fossil fuels, that it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and create jobs. What the industry doesn’t mention is the highly controversial practice required to extract the oil known as hydraulic fracturing.

Today, filmmaker Josh Fox, Earth Justice Senior Attorney Deborah Goldberg, Sabrina Artel, Host and Producer of Trailertalk, and Natural Resources Defense Council Attorney Kate Sinding on why hydraulic fracturing poses a real threat to water supplies in the United States and the New York city watershed in particular.

Then, Roberto Lovato, Contributing Associate Editor at New America Media, and Andres Thomas Conteris, the founder of Democracy Now! en Espanol on the political impasse in Honduras and the US role in negotiations to reach a deal between the coup leaders and ousted president Manuel Zelaya. Obama may be paying lip service to the fact that the coup is illegitimate but the actions of the US State Department speak otherwise.

Finally, a boat with medical supplies on its way to Gaza was turned away by Israeli gunships in late June. Ricenpeas.com has footage of the conflict and we’ll be discussing the free Gaza movement right here on Wednesday.

GOP will help Mark Kirk run for Illinois Senate Seat

2009-07-20T19:06:00.002-05:00

Chris Cilizza from The Fix at WaPo says:

Kirk To Get His Wish: Seventy-two hours after informing several Republican strategists that he was not running for the Senate in Illinois due to concerns of a primary challenge, Rep. Mark Kirk looks almost certain to get a clear field after all. Illinois Republican Party chairman Andy McKenna is nearly certain to bow out in favor of Kirk today, according to numerous conversations with strategists close to the process. Kirk had made clear that he would not run if McKenna also ran. While national Republicans will now likely get their wish -- as Kirk is clearly their strongest potential general election candidate -- his off-again, on-again decision about the race suggests an ambivalence that should be worrisome to Republican recruiters. A Kirk candidacy would give Republicans a real shot at winning the seat being vacated by appointed Sen. Roland Burris (D). On the Democratic side, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is the only announced candidate. Merchandise Mart CEO Chris Kennedy is reportedly interested but the fact he isn't in the race yet suggests he may not get in.

Remember, and I can't say this too often, Kirk is the one that told the Chinese Gov't not to believe the US Budget. China is holding a lot of our debt. This was almost treasonous for a representative from the US to say. And this is what they want for a U.S. Senator?

Republican's Boo Their Own Congressman

2009-07-20T17:50:00.002-05:00

A woman gets up, holding a baggie containing her birth certificate, and unleashes a rambling, minute-long tirade tirade about how the president is a “citizen of Kenya.” The crowd hoots and cheers when she’s done. Castle responds, diplomatically: “Well I don’t know what comment that invites. If you’re referring to the president, then he is a citizen of the United States.” That elicits roars and boos from the crowd, so Castle presses on. “You can boo, but he is a citizen of the United States.”

Link to FDL

GOP trying to sabotage Financial Reform

2009-07-20T16:25:00.003-05:00

Well maybe not sabotage it but slow it down. Just as they are trying to slow down health reform.

From Roll Call:

GOP Reps. Ed Royce (Calif.) and Jeb Hensarling (Texas) plan to offer a barrage of amendments and rhetorical broadsides as the Financial Services Committee on Thursday begins marking up a bill to overhaul the rules governing the financial sector and create a powerful new regulator, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
They stand little chance of defeating the legislation in committee — Democrats hold a double-digit advantage in seats on the Financial Services panel. But the conservative lawmakers will try to scale back the bill’s reach and use the markup as a forum for making their case for free markets and limited government oversight.
snip
But Hensarling and Royce, who came to Congress a decade apart and represent different regions, share a common philosophy on limiting the role of government that will underlie GOP opposition to the bill.
Hensarling, a protégé of former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), is among the the most outspoken conservatives in the House.
He frequently offers amendments on the House floor to cut federal spending and scale back federal programs. As a former leader of the Republican Study Committee, Hensarling, whose districts includes parts of Dallas and its suburbs, managed the failed bid of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) to oust Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in 2007.
snip
Hensarling said: “The left seems to believe that if only we will empower some sort of ruling, enlightened elite, that only then can consumers hope for fairness and justice. We believe that the best form of consumer protection comes from competitive markets — competitive markets that are vigorously policed for abuse and fraud.”
Hensarling’s views often provoke eye rolls from Democrats. But his relentless ideology has earned him the top Republican spot on the Financial Service Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit. He’s also popular with the wealthy financial services industry, which could be a key source of campaign funds if he ever opts to run for the Senate, as some expect.

The big give away is that Hensarling is a protege of Phil Gramm. The person we have to thank for no oversight in the Financials and the collapse of our economy. And competition did so well with Consumer Protection, didn't it!

Wake up people!

Obama: healthcare reform "urgent" and "indisputable,"

2009-07-20T15:08:00.002-05:00

Obama spoke about healthcare reform again today.

From the LA Times:

Reporting from Washington -- President Obama, calling the need for healthcare reform "urgent" and "indisputable," said today that it is not his own political fortune that is at stake, but rather the health of the nation's economy.

"The need for reform is urgent, and it is indisputable," the president said, in an appearance at the Children's National Medical Center.

"Now, there are some in this town that are content to perpetuate the status quo," said Obama, demanding that Congress act this summer. "There are others who recognize the problem but believe, or perhaps hope, that we can put off the hard work of healthcare reform for another day, another year, another decade."

snip

Shaking his head ruefully, Obama called the Waterloo metaphor into question.

"Think about that," Obama said. "This isn't about me. This isn't about politics. This is about a healthcare system that is breaking America's families," its businesses and its economy.

snip

Obama, who last week started ratcheting up his call for Congress to act on healthcare reform this summer, met with healthcare providers at the Children's National Medical Center before making his public remarks.

"We always knew that passing healthcare reform wouldn't be easy," he said today. "There is a tendency toward inertia in this town. . . . But we are a country that chooses the harder right over the easy wrong."

Are we a "country that chooses the harder right over the easy wrong." I hope so!
Are people going to support this with Obama or will they vote against their own best interest again?

How are the Banks using TARP Money?

2009-07-20T14:45:00.003-05:00

That is the question, isn't it? From what I can see there is not very much lending going on so what are the banks doing with the money?

From the Washington Post:

Many of the banks that got federal aid to support increased lending have instead used some of the money to make investments, repay debts or buy other banks, according to a new report from the special inspector general overseeing the government's financial rescue program.

The report, which will be published Monday, surveyed 360 banks that got money through the end of January and found that 110 had invested at least some of it, that 52 had repaid debts and that 15 had used funds to buy other banks.

Roughly 80 percent of respondents, or 300 banks, also said at least some of the money had supported new lending.

The report by special inspector general Neil Barofsky calls on the Treasury Department to require regular, more detailed information from banks about their use of federal aid provided under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Treasury has refused to collect such information.

Doing so is "essential to meet Treasury's stated goal of bringing transparency to the TARP program and informing the American people and their representatives in Congress about what is being done with their money," the report said.

Some lending? How much is "some lending"?

In a written response, the Treasury again rejected that call. Officials have taken the view that the exact use of the federal aid cannot be tracked because money given to a bank is like water poured into an ocean.

"Although it might be tempting to do so, it is not possible to say that investment of TARP dollars resulted in particular loans, investments or other activities by the recipient," Herbert M. Allison Jr., the assistant Treasury secretary who administers the rescue program, wrote in a letter to Barofsky.

The Treasury has required 21 of the nation's largest banks to file public reports each month showing the dollar volume of their new lending.

The government so far has invested more than $200 billion in more than 600 banks under a program that began in October with investments in nine of the largest banks. Some banks have started to repay the aid even as others continue to apply for it.

Sorry Treasury! This isn't transparent enough yet. And why are they using TARP money to buy up other Banks? So we can create some more Too Big To Fail banks?

Cheney still may be Investigated

2009-07-20T13:06:00.004-05:00

Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowski's, Chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee is quoted by Politico:

“The House Intelligence Committee will move forward with a full investigation that will explore certain CIA programs and the core issue of how the committee is kept informed,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairwoman, announced in a statement issued Friday evening.

“My subcommittee will take the lead on significant portions of the investigation; we will explore instances where the Congress was not informed in a timely way and situations in which laws may have been broken.”

And from Raw Story:

Cheney tried to keep program secret

US former vice president Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years, The New York Times reported on its website Saturday.

Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence on June 23, revealed Cheney’s role in a closed briefing a day later to the Senate and House intelligence committees, the Times said, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” an intelligence official told the newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There's a BIG Update to this CIA story:

From the AP:

Judge rules CIA committed fraud in court

By NEDRA PICKLER (AP) – 45 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against a lawsuit.

According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred one CIA attorney for disciplinary action. The judge also is considering sanctions against five other current and former CIA employees, including former CIA Director George Tenet.

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the MOON WALK

2009-07-20T12:43:00.002-05:00

Apollo 11, July 20th 1969
Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin

"that one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" Neil A. Armstrong

The Case For a Surtax

2009-07-20T11:34:00.002-05:00

As part of its health care legislation, the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed implementing a tax surcharge on the richest one percent of Americans, with the revenue going toward financing a portion of the estimated $1 trillion cost for health care reform. Under the House proposal, the surtax would begin in 2011 and constitute a one percent marginal rate for households making between $350,000 and $500,000, 1.5 percent for households making $500,000 to $1 million, and 5.4 percent for those making more than $1 million. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put it, "Let's leapfrog over the middle class to the wealthiest people in our country. They've had it pretty good the last eight years in terms of tax policy under President Bush. And we think that's a place you can go." Yesterday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius called the tax "a legitimate way to go forward." And as Families USA executive director Ron Pollack said, "Since this group enjoyed a significant tax reduction windfall during the last decade -- and since this windfall played a big role in burgeoning federal deficits -- it makes sense that this group bears some burden as part of the effort to secure America's long-term economic future through health-care reform."

...Full Story at Think Progress

Obama's Odds

2009-07-20T10:35:00.003-05:00

E.J. Dionne Jr has a great article in the Washington post today called Why Obama Likes His Odds.

It was not the soaring rhetoric that is Barack Obama's signature, but he recently offered the sound bite that may define his presidency: "Don't bet against us."

He explains that Obama wasn't around when the Democrats were beaten down during the Clinton years:

But Obama doesn't quite see things the way his more nervous Democratic allies do because he missed the years in Washington during which his party was beaten down. Many Democrats had their perceptions of political reality shaped by the failure of Bill Clinton's health proposal, the 1994 Republican revolution and the GOP's triumphalism during President Bush's first term.

And this has been a problem. The Democrats were beaten down so badly during those years they seem to have lost their spine. And as Dionne says "no one ever thought passing a health-care bill would be easy, and the effort hit some bumps last week over costs and how to cover them."

Since then the Budget Office has reworked the numbers and found that the Public Option will work within the parameters Obama wants, Pay Go, and will actually save money.

Dionne goes on to say:

The paradox is that Obama's limited experience under Republican sway makes him more comfortable than many of his allies are with wielding the power that comes from large Democratic majorities.

And it's real power. Nothing made that clearer than the trajectory of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination battle -- or non-battle.

Obama is doing a balancing act right now and the Democrats old way of thinking along with the constant beat down by the Republicans and the health insurers Obama has to fight all the way.

Dionne goes on to say:

But Obama must simultaneously convince Democrats that they are not living in the Republican congressional eras of 1995 or 2003 -- that if it's necessary, they have the strength on their own to win. This was the implicit message Obama conveyed to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to push him to conclude his frustratingly protracted health-care negotiations with Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee.

Getting Baucus to move this week is essential to maintaining momentum. If Obama seems likely to win, interest groups will be more forthcoming, his own party will be more likely to hold together and more Republicans will be inclined to cut a deal.

And that, finally, is why Obama wants to make sure his party bets with him, not against him. His core message to fellow Democrats is that the only things they have to fear are the fears and insecurities bred into them when they were a battered minority. Obama is free of those doubts because he never knew them.

So the fight is increasing and we have to stand behind Obama and keep sending those faxes, emails, phone calls and letters. This time we have to pass Health Care Reform or it may take another 100 years.

News from Pelosi on the Health Care bill

2009-07-19T21:56:00.002-05:00

h/t to Maggiesboy

From Pelosi's blog at the Gavel:

CBO Scores Confirm Deficit Neutrality of Health Insurance Reform Bill
July 18th, 2009 by Karina

News from the Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means, and Education & Labor Committees on the CBO estimates released last night on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act:

July 17, 2009

Washington, D.C. — The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for the first time that H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, is deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window - and even produces a $6 billion surplus. CBO estimated more than $550 billion in gross Medicare and Medicaid savings. More importantly, the bill includes a comprehensive array of delivery reforms to set the stage for lowering the future growth in health care costs.

Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion, coupled with the $583 billion revenue package reported today by the House Committee on Ways and Means, fully finance the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform, which will provide affordable health care coverage for 97% of Americans.

“This fulfills the strong commitment of the President and House leadership to enact health reform on a deficit-neutral basis,” said Chairmen Henry A. Waxman, Chairman Charles B. Rangel, and Chairman George Miller. “The reforms included in this legislation will help control health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable coverage to all Americans in fiscally-responsible manner.”

The estimates also cover important reinvestments in Medicare and Medicaid, including phasing in the closing of the “donut” hole in the Medicare drug benefit. The bill’s long-term reform of Medicare’s physician fee schedule to eliminate the potential 21 percent cut in fees, and put payments on a sustainable basis for the future, will cost about $245 billion. Those costs, however, are not included in the net calculations above, as they will be absorbed under the upcoming statutory “pay go” legislation that is pending in the House.

Blogger Puts Blue Dog Mike Ross in the Dog House

2009-07-18T14:16:00.002-05:00

Gonzo jounralism? I think not, I call it 4th Estate vs CNN's 5th Column

CBO Scores Confirms Deficit Neutrality of Health Reform Bill

2009-07-18T12:09:00.000-05:00

Published on Jul 18, 2009 - 7:29:28 AM

By: House Committee on Energy and Commerce

Washington, D.C. July 17, 2009 - The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for the first time that H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act, is deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window - and even produces a $6 billion surplus. CBO estimated more than $550 billion in gross Medicare and Medicaid savings. More importantly, the bill includes a comprehensive array of delivery reforms to set the stage for lowering the future growth in health care costs.

Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion, coupled with the $583 billion revenue package reported today by the House Committee on Ways and Means, fully finance the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform, which will provide affordable health care coverage for 97% of Americans.

"This fulfills the strong commitment of the President and House leadership to enact health reform on a deficit-neutral basis," said Chairman Henry A. Waxman, Chairman Charles B. Rangel, and Chairman George Miller. "The reforms included in this legislation will help control health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable coverage to all Americans in a fiscally-responsible manner."

The estimates also cover important reinvestments in Medicare and Medicaid, including phasing in the closing of the "donut" hole in the Medicare drug benefit. The bill's long-term reform of Medicare's physician fee schedule to eliminate the potential 21 percent cut in fees, and put payments on a sustainable basis for the future, will cost about $245 billion. Those costs, however, are not included in the net calculations above, as they will be absorbed under the upcoming statutory "pay go" legislation that is pending in the House.

Obama's Weekly Address - Is He Starting to Manage?

2009-07-18T10:35:00.001-05:00

Right now in Washington, our Senate and House of Representatives are both debating proposals for health insurance reform. Today, I want to speak with you about the stakes of this debate, for our people and for the future of our nation.

This is an issue that affects the health and financial well-being of every single American and the stability of our entire economy.

It’s about every family unable to keep up with soaring out of pocket costs and premiums rising three times faster than wages. Every worker afraid of losing health insurance if they lose their job, or change jobs. Everyone who’s worried that they may not be able to get insurance or change insurance if someone in their family has a pre-existing condition.

..more

A Canadian Comments on Experiences with Single Payer System in Canada

2009-07-14T19:17:00.002-05:00

While this story is a few months old, it speaks to a lot of the misdirection the right is using to keep single payer off the table, out the door and buried in a deep hole.

Found at PNHP

Posted By Chris Dinn
March 5, 2009

http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name=let_single_payer_free

As a Canadian who watched and helped his sister go through 5 years of elite treatment medical treatment for a rare brain tumor, I consider myself experienced with the single-payer approach and I have generally great things to say about it.

First things first, and this is a hugely important factor, Canada’s health care system is PROVINCIALLY RUN. That is to say, constitutionally, it’s not the purview of the federal government, it’s the explicit responsibility of the provinces. Over the years, various federal governments have issued transfers to the provinces explicitly for health care, but the responsibility for delivery remains with the provinces.

Additionally, as Ezra noted once upon a time in a review of international health care systems, the providers in a single payer system are private. This is an important distinction. Doctors in Canada are small business-people competing for customers. Canadians choose which doctor to visit and the doctor with the most visits gets better reimbursement from the province.

Get that? That’s provinces competing to do the best job on health care management (keeping costs down) with doctors and hospitals competing to get the most visitors, to keep business booming and government reimbursements coming.

The upside of this is that it promotes competition for efficiency of delivery. In fact, Canada’s entire system evolved that way, beginning as a Saskatewan program pioneered by Tommy Douglas.

Now, before you write off the single payer system (I’m looking at you wisewon), keep in mind that not only did Canadians recently vote Tommy Douglas the greatest Canadian in a recent CBC reality show (http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/), but he’s also Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather (no lie).

We should be honest about the downsides of a single-payer system. Despite the sundry downsides you may here from US commentators, criticisms in Canada come from mainly two areas.

First is equal access. In Canada it doesn’t really matter how rich you are or how much money you have to throw at your medical problems, you get treated in the same line as the poor farmer, the homeless guy and the suburban middle-class family who need the same treatment. To you, maybe, this is a bug. To me, it’s a feature. The idea that in Canada we treat our poor in the same order we treat the rich seems an impressive display of equality when it matters the most.

The second is for wait times. This is not a material concern to this discussion. If you want to know why read http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_health_of_nations.

While there are some exceptions to these rules, such as Canada’s rare and controversial private clinics, the system generally works as advertised.

As an example, in 1996, when she was 10 years old my sister was diagnosed (in Newfoundland) with a rare brain tumor. She was treated in Newfoundland, but when a better treatment became available in Toronto the provincial government sent her to Toronto for the care and covered its cost. Had a better program existed in an American children’s hospital, she could’ve been treated there.

My family was middle class for our rural community, but would hardly qualify as rich. My parents had a combined income of under $100,000 yearly, but my sister received three rounds of neurosurgery, three rounds of chemotherapy and a three-weeks-in-isolation bone marrow transplant. All without my parents paying out of pocket for anything.

In the US people go bankrupt in situations like this. In Canada, they live through it. My parents are now happily in retirement and relatively well financed.

Meanwhile an exgirlfriend of mine from Wisconsin needed her wisdom teeth out. Her plan was to go get the treatment and stiff the hospital on the bill. She said future creditors would understand, since medical bills are often skipped out on.

I’m not an American, and I don’t know how typical or a-typical that is, but it definitely happened.

Are you still telling me the Canadian approach is completely the wrong solution? I’m sorry, but I just can’t take Americans with a straight face on that point.

Volunteers Needed

2009-07-14T18:58:00.003-05:00

Daily Kos and Fire Dog Lake are teaming up to go to Washington to attend the Markup of the House Health Care bill. They need volunteers to go to Washington and they need donations to help us get the Health Care bill we want. A good Public option.

Here's some info from myceve at Daily Kos:

UPDATE:

It's official, we're off to the races. Just received word from Speaker Pelosi's office as follows. This means we need all hands moving toward Washington for the markups.

Please check back for additional details and read the comments of Jane Hamsher.

Pelosi, House Leaders, Committee Chairs to Hold Press Conference on Introduction of Health Care Legislation

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leaders, and Committee Chairs will hold a press conference in the Rayburn Room of the Capitol today, July 14, at 2:45 p.m. to discuss legislation introduced today by the Tri-Committees on health care reform.

Okay, so now we have certainty on the legislation. Now, we must remove the vice-like grip of the lobbyists. The way we do this is by having the American people sit in the mark up room and fight for a good bill as hard as the lobbyists will try to destroy it.

But before I go any further, a little bit of housekeeping. A lot of you asked how you could help, especially if you can't get to Washington. We're starting to run up some big expenses, so Jane Hamsher has put up a FIGHT THE LOBBYISTS DONATIONS PAGE:

https://secure.firedoglake.com/page/contribute/PublicPlan

The lobbyists have countless millions. If you can throw in a few dollars to help with the mounting costs of this undertaking that would be a great help and we thank you for your generosity.

IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT WHAT WE'RE FIGHTING, PLEASE LOOK AT THIS. LOBBYISTS BUY ALL THE SEATS AT THE TABLE.

Nataline Sarkisyan's parents coming to Washington to sit front and center in markup room.

One of our expenses among many, is getting Nataline Sarkisyan's parents to Washington and putting them up in a hotel for four nights.

It's huge that Nataline's parents have agreed to come from Los Angeles to sit in the front row during the markup. They are the living embodient of this national catastrophe, and Hilda Sarkisyan will tell the Congresspeople that no other American family should ever lose a child to a murderous for profit insurance company.

URGENT CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS.

PLEASE SIGN UP HERE. CAN YOU COME TO WASHINGTON? THERE ARE OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO, PLEASE GO TO THE SIGN UP SHEET AND LET US KNOW HOW YOU CAN HELP. AND THANK YOU! ALL THESE RESPONSES ARE GOING DIRECTLY TO JANE HAMSHER.

IF YOU CANNOT COME TO WASHINGTON THEN COULD YOU DONATE A FEW DOLLARS TO FIGHT THE LOBBYISTS MILLIONS?
YOU CAN DONATE HERE:

https://secure.firedoglake.com/page/contribute/PublicPlan

The lobbiests are ready and already on their way to DC. Help if you can any way that you can.

Myth Busters

2009-07-13T18:24:00.002-05:00

Found at The Seminal

As the health reform fight moves forward, the issues people are talking about change. While it once seemed like our biggest battle was over whether we are going to get a strong public health insurance option as part of reform, that question has now joined a host of others in the debate.

Predictably, these new arguments come with their fair share of myths that need to be pushed back on. So here we go...

Myth: Health reform will be paid for by "cutting" Medicare and Medicaid

This is the latest line trotted out by conservatives and picked up by the media, that we're going to cut Medicare and Medicaid to pay for health reform. We're not cutting Medicare or Medicaid, if by cut you mean doing anything that will lower people's benefits. We're finding savings in the program. And that's not just spin.

Here's an example: Right now, Medicaid pays hospitals a sum of money (which varies geographically) to help make up the losses they incur for treating patients that show up in the emergency room without insurance (who hospitals are legally required to treat). After health reform is passed, the number of uninsured in this country will diminish. These payments will therefore become redundant and can be phased out, yielding savings without cutting anyone's benefits.

Myth: We're just waiting for reconciliation on health care so we only need Democratic votes to pass it

This one isn't true...yet.

Right now, the Senate is still operating under regular order, which means we will need 60 votes to end a filibuster and cut off debate over a health care reform bill. (Aside: Which Senators are going to be the ones to filibuster health care? People should start asking them that.) There is, however, an October 15th deadline. If the Senate is unable to move a health reform bill under regular order, they must move one under reconciliation by October 15th. So, right now, Harry Reid and other Senate leadership are giving Republicans every opportunity to come on board and vote for real health reform. If they don't come on board, that's what reconciliation is for.

Myth: Health reform will cost too much and put a burden on families

This is the most insidious of the right-wing lies. In reality, the cost of doing nothing on health reform will bankrupt families, and reforming health care will save the average American family thousands per year.

If we don't reform our health care system and bring down skyrocketing costs, the average family will be paying almost $10,000 more per year for health care by 2016 than they do now. Our government will be bankrupt. And we'll spend one in every five dollars in our entire economy on health care, up from the already astronomical one in seven that we spend now. The cost of doing nothing is simply unacceptable, and those against reform are willing to bankrupt families, government and our entire country to serve their obstructionism.

Not to mention that reforming health care will reduce costs for families. According to the Commonwealth Fund [pdf], health care reform that puts everyone in, gives people affordable options, and includes a strong public health insurance option (like that proposed by the House of Representatives) would save the average family $2,228 per year.

Plus, health reform will be fully financed. In the House, it will be paid for by a combination of Medicare and Medicaid savings, a public health insurance option that saves money, and a 1% tax on those that make over a quarter of a million dollars per year.

-------------------------------

Even though these myths are fairly prevalent in the debate right now, there's a silver lining here. The Frank Luntz messaging that was supposed to be the GOP's silver bullet - the health care reform is a Washington takeover leading to rationed care - is largely failing to take hold. And so, we're forced to combat that latest set of conservative talking points. We'll just have to do to these points what we did to Luntz - discredit and bring the truth.

No Laughing Matter

2009-07-13T17:55:00.009-05:00

Found at TPM

Al Franken probably has the "big fat idiot" overdosing on anxiety prescriptions after giving an excellent opening statement in the Sotomayor hearing. Just goes to show any comedian can be a radio or TV talk show host but only a select few can be a functioning senator.

My favorite part of his statement came towards the end:

Second, I am concerned that Americans are facing new barriers to defending their individual rights. The Supreme Court is the last court in the land where an individual is promised a level playing field and can seek to right a wrong:
• It is the last place an employee can go if he or she is discriminated against because of age, gender, or color.
• It is the last place a small business owner can go to ensure free and fair competition in the market.
• It is the last place an investor can go to try to recover losses from securities fraud.
• It is the last place a person can go to protect the free flow of information on the internet.
• It is the last place a citizen can go to protect his or her vote.
• It is the last place where a woman can go to protect her reproductive health and rights.
Yet from what I see, on each of those fronts, for each of those rights, the past decade has made it a little bit harder for American citizens to defend themselves.

Illinois Political News

2009-07-12T09:50:00.004-05:00

Mark Kirk Denies Report He's Out Of Senate Race, Deciding Over Weekend

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk is denying a report that he has decided not to run for the Senate in part to avoid a primary with the Illinois Republican Party Chairman.

The Washington Post's Chris Cilliza reported Friday afternoon that Kirk would not make a Senate bid, despite signaling to party leaders just days ago that he was planning to run.

The North Shore Republican appeared set to enter the race after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she would not run. A potential sticking point for Kirk, Cilliza reported, is his vote for the administration's climate change bill and a potential primary with state GOP chairman Andy McKenna:

[Kirk's decision] followed a meeting of the Illinois Republican congressional delegation on Thursday in which his colleagues refused to back Kirk in a primary against Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna due, in large part, to his vote in favor of President Barack Obama's climate change bill.

This is the idiot guy that told the Chinese not to believe the US Budget

---

Quinn Shelving Tax Increase Push Until Fall

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is putting aside his call for an income tax increase until November.

In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Quinn said he now wants to pass a state budget with significant spending cuts. Then in November, he would ask lawmakers to choose between balancing the budget by cutting even further or by raising taxes.

Quinn said delaying the decision for five months would provide time to study Medicaid spending, pension reforms and other cost-cutting measures.

Then officials would be in a better position to decide the best way to finish erasing a roughly $11.6 billion budget deficit.

The Democratic governor says he'll ask lawmakers to consider the idea when they return to Springfield next week.

---

Giannoulias takes lead in fund-raising for a Senate bid

Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias has raised $1.8 million for his Senate bid, while his likely Democratic rivals have zero dollars in their war chests.

Giannoulias has been fund-raising since March. Federal fund-raising reports, public next week, will show that Giannoulias raised about $670,000 in the second quarter of 2009.

Giannoulias is also in a position to pour some of his own money into his campaign; his federal financial disclosure statement will show that he is worth between $13 million and $62 million, I'm told.

Lisa Madigan is running again as State's Attorney but will Have Joe Birkett, from DuPage County as her opponent again. My opinion...Birkett doesn't have a chance!

Medical Liability - The Debate

2009-07-12T08:53:00.003-05:00

Medical Liability is constantly pushed by the GOP as a reason medical costs have skyrocketed. The cost of liability insurance is very expensive for Doctors and Hospitals. But if you are permanently disfigured or die because of a mistake a doctor or hospital made, what other alternative does the patient have or the patient's family?

I have long thought that doctors don't police themselves enough and hospitals, like the Catholic Church covered for their wayward priests, cover for their doctors.

The New York Times has an OP-ED today written by Tom Baker that delves into medical liability:

Liability = Responsibility

OUR medical liability system needs reform. But anyone who thinks that limiting liability would reduce health care costs is fooling himself. Preventable medical injuries, not patient compensation, are what ring up extra costs for additional treatment. This means taxpayers, employers and everyone else who buys health insurance — all of us — have a big stake in patient safety.

Eighty percent of malpractice claims involve significant disability or death, a 2006 analysis of medical malpractice claims conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health shows, and the amount of compensation patients receive strongly depends on the merits of their claims. Most people injured by medical malpractice do not bring legal claims, earlier studies by the same researchers have found.

On the other hand, medical liability has improved patient safety — by leading hospitals to hire risk managers, for example, and spurring anesthesiologists to improve their safety standards and practices. Even medical societies’ efforts to attack the liability system have helped, by inspiring the research that has documented the surprising extent of preventable injuries in hospitals. That research helped start the patient safety movement.

When it comes to rising medical costs, liability is a symptom, not the disease. Getting rid of liability might save money for hospitals and some high-risk specialists, but it would cost society more by taking away one of the few hard-wired patient safety incentives.

Besides, there’s a better answer for doctors worried about high malpractice insurance premiums.

He goes on to say:

The research shows, overwhelmingly, that the real problem is too much malpractice, not too many malpractice lawsuits.

And:

Evidence-based liability reform would give these institutions the incentive they need to cut back on the most wasteful aspect of American health care: preventable medical injuries.

This medical liability issue is a straw man issue by the GOP. Any excuse to avoid giving the American people good, afordable health care.

Good News on the Public Option

2009-07-10T18:01:00.003-05:00

Blue Dog Loretta Sanchez changed her mind and now is for the Public Option

From Think Progress:

Fortunately, there is at least one “Blue Dog” member who understands this contradiction and is willing to break from her coalition to support a public plan. On MSNBC this afternoon, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) said, “I am one of those people who believes that we should be required to have a public option because it will bring the costs of health care down."

And the Hill reports:

Band of House centrists offers support for ‘robust’ public health insurance plan
By Mike Soraghan
Posted: 07/09/09 07:20 PM [ET]

A band of 22 New Democrat and Blue Dog lawmakers say they support a “robust” government-run health plan, boosting chances of moving healthcare reform with a public insurance plan through the House.

Democratic centrists remain the biggest obstacle to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) ability to pass a healthcare bill with a public plan, and many conservative Democrats oppose a public option as unfair to private insurers.

But the letter from the 22 New Dems and Blue Dogs indicates opposition from this group is far from universal.

“We have a broader coalition to pass this than what was assumed before,” said Rep. Lois Capps (Calif.), a New Democrat who circulated the letter supporting a public option with Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “While we may belong to a more moderate branch, we want it known that we support the public option.” More at link

Keep the pressure on!

CBO says Early Estimates show Public Option will sav Billions in Ten Years

2009-07-10T17:31:00.003-05:00

From the New Republic:

A lot of conservative Democrats, not to mention Republicans, express two big concerns about health reform. They're worried that reform will cost too much. And they don't want a government-run insurance plan.

It's about to get a lot harder to make those two arguments simultaneously.

According to a pair of Capitol Hill sources, preliminary estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that a strong public option--the kind that the House of Representatives is putting in its reform bill--should net somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 billion in savings over ten years.

The sources cautioned that these were only the preliminary estimates, based on previous discussions--that CBO had not yet issued final scoring on language in the actual bill. But the sources felt the final estimate would likely be close.

And TPMDC adds:

Keep in mind, though, that the public option creates savings by driving down prices, and it can't do that nearly as effectively if it's prevented from setting below-market pay rates. But that's exactly what conservative Democrats are trying to do. At the same time, those Democrats are demanding that health care legislation do a better job of lowering health care costs. And that's just one of the contradictions inherent to the position of those attempting to scale back reform efforts.

Keep on those Blue Dogs. Call them, email them, write them, sign petitions, hold vigils or protests outside their local office. Whatever it takes, because to pass this you have to do whatever it takes!

Blue Dogs delay Health Care bill

2009-07-10T10:32:00.003-05:00

From USA Today:

Blue Dog Democrats hold up health overhaul bill in House

WASHINGTON (AP) — The drive to remake the nation's health care system suffered yet another setback in Congress on Thursday when a pivotal group of House Democrats demanded changes in legislation the leadership was drafting on a fast track.

The emerging bill "lacks a number of elements essential to preserving what works and fixing what is broken," 40 members of the Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats wrote party leaders. To win their support, they said, any legislation would need to be much more aggressive in reining in the growth of health care as well as in addressing a disparity in Medicare payments they said adversely affects rural providers.

A group of the Blue Dog members met into early evening with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and arranged to sit down with committee chairmen on Friday to go over proposed changes. Officials said the public release of the bill, originally set for Friday, would occur no earlier than Monday.

It was the second setback in three days for President Obama's top domestic priority, although it was unclear whether it would amount to anything more than a brief delay for a bill of enormous complexity and controversy.

And TPMDC reports:

After Pressure From Blue Dogs And Others, House Leaders Delay Unveiling Health Care Bill
By Brian Beutler - July 10, 2009, 9:06AM

Late last night, House leadership decided it would postpone the release of its completed draft of health care reform legislation, after Blue Dog Democrats--and a variety of other concerned members--raised a number of objections to aspects of the proposal.

The bill was originally supposed to be unveiled late last night, but will now be postponed until at least early next week.

Leadership characterizes this as part of the negotiating process--and that's fair enough. The House is still on a much clearer, more united course toward passing legislation than is the Senate. But after weeks of smooth sailing in the lower chamber, this is the first serious speedbump.

Read the House Blue Dogs' letter to Speaker Pelosi and Steny Hoyer which prompted the delay in publicly rolling out of the draft health care reform bill.

It has been suggest by other bloggers that maybe we should take Health Insurance and Pensions away from our Reps and Senators and let them experience what we do. Would they change their minds then?

Jane Hampsher on MSNBC today

2009-07-09T20:35:00.002-05:00

Jane was on MSNBC today with David Schuster debating this witch from Townhall blog.
Watch it! You won't believe what happens.

It does show how soulless these right wing people are.

Why Can't a Better Health Care Plan Be a Stimulus Package

2009-07-09T11:18:00.004-05:00

From FDL July 9th

I can't agree more with this idea. Why not put our tax dollars into something tangible like health care and infrastructure. Bailing out banks and insurance companies does not one damn bit of good for middle/working class and poor. Like the often played clip on the Sam Seder Show, "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining". Take it away Jane Hamsher.....

We bailed out the banks to the tune of 2 trillion dollars in the past year, put through an enormous stimulus bill, bailed out the European banks, put through yet another war supplemental, and never asked how we were going to pay for it. We just wrote a bunch of big checks.

But now that it has come to taking care of the health of Americans, well, we have to tighten the old belt and it's suddenly "pay-as-you-go."

Everyone is obsessed about "how we're going to pay for this" when discussing health care. And as long as we're prisoners of a CBO score (is it $1 trillion? $1.4 trillion?) we're going to wind up passing a bill that does not cover average Americans in the way they need to be covered so that as a country we can step forward into a new business era of international economic interdependence. Other industrialized nations cover health care. We're saddling business with that cost, and a huge chunk of what we are planning to spend will go to bail out insurance companies.

Meanwhile, just as Krugman and others predicted, White House aides are saying we need another stimulus plan. Joe Biden and Steny Hoyer have sent up trial balloons.

Middle class Americans pay huge premiums every month for junk insurance. Four hundred, six hundred, a thousand dollars a month easily. Even if they have employer-based insurance, huge deductibles mean that every trip to the doctor is costly. If those costs get cut, a huge financial burden is lifted off average Americans. They are no longer prisoners of a job, or a state, just to keep an insurance policy they can't leave without risking their economic security or their health.

But more importantly, a huge burden of anxiety is lifted from Americans in a time of economic insecurity. If a plan is passed that only affects the poor, it's going to anger the middle class when they are the ones that get shafted once again. It's only going to increase anger and frustration that there is nobody at the helm who cares about them, and confirm their fears that government exists to benefit Wellpoint at their expense.

I was up on the Hill yesterday, and discovered that Congress never had ordinary people come and testify about their insurance company horror stories, because nobody wanted to piss the insurance companies off. It was incomprehensible and outrageous.

Compared to the huge sums we've shelled out without batting an eyelash over the past year, why are we going to have a shitty, compromised plan just so Blanche Lincoln and Olympia Snowe can achieve their objectives of protecting insurance company profits, when for $30 billion more a year we could actually do it right? Why is that suddenly such a big price tag?

In short, if we need more economic stimulus, why aren't we talking about health care as economic stimulus?

Surprise, Baucus doesn't change anything!

2009-07-09T10:09:00.004-05:00

From TPMDC:

Good Cop, Bad Cop? Baucus Says All Options Still On The Table
By Brian Beutler - July 9, 2009, 9:49AM

After telling Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to put a public option in his health care bill, and strip it of a financing provision that would tax employer-provided health care benefits, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to assure Republicans that he wasn't abandoning bipartisanship. Now, Baucus is saying much the same.

"Everything's on the table," was Baucus' mantra yesterday. "By far the better approach is a bipartisan approach to get this moving."

These are palliative words, but they don't seem to have changed momentum on the Hill. Most indications suggest two key provisions that were recently expected to be included in the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill--health care co-operatives and the benefits tax--are on life support. That pleases reformers, but also makes them nervous. They abhor the co-op model--preferring a public insurance plan instead--and though their feelings about taxing benefits are mixed, they see no reason to ignite controversy when there are plenty of other, more-popular ways to finance reform. But at the same time, Finance is now way, way behind schedule, and there are precious few days left for them to complete work on a bill, merge it with the HELP Committee's bill, debate the final product on the floor, and bring it to a vote.

It seems that Reid really can't control his Senators and Baucus is hard headed and won't listen to anyone. Not Reid, Obama, or his constituents. How can a Committee Chairman think he has more power to do what he wants over the President and the Senate Majority Leader and a majority of the Democratic Senators?

UPDATE:
Report: Reid Promises Bipartisanship To Senate GOP
The Hill reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) met with a group of Republican Senators yesterday, assuring them that he was still committed to a bipartisan process on health care reform despite the new Democratic supermajority. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said that Reid "understands the enormity of this issue and the challenges it presents and that it's most important to be able to build a bipartisan consensus. If that requires more time, it requires more time."

Is the Progressive Block Strategy Working?

2009-07-08T10:24:00.003-05:00

I've been a bit skeptical only because I've never had spelled out in way that I could process internally and then defend but that all changed today. This new post on FDL finally gave me the backfill I needed to bring it all together when Jane explained the reasoning for the 3 criteria they are pushing progressives in congress to pledge to:

That definition was drawn up to explicitly to get people to commit to vote against the Conrad plan. Available day one (no triggers), nationwide (no state balkanization), answerable to Congress and the voters (as opposed to answerable to states that lack bargaining power at the federal level).

There's a lot more thought given to this strategy than I was giving credit. You'll learn from reading the post how this works to get progressives commit to a strong plan that can only get stronger and how it catapults fiery rhetoric (think Harry Reid) that is frittered away in procedural mumbo-jumbo.

This is an action to get behind

Gas Companies Price Fixing?

2009-07-08T08:04:00.003-05:00

I wish the US would do this!

From the Wall Street Journal:

The European Union's powerful competition commissioner slapped two energy companies with record fines of $1.53 billion today for cartel misbehavior. GDF Suez and E.ON, two of the world's biggest gas producers, colluded to avoid competition in French and German energy markets and drive up prices. It's the first time that the commission has imposed antitrust fines on an energy company, reports the Wall Street Journal.

"Market sharing is one of the worst types of antitrust infringement," said commissioner Neelie Kroes. "This agreement deprived customers of more price competition and more choice of supplier in two of the largest gas markets in the European Union." GDF Suez plans to appeal the fine.

In my opinion the large oil companies have been fixing prices for a very long time. I come from the generation that remembers gas wars and prices as low as 19 cents a gallon and when you filled your tank, you got Green Stamps or a set of dishes, glasses, or tableware. That's when there was competition between oil companies.

If you don't think that there is collusion to fix prices, look around at the different brands and see if you can find any real difference in prices.

Rahm Backs down

2009-07-08T07:40:00.001-05:00

Emanuel assures House Democrats that he won’t compromise on public plan.

After initially indicating his support for a public plan “trigger,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reassured House Democrats tonight that he strongly backs a public plan. Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said she told Emanuel that support for a “trigger” would cause health reform to lose Democratic votes:

“We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game,” Woolsey said she told Emanuel. “People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said Emanuel reassured him that he “doesn’t stand by that trigger.”

UPDATERep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chairman of the 77-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, fired off a letter to President Obama today, stating: “I want to be crystal clear that any such trigger for a strong public plan option is a non-starter with a majority of the Members of the Progressive Caucus.”

UPDATEMoveOn has been rallying its members to call the White House to express their views.

Home State News - Illinois, Quinn vetos Operating Budget

2009-07-08T06:40:00.003-05:00

Quinn's press release:

CHICAGO - July 7, 2009. Governor Pat Quinn today vetoed House Bill 2145 saying the General Assembly's bill fails to make any significant cuts in state operations. Instead, the Governor proposed passing a responsible "Tough Choices" budget, which calls for cutting an additional $1 billion in state costs.

"I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because it favors preserving the government status quo and fails to make the necessary cuts and reductions in state government operations," said Governor Quinn. "It does not reflect the spirit of shared sacrifice that must prevail throughout our state government, particularly during these harsh economic times."

HB 2145 appropriates $3.8 billion to fund state operations. However, HB 2145 fails to adequately cut the cost of state operations, including the budget of the General Assembly and other Constitutional Officers, including the Attorney General, Treasurer, Comptroller and Secretary of State. (Attached is the Governor's veto message)

Governor Quinn said the General Assembly and all statewide officers should cut their budgets by at least 10 percent, a cost-cutting move that includes an option of ordering up to 12 furlough days for all employees.

"I presented my budget to the General Assembly on March 18 with a clear message: When it comes to making cuts, we have to make tough choices, not bad choices. It was true then and it's true today," said Governor Quinn. "My goal has always been to pass a fair and comprehensive state budget that serves the fundamental needs of the people of Illinois."

The Governor's "Tough Choices" budget proposes cutting $1 billion from the state budget including:

* $185 million from state operations, including approximately 2,600 layoffs and 12 furlough days for state employees
* $140 million from Medicaid and health insurance
* $250 million in targeted reductions in grant programs
* $125 million from the Department of Corrections
* $175 million cut from proposed increases for K-12 education
* $25 million from other state offices, departments and agencies not under the Governor
* $100 million in additional reserves

There are real problems here in Illinois. Governor Quinn wants to raise the income tax, temporarily, to get funds to pay for services but the Illinois House and Senate don't want to raise taxes.

From the Chicago Tribune:

For the second time in a week, Gov. Pat Quinn backed off his threats to make major cuts in state spending, instead vetoing much of the state budget Tuesday and trying to pressure lawmakers to help him find a solution.

But legislative leaders said Quinn's latest move only deepens mistrust of the rookie governor. House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton have urged Quinn to avoid a crisis situation, but state government edged closer to that as Illinois entered its second week with no budget in place.

As recently as Monday, Quinn said he would cut $1 billion in state spending as part of plans to fill a budget hole he estimates at $9 billion. On Tuesday, however, Quinn vetoed another budget bill, saying it was flawed from "beginning to end" and should be completely rewritten to reflect spending cuts across state government.

The decision allowed Quinn to try to spread responsibility for budget cuts. He called for a "partnership" as he said lawmakers must "start from scratch" to come up with a spending plan he can sign.

"If the General Assembly passed a budget that's out of balance, the proper thing for the governor, the executive, to do is to veto it and send it back and say, 'Do it again, do it right,' " said Quinn, who wants an income tax increase to raise more money. "Now if you need some help, I'm here to help."

The latest veto was a repeat of Quinn's budget maneuver last week. With the deadline to get a spending plan in place approaching, Quinn vetoed a different budget bill on social services after threatening for weeks that he would slash such spending by 50 percent.

Legislative leaders derided Quinn's vetoes, but said it was too early to say if they would seek to override them when they return to the Capitol on Tuesday.

"It looks at the front end as sort of his biggest flip-flop yet," said Madigan spokesman Steve Brown.

Cullerton spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon said the governor's veto came as a surprise and was not mentioned during a meeting between Quinn and the Senate president earlier in the day. Phelon questioned why Quinn didn't instead use his amendatory veto powers to alter the budget bill instead of rejecting it outright, and said the decision will add further tension to negotiations.

"If we just had to deal with the budget gap in these meetings, that would be one thing.Now we have to maneuver around his credibility gap," Phelon said.

Quinn did move forward with some cuts, however. His administration sent layoff notices to 2,600 of the state's 58,000 employees, including 1,000 corrections workers. He said he also has started negotiating with worker unions for 12 unpaid days off. Combined, those measures are expected to save the state $185 million. If an agreement isn't reached on the furlough days, Quinn said another 2,500 workers could lose their jobs.

There has to be an agreement between Quinn and the Illinois legislature soon or there will be major problems for the most vulnerable in Illinois. Many of us. here in Illinois have been calling, emailing, and writing to both Gov. Quinn and our local Reps and Senators to pass something soon. I also added that I would like to see more transparency for the government of Illinois so we know where this money is going. A web site would be nice.

So far we haven't had to send IOUs like California but if they don't agree on something soon...

The Health Care issue is heating up!

2009-07-07T21:52:00.003-05:00

Huffington reporting that:

Sanders Takes On Emanuel, Warns Of Dem Opposition To Baucus Proposal

Two major progressive voices in the health care debate took White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to task on Tuesday for suggesting that a public option with triggers could be a potential compromise on reform.

One of those voices, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) went so far as to insist that some Senate Democrats would vote against any proposal that didn't include a strong government-run option. Even the bill being crafted by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, Sanders noted, might not get the caucus' full support because it could stray too far away from an effective overhaul of the health care system.

"I think that it is fair to say that there are a number of us who would not be voting for anything resembling a Baucus-type plan as we understand it right now," the senator told the Huffington Post, referring to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' effort at constructing a reform bill.

In separate interviews, Sanders and his fellow Vermonter, former DNC Chair Howard Dean, both took umbrage with comments Emanuel made in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that was published Monday evening. The White House chief of staff did not deviate fully from the administration's line, suggesting that all prospects for reform remained on the table. But Emanuel added something that health care operatives said they hadn't heard from the White House to date: a statement of support for a health care insurance compromise based on a public option with triggers.

Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean are still fighting to get that Public option for our Health Care!

UPDATE: From Daily Kos - ROLLCALL NOW SAYS RAHM CONFRONTED BY REP WOOLSEY ON MEDICARE LIKE PUB OPT-RAHM APPARENTLY TOLD DEM REPS THAT OBAMA BACKS HAVING A STRONG PUB OPT. MORE BELOW.

Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) warned Emanuel that he would lose the caucus’ votes if the White House compromised on the issue and included a "trigger" that could delay a public insurance plan indefinitely. The trigger idea is backed by conservative Democrats but is anathema to liberals.

"We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game," Woolsey said she told Emanuel. "People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives."

Rove was Deposed today!

2009-07-07T21:19:00.003-05:00

That's right! News we missed because the MSM was busy showing the "Memorial Service" for Michael Jackson, more newsers by Sarah Palin, and the swearing in of Al Franken as the 60th Dem Senator.

Politico reporting today:

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was deposed Tuesday by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman.

Rove’s deposition began at 10 a.m. and ended around 6:30 p.m, with several breaks, Conyers said.

Conyers would not comment on what Rove told congressional investigators, what the next step in the long-running Judiciary Committee investigation would be or whether Rove would face additional questioning.

“He was deposed today,” Conyers said in an interview. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Remember the firings of the nine US Attorneys? Conyers finally got Rove to tell what he knows. (I cannot recall?)

There's not much more to the story except that Rove was deposed. Meier was deposed in June. Hopefully we'll be hearing something soon.

Reid making a bit of sense today

2009-07-07T20:12:00.003-05:00

Harry Reid (D) Nevada, strongly urged Max Baucus (D) Montana, to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill per Roll Call.

Yes, you read right. Reid doesn't care about bi-partisanship for this Healthcare bill. He sent this message to Baucus after Consulting with Senate Dems after the Tuesday morning leadership meeting.

According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus that several in the Conference had serious concerns and that it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Finance Committee began looking at ways other than taxing health benefits to deliver a health care overhaul that costs less than $1 trillion and is deficit-neutral, as Baucus wants. Baucus’ office declined to comment, but Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a key member of Finance, confirmed as much late Tuesday.

“I would say there’s a search for alternatives,” Conrad told reporters. “There’s been feedback. There’s been additional questions in terms of getting the votes and public support.”

Maybe some of us are making inroads with some of the Senators letting them know what we expect of them. Maybe.

The article goes on to report:

The source added that the meeting then devolved into “a cacophony of voices against bipartisanship” because Senate leaders could not reconcile how they could attract Republicans without sacrificing too many Democrats.

Bingo! They would lose too many Democrats! And I would venture to say, Independents as well!

And then you have the centrists, better known as the Blue Dog Dems that said:

However, the Democratic source said the leadership’s decision could backfire by alienating other elements of the Democratic caucus, such as centrists.

“I’m concerned we’re going to be perceived as abandoning the Republicans,” the source said. “The demands Reid is putting on some Democrats is going to make it harder for other Democrats to support this. ... Going the partisan route doesn’t get this bill done any faster.”

So what the Blue Dogs are doing, in essence, is threatening to slow down the bill.

Here's the holdup:

Finance may not begin marking up its bill until next week or the week after that. Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is set to complete the markup of its health care reform legislation this week or next. One senior Democratic Senate aide warned Tuesday that further delays by the Finance Committee could result in the planned merger of the two panels’ bills being scrapped in favor of allowing each one to move to the floor on its own.

The HELP bill is unanimously supported by the panel’s Democrats, with all Republicans opposed. It was drafted with liberal reform goals in mind, including health care policies that many Democrats have sought for decades.

“The longer Baucus takes, the trickier it gets,” a senior Democratic Senate aide said.

And the issue doesn’t just rest on Baucus’ shoulders. For Reid, up for re-election in 2010 and to whom Obama is looking for delivery of a top priority, the stakes are incredibly high.

Complicating matters, the Majority Leader must contend with powerful committee chairmen who are not a part of his leadership team, including Baucus and HELP Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), the No. 2 Democrat on HELP, has been managing the markup of that committee’s bill in the absence of Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer. Dodd has said he confers with Kennedy regularly.

There are more liberal Dems for the bill:

Reid also faces the challenge of reconciling two bills that have been developed with conflicting goals.

Particularly on whether to implement a government-run insurance option as a part of the overhaul, Reid must assuage a significant number of Democrats from conservative-leaning states who are either skeptical of or opposed to the proposal, while simultaneously keeping happy his liberals — whose numbers are greater.

Most Democrats, including Reid allies like Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), are enthusiastic backers of the government-run insurance option. The HELP Committee’s bill includes a robust government-run option; Finance on Tuesday was still haggling over several policies, including an acceptable compromise to the public plan component.

Now all we can do is keep the heat on all these people and see what happens.

Clinics starting options to Insurance for Health Care

2009-07-07T17:11:00.003-05:00

Here's an interesting concept for Health Care. It's flat-rate no-limit primary care.

From Reuters:

A Seattle clinic for people fed up with insurance, started by doctors fed up with insurance, has gotten $4 million in private venture capital money to expand, it announced on Monday.

Qliance says it has a profit-making solution to the problems of long waits, rushed doctors and cursory care that bother patients, at the same time that it eliminates the paperwork and pressure that plague primary care doctors.

"If you spent five minutes in my office you would notice there is nobody waiting. We don't have to stack them up like jets over Newark," said Garrison Bliss, a doctor and co-founder of the primary care clinic.

The new venture funding comes from Second Avenue Partners with participation by New Atlantic Ventures and Clear Fir Partners, bringing total capital raised to about $7.5 million.

Co-founder Norm Wu said per-patient revenue is triple that of insurance-based clinics. He said many costs are fixed so the firm, now losing money, will turn to profit as business grows.

More than 50 noninsurance clinics operate in 18 U.S. states, based on different business models, Wu noted.

The backers believe Qliance can grow very profitable, and the clinic uses stock options to attract new doctors. The next step is to open a suburban office.

And the charges to the patients:

Qliance customers pay $99 to join, then a flat monthly rate of $39 to $119, depending on age and level of service. Patients can quit without notice and no one is rejected for pre-existing conditions.

Patients must go to outside brokers and qualify medically to buy catastrophic care. One broker said a 30-year-old could expect to pay $133 per month for such care, and a 60-year-old nearly $400, plus substantial deductibles.

Qliance patients get unrestricted round-the-clock primary care access and 30-minute appointments.

And Dr. Garrison Bliss said this about insurance companies:

"Why would a doctor not want to see sick people? That doesn't make sense, unless you're an insurance company," Bliss said.

He rejected the idea that unrestricted access causes overuse, calling that "nonsense promoted by insurance companies .... There's nobody I've ever met who gets their pleasure by seeing doctors."

Bliss said dumping rigid, convoluted insurance requirements and paperwork saves large amounts of money.

This just goes to show you that the prices paid for healthcare are much higher because of insurance companies. Take out the middle man and you can still get good healthcare at more reasonable prices.

As a side note, I do think that doctors must start policing themselves. If they do that the amount of their liability insurance would go down. And it would root out the bad doctors.

Obama denies that U. S. has given Isreal green light to attack Iran

2009-07-07T15:45:00.004-05:00

Just as I surmised, Biden was out of line, again when he was interviewed on Sunday.

The AP reports On ABC's This Week, Vice President Biden signaled that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, even as the top U.S. military officer said any attack on Iran would be destabilizing.

Now Obama is doing damage control with reports out today from the AFP:

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly denied that the United States had given Israel a green light to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, in an interview on CNN television.

Asked by the cable television broadcaster whether Washington had given Israel the go-ahead to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Obama answered: "Absolutely not."

In the interview, which was broadcast from Russia, where he is on an official visit, he added: "We can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are.

"What is also true is, it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities," Obama said.

This would be achieved "through diplomatic channels," he added.

And from Boston.com:

Obama was asked on CNN this morning, "Are you giving Israel a green light?"

"Absolutely not," the president replied. "And I think it’s very important that I’m as clear as I can be, and our administration is as consistent as we can be on this issue."

"I think Vice President Biden stated a categorical fact which is we can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are," Obama added. "What is also true is that it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels. That is our policy, I have been talking about this for the last two years, we are going to continue to pursue this, and you know we have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and solve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East.

I don't dislike Biden but he does have a trigger mouth and seems always to say things before he really thinks about what he is saying.

Between Biden and Emanuel, Obama has his hands full. And I think he is regretting his choice for economic advice as well, if not yet, very soon! I am thinking Obama has many regrets on who he chose for many cabinet members and aides. He's learning fast that who stands behind you is very important.

Health Care. The fight for the Public Option

2009-07-07T13:53:00.004-05:00

This morning Think Progress' Faiz Shakir's posted about how Rahm Emanuel Signals White House Is Willing To Compromise On Public Plan. Rahm has never been one of my favorite politicians, and he's from my State and a Democrat. They try to call him a king maker but all I've seen from Rahm is obstructionism and back room deals for power and money. About the issue of Health Care, I wish he would just shut up. He's going against the wishes of Obama. Here's part of Faiz's post:

The Wall Street Journal reports that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is now lending Baucus his support for the public plan “trigger”:

Mr. Emanuel said one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama’s goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own. He noted that congressional Republicans crafted a similar trigger mechanism when they created a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare in 2003. In that case, private competition has been judged sufficient and the public option has never gone into effect. […]

On Monday, Mr. Emanuel said the trigger mechanism would also accomplish the White House’s goals. Under this scenario, a public plan would kick in under certain circumstances when competition was judged to be lacking. Exactly what circumstances would trigger the option would have to be worked out.

But in the same post, even though Emanuel said: "one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama’s goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own", there is an unlinked update of what Obama is saying:

President Obama issued a statement this morning, reiterating his support for a public plan:

I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals.

I think Obama needs to tell Rahm to keep his mouth shut on this issue and quit talking for Obama. And I also think Obama has to talk to his Senate buddies and tell them what he wants and that he will accept only a bill that has a Public Plan in it.
A majority of the American people really want this public plan.

What I can't understand is that Obama has a Web Site for people to post the problems they've had with Private Insurance. What is he going to do with it and when is he going to use it?

Update: Huffington's Sam Stein has a post saying: President Tries To Put Out Fire From Emanuel's Health Care Remarks

"Rahm's problem with this is he is on the more conservative end of the Democratic Party and he is a very political guy," the source added. "He is working for a way out without a bloody fight. The problem is he doesn't mind taking that fight to the left. And what I worry could happen is the left will just quit."

Certainly Emanuel's remarks to the Journal presented a pill too big to swallow for many Democrats. "It is actually the most ludicrous of the compromises on the table," explained one activist. "It says we should wait until the health care crisis gets worse before it gets better."

And in the hours after the interview was published, the White House clearly sensed concern bubbling. Moving with haste, aides put out a statement from the president before any major firestorm erupted.

The Economy! What can I say? It stinks!

2009-07-06T06:28:00.004-05:00

Biden said yesterday that the Obama Admin misread the economy.

From ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package. The national unemployment rate has ballooned to 9.5 percent in June -- the worst in 26 years.

"The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited," said Biden, who is leading the administration's effort to implement it's $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

snip

The vice president argued more time is needed for the stimulus to work.

"We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package," he said. "The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money."

Biden didn't rule out a second government stimulus package, but downplayed calls from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman this week that a second stimulus will be needed.

There are many economists that agree with Krugman. How about Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Ravi Bahtra. The stimulus wan't enough and the TARP money went to Banks that didn't need the funds. What we should give the banks is a nice package of rules and regulations that would keep their lawyers and bean counters busy for awhile trying to find loop holes and ways around these rules and regs!

And just to throw another wrench on the pile, the New York Times has an article today about the unstable Oil Prices and how it will hurt our economy. But this article also says:

"The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now — or even next month."

This article goes on to say:

While the movements in the oil markets have been similar to swings in most asset classes, including stocks and other commodities, the recent rise in oil prices is reprising the debate from last year over the role of investors — or speculators — in the commodity markets.

Government officials around the world have become concerned about a possible replay of last year’s surge. Energy officials from the European Union and OPEC, meeting in Vienna last month, said that “the speculation issue had not been resolved yet and that the 2008 bubble could be repeated” without more oversight.

Many factors that pushed oil prices up last year have returned. Supply fears are creeping back into the market, with a new round of violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta crimping production. And there are increasing fears that the political instability in Iran could spill over onto the oil market, potentially hampering the country’s exports.

So in my opinion, the Foxes guarding the economic Hen House from the Obama Admin has to start broadening their outlook and accept the opinions of other economist that our stimulus package wasn't enough. The falling employment shows this with fears of a double digit jobless count on the horizon.

And G W Bush is in Texas, in his recliner, with his feet up, and his wide screen TV watching all the destruction his 8 years in office has created. Doesn't seem right!

Back to posting and discussing again....

2009-07-05T22:59:00.000-05:00

Health issues have kept me away but it's time to start blogging again. Too many issues to cover now. The economy, health care, climate change, Iran, North Korea, the G8 to name a few.

The GOP and GW left us in a huge mess. And the economic problems go all the way back to the Reagan administration. It seems they don't like Government but I can see by what they've done that an Emperor would be okay.

There's lots to post and lots to discuss! Let's get to it

toniD

Election Commission of DuPage is Challenged

2008-07-19T17:31:00.004-05:00

Finally. having been an Election Judge, I've seen a security issue first hand. Here's more from the Naperville Sun:

Election commission is challenged to explain voting machine accuracy

July 17, 2008Recommend (5)

"With all the mechanical improvements they have in the way of adding machines, and counting machines, they can't seem to invent anything to take the place of the old Political mode of counting - two for me and one for you. More people have been elected between Sundown and Sunup, than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown." Indeed, when Will Rogers wrote that, we could not mechanize vote fraud. But now that we have things like Premier/ Diebold touch screen voting machines, votes can be stolen whether it's night or day.

Of course, it's not the machine that steals them.

Diebold machines are, as our election commission proclaims, fairly accurate. And we do not, in fact, know that any votes have ever been stolen electronically in DuPage County. All we know is that they have been stolen in other places and that, if they were to be stolen here, the design of the machines guarantees that the theft would be absolutely undetectable.

The criticisms that have been leveled at the DuPage County Election Commission have had more to do with the appearance of impropriety. They've been about some members' close personal relationships with both the manufacturer and distributor of the voting machines, for example, and the kind of cross fertilization that, frankly, is not unusual in "old boy" networks.

There's nothing in the commission's charter, however, that mandates objectivity or that forbids doing business with cronies. The commission simply certifies election judges, registers voters, and redistricts precincts. In short, it conducts elections, and its only responsibility to the people of DuPage County is to ensure that every vote is counted, and counted fairly.

Were we using only paper ballots that could be kept indefinitely, so they could be sampled after the election, or if the state Legislature had mandated touch screen voting machines with open source software, nobody would have to worry about his or her vote.

But we use machines with unnecessarily complex, poorly written, proprietary software that are physically much less secure than ATMs made by the same company. Some of these machines can be secretly, and undetectably, reprogrammed in seconds by people with limited technical skills.

I have been assured that everything is fine and that the commission's critics are suffering from paranoia. Perhaps, but in response to increased concerns from readers, I would like to invite the election commission to allay our fears and tell us, either in a special Sun column or in a meeting with me that I will discuss in this space, exactly what measures they are taking to deal with the dangers posed by this new, and as yet unrefined, technology.

Read more HERE

The last day of the Democrats Primary. Who will win?

2008-06-03T11:20:00.002-05:00

First Clinton will concede then she won't concede. Obama's within 30 delegates of clinching the nomination. The MSM is going crazy trying to forsee what will happen tonight. What do you think will happen?

The Senate Commerce Committe held an eye opening meeting on the price of oil. Speculation in oil is being blamed for the steep increase in oil and gas prices because we have no regulations over speculators. This will be an issue to follow and voice your thoughts to your Senators.

I've been away for awhile because of many things, one being health problems. I'm going to try to keep the blog going as best I can.

Comments welcome.

toniD

Sam Seder Blog down - Open Thread

2007-12-22T22:26:00.000-06:00

Use it if you need to.

THE GATES GATE

2007-10-01T09:46:00.003-05:00

Today on The Young Turks, Michael Hirsh spoke of Seymour Hersh from the New Yorker Magazine and his latest predictions on the likelihood of strikes against Iran. The audio segment can be heard here.

During the interview Hirsh discusses the role of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. It wasn't that long ago when many on the left including myself had serious doubts about Roberts ability to maintain objectivity. While Defense Secretary Gates has long and controversial ties with various Bush administrations, some now look at him as the man who stands in the way of war with Iran.

I only began looking at Robert as a voice of reason when I heard of Admiral Fallon's description of General Petraeus as an Ass Kissing Chicken Shit. I asked myself how Admiral Fallon got his post at CENTCOM and learned that it was Robert who installed him in that post. So I say give Robert Gates space.

Michael Hirsh is the first to confirm to me that Gates and Cheney are the opposing voices pulling George into the future. How can we help Robert?

Today Navy Adm. Mike Mullen is scheduled to replace Marine Gen. Peter Pace. He is already on record as saying the military is over stretched. Robert Gates also nominated Adm. Mullen as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Let's watch and hope that reason triumphs over greed. Could the Gates gate be in his choice of nominations?

Unfair Treatment to Kucinich

2007-08-30T12:21:00.000-05:00

This should not be done to any of the candidates running for president....

From Media Bloodhound:

Special Report:
WashPo and Time Help ABC Bury Treatment of Kucinich

Following last Sunday's Democratic presidential debate on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Dennis Kucinich's campaign asked ABC News to address issues it had with treatment Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) received both during the debate and afterward in ABC's online coverage. In an email sent out to supporters on Wednesday, the campaign said it "submitted objections and inquiries to ABC News representatives on Monday and Tuesday. ABC News representatives have failed to respond - or even acknowledge - those objections and inquiries." I confirmed with the Kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded the same response ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones sent to The Washington Post and Time magazine.

ABC News representatives felt it necessary to answer the Kucinich campaign's objections when Time magazine's National Political Correspondent Karen Tumulty queried them. Writing on the Time blog Swampland, Tumulty initially says of the Kucinich team's issues with ABC's treatment (which included Kucinich not having a chance to speak until 28 minutes into the debate), "These all seemed like fair complaints to me, so I asked ABC News to respond." Then Tumulty says, "In an e-mail, Executive Director Andrea Jones answered him [Kucinich] point by point."

While I give Tumulty credit for contacting ABC News, her investigative journalism unfortunately ends there. Once she receives the email from Jones, Tumulty slips into stenography mode. Jones' "point by point" response to the Kucinich campaign's complaints does not in itself exculpate or dispel any of ABC's wrongdoing. Tumulty fails to assess the accuracy and logic of Jones' answers.

First, just so we're all up to speed, here are the issues (an aggregate of the thousands of complaints received during and after ABC's debate coverage) that the Kucinich campaign asked ABC News to address:

* Congressman Kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a "Politics Page" photo of the candidates.

* Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a commanding lead in ABC's own on-line "Who won the Democratic debate" survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.

* ABC News has not officially reported the results of its online survey.

* After the results of that survey showed Congressman Kucinich winning handily, ABC News, sometime Monday afternoon, replaced the original survey with a second survey asking "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"

* During the early voting Monday afternoon and evening, U.S. Senator Barack Obama was in the lead. By sometime late Monday or early Tuesday morning, Congressman Kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in this second survey.

* Sometime Tuesday morning, ABC News apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely.

* AND, as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday Presidential forum is aware, Congressman Kucinich was not given an opportunity to answer a question from moderator George Stephanopoulos until 28 minutes into the program.

Now back to Tumulty commenting on Jones' response [emphasis below is mine]:

This gist of her answer is this: She denies that Kucinich was cropped out of any photo, noting that "there are 20 photos live on the ABC News website, Mr. Kucinich is in a number of them and there is even one of him and his wife. He is one of 6 candidates who got his own photo in the slide show. As for the images, clearly nothing was cropped, the image in question was shot by Charlie Neibergall of the AP not ABC."

FALSE. Had Tumulty - Time magazine's National Political Correspondent and former member of the White House press corps - simply located the original AP photo (which, at most, should've taken a few minutes online), she would've found Kucinich in it and realized the following version ABC News prominently displayed online after the debate had, indeed, been cropped:

So Jones either lied when she said "clearly nothing was cropped" or was misinformed by someone on her staff. Since Tumulty seems to think her job ends with receiving answers from an ABC News spokesperson, she doesn't question the veracity of Jones' assertion, which is clearly false.

Adding to its duplicity, ABC News has now completely replaced the original photograph in question. If you click on the link in Tumulty's post (which is supposed to bring you to that photo), you are now taken to a wholly different shot that includes Dennis Kucinich and is currently the default debate photo sitting on the ABC News website.

So, in case your keeping score, first ABC disappears Kucinich from a photo by cropping him out, then denies it, then later disappears the original cropped photo, replacing it with a separate photo that includes Kucinich, making it appear as if nothing improper ever occurred.

Eat your heart out Fox News.

Tumulty does later post an update after she manages (she doesn't say how) to find her way to a page on the site Pinkraygun that shows the original AP photo and the doctored ABC photo side-by-side. This compels Tumulty to gingerly concede "there does in fact appear to have been some cropping." First, it was either cropped or it wasn't. "Some cropping" gives the impression a whole cropping didn't occur, which it did. Second, if there was "some cropping," then logic follows that Jones either did some lying or some misinforming. That, in turn, means Tumulty should be doing some follow up with Jones. She does not. Third, a question for Tumulty and her editors over at Time: How did you fail to bring this simple fact to light yourselves? You had three main points to investigate - whether a photo was cropped, whether a poll was manipulated and whether Kucinich was allotted a fair amount of time. Arguably, the cropped photo was the most simple and quick of the three to verify. Did you attempt to find this on your own? If so, what's your excuse for initially failing to obtain such readily available evidence? If not, what's your excuse for failing to pursue this evidence in the first place?

On to the poll(s):

She notes that the poll was and is live on ABC's website. (When I checked it, Kucinich was still winning, with Barack Obama a distant second.) She also notes the poll's disclaimer that it is "not a scientific survey," which seems like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story.

MISLEADING. Jones' statement circumvents the facts and the original thrust of the Kucinich campaign's complaint about the poll. Tumulty's unobtrusive reporting gives the impression the poll has always been up on ABC's site in clear view and at no time were changes made to it.

FACT: The original poll, prominently displayed, asked, "Who won the Democratic debate?" Once Kucinich jumped ahead, this poll was scuttled from its prominence on the site. As it became clear Kucinich was trouncing his competition, ABC just happened to decide to post a new poll asking, "Who is winning the Democratic debate?" As the Kucinich campaign (and Tumulty) correctly cited, Barack Obama had an early lead in this second poll; but when Kucinich pulled ahead by a wide margin, ABC then dropped this poll from prominence, too. (Because the Kucinich camp had difficulty finding the poll after ABC moved it, they questioned whether ABC may have buried the poll "or killed it entirely." It appears ABC didn't kill it entirely; they just made it difficult for users work to find - which, as anyone who knows anything about online usability, is nearly tantamount to killing it). More at link.

And this they call the "Liberial Media"?

NUGENTS NUGGETS

2007-08-28T08:10:00.000-05:00

Facing a draft, Nugent bravely wet his pants

Rocker is all talk as he calls Obama, Hillary vile names

August 27, 2007

BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist

So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama "a piece of -----" and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch" and Dianne Feinstein a "worthless whore."

That Nugent, he's a man's man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?

Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!

GOLD RECOGNIZES ALBERTO

2007-08-27T09:48:00.001-05:00

I took this screen shot of the price of gold as soon as Alberto Gonzales resigned his post.

Hastert Retiring, Will a Dem take his place?

2007-08-19T08:06:00.000-05:00

Dennis Hastert isn't running again. Who will take his place? Chris Cillizza from Washinton Post's, The Fix, has some thoughts:

Analysis: Can Dems Pick Up Hastert and Pryce Seats?It's been a bad couple of days for House Republicans, as two senior lawmakers who once held top leadership positions in the GOP caucus -- former Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and ex-Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (Ohio) -- said they will not run for reelection next fall.

We've written before in this space that with Republicans no longer in the majority and a national political environment that looks decidedly unfriendly for GOPers in 2008, it's likely that a number of lawmakers who had been contemplating leaving office in elections past will retire this time around.

Republicans currently have four open seats -- two in Illinois, Hastert's 14th District and Ray LaHood's 18th, Pryce's 15th in Ohio, and the 52nd in California, currently held by Duncan Hunter. (House Democrats are so far losing three lawmakers: Luis Gutierrez in Illinois's 4th, Mark Udall in Colorado's 2nd, and Tom Allen in Maine's 1st.)

Wholesale retirements could leave an underfunded National Republican Congressional Committee hard pressed to cover all of its vulnerabilities, creating the potential for another cycle of significant Democratic gains in the House.

Here's a quick synopsis of the political situation in the districts currently held by Hastert and Pryce. We'll provide this synopsis any time a seat comes open between now and next November. These are meant to be sketches; we'll return to each race with additional analysis as events warrant.

Illinois's 14th District

Geography: The 14th runs west out of Chicago, taking in the population hub of Aurora as well as several smaller towns like Geneva and St. Charles (home of The Fix's in-laws).

Electoral History: President Bush carried the 14th with 55 percent of the vote in 2004 and 54 percent in 2000. Hastert has held the seat easily since 1986.

Candidates: Both sides seem headed for a primary. For Republicans, dairy magnate Jim Oberweis and state Sen. Chris Lauzen are seen as the two most serious contenders. Oberweis has name identification as a result of three unsuccessful statewide races -- twice for Senate (2002, 2004) and once for governor (2006); he also has very deep pockets. Hastert will not likely endorse in the primary race to replace him, but he's made clear that Oberweis is his preferred candidate. Lauzen has held an Aurora-based legislative seat since 1992 and has already formed an exploratory committee for the race.

On the Democratic side, national party officials seem to prefer Bill Foster. Foster, a scientist who spent two decades working at Fermilab in Batavia, is independently wealthy and has already pledged to put $2 million into the race. Foster also released a poll conducted for his campaign in April that showed him trailing Hastert by 27 points but with a generic Democratic candidate ahead of a generic Republican candidate 40 percent to 30 percent. John Laesch, the party's 2006 nominee, looks set to run again. State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, seen by some as the party's strongest candidate, has said she will not run.

Outlook: By the numbers alone, this district shouldn't be all that tough for Republicans to hold. But with Sen. Dick Durbin (D) expected to cruise to reelection in 2008 and the possibility of Sen. Barack Obama on the national ticket, Democrats are increasingly optimistic. The 14th District is not all that dissimilar to Illinois's 8th District, which was won by Rep. Melissa Bean (D) in 2004, and the 6th district, which played host to an expensive and competitive open-seat race in 2006 -- eventually won by now Rep. Peter Roskam (R). One other X-factor in this race is that the district is almost entirely covered by the pricey Chicago media market. If Foster and Oberweis wind up as the nominees, this could be one of the most expensive races in the country.

Sam Seder Show Blog Widget

2007-08-14T12:47:00.000-05:00

I'm going to put up this embed widget for people to copy/paste the code. Post Sam's shows on your blog for those who miss the show. I will try to keep it current as soon as the show becomes available.

Embed code available by playing the show. Look for the <> button.

This embed created using SplashCast.

Custom Blog Widget Code:

Illinois Action Needed for DuPage County

2007-08-14T08:58:00.000-05:00

Operation Turn DuPage Blue Announces

Help us oppose Senate Floor Amendment No. 2 to IL House Bill 1752

State Senator Dan Cronin (a Republican from District 21) has proposed an amendment to House Bill 1752 which seeks to amend the Election Code by making the minimum nomination petition signature requirement for county offices in DuPage County 1.5% (now, 0.5%) of the number of voters in a certain category.

OTDB thinks it is egregious that such a state law would single out DuPage County, seemingly for the purposes of making it three times more difficult for Democratic, and especially grassroots, candidates to run for office.

What makes Sen. Cronin's sponsorship of this amendment even more irksome is that he has recently written letters to the editor stating that, "It has become imminently clear that one-party rule in the General Assembly does not benefit the people we were elected to represent" (Elmhurst Press, 6/14/07) and that Illinois' budget stalemate was "the result of one-party control of our system of governance, which eliminates the need for cooperation and good-faith negotiations" (Daily Herald, 8/7/07).

Below is a list of Representatives. Please chose three or four to contact on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. The vote is on Friday. Let them hear us down in Springfield (and it will certainly echo around DuPage).

List of Representatives