health care reform

One of the arguments that my fellow progressives and liberals have been making, both in the blogosphere and in real life, in support of supporting the option of a public option is but don't you want for everyone to be able to have the same health care as Congress?

Well, of course. I'd be cool with that. But first a digression... Read below the fold...

"Shared responsibility payments...."

Love the Orwellian language! That's the fifteen trillion dollars we're all on the hook for to bail out the banksters, right? No?

Alrighty, then. Read below the fold...

Current: explains why the proposal stinks and why HR 676 is better. Read below the fold...

"?" since the sourcing is a tweet:

Karen Tumulty was on a press call with the HELP committee to hear about Kennedy's bill, and she just posted a tweet with the following...

Senate HELP bill: If u hate ur employer's coverage, u have to keep it, unless it costs 12.5% of ur salary. No public plan 4 u.

Read below the fold...

Nurses National Movement has a diary at MyDD on the proposal to tax employee health benefits:

Ordering everyone to buy insurance, however, is a little messy. Especially in a deep recession when many are losing their employer coverage, premiums have soared four times faster than incomes in the past decade, and 62 percent of personal bankruptcies are now linked to medical bills.

Read below the fold...

Times:

An estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

Many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.

Read below the fold...

As readers know, I've been looking for an explanation of what, if anything, "public option" actually means. I think I've finally found the right analogy: Read below the fold...

The three co-founders of The American Prospect, each of them -- Robert Kuttner, Robert Reich, and Paul Starr -- considering himself a good progressive, square off in an article titled Debating the Public Option. Read below the fold...

UPDATE: How this hair brained scheme came into existence.

U.S. Senate proposal avoids healthcare taxes for union workers Read below the fold...

Read below the fold...

By STEVEN THOMMA AND DAVID LIGHTMAN
McClatchy Newspapers (Who should know better)

The White House is ramping up its behind-the-scenes lobbying of Congress. President Barack Obama is signaling that he could drop some key principles of his campaign if necessary to jump-start negotiations, opening the door to broad tax increases and a plan that could, he now concedes, push people into a government-run insurance program against their will. Senate Democrats also said last week that they were heading toward agreement again after a momentary stall.

Read below the fold...

and Michelle Obama sent me an email about it --

hipparchia --

National and community service has been a cornerstone of my life, as I know it has been for many Americans. And with the daily struggles now confronting so many families, it's especially important for us to reach out to one another and offer a helping hand.

I've just launched United We Serve, a national initiative to tackle our toughest problems by working hand-in-hand in communities across the country. We aim to make a real difference right now and bring more and more Americans into a tradition of life-long service to make an even greater difference down the road.

Read below the fold...

Scarecrow writes at FDL:

[A]s far as I know, there don’t appear to be successful examples of the “uniquely American” hybrid model that somehow combines employment-based insurance, competition between public vs private insurance plans in an exchange, plus government-sponsored Medicare/Medicaid --- and makes it all work in a sensible fashion.

Or to put it another way, there’s a reason why this model would be “uniquely American.” It’s because no one else has made such a combination work.

Read below the fold...

Sign the open letter from PNHP to Obama demanding that Obama follow through on his 2003 promise to support single payer: Read below the fold...

President Obama's town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening.

The one-hour ABC News special "Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America" (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour (against NBC's "The Philanthropist" debut and a repeat of "CSI: NY" on CBS). The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

People are beginning to twig on the fact that Obama has no plan. Read below the fold...