Who knew? But it's nice to see it all put together:

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Because it’s not the best we can do. It mandates people purchase private insurance. It is a $70 billion giveaway to private insurance companies and locks in this system that’s the problem, not the solution.

David Swanson:

Why is a bill better than no bill? Why is a bill that funds absolutely useless parasites like health insurance companies at the expense of our grandchildren's unearned pay better than nothing? Why -- when blocking a bill would almost guarantee a better debate in round 2 -- is it more important to pass the bill and close off the opportunity for valuable reform? Is there nothing this bill could do that would lead you to oppose it? If the senate turns the "public option" into something that does not even exist until possibly "triggered" years from now, then will you oppose the bill? But the public option barely exists in the House version either. Why wait until the last minute to pointlessly pretend you oppose this pig?

Don McCann says abort. Then reboot:

The five reform bills passed by House and Senate committees will not control health care costs, and yet these are to be merged into one bill – that will not control health care costs.

What is the worst that could happen?

The second worst is that the final bill could be defeated and everyone would walk away with yet another failed attempt at reform. (Everyone would understand that very soon we would have to return to start over since the status quo is totally unacceptable.)

The very worst is that this bill could pass and everyone would walk away insisting that we have successfully reformed health care when all we have done is to establish an unnecessary and unethical ten-year long experiment that will cause financial hardship, physical suffering and even death – adverse outcomes that could be prevented with reform based on policy evidence rather than markets.

I think Dr. McCann is an optimist.

WaPo:

The bipartisan initiative [Hold onto your wallets! -- lambert], largely eclipsed in the health-care debate, builds on a trend that is in play among some corporations and that more workers will see in the benefits packages they bring home during this fall's open enrollment. Some employers offer lower premiums to workers who complete personal health assessments; others limit coverage for smokers.

The current legislative effort would take the trend a step further. It is backed by major employer groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. It is opposed by labor unions and organizations devoted to combating serious illnesses, such as the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association.

Critics say employers could use the rewards and penalties to drive some workers out of their health plans.

President Obama and members of Congress have said [and of course, we believe them -- lambert] they are trying to create a system in which no one can be denied coverage or charged higher premiums based on their health status. The insurance lobby has said it shares that goal. However, so-called wellness incentives could introduce a colossal loophole. In effect, they would permit insurers and employers to make coverage less affordable for people exhibiting risk factors for problems such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Or... Whatever! Pre-existing conditions are right back in the game, except now they're called "risk factors." Can anybody seriously believe that the bill won't create a whole industry devoted to finding "risk factors" and denying people care who have them? Or can plausibly be said to have had them, perhaps during rescission? Ectomorphs under the bus! Endomorphs under the bus! Black men have a higher "risk factor" for stroke? Under the bus! People who worked in chemical plants have a higher "risk factor" for cancer? Under the bus! People with blue eyes have a higher "risk factor" for uveal melanoma? Under the bus! Women have a higher "risk factor" for pregnancy? Under the bus!

It's the same old game: Collect premiums, deny care.

McClatchy:

The committee also heard from women such as Peggy Robertson of Colorado, who read a letter from her insurance company. Robertson testified that because she'd already given birth via cesarean, when she tried to get an individual policy in Colorado, her insurance company considered it a pre-existing condition and wouldn't insure her unless she could prove she'd been sterilized.

That "put me on the edge of my chair," said the chairwoman of the committee, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., calling it "offensive and morally repugnant."

"No one in the United States of America, in order to get health insurance, should ever be coerced into getting sterilized," Mikulski said.

AP gets the date, in full why oh why can't we have a better press corps mode:

Under the Democratic bills, federal tax credits to help make health insurance affordable for millions of low- and middle-income households won't start flowing until 2013 — after the next presidential election. [Quelle surprise!] But Medicare cuts and a sizable chunk of the tax increases to pay for the overhaul kick in immediately. [Quelle surprise!]

The eat-your-vegetables-first approach is causing heartburn for some Democrats. Three years is a long time to wait for dessert...

Oh, health care is dessert? I guess to the press, who have insurance, it is!

... and opponents could capitalize on misgivings about the complex legislation to undo what would be a signature achievement for Obama.

Obama administration officials and Democratic lawmakers say the reason for the three-year wait is the time it's going to take to set up insurance marketplaces, write consumer protection rules and reconfigure the bureaucracy to carry out the legislation. It took President George W. Bush's administration two years to phase in the Medicare prescription benefit, a more modest undertaking.

Right, and it took LBJ only 1 year to implement Medicare -- before computers! Why?

Obama, in the Rose Garden, speaking to a gathering of physicians today:

Every one of you here today took an oath when you entered the medical profession. It was not an oath that you would spend a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies. (Laughter.) It was not an oath that you would have to turn away patients who you know could use your help. You did not devote your lives to be bean counters or paper pushers. You took an oath so that you could heal people. You did it so you could save lives.

Helen Thomas explains to Robert Gibbs why she keeps asking if Obama will fight for a public option (h/t Melissa McEwan):

Of course, I'm sure Helen realizes that:

1) Obama isn't going to fight for a public option (even a puny, useless one and if you don't believe me, watch the video again); and
2) Robert Gibbs doesn't have a conscience.

(Via.)

Asses to asses, mush to mush. [pounds head on desk]

Chris Floyd sums up the health care reform debate:

One side is lying; the other side is not telling the truth.

*

Or to put it another way: One side is pretending that a wildly reactionary plan to further enrich rapacious corporations is really hardcore, gutbucket socialism from the Bolshevik trenches, while the other side is pretending that its "reform" is not really a wildly reactionary plan to further enrich rapacious corporations but something that will somehow, in some way, be good for some people at some point way down the line.

Yep.

RL calls, so maybe somebody else can unpack this detailed article on California's health exchange experiment (via McClatchy, bien sur).

Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.
- George Bernard Shaw

Trolling through some recent history I found this from hipparchia from back in March. Jason Rosenbaum:

The argument that single-payer health care would be more efficient is a straw man. Both health care reform plans would increase efficiencies and save a great deal of money. But only one can get 60 votes in the Senate.

The HCAN strategy all along has been to calculate based on some unknown formula what is politically feasible at the moment (curiously, without seeming to take into account the effect that energetic activism can have on feasibility) and direct all its energy towards that goal. It's a reasonable and legitimate plan, I wish them success on it, and for reform advocates generally (including single payer) their success is all our success. I still don't like it, though.

First, it's asymmetrical. Do you think AHIP is so finely calibrating its strategy? Hell no. They're trying to burn the motherfucker clear to the ground. We need to be the equal and opposite reaction by repeatedly and loudly demanding our entire wish list. Second, it's not our job to think about, or even care, if the perfect is being the enemy of the good. That's for politicians to consider, not activists. Our job is to ceaseless agitate for the best policy. Our elected representatives can worry about the perfect, the good, the realistic and the rest of the sausage-making process.

This great quote at Shakesville made me go look for the answer to that question, which I'd been wondering about, and at Our Bodies, Ourselves, I found this:

Our Bodies Ourselves supports the single-payer model as the most effective approach for solving the United States' health and medical care crisis.

As the Democrats busily work on plans to make us all captive consumers of the private health insurers, the rich are cutting loose from the system. While we'll be stuck in costly Exchanges, the rich will be moving on toward their own privately reformed health system. Welcome to the world of concierge medicine.

Via Dr. Grumpy. I have to quote the whole thing because it's so damn good:

Yesterday I was walking by Annie's office, and heard her losing it over the speaker phone. And, as always, she was totally awesome.

Annie: "I'm calling because you people denied an MRI on a stroke patient?"

Pinhead: "Before we discuss this, I have to inform you that this is a recorded line."

Annie: "Oh, good, hopefully someone will actually be listening to me then. Thus far it hasn't happened."

Pinhead: "Let me look up the tracking number... Okay. I have to inform you that we are unable to approve this study. Your doctor will need to make a peer-to-peer call."

Annie: "Oh, now THAT's a surprise."

UPDATE ii: Action Alert for FAIR

UPDATE: Commentary from Healthcare-NOW!

Dave Lindorff: The New York Times Trashes Single-Payer

In an article in Sunday's The New York Times, headlined "Medicare for All? 'Crazy,' 'Socialized' and Unlikely," reporter Katherine Q. Seelye did her best to damn the idea of government insurance for all with faint praise.

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

If you watch or listen to Democracy Now! you know about the latest study on insurance and mortality in US adults. It's no big deal, just some wacky research indicating that tens of thousands of people (45,000 actually) in the US die every year because they don't have health insurance.

National Nurses Movement

The campaign for the most comprehensive healthcare reform of all, single payer, won a huge boost Tuesday as the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention in Pittsburgh to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare.

The vote came shortly after the convention was addressed by President Obama who repeated his call for comprehensive healthcare reform, and will accompany another AFL-CIO resolution supporting other Congressional efforts to pass comprehensive reform.

Bloomberg reports on forthcoming report funded by Pete "Ice Floes" Peterson on health care savings. No doubt all of Versailles will happily accept the cover the report will provide to argue that the CBO cost estimates for health care insurance "reform" don't take these savings into account, and so whatever shit sausage Versailles comes up with is jake with the angels. Yay!

Susan Collins wants you to know that she does NOT support a public option trigger:

A key swing vote on healthcare reform said Sunday she would not support a public option "trigger" -- a series of benchmarks that, if not met by a certain time, would authorize the creation of a government insurance program.

"No -- the problem with triggers is that is just delays the public option," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told CNN's "State of the Union," adding that her major qualm with the public option was its scope and cost.

From the Baucus health insurance reform framework document: (p. 2)

Interstate Sale of Insurance. Starting in 2015, states may form “health care choice compacts” to allow for the purchase of non-group health insurance across state lines. Such compacts may exist between two or more states. Once compacts have been formed, insurers would be allowed to sell policies in any state participating in the compact. Insurers selling policies through a compact would only be subject to the laws and regulations of the state where the policy is written or issued.

The CBO confirms today my long-held suspicion that the vaunted "public option" is not much more than a high-risk pool and forecasts that premiums will actually be slightly higher than private offerings.

Currently, private health insurance is available via the following mechanisms:



1. Large employer group coverage

2. Small group market (small business)

3. Individual market (self-employed, unattached)
  Read more…

unless you were compromising with yourself. I'm sick of hearing the "public option was the compromise". No, it wasn't. You can't compromise on something when it's the only policy for which you have advocated. The public option, not single payer, is the demand. A compromised public option is likely to be the compromise. Improved and Enhanced Medicare for All, or single payer, was never on the table. It was never part of the negotiations, thus it was never a policy up for compromise.

See Susie, Versailles poolboy Ezra Klein, and Kaiser's PR wire*.

'Scuse me, got to go vomit now.

Joke, ha ha: Clyburn -- yes, THAT Clyburn -- is talking about a "pilot" program for health care insurance reform:

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is pushing a compromise on the most contentious part of President Barack Obama's bid to provide medical benefits to uninsured Americans.

Instead of a nationwide government insurance program, Clyburn is urging other Democrats to accept a scaled-down public option that would be tested as a pilot program in several parts of the country.

"We ought to set up some pilot programs regionally around the country," Clyburn, the No. 3 leader in the House of Representatives, told McClatchy. "What you're trying to do is find out what works and what doesn't work."

Well, Medicare works, and so does the VA. Both are single payer. So, couldn't we just consider them the pilot programs, and go directly to HR676?