Linda Bergthold: Happy Health Care Reform New Year

Will the single payer advocates support a more gradual roll-out of the elements of health reform if the result is not Medicare for All?

Single payer advocates will accept any compromise that preserves the right of the states to enact their own single payer plans..

KevinMD Read more…

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has an article about Kennedy's effort to form a "concensus" on health care, filled with fluffy quotes from special interest lobbyists.

Special attention is given to the role of John McDonough, who is described as a former law maker and head of Health Care For All. Sounds like a nice guy huh?

Let's review who McDonough really is: Read more…

Nearly two and a half years to the day, I wrote an early article detailing Rick Warren's connections with Paul Yonggi Cho nee David Yonggi Cho--a figure who is practically at Ground Zero regarding the continued perpetuation and promotion of what has been termed "Latter Rain", evolved into "Joel's Army", and is known now as the "New Apostolic Reformation".

This early post has gained sudden relevance now with Rick Warren now being chosen as the pastor to give the inauguration prayer on 20 January.

This is also rather unfortunate, as it turns out that Rick Warren's connections to "Elijah's Army" go farther than trading tips with Cho on megachurch growth...far deeper. Read more…

Mass. health plan has national appeal

WASHINGTON - Key players in the debate over how to provide healthcare coverage for the nation's 47 million uninsured say they view Massachusetts' landmark 2006 law as an important model for what Washington could do and how to get it done.

Check out who Senator Kennedy has been talking to: Read more…

U.S. Health Industry to Fight Public Insurance Option in Reform Proposals

Perhaps no idea is more disliked by the U.S. health insurance industry than a proposal by Democratic President-elect Barack Obama to have a public health insurance plan competing directly with them as part of his broad pledge to reform the country''s ailing health care system.

The industry is "going to fight and they're going to kick and they're going to scream," said Sam Fleet, president and chief executive officer of AmWins Group Benefits, a wholesale brokerage. "The last thing private insurers want is the federal government to compete with them." Read more…

Milwaukee Business Journal

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) is introducing a proposal Wednesday that he says would establish universal health care, shore up Social Security and Medicare, and provide a simpler alternative to the current tax code. Read more…

well, I signed up to "moderate" a house party on health care. But with a twist -- its going to be a "pot luck" dinner as well.

And only Correntians (or those who are endorsed by correntians) will be invited.

Here is how I answered the survey questions Read more…

Don McCanne, MD, Senior Health Policy Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), on the Obama house parties on healthcare: Read more…

Or at least he pretends to be:

"In the macroeconomic sense, foreclosure reduction is an essential part of getting us out of the problem we're in," House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said Wednesday. "The refusal so far to use the money to that purpose has been I think a violation of the intent and undermines the ability to get the votes in this Congress to do things in the future."

You know, Barney, if that's how you wanted the money spent, then you should have said so in the legislation. Take it away, Factesque's mick arran: Read more…

I'll admit: I'm a little bit jealous. Or at least, jealous for Lambert. He's a WASP, and therefore is "worthy" of making the NYT's political pages, right? Oh well. Bowers has become the new, eminently misquotable whipping boy for the "angry Left," and thus not to be contacted directly, lest some terrible germ infect the sacred flesh of reporters. He's calling from Inside the House!!!

I just noticed this article in the New York Times now. Emphasis mine:

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the influential Daily Kos site on the Internet, said it was way too early to begin judging Mr. Obama. "Some people may be nit-picky about his choices but at the end of the day, he's going to make better choices than John McCain would have made," Mr. Moulitsas said by telephone. "There will be a time to push him, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to wait to see what it means on a policy basis, not on personalities."

Some bloggers have been less patient. "Why isn't there a single member of Obama's cabinet who will be advising him from the left?" asked Chris Bowers on his site, OpenLeft.com.

The reason I emphasized those two lines is because I was never contacted by the author of the piece, Peter Baker, about an interview for the article. So, if you are a blogger perceived as supportive of Obama, you get a phone call. However, if you are perceived as critical of Obama, you are just selectively quoted in order to fit into the existing narrative.

Come to think of it, I wasn't I contacted by The Politco for their piece that quoted me. Nor was I contacted by the New York Times for the piece where they quoted me last month. Nor by USA Today last month. Nor by UPI. Nor by Salon. Nor by Time (even though Beinart actually works with someone who is dating one of my cousins, and it wouldn't have been hard to fine me). Nor by The Washington Post. I was actually contacted by Fox News, which has quoted me a few times recently, but I declined to appear on their network. MSNBC also contacted me, and I had a great time on Hardball. Read more…

How is it that for days now, our SCLM has presented all manner of ciritical detail about the many reasons why "bailing out the auto industry" is a Very Bad Idea, but when the financial industry bailout was being passed, against overwhelming public opposition, the only song the SCLM could sing was "Unlimited, no guarantee trillions, NOW! or you'll all DIE!!!"

It is especially interesting when one notes that the amounts in question are roughly $50b (in loans that will be repaid, as they have in the past) vs $3trillion and counting (for nothing).

Today's Boston Globe carried a piece of corporate propaganda entitled Lobbies backing health reforms: Insurers change their tune from 1993-94 debate. Rather than deconstruct it line by line, I will just say what is conspicuous by its absence: any mention of single payer. Read more…

Thanks to DCblogger [many, many thanks] we all know that Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus are members of the Senate Finance Committee, and will therefore have some say in what happens to our efforts to get HR 676 passed.

We also know, again thanks to DCb, that the Des Moines [Iowa, home state of Grassley] Register endorses single payer. Yay! Which prompted me, just out of curiosity, to go looking for what the Montana [home state of Max Baucus] papers are saying about single payer. I found this article by honest, intelligent reporter Mike Dennison. My favorite quotes from the article --

As I said earlier, it is not a national plan that simplifies things. It takes our fragmented, expensive system — the most expensive in the world, mind you — and plops another mishmash of new rules, regulations and bureaucracy on top of it, all in the name of maintaining the private, for-profit insurance market.

[...]

I could go on, but you get the idea. Yes, the Baucus plan has some good aspects. But it seems to bend over backwards to preserve much of the status quo — a status quo that just about everyone agrees is badly broken.

And when it comes to real reforms, like a national health care plan with one payer or one system, Baucus says that is “off the table,” because it’s “not politically feasible.”

Why? We’ll look at that question Tuesday.

So, Tuesday got here, and I kept checking helenair.com, looking for the promised follow-up, but no luck. No hard feelings, though. Montana's having a bit of trouble with storm-related power outages, and while I just scratch my head and furrow my brow and ask what is this ice and snow of which you speak?, as a long-time resident of Hurricane Alley, I can most definitely relate to storms and power outages.

It did finally dawn on me to check the websites of other Montana papers, and sure enough, Mike Dennison, intrepid hero reporter, appears to write for the company that owns several Montana papers, and the Billings Gazette has both installments [same articles, different titles].

Part I -- Baucus plan falls short of universal coverage [quoted above], and

Part II -- Why is single-payer health reform not viable? Some excerpts: Read more…

Because this was such a vote getter for McCain:
Democrats may tax health benefits

Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, recently issued an 89-page health policy paper that many see as an important Democratic blueprint for health reform. His paper raises the possibility of capping tax breaks for health insurance premiums based on income, value of health benefits, or both. Read more…

Levey, for reasons best known to himself, puts out this remarkably tone deaf report on the healthcare debate. I say this because in addition to the usual fear mongering, there are no quotes from any single payer advocate. Fourteen of the 93 cosponsors of HR 676 are from California, and that does not count newly elected single payer advocate Jackie Speier. Moreover, single payer legislation has passed the California legislature twice, only to be vetoed by the Gropenator. Read more…

Ceci Connolly has an article entitled, U.S. 'Not Getting What We Pay For': Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful, where she quotes, without irony, all the parasites of our health neglect system.

First a few words about Ceci Connolly; if you read The Daily Howler, you know that more than any other member of the celebrity press corps, she is responsible for smearing Al Gore and giving us Bush. An example of her notion of humor:
Smile-a-while (10/3/00) Read more…

Bloomberg:

Buyer’s Remorse Chills New Englanders Who Locked in Oil Prices
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Max Hartshorne was thrilled to lock in a winter’s worth of heating oil at $4.09 a gallon.

That was in July. Now heating oil is $2.75 a gallon and Hartshorne can’t break his contract with the dealer.

“I was just so angry,” said Hartshorne, 50, who uses about 900 gallons of oil to warm his home in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, each winter. “I said, ‘You guys can’t be serious about $4.09 a gallon.’ And he said to me, ‘We’re deadly serious.’”

Buyer’s remorse is afflicting tens of thousands of customers in New England, where heating oil is used more than in any other U.S. region. Their eagerness to nail down a guaranteed rate backfired when oil prices fell.

“There was a belief [Oooh! A fine example of ducking the question of agency!] that heating oil could rise to $6 or $7 a gallon,” based partly on predictions by Goldman Sachs [my parasite!] Group Inc. and billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, said Matt Cota, executive director of the 120-member Vermont Fuel Dealers Association in Montpelier.

“Some dealers had lines out the door,” Cota said. “People were coming in with their checkbooks to sign contracts. There was a palpable panic in the cold-weather states.”

Indeed.

Why didn't I sign up? Read more…

Via Boztopia:Group hopes to shape nation's privacy policy

AT&T is funding a group run by some of the nation's top privacy experts that aims to influence policy in the Obama administration and develop best practices on privacy for businesses.

Called Future of Privacy, the organization will be announced Wednesday. Its Web site, www.futureofprivacy.org, is set to go live Monday.

One of the group's co-founders, Jules Polonetsky, said he left his job as chief privacy officer at AOL to run Future of Privacy. He also had worked at DoubleClick, which was acquired by Google last year.

At&T? Doubleclick? Read more…

Unity is its own virtue. It does not matter whether it leads to good things or bad things, just having a Government of National Unity is itself a good thing. How do I know this? NPR just told me so.

I'm driving home and make the mistake of turning on the radio. NPR is interviewing a historian (Robert something or other) to discuss the issue of whether all the Clinton "retreads" are really the change Obama promised.* After all, when John F. Kennedy came in he brought a new generation of advisors and (mostly) did not rely on Truman appointees. The historian does a generally good job of pointing out that the Clinton people are still a change from Bush, but then goes off for a ride on the Unity Pony and rides straight into stupid. Read more…

Meet the new Ari/Scottie. A little history on Obama's new press sec'y--his role in destroying Dean while working for Kerry, reviving the "lincoln bedroom" against Clinton, and other totally Rovian and "old politics" methods. So far, we have Gibbs and Emanuel and Axelrod -- 3 old-school, old-politics, attack dogs. Who's next?

Jeebus, Bob, couldn't you have waited 'til Wednesday?

You know when an Op-Ed starts out by inveighing against "polarizing dichotomies", the big wienie's gonna come. Here it is:

In addition to restoring a sound fiscal regime, we could improve our personal savings rate and expand retirement security by establishing some kind of individualized account separate from Social Security, financed by an appropriate revenue measure.

But why touch Social Security at all? From a public policy perspective, there's no need to. As the late, great Molly Ivins -- who has a hell of a lot more credibility these days than a Goldman Sachs alum like Rubin could have -- opined:

Q: Can we at least agree that we have a problem? A: No.

The argument in favor of "no" has two parts. One involves the incredible shrinking doom date. As Kevin Drum [Hi, Kevin!] of Washington Monthly points out, the Social Security trustees, always operating on a properly gloomy forecast, have been predicting disaster for the system for years, but the projected point at which it will go bust keeps moving.

In 1994, the system was supposed to go bust in 2029, a mere 35 years from the date of prediction. Now, it's supposed to go bust in 2042, 38 years down the road.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, using a more realistic model, the trust fund will run out in 2052, and even then it will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. To fully fund this shortfall would require additional revenue of 0.54 percent of GDP, less than we are currently spending in Iraq. Or, as Paul Krugman noted in The New York Times, about one quarter of the revenue lost each year by President Bush's tax cuts, "roughly equal to the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with incomes of $500,000 a year."

What problem is Rubin solving here, exactly? Read more…

While Poppy was in the White House, petty thieves developed a strategy of delighting in petty vandalism -- destroying stuff they didn't steal, vandalizing the kitchen with wasted groceries, etc.
Now that Junior's skulking out toward (well-deserved IMNVHO) D-list celebrity / trivia question post-Residency, his administration's doing the same to the regulations that protect the environment and consumers, says today's WaPo. Read more…

Despite the feverish bleating of the highly-lathered right wing voices desperately trying to save Wall Street's ponzi-scheme freedoms. Bush was right, too. I hate how he and his cronies take, take, take, take -- and that they remain free to do so. Those of us who work for what we have -- a home, a vehicle, a little savings against a rainy day, tuition for our kids' college even -- shouldn't have to be robbed every 20 years or so to finance the lifestyles of the "rich" and "famous".

The image below is from a proposed Pepsi print ad for a campaign the soft drink company has running in France.

Anybody besides me think it's got something waytoowrong with it?

Detroit Families Target Of AHIP Campaign

It was moderated by New York Tunes journalist Dirk Johnson and hosted by the America's Health Insurance Plans' (AHIP) Campaign for an American Solution. Karen Ignagni, president and CEO, will take these stories back with her to Washington.

It is a common practice for journalists to moderate political debates and to preside over community discussions. But this is different; this is Dirk Johnson lending what remains of the NYT's prestige to what is clearly an astroturf stunt. Keep that in mind when you see his byline.