An excerpt:

"What I always found so frustrating about Ezra - the tendency to repeat, as told to him, political sales jobs for the side he likes, and to rarely look too critically at them - has really only gotten worse. There's no attempt in what passes for "reporting" from him to relate the proposed "reform" scenarios to concrete realities of the current healthcare system, or challenging any of his scenarists

Ezra Klein

And all this elides a simple fact: Capping the employer health care exclusion is good policy. Eliminating it entirely would be better policy. It's true that some unions, like AFSCME, would see the value of their employer benefits degrade slightly. (Some unions, like Service Employees International Union, would scarcely be affected at all. Janitors are not, as a rule, given generous employer health benefits.) But the labor movement, as a whole, is much worse off in a world where the employer exclusion is capped but we have health reform than in a world where we don't have health care reform and can't control premium costs.

Blogger: Health care reform coalition faces tough battle

Q: Baucus has said a government single-payer or Medicare-for-all system of universal coverage is not an option for reform. Shouldn't a single-payer system be considered?

Ezra Klein has been talking to anonymous administration officials. And they explain why they don't want to nationalize the banks. I link, you decide.

Ezra Klein

I'm in In These Times this month moderating a debate between Steffie Woolhandler, co-director of Physicians for a National Health Program and a single-payer supporter, and Richard Kirsch, the national director for Health Care for America Now and an advocate of a hybrid approach.

A CONVERSATION WITH AMERICA'S HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS.

I gave Robert Zirkelbach, AHIP's director of Strategic Communications, a call to talk through the proposal his organization released today and get more specifics on their stance towards community rating, public plans, and affordability questions. Our chat is transcribed below. ...

Via Big Media Matt (who is auditioning to be Versailles’ next Richard Cohen) comes this bright idea hyped by Ezra Klein