Times:

In a last effort to give the Senate a bipartisan health care bill, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee circulated a comprehensive proposal on Sunday to overhaul the health care system and proposed a new fee on insurance companies to help pay for coverage of the uninsured.

Mr. Schumer said, “The health insurance industry should pay its fair share of the cost because it stands to gain over 40 million new consumers under health care* reform legislation.”

Translation: We bailed you out with the mandate. Now, give a cut to the uninsured with this fee.

Of course, the insurance companies will immediately pass the fee on to their existing policy holders:

July 30 Great Falls Tribune

HELENA — Donors planning to attend Sen. Max Baucus' "Camp Baucus" fundraiser at the posh Big Sky Resort south of Bozeman this weekend will be met by an unfriendly welcoming committee.
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On Friday, Baucus kicks off the first of the annual three-day fundraising event, and health care reform activists will be there to greet Baucus' donors as they drive the narrow and windy road to the event.

Thanks, Max!

Singlepayer advocates protest Baucus

HELENA, Mont. (AP) Advocates for a government run health care system marched in the streets in several Montana cities Friday to protest U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' leading overhaul plan.

Single Payer Health Care Rally Boise Idaho

Rochester Now

The Daily Howler

In all likelihood, Baucus took single-payer off the table for a very good reason—because he isn’t trying to create a progressive health reform package. His statement to the Times was pure BS. After all, Baucus is a corporate man (data below). He wants health reform near the “center.”

I'm really taken with the word FAIL these days. I can't imagine why:

The pharmaceutical industry agreed Saturday to spend $80 billion over the next decade improving drug benefits for seniors on Medicare and defraying the cost of President Barack Obama's health care legislation, capping secretive negotiations involving key lawmakers and the White House.

And please understand that by "secretive" we mean, like, totally open and transparent!

"This new coverage means affordable prices on prescription drugs when Medicare benefits don't cover the cost of prescriptions," Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement announcing the accord.

The deal marked a major triumph for Baucus as well as the administration. Obama praised the deal.

"The agreement by pharmaceutical companies to contribute to the health reform effort comes on the heels of the landmark pledge many health industry leaders made to me last month, when they offered to do their part to reduce health spending $2 trillion over the next decade," Obama said. "We are at a turning point in America's journey toward health care reform."

Matchless rhetoric, and I couldn't agree more! A toothless voluntary "agreement" is, like, totally equivalent to legislation, especially when my health is involved! I'm gonna go out and bet the farm right away!!

Max Baucus Must GO!

The so-called leader of healthcare reform in the Senate, Max Baucus (D-Mont.) earns $1,500.00 a day from the very industry he says he is trying to reform

Letter to the Helena Air

The Hill

Baucus has kept much of the Senate, including members of his own committee, in the dark about the details and cost of the policy proposals he is considering. Several members of the Finance panel, for example, said they had not seen the CBO report that Baucus will use to scale down — or eliminate — proposals on the negotiating table.

 Read more…

Private insurance companies push for 'individual mandate'

Protesters want Baucus to consider single-payer system: Video

Billings Gazette

On Friday, Paris was in Montana, doing what got her arrested: urging Baucus, Congress and the president to consider a single-payer system of national health insurance that covers all citizens equally.

"The next 60 days are critical," she told a rally of 150 single-payer supporters in Helena. "We need to keep the heat on Sen. Baucus (and Congress and the president)."

Marcia Angell : There would be no need for an individual mandate in a single-payer system

David Swanson*:

Senator Max Baucus met Wednesday with advocates for single-payer healthcare, including Senator Bernie Sanders, and told them that he might drop criminal charges against 13 people arrested for speaking up in his hearings, but that he would not include any supporters of single-payer health coverage in any future hearings.

Then the hearings are a sham, plain and simple.

According to one report, Baucus suggested that he'd been mistaken to exclude single-payer but asserted that the process of creating healthcare reform legislation was too far along now to correct that omission.

Reminds me of an old saying from the world of graphic arts: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. Well, Obaucus plan is a FAIL in the making, so doing it over is exactly what we will end up doing. So why not do the right thing now?

And what Bernie Sanders said:

And, amazingly, McClatchy puts Kaiser Health Care News in the byline. Kaiser is a player, not a news source*! This is speaking truth to power? Way too much conventional wisdom:

The biggest challenge: The price tag. The Democratic proposals could cost $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, and lawmakers are a long way from coming up with the money.

For-profit health insurance takes 30% of health care spending for CEO salaries, profit, and the administrative apparatus needed to put you into voice mail hell until they can deny you care. Single payer doesn't have all that waste, so it takes 3%. That saves $350 billion a year. That's how you pay for the program. QED.

But the finance wing of the FKD took single payer off the table so that they could keep the health insurance parasites in business, and dip into that money flow. QED.

Here are the two extremes as the Village sees them, since single payer is off the table:

Single-payer health care: Baucus keeps getting an earful

“I can find nothing in his white paper,” said Howlett, director of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' Health and Human Services Department, “that provides for Native American health care on a par with the rest of the country.”

Howlett, who served on an advisory committee that offered input from Montanans to Baucus on the subject, said he ended up feeling his presence there was “symbolic more than substantive.”

“We're only given

 Read more…

Single-payer mentions draw cheers at Baucus-sponsored health care talk

When the time came for questions, McArthur stood up and asked a simple question. Looking across a standing-room-only crowd of about 275, he asked how many were happy with their employer-based health insurance.

Less than 10 people raised their hands.

“The number is bogus,” McArthur said. “It's not working for 95 percent of us.”

McArthur drew resounding applause.

 Read more…

Action Alert San Francisco, CA

Picket Senator Max Baucus
6pm Tues. May 26 in SF
He has been banning discussion of Single Payer in DC
2436 Jackson St – San Francisco
between Steiner and Fillmore in Pacific Heights

Twitter users can subscribe to NotMaxBaucus for complete up to date news.

Paul Jay, of The Real News, interviews Roger Hickey, one of the Very Serious People who bring you managed competition this time around about single payer, the public option, Obama's campaign promise on health care and whether he'll keep it, and that little foofaraw at the Senate hearing.

I just got an email from Health Justice complaining that faxes in support of single payer were being thrown out. Yeah. No kidding.

People think that big lobbyists keep winning because they have the $. Well, that is only part of the reason. Another reason is that they are respectful of the ways of capitol hill. When they contact their clients they make sure that everyone contacts THEIR representative. If you are from Montana Baucus is interested in you, otherwise you need a gazzillion dollars. That is just the way it is.

Of course, Health Justice could collect emails by state and send out its notices sorted by state with the right contact info for senators from those states, but Health Justice can't be bothered.

If we are going to win, we need to be smart.

Baucus to sponsor town halls on health

Baucus himself won't be attending the meetings held mostly in smaller communities across the state. But his top staffers will be there

I trust our brothers and sisters in Montana Single Payer will be in attendance.

Karen Tumulty interviews Max Baucus

Will the bill provide universal coverage?
It has to come pretty close, Baucus said, if all the other reforms are going to work. Most health care experts agree. By "nearly everybody," Baucus added he was talking about something like 96% of all Americans. However, he refused to specify how quickly that might be achieved.

Will the bill have a government-financed "public option"?

 Read more…

UPDATE: Film Baucus fleeing.

Baucus Flees Single Payer Questions, Conducts Business of Health Care in Secret

This morning I got up early to go to the Kaiser Foundation before Senator Baucus arrived in order to ask him some questions. We had tried to RSVP to the event but were told we were not allowed because of our single payer views. The meeting was for reporters including bloggers, and I am regularly published on many websites, but it was not for independent reporters who would ask Baucus tough questions.

 Read more…

[Readers, do play the YouTube. It's comedy gold!]

Bloomberg:

The Senate Finance Committee provided an early glimpse of ways Congress might pay for the overhaul of health care President Barack Obama wants, outlining a range of options that included new taxes on employer-provided health insurance and levies on sugar-sweetened drinks.

You know how poor people are all fat? It's the soft drinks. All this is really for their own good! [Commenters: Let's not focus on the snark, mkay? The point is class bias, not fizzy flavored water]

And you know the other problem? The peasants have too much health care. I kid you not:

Baucus closes door on single-payer in national health care debate

ZOMG the phrase "single payer" was spoken on Fox News!

DeLauro, Dodd get earful from public on health care

Letter to the Rutland Herald: Why we need single-payer

Letter to the Las Vegas Sun: Single-payer system is most trustworthy

Jonathan Cohn, writing at TNR, [via Matt Yglesias]:

Instead of a politically daunting $1.5 trillion, the CBO figures the price tag will be closer to $1 trillion, at least under certain parameters.

Gene Fenderson's guest opinion in the Billings Gazette

So the old scare tactics on health care reform are still around. But think about it. If Congress won't even consider a single-payer health care system, what kind of a "system" will our nation and we, as individuals, end up with? I am convinced the outcome will be even more complicated and detrimental than what we have now, a hodgepodge on top of an existing hodge-podge of insurance plans. In other words, no plan and certainly no "system."

 Read more…

but he acquits himself admirably:

I want you to know, that 30 years ago I was out in Montana, campaigning to get Max Baucus elected to the United States Senate. That was back when he was a Democrat.

More goodies at 1payer.net.