If it were really Medicare for Everybody we would just pass HR 676. Whatever they are talking about, it isn't everybody in, nobody out. Do we have a policy expert that can deconstruct this for us?

Deval Patrick’s likely Senate pick raises ‘serious concerns’

The Kennedy-backed pick for interim senator - a Beltway insider who could enjoy a lifetime pass to the Senate floor - has deep ties to special interests, sitting on a board that oversees a health-insurance provider and having lobbied for the pharmaceutical industry, the Herald has learned.

We need a HR 676 co-sponsor to primary this jerk.

John Amato alters us to NBC's characterization of the support for the public option as a "fetish." Like Disney, GE has a corporate relationship with a pharmaceutical company, Procter & Gamble, which has a vested interested in no government body having the power to negotiate for prices. Alan Lafley sits on the board of both companies where he spends his time dumping stock.

Chuck Todd is a sock puppoet, Lafley is our problem.

Once again Atrios alerts us to a Media Matters report that documents the news as entertainment reporting of ABC, never letting their viewers know that Obama was telling the truth when he said that illegal aliens would not be covered under his plan.

So why would ABC News leave that out? We have no way to know, but since ABC's parent company, Disney, has a relationship with a pharmaceutical company, Procter & Gamble, clearly they have a vested interest in misreporting the health reform story.

You may have noticed that many of the high traffic progressive blogs are sporting banners paid for by the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. Let me say right off the bat that I think it is terrific that bloggers are getting a cut of all the lobbying largesse that is floating around. I only wish it were spread even further to lower traffic blogs.

K Street preps for healthcare Round 2

“August recess was a missed opportunity. So much discussion was focused on whether or not to create a government-run insurance program. That was a distraction,” said Robert Zirkelbach, the spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).

We need Dave Johnson to do justice to this article.

So far it looks like the bill that will emerge from conference committee will mandate that everyone buy health insurance, will tax employer paid plans to subsidize private plans. It will have the effect of destroying the employer based system with no adequate replacement. This is the McCain plan and it was turned down by a landslide vote.

A public option is supported by the vast majority of Americans, a solid majority support a single payer system. We need to start asking question why a plan that was resoundingly defeated in the November 2008 election is somehow more pragmatic than a single payer plan that is supported by the majority.

The Republicans are pushing the idea that the fight for health care reform could be Obama's Waterloo. Everyone keeps refighting the previous war. The whole of Versailles thinks that it is still 1993.

I don't think so, I think the debate over health care reform is Versailles' Sarajevo, the debate that collapses a decrepit political order. Arguably that was the Iraq debate, which is still playing out.

Diary of a Heartland Radical

Since I cannot read minds, I cannot say why Bayh is dragging his heals on health care. It may be that he is afraid on Republican TV ads. But it seems more likely that he is simply protecting his wife’s gig and as a member of the board of directors of Wellpoint.

Our good friends at Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan are doing their best to alert the people of Indiana to Bayh’s conflict of interest.

UPDATE: How this hair brained scheme came into existence.

U.S. Senate proposal avoids healthcare taxes for union workers

I just got a note from Chris Dodd that says in part:

One thing is crystal clear: you want substantial health care reform, and you want it now.

I've been reading through your ideas and comments about health care reform, and the common thread through virtually all of them is that you want a real solution to cover all Americans and reduce costs.

At the bottom is a link to donate money to Chris Dodd. This man cannot get a decent bill out of the HELP Committee, and he wants my money. Nothing doing.

Medicare Drug Plan Ought to Be Model for Health Reform

No matter how often I see it, I can never get over their staggering indifference to the rest of the country.

Paul Rosenberg

Lobby Terminations Up Over Last Year

Paul Lee, a former staffer to ex-Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) who started the firm Strategic Health Care 15 years ago, said his shop had to cut loose a number of pro bono clients in order to meet the brisk demand for hand-holding, as the White House plots to upend the nation’s health care system.

“We do a lot of pro bono work for hospitals and other health care providers, and our work has actually picked up so much in the last six months or so that we don’t have as much time to do the pro bono work anymore,” Lee said. “We just made a decision that we can’t do as much of that anymore because we’re getting too busy.”

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Dick Gephardt works for PhRMA. Explains a lot.

Via the Chamber Pot we learn that James Gelfand think that the public won't support any more health care initiatives because we have already spent a lot of money SCHIP, COBRA, Medicaid, and some others.

He does not appear to understand that the public is a little more concerned with the TARP program. I think it is in our interest that the Chamber is so out of touch.

note - I still don't understand why the National Journal does not have someone from the single payer movement blogging on their health care discussion.

Missoulian Online

Which brings us back to Sen. Baucus, who told us last week that health care reform in America will include “both public and private coverage,” and that he'll be carrying legislation that will have “a very strong incentive for private (insurance) coverage.”

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WhoRunsGov.com

offers a unique look at the world of Washington through its key players and personalities. It’s your window into how deals get made and policy is shaped in the new Obama administration that is remaking the nation’s capital

Alex Wayne

A coalition of liberal advocacy groups and labor unions is trying to breathe new life into the idea of a European-style “single-payer” health system in the United States, a concept thought discredited after the collapse of President Bill Clinton’s attempt at overhauling the health care system.

European countries either have socialized medicine or tightly regulated non-profit insurance systems with employers required to pay health insurance.

CANADA has single payer.

Andrew Sullivan

We need to take a machete to social security and Medicare and a very sharp scalpel to all domestic discretionary spending.

See any reference to the Bush tax cuts? No?

Social security and medicare are not the cause of our budget problems.

Rebecca Adams, CQ Staff

Insurance companies suggest that government-administered plans actually would increase costs for those with private insurance because hospitals and providers would charge the privately insured patients more in order to compensate for low government rates. The long-term effect of that process, industry advocates say, would be to drive private insurers out of business and to set the stage for an exclusively government-run, single-payer system.

Digby has Andrea Mitchell's latest embarassment:

Andrea Mitchell: It does go beyond rhetoric. He needs to engage the American people in this joint venture. That's part of the call. That's part of what he needs to accomplish in his spech and in the days following the speech. He needs to make people feel that this is their venture as well and that people are going to need to be more patient and have to contribute and that there will have to be some sacrifice.

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John Stewart has compared the contemporary news media to the movie Gaslight.

The Hill has an article about Sanjay Gupta and his probable role in promoting Obama's health care legislation which is penned by Ben Goddard. And who is Ben Goddard? Source Watch offers this morsel:

Goddard Claussen is notorious for its "Harry and Louise" advertisement that helped derail President Clinton's 1993 health reform proposal.

Senate staffers predict major health care reforms in 2009
Once President-elect Barack Obama, HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle and a Democrat-led Congress take office in 2009, broad scale health care reforms are likely to occur, predicted Senate staffers who spoke at a recent Alliance for Health Reform and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation forum in Washington, D.C. ...