Health and Wellness

Personal health and fitness, health care legislation, Big Pharma, medical developments. Comprehensive coverage on Health and Wellness here.

50 Things Restaurant Servers Should Never Do
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on October 30, 2009 at 3:00 PM.

The New York Times has a blog post up now (part 1 of "100 Things") that outlines the best etiquette for restaurant employees. And no, this is not a 'remember to wash your hands' or 'don't spit in the food' kind of list -- it's a bit above that. Having worked only briefly in food service at one of my first jobs, I have to say that being a great server is really hard and I definitely notice and appreciate immensely when it is done well.

I agree with just about everything on the list except for number 6: "Do not lead the witness with, 'Bottled water or just tap?' Both are fine. Remain neutral." Actually, unless you are some place where the tap water is not drinkable, then I'd say, ditch the bottled water, like so many high-end (and other) restaurants are starting to do. It's better for the environment and often is actually better quality water, too.

Here's one of my favorites from the list: "If someone likes a wine, steam the label off the bottle and give it to the guest with the bill. It has the year, the vintner, the importer, etc." I've never seen that done before, but I'd be super impressed!

Here's a couple more good ones:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

NC Blue Cross Blue Shield Customers Asked By Company to Oppose Public Option -- After Hiking Premiums 11%
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 29, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

In a brazen act of hubris, Blue Cross & Blue Shield has sent letters to all of its customers, asking them to send a pre-printed, postage-paid postcard to Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, that urges her to oppose any health-care reform that contains a public option. (The state's other senator, Richard Burr, is a Republican, so Blue Cross already has his "no" vote in their pocket.) And all this after notifying subscribers of a hefty premium hike.

As reported by the Raleigh News & Observer, the letter reads:

"No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it's a slippery slope to a single-payer system. Who wants that?"

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Pelosi to Go With Not-So-Robust Public Option
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on October 28, 2009 at 10:35 PM.

The public option was always a compromise for serious supporters of health-care reform, who -- like Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate in 2003 -- knew that a single-payer "Medicare for All" system was what America needed to provide health care to everyone while controlling costs.

But, in the reform legislation that will be debuted Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the compromise will be even more compromised.

According to The New York Times:

Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government, aides said Wednesday.

Ms. Pelosi said the public plan, which she prefers to call a "consumer option," would compete with private insurers. But the speaker was apparently unable to muster the votes needed for the "robust" liberal version of a public plan, which she has repeatedly said would save more money for consumers and the government.

Translation: The "public option" Pelosi and her team will not make payments based on Medicare rates. It will, instead, be forced to negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, as private insurers do. That weakens the flexibility and muscle of the public option.

Pelosi's plan also drops a number of provisions that had been advanced at the committee level to promote consideration of "Medicare for All" models and to allow states to experiment with single-payer plans.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

House Leadership Deciding Now on Public Option
Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos on October 28, 2009 at 4:56 PM.

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Centrist Democrats = Corporate Sellouts
Posted by Ari Berman, The Nation on October 28, 2009 at 1:45 PM.

Every time I hear about Joe Lieberman's latest apostasy, I think, Oy vey! There he goes again. More Joementum.

Remind me why we still call this guy a Democrat? Sure, Lieberman caucuses with Democrats in the Senate--Joe is nothing if not opportunistic and who wants to be part of a lowly Republican minority?--but I think he forfeited his right to call himself one when he almost became John McCain's VP and campaigned stridently against an Obama presidency. Yet somehow he managed to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Gotta love those Senate Democrats--they always find a way to reward someone for stabbing them in the back. See Baucus, Max.

Following Lieberman's threat to filibuster a public option, every paper played up the story of how the "centrists" are now rebelling. Watch out, the centrists are coming! "Centrists unsure about Reid's public option," the Washington Post reported today. Let's get real. These holdouts are not centrist Democrats; they are corporate Democrats, which should be an oxymoron. They'll do whatever the healthcare industry wants and use their red state constituents as an excuse to do so. Only Lieberman is from Connecticut, one of the bluest states in the country. So what's his excuse?

Well, some rather large insurance companies reside in Connecticut and, as Joe Conason points out, Lieberman's wife just so happens to have been a drug industry lobbyist for Hill & Knowlton. Conason reports:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Is Joe Lieberman Bluffing, or Would He Really Torpedo Health-Care Reform?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 28, 2009 at 10:19 AM.

OK, the Dems had a choice of strategies to get around an inevitable GOP-led filibuster of any health-care bill with a public option.

The bill they have in the House has a public option. They could have gotten a really watered-down bill without the measure through the Senate, used the popular momentum for a public choice to add it during the the reconciliation process (in which the House and Senate bills are combined) and then done a full-court press to pass the final product. 

Most Congressional observers doubt that the handful of cantankerous Democrats in the Senate who might join a filibuster of the Senate bill the first time around would have the nerve to block the legislation if it came back from the reconciliation process with some compromise public plan. Which would have left the insurance caucus Dems -- Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln and other sell-outs -- out of the limelight.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to deliver a bill with some form of public insurance option. That moves the process along significantly and, as The Hill reports, may help progressives in the House get a "robust" version of the scheme through the lower chamber, as the details of their bill get ironed out. (See Booman for more on the process stuff.)

But because Reid doesn't have the votes so far to bring his bill to a vote -- and may not even have enough to begin debate on its provisions -- it's a high-risk move, in large part because it empowers so-called "moderate" Senate show-boats like Joe Lieberman, who promptly announced that he would likely join a Republican filibuster of the reform package. Whatever else he believes, Lieberman's all about the attention and he's got an abundance of it right now.

At this time, I'd like to just remind readers that when progressives backed Ned Lamont in the primary against Lieberman in 2006, Harry Reid came to his defense by swearing that Old Joe was "with us on everything but the war" in Iraq.

Anyway, sour grapes aside, the buzz today is about whether Lieberman can be moved. Is he being cantankerous now to puff up his own chest and make the liberals who had the chutzpah to beat him in a Democratic primary chafe but will eventually come around? Or is he really prepared to almost single-handedly blow up the whole year-long legislative process during its final act if he doesn't get his way?

A sampling of what some smart observers are saying about that question after the jump ...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Sen. Lieberman May Try to Stop Public Option By Joining With GOP Filibuster
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 27, 2009 at 12:32 PM.

It's hard to remember this sometimes: Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the former vice presidential candidate, was once a standard bearer for the Democratic Party. Today he put himself forward as the potential killer of the Democrats' signature piece of legislation: health-care reform.

Since leaving the party in 2006 when he failed to garner the support of party leaders for his re-election bid (his unqualified support for the Iraq was was the big issue), Lieberman has consistently moved further to the right, even working the rope lines on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Yet Lieberman, an independent, has continued to caucus with the Democrats, a move that allowed him to retain his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Brian Beutler of TPM reports that Lieberman is now threatening to join with Republicans should they launch an expected filibuster that would keep the health-care proposal announced yesterday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from getting a final vote on the Senate floor. At issue for Lieberman is Reid's decision to include a public option in the bill.

Harry Reid has the power to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and one hopes that threat will be brought to bear on him. However, it may just not matter. Clearly, Lieberman needs to be made to feel important, and he may be looking for a reason to move completely to the GOP side, once and for all. Stripping him of his chairmanship would likely give him the impetus to do so.

Why does this matter? Because it takes 60 votes to close down a filibuster, and with Lieberman and fellow independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont (fellow in only independent status; Sanders is a socialist) in the Democratic caucus, the Dems have exactly the magic number. If Lieberman high-tails it out of the Dem caucus for good, there's no 60 to hold the line on climate change or financial reform or net neutrality.  It's a nasty little game the Lieberman is playing.

Progressives and Public Option: This Is How Democracy Is Supposed To Work
Posted by Bill Scher, Campaign for America's Future on October 27, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would submit a health care reform bill with a national public option that states could choose not to join.

This is how democracy is supposed to work. The highest ranking member of Senate was able to hear the will of America's progressive majority over the din of the insurance lobby and the right-wing noise machine, and was responsive to the majority.

But that's mere idealism. From a practical standpoint, this is how the modern progressive movement is supposed to work.

In 1993, there was no significant progressive movement putting positive pressure on the Clinton Administration. Many naively assumed having a Democratic president and Congress was enough, the hard work was done, and we could kick back with a Crystal Pepsi and let democracy work its magic.

We learned the conservative minority had many tricks up its sleeve, and was able to smear and fear to death any attempt at major progressive reform.

The election of a uniquely compelling figure in President Barack Obama threatened to bring back some of that complacency. A false notion persists in some corners that the President should be able "ram through" any legislation he likes.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Harry Reid Announces Senate Health Bill With Public Option
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 26, 2009 at 1:37 PM.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, long a target for the ire of progressives given his reluctance to express support for including a public health-insurance plan in the Senate's health-care reform bill, today surprised reporters with his announcement that the final Senate bill will contain a public option.

States will be permitted to opt out of the plan via their state's legislative process -- an escape clause, if you will, for a handful of Democratic senators who are less than keen on the notion of a public plan.

"I believe that a public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system," Reid said, "will protect consumers, keep insurers honest, and ensure competition. And that's why we intend to include it in the bill will be submitted to the Senate."

Reid has been under relentless pressure from progressives to craft a bill containing a public insurance plan just as he gears up for what is expected to be a tough re-election campaign for 2010. Just last week, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a television ad targeting Reid that asked, "Is Harry Reid strong enough?"

Most striking is that Reid's decision to include the public option assures the lack of a single Republican vote for health-care reform in the Senate, despite months of wrangling to get at least one -- that of Maine's Olympia Snowe.  So desirous was the president of having a bipartisan bill, the White House seemed ready to cave to Snowe's proposal for a "trigger" -- a sort of imaginary public option, one that would only go into effect after private insurers had a few years to reduce costs on their own. Had the insurers failed to meet a benchmark for cost reduction, then a public plan would be designed, built and implemented -- a scheme that critics, such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., see at best as a delaying tactic.

Just hours before Reid's press conference, the White House signaled weakness on the public option in a speech by Christina Romer, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, who expressed a personal belief in the public option as a means of cost containment, but used qualified language to say so.

In her prepared remarks to journalists and policymakers at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., Romer cited a public option as a "potentially important source of cost containment." Romer was more definite about the benefits of two other measures for holding down costs: Medicare cost reform, and an excise tax, such as that proposed by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on high-cost private plans -- a concept opposed by the AFL-CIO.

Asked by AlterNet why her enthusiasm for the cost-savings offered by a public option was limited to a maybe, Romer replied, "I was certainly planning to present all three of these [proposals] as important." But the broader agreement among economists, she said, was for "something like the Kerry proposal."

Up until today, the White House had signaled a willingness to accept Snowe's trigger plan. But when Sam Stein of The Huffington Post asked about any potential cost containment offered by a trigger plan, Romer said she had no evidence of such -- a harbinger, perhaps, of the announcement later in the day that the Democrats would move forward without the Maine Republican.

After days of meetings, Reid explained, he and the two senators who produced the legislation from their respective committees -- Chris Dodd, D-Conn., of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Finance Committee -- met with White House staff to hammer out a final proposal that Reid described as a "melding" of the two committees' bills. Though tight-lipped about the result, Reid did let on that the final bill would retain the provision for a health-care co-op system contained in the Finance Committee bill.

Next up, the "melded" bill will go to the Congressional Budget Office for cost analysis of its various provisions.  Any final tweaks will come after the CBO has scored the proposed legislation. The bill will then enter the legislative process, at which point Republicans will likely try to launch a filibuster stop the bill from coming to the Senate floor for a vote.

Reid expressed confidence that he had the 60 votes he would need to stop a promised GOP filibuster of the bill -- a legislative maneuver that, if successful, would keep health-care reform legislation for moving to the Senate floor for a vote by the full body. That likely means that Reid has exacted promises out of conservative Democrats who oppose the public option, such as Mary Landrieu, La.; Blanche Lincoln, Ark.; Ben Nelson, Neb., and the independent Joe Lieberman, Conn., that although they're unlikely to vote for the final bill because of Reid's opt-out plan, they won't side with Republicans in preventing the bill from coming to the floor.

One reporter asked if the Senate Majority Leader had asked the White House to call any of the senators in question. "I haven't asked them to make any calls," Reid said. "It hasn't been necessary at this point."

Looks like we just may get health-care reform, after all.

White House Adviser Romer Tells AlterNet She Is "Personally Persuaded" On Value of Public Option
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 26, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

In a speech to journalists and policy-makers, Christina Romer, PhD, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, offered a list of provisions in the various health-care reform bills currently before Congress that will help to contain costs and reduce the deficit over the long run. Included on her list the tax on high-priced plans proposed by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., (a provision opposed by the AFL-CIO), payment reforms in Medicare and last but not least, kinda, sorta maybe a public health insurance plan.

In her prepared remarks, Romer cited a public option as a "potentially important source of cost containment." Why the modifier, AlterNet asked her during the Q & A. Sounds like a bit of a hedge at a moment where the public option is a major issue in the progressive community.

"I was certainly planning to present all three of these [proposals] as important," Romer said. But the broader agreement among economists, she said, was for "something like the Kerry proposal."

"I have been personally quite persuaded," Romer continued, "that the public option certainly can be an important source of cost-growth containment."

As an example, Romer cited research done by her senior economist, Mark Duggan, on California counties with a dual plan structure, in which Medicaid patients are enrolled in one of two competing plans. In counties where all the Medicaid care was contracted to two competing, privately-run plans, costs grew more rapidly, Romer said, than in counties where a private plan was forced to compete against a public plan.

"It's a small sample...," Romer said, adding that whether or not the same results would hold throughout the country remained a question. But, she said, it's "one of the things that is giving me a sense that it could be something that could genuinely slow the growth rate of costs."

So, if that's the case, why doesn't the administration make the case, and start twisting a few arms?

Obama: How Long Will He Refuse To Fight?
Posted by Adam Green, Open Left on October 26, 2009 at 6:45 AM.

White House Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer posted this on the White House blog tonight:

A rumor is making the rounds that the White House and Senator Reid are pursuing different strategies on the public option.

Those rumors are absolutely false. In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. That continues to be the President's position.

Senator Reid and his leadership team are now working to get the most effective bill possible approved by the Senate. President Obama completely supports their efforts and has full confidence they will succeed and continue the unprecedented progress that is being made in both the House and Senate.

Among Democrats and progressives, there are a whole set of views about how we should do health care.

But understand that the bill that you least like in Congress right now. The one you least like, of the five that are out there, would provide 29 million Americans health care.

29 million Americans who don’t have it right now would get it. The bill you least like would prevent insurance companies from barring you from getting health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

Whatever the bill you least like would set up an exchange so that people right now who are having to try to bargain for health insurance on their own are suddenly part of a pool of millions that forces insurance companies to compete for their business and give them better deals and lower rates.

So there are going to be some disagreements and details to work out. But to the Democrats – I want to say to you Democrats – let’s make sure we keep our eye on the prize.

...Sometimes Democrats can be their own worst enemies. Democrats are an opinionated bunch. (laughter)

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Video: Public Option - Progressive Change Ad Targets Obama
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 26, 2009 at 6:00 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Once again, President Obama has publicly stepped back from the fray on heatlh-care reform, offering only lip service on the prospect of a public health-insurance plan. The White House is said to be ready to compromise the public option away in return for the vote of Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who favors a so-called "trigger" plan, which is really no public option at all.

(The trigger would allow for the creation of a public plan only after private health insurers proved their unwillingness to lower rates appreciably enough to meet some benchmark to be determined. In other words -- a big delay, at best, in the implementation of a public plan, or the defeat by legislative attrition of a public plan.)

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is having none of it. They've produced an ad featuring Ben Katz, a former organizer for Obama's presidential campaign in Maine, urging the president to keep his campaign promise of a public health insurance program.

The ad makes the point that Obama won Maine with a 58 percent mandate, and that 58 percent of Mainers favor the public option.

"President Obama," Katz says, "Olympia Snowe isn't representing Maine on this issue. We need you to fight. Tell Olympia Snowe to represent her constituents -- and that anything less than a public option is not change we can believe in."

PCCC is also collecting signatures on a petition that reads:

Every day, insurance companies deny care and let people die. Getting one Republican senator's vote is not worth delaying reform -- too many real lives are at stake. We need you to fight and state clearly that anything less than a strong public option is not change we can believe in.

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Will Your Member of Congress Get the Swine Flu Vaccine?
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on October 24, 2009 at 1:53 PM.

Jordy Yager reports for The Hill:

Democratic and Republican lawmakers cannot agree on whether to get the swine flu vaccine even after this week’s first reported case of a member of Congress catching the illness.

Some, like Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), are choosing not to get vaccinated, at least not immediately. Others, like Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), want it but can’t get it. She tried, but is not among the vulnerable categories that have first call on limited supplies.

Read the rest here.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: The Fight for Better Health Care
Posted by Sen. Bernie Sanders on October 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM.

One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don’t end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.

Senator Sanders Unfiltered is a weekly web program produced by Brave New Films.

Stay up-to-date with "Unfiltered" on Facebook. Follow Bernie on Twitter.

Majority of Americans Really Like the Idea of a Public Insurance Option
Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos on October 23, 2009 at 3:39 PM.

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Murder by the Insurance Industry: "He Survived as Long as His Battery Did"
Posted by Oliver Willis, Oliver Willis.com on October 23, 2009 at 1:52 PM.

Lack Of Health Insurance Never Killed Anyone. Except This Guy.

And thousands more.

In 2003, William Koehler of Pittsburgh, Pa. lost his job as an electronics technician. He lost his health insurance, too, but he’d been lucky enough to have the defibrillator battery in his heart changed just the previous year. No insurer would cover him except for one company which refused to cover anything related to his arrhythmia, says his sister.

He survived as long as his battery did, dying on March 7, 2009 at 57. His sister, Georgeanne Koehler, has become an activist, telling the story about how her brother died to anyone who will listen.

Public Option Looking Good In the Senate ... Baucus Ballistic, According to ABC News
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 22, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

After weeks of hand-wringing over the alleged inevitability of a filibuster against any health-care reform bill that contains a public insurance plan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now thinks he has the votes, according to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, to bring a bill with a public option to the Senate floor, where it is almost sure to win. Karl writes:

Reid is now convinced that Democratic critics of the public option will support him when it counts – on the procedural motion, which requires 60 votes, to defeat a certain GOP-led filibuster of the bill. Once the filibuster is beaten, it only takes 51 votes to pass the bill.

And one health-care camper is said to be very unhappy: Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of Senate Finance Committee, whose bill purposefully omitted any public health plan. As Karl explains:

I am told that Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) – who worked for months to get Olympia Snowe’s support for the bill and has consistently said a public option cannot pass the Senate – was apoplectic when Reid told him he wanted to include the public option. “Baucus went to DEFCON 1,” said a source familiar with the negotiations, referring to the alert level the military uses for an imminent attack on the homeland.

 

 

Insurance Company Tells Rape Victim Her Assault Would be a Pre-Existing Condition
Posted by RH Reality Check, RH Reality Check on October 21, 2009 at 7:00 PM.

This post comes from Jodi Jacobson's blog at RH Reality Check.

There is a serious and deep disconnect on health reform between reality and the debates ongoing in Washington. For one thing, despite continued support by the actual people of the United States for a public option in health reform, some Senators, namely Max Baucus (D-Montana) just want "a bill that can pass." Sounds to me like that's a strong endorsement of giving us the lowest common denominator health bill on one of the most important issues of our time.

Yet another deep, deep disconnect is on the issue of women--the people, their lives, their reproductive needs--being considered either irrelevant a la Senator "Who-Needs-Maternity-Care" Kyl of Arizona (home of the Sheriff who wanted female inmates to pay extra transportation costs to procure abortions) or in the form of Senator "You-Can't-Pay-For-Your-Abortion-With-Your-Private-Insurance-Policy" Hatch (R-Utah), or the insurance companies and the Catholic Bishops for whom women's health is a pre-existing condition or a condition of original sin.

Out of all of this is an increasing string of stories of individual women who've been denied insurance because their wombs, breasts, rapes (pick one) or simply their sex makes them a "pre-existing condition."

Among the most recent examples is a woman who spoke at the launch of NWLC's "Being A Woman Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition" campaign on October 20th, 2009.

Writing at Womenstake.org, Amanda Stone recounts the tale of the speaker, Chris Turner:

"Nope, we won’t take her." This is what insurance companies in Florida said when asked whether they would provide insurance coverage to a hypothetical applicant who had survived rape. Let’s back up a few steps. First, who was asking the question? Second, why was the applicant's history posed as a hypothetical? Third, what can we do to change this dire situation?

In November 2002, [Chris Turner] was drugged and raped while on a business trip. She sought medical help from her physician, who put her on preventative anti-HIV medication, since there was no way of knowing whether the person who raped her used a condom. Following her assault, Chris was afraid to leave her house for some time. About a month after the assault, Chris gathered the courage to seek counseling to deal with her fears-counseling which continued for about a year. She took the steps she needed to take care of herself, and the steps she now encourages other rape survivors to take as a volunteer at a Florida organization called SOAR-Speaking Out About Rape. As a volunteer, she warns rape survivors about a harm which she faced-she tells them, "if you lose your insurance, you might not be able to get it back." This is exactly what happened to Chris.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Pelosi Steps Up as Champion of the Public Option
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium on October 21, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

A plan to reform health care that includes a robust public option would actually cut the deficit, according to preliminary estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). For the purposes of this analysis, a robust public option was defined as one that reimburses doctors at Medicare rates plus five percent. The latest CBO estimate is critical for Democrats because President Barack Obama said he wouldn’t sign a health care bill that adds to the deficit. (There’s a double standard at work. Health care has to pay for itself or save money. But as Jo Comerford notes for Democracy Now!, the president has no compunction about bloating the budget with defense spending.)

As health care reform moves into the closed-door, intra-party negotiation phase, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is emerging as a champion of a public option. Pelosi has always said that she can’t pass a bill without some kind of public plan, though she has wavered about how tough that plan should be on payouts to providers. But according to Brian Beutler of TPMDC, yesterday’s “favorable CBO report seems to have settled all that, and Pelosi’s decided to go all in for a public option.”

And why not?

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Video: Heather Graham Makes Public Option Sexy in MoveOn Ad
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on October 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM.

Video: Pressure Mounts For Public Option in Senate; Harry Reid Targeted by Progressive Change Ad
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 21, 2009 at 6:00 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

As Senate negotiators continue to convene on crafting a final bill for health-care reform, support for a public health insurance plan seems to be gaining, the Washington Post reports, even among reluctant moderates. Perhaps the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which shows majority public support for the public option -- as much as 76 percent, depending on the make-up of the program -- has lit a fire under the seats of lagging senators.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to pledge his support for writing a public option into the final bill, which will combine the legislation passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and the one passed last week in the Finance Committee. The HELP Committee bill features a public option, while the Finance bill does not.

At issue for Reid is the math of the Senate, where 60 votes are required to call off a promised Republican filibuster, a legislative maneuver that would prevent the final bill from coming to the Senate floor for a vote. The Democrats have exactly 60 seats in the Senate (if you include the two independents who caucus with the Democrats), but not all are on board -- and one, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virgina, may not be well enough to come to the Capitol to cast a vote. The margin for voting down a filibuster may be as small as three votes.

Progressives seem to be saying, regardless of the arithmetic, it's time to take a stand. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is currently raising money to run an ad in Nevada, Harry Reid's home state, where he faces a difficult election next year. The ad asks whether Reid is "strong enough" to stand on principle.

Other machinations on the public option continue as well in the Senate. Democrats want to increase payments to doctors who accept Medicare, codifying a fix that is usually made ad-hoc in other spending bills. This would allow those crafting the final bill to tie the costs of a public plan to Medicare reimbursements.

Republicans are mounting opposition to the Medicare tie-in as currently written, because it would involve deficit spending. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told the New York Times, "Republicans believe they can derail health care reform by defeating the doctor fix. That’s what this is all about."

VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP

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Husband Joins Army So Cancer-Stricken Wife Can Get Health Care
Posted by Zaid Jilani, Think Progress on October 20, 2009 at 5:30 AM.

One of the worst tragedies of the recession has been people losing their health insurance because they lost their job. Nearly 14,000 Americans lose their insurance every day. Wisconsin father Bill Caudle was laid off from his job at a plastics company in March 2009, which resulted in his family losing their employer-subsidized health care coverage. This put the family in an especially precarious position, because Bill's wife, Michelle, was an ovarian cancer patient. After months of unsuccessfully looking for work, Caudle did the only thing he could to get his wife chemotherapy -- he joined the Army:

Bill needed a job. He needed health benefits. [...]

The Army would solve their health coverage problem. In years past he would have been too old, but in 2005 the age limit for enlistment was increased from 35 to 40, and a year later it was raised again to 42. The tradeoff would be his absence from home.

In the end, although he risked leaving Michelle to fight cancer on her own, Bill chose the Army. He signed on for a job as a signal support systems specialist, a soldier who works with communications equipment.

"Seventy percent of the reason is for the insurance," said Bill’s mother, Marguerite Hemiller. "He told me, 'I've always wanted to do something for my country and I have to help Michelle.'"

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Harry Reid Turns Up Heat on Insurance Industry
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 14, 2009 at 3:42 PM.

It's pretty unusual for a Senate Majority Leader to testify as a witness at a committee hearing, so I was glad to see Harry Reid (D-Nev.) make an exception today on a key issue.

In a provocative move, the Majority Leader spoke directly to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and raised the specter of repealing the 1945 law pertaining to the insurance industry's limited exemption to national antitrust laws.

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Health Insurance Companies Want You to Stop Reproducing, or Pay the Price
Posted by Robin Marty, RH Reality Check on October 13, 2009 at 4:25 PM.

From RH Reality Check

Having our first child was one of the greatest moments of my husband’s and my life together.  Once we adjusted to being parents, we knew that at some point we would want to expand our family.  When we found out 7 weeks ago that we were expecting again, we couldn't have been more excited.

The longer we have been parents, the more we have become planners, especially financially.  I made a goal of paying off my student loans before our first was born, literally writing that last check two weeks before her due date.  That payment quickly became a 529 account.  We became frantic savers, opening online accounts, IRAs, anything we could sock our money into.  When we decided to try for a second child, we made sure to first set aside the $3000 it would cost us out-of-pocket to pay for the birth, $1500 out-of-pocket max for me, and $1500 max for the new baby.

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GOP Senator Olympia Snowe on Board With Health Reform...But There's a Catch
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 13, 2009 at 12:44 PM.

SNOWE TO SUPPORT SFC REFORM BILL.... Senate Democrats really sought Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) vote in advance of today's Senate Finance Committee consideration of health care reform. Their efforts have apparently paid off -- the moderate Republican announced this afternoon that she will vote with the majority today.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday she would vote to approve the healthcare bill before the Senate Finance Committee.

Snowe joined the committee's Democrats to vote in favor of Chairman Max Baucus's (D-Mont.) health reform proposal, characterizing her vote as a move to support moving forward with landmark healthcare reform.

This does not necessarily mean she'll vote for reform on the Senate floor, after the Finance Committee bill is merged with the Senate HELP Committee bill. Snowe wasn't especially subtle on this point today, reminding her committee colleagues, "My vote today does not forecast what my vote will be tomorrow."

In other words, too many meaningful changes to the Baucus plan will push Snowe away. The Maine senator apparently intends to keep the changes to a minimum as Senate leaders merge to the two committee bills.

With that in mind, Snowe has positioned herself as still the member whose opinions will help dictate the process. There was some talk that Snowe would lose her leverage if she backed the Baucus framework today -- if she were considered a "yea" vote for reform, Snowe would lose influence in the ongoing negotiations and Dems would stop trying to give her everything she wants -- but that's clearly not the case.

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New Legislation Might Guarantee a Public Option
Posted by Booman, Booman Tribune on October 13, 2009 at 11:23 AM.

Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery have a damn good roundup in the Washington Post of the state of play for health care reform on the eve of the big vote in the Senate Finance Committee. If you don't feel like you have a good grasp of the various issues and shifting winds, I recommend giving it a careful read. There's not much to complain about in their report.

There are two important tidbits to focus on.

First, on Harry Reid and the public option:

The measure does not mandate that businesses provide coverage to their workers. Committee members defeated two versions of a government insurance option. And the bill would tax high-value policies that, to the dismay of many liberal lawmakers, could affect some union households.

Senior Democrats, including Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), both liberal members of the finance panel, are urging Reid to address these perceived shortcomings before the merged bill reaches the Senate floor. But Reid has told colleagues that he is reluctant to produce a measure that proves too divisive within his caucus. Regarding a government-funded, or public, insurance option, in particular, he has said he wants proof that a provision would attract broad support within the party before it is included. Otherwise, senators would be free to offer changes as amendments on the Senate floor.

Second, on Tom Carper and the opt-in or opt-out alternatives:

One proposal attracting considerable attention originated with Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.) and would allow states to decide whether to create their own insurance plans or join forces to provide coverage in collaboration with neighboring states. Other Democrats want to take the state-based approach a step further, creating a national public plan that states could join. Carper, a moderate Democrat, said he is not sure he is prepared to go that far. "I'm just chewing on that one," he said.

Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), a moderate Democrat, was bullish on the Carper approach. "I think something like that is likely, and would probably pass muster with moderates," he said. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who opposes a public option, said he likes Carper's idea. "I think the states, as laboratories of democracy, probably can find ways to deal with this, and if they do make a mistake it's a smaller mistake to correct than at the federal level," Nelson said.

It looks like nothing is decided yet. Tom Carper, Evan Bayh, and Ben Nelson are trying to kill a public option by letting states set up their own state-run or regional insurance systems. But Schumer is pushing a different idea where states would be eligible for the public option by default, but could opt-out of it in favor of Carper's approach if their legislatures or governors or a plebiscite ratifies the idea. I believe this is Schumer's attempt to prove to Reid that he can get 60 votes for cloture for a public option. Carper says he is "chewing on" it. That signals weakness to me. I think we're going to get this done. And I haven't thought it would be possible all year up until this past week.

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Americans Aren't Guinea Pigs for Health Care
Posted by Flory, Whiskey Fire on October 13, 2009 at 4:03 AM.

In my humble opinion Ezra Klein has been one of the best writers, on or off the internets, on both the politics and the substance of health care reform. Which is why I hate it when he gets all abstract and so far into Village politics he starts to forget there are real people affected by this stuff.

Case in point: A Public Option Compromise That Might Actually Work....on lab rats. Ezra is arguing that a compromise under consideration by "the Democratic leadership" is a reasonable compromise of the compromised compromise postion. Or something.

So the argument is that a public insurance option would be the default position for all state insurance exchanges, but states would have the right to opt out of a public option if they wanted:

States would then have the right to vote -- either by referendum, legislature, or simply a gubernatorial decree -- to make the option unavailable in their health care exchanges.

Ezra is arguing that this is a good idea since it provides a real world opportunity to test the impact of a public option:

It also creates a neat policy experiment: We can see, over time, what happens to state insurance markets that include the national public option and compare them with those that don't. We can see whether the worst fears of conservatives are realized and private insurers are driven out and providers are forced out of business due to low payment rates, and we can see whether the hopes of liberals are right and costs come down and private insurers become leaner and more efficient. Or both, or neither. It's an opportunity to pit liberal and conservative policies against each other, rather than just pitting liberal and conservative congressmen against each other.

According to this logic it makes sense to give this whackjob or this nutcase or the looney tunes making the rules here the authority to decide whether or not the people in their state get access to a public healthcare plan. And this is all a good idea because hey!  lab test!!

In a word...No.

People are not lab rats. There's no need to test whether "the hopes of liberals are right". Public options have been tested - they're called Medicare and the VA. They work. They're cheaper and, when done right, provide better continuity of care than our current mishmash of a system.

Any governor or legislature that decides to forgo a public option on behalf of the citizens of their state should first be required to forgo the public healthcare they are no doubt receiving thru their state job.

Big Insurance Reverses Course and Launches Attack on Health Reform
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on October 12, 2009 at 10:57 AM.

I guess the insurance industry finally decided they weren't going to get the kind of sweetheart deals that PHarma and the Hospitals got, so they've gone on the warpath by holding a gun to ... er ... releasing a "cost projection" report about the effects of health care reform. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that it says they will raise premiums sky high if reforms are passed.

Frankly, I wouldn't expect any less of them. They will raise premiums sky high even if reforms don't pass. They always have before. Indeed, the only thing that kept them in check at all over the past 20 years was a roaring stock market, which allowed them to make huge profits while only gouging their customers at about 15% inflation. Lately, they've had no choice but to jack that up and gouge the sick customers even more. They are, after all, profit driven corporations .

This report today, however, signals that the industry is ready to go to war to stop health care reform. Ezra characterizes it properly:

In the hallowed tradition of the tobacco and energy industries, the health insurance industry has commissioned a report (pdf) projecting doom and despair for those who seek to reform its business practices. The report was farmed out to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has something of a history with this sort of thing: In the early-'90s, the tobacco industry commissioned PWC to estimate the economic devastation that would result from a tax on tobacco. The report was later analyzed

by the Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting group, which concluded that "the cumulative effect of PW’s methods … is to produce patently unreliable results." It's perhaps no surprise that the patently unreliable results were all in the tobacco industry's favor. He who pays the piper names the tune, and all that.

All that makes it a bit hard to respond to this analysis. Seriously engaging with its methodology probably gives it more credit than it deserves, making this seem like an argument between two opposing sides as opposed to a predictable industry hit job. But totally ignoring its claims means some of them might live unchallenged. So rather than a full tour through the "analysis," here are a couple of its more representative moments.

Read on.

So why now? Well, this may be a clue:

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No More Excuses: John Tester Brings 51st Senate Vote for Public Option
Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left on October 10, 2009 at 4:40 AM.

I have just received word that Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) would vote in favor of Senator Schumer's "level playing field" public option.

This pushes the Senate whip count to 51, even without Joe Biden casting a tie-breaking vote.

Since there are now finally 60 active, voting Democrats, it is possible to break any Republican filibuster. Hell, it actually only requires 51 votes to break a filibuster, if Senators were more honest about process. Further, if they didn't even want to both with filibusters, they could always just go with reconciliation, since Tester now gives them enough votes even if Robert Byrd (who is opposed to using reconciliation for health care) defects.

Senate Democrats have the votes. No more process excuses. Pass the public option.

Poll: GOP Taking a Pounding on Obstruction of Health-Care Reform
Posted by DemFromCT , Daily Kos on October 9, 2009 at 11:06 AM.

From Bloomberg:

Months of Republican attacks on President Barack Obama’s health-care proposals appear to have hurt the party, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

And on the Republican measure of failure, directly from the Q-poll:

But Republicans get their lowest grades since Obama was elected on several measures:

   * Voters disapprove 64 - 25 percent of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job, with 42 percent of Republican voters disapproving;
   * Only 29 percent think Republicans on Capitol Hill are acting in good faith;
   * Voters trust Obama more than Republicans 47 - 31 percent to handle health care;
   * Voters 53 - 25 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party.

On bipartisanship here's a variation of the polling choice of words noted by Greg Sargent:

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But Specter Is OUR Pompous, Shameless, Opportunistic Hack!
Posted by Thers, Whiskey Fire on October 9, 2009 at 3:33 AM.

Noted lunatic imbecile Dan Riehl says something stupid -- no surprise there -- though only after actually getting something right, hard as that may be to believe.

Funny that Arlen Specter would come out for a robust public health care insurance option on the very same site that once headlined his opposition to that very thing as recently as May.

Specter Won't Back Public Health Care Or Employee Free Choice Act (VIDEO)

Fast forward to today at the Huffington Post: Arlen Specter: Supporting a Robust Public Option

Arlen Specter, T (for traitor) was previously highlighted by the Lefty blogs as the highest paid shill for corporate America in his strong opposition to a public option for health care reform. Perhaps he was, once. I guess he needs union money, now....

So much for principle and judgment. What a desperate, pathetic figure Specter cuts today. He's just a shell of a man who doesn't want to let go of his cherished Senate office no matter what, even after all these years.

All true! Arlen Specter is a hack and a half, an opportunist whose most attractive quality is that his shamelessness tends to overshadow his pomposity. Never liked Arlen Specter, never will. We're with ya, Dan! Until this bit:

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Health-Care Reform: About the 'Opt-Out' Compromise
Posted by Booman, Booman Tribune on October 8, 2009 at 4:48 PM.

If you look at the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill (PDF), you'll see that it substantially increases eligibility for Medicaid.

Starting in 2014, nonelderly people with income below 133 percent of the FPL would generally be made eligible for Medicaid; the federal government would pay a share of the costs of covering newly eligible enrollees that varies somewhat from year to year but ultimately would average about 90 percent. (Under current rules, the federal government usually pays about 57 percent, on average, of the costs of Medicaid benefits.) In addition, states would be required to maintain current coverage levels for children under Medicaid and CHIP through 2019.

Beginning in 2014, states would receive higher federal reimbursement for CHIP beneficiaries, increasing from an average of 70 percent to 93 percent. CBO estimates that state spending on Medicaid would increase by about $33 billion over the 2010–2019 period as a result of the specifications affecting coverage.

The key here is that $33 billion number. We all know that state budgets are in complete disarray, and here comes the government with a substantial unfunded bill for them to pay. But that number is deceptive. What happens when a person moves from employer-based health care to one of the regional exchanges? One thing that happens is that their employer pays a fee (this is to dissuade them from dumping their employees). But the other thing that happens is that the employee's compensation moves from untaxable health care benefits to taxable wages or salary. The states will see a spike in income tax revenue.

Now, let's think about something. What would happen if a robust public option was added to the SFC bill, but it came with an opt-out clause for the states? Here is how Sam Stein explains the proposal:

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30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape
Posted by Charles Lemos, MyDD.com on October 8, 2009 at 11:16 AM.

It is stunning that 30 Republican members of the United States Senate would vote to protect a corporation, in this case Halliburton/KBR, over a woman who was gang raped. The details from Think Progress:

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

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Are There Enough Votes For a Public Option? Here's the Math
Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left on October 8, 2009 at 8:31 AM.

At the request of Speaker Pelosi, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is currently undertaking a whip count to see if there are enough votes to pass a health care reform bill in that chamber with a "robust" public option (that is, a public option tied to Medicare rates, +5%).

As I reported on Friday, they began this whip count a couple weeks ago, interrupting their whip count of House Progressives who would vote against a health care reform without a robust public option to do so.

Yesterday, anonymous Blue Dog aides told Politico that Progressives had found only 145 votes for the robust public option during this whip count. This morning, Greg Sargent reports that Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Raul Grijalva's office is claiming a much higher number, around 180:

"I am confident that we have the support of over 70% of the Democratic Caucus," Grivalva said in a statement emailed my way. That means according to him, around 180 of the 256 Dems in the House are prepared to back the robust public option right now.

Sargent is correct, not the anonymous Blue Dog aides. I know this, because I have the actual numbers. As of Friday, here is where the whip count stood:

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So, How Much Would the Baucus Health Care Bill Cost? The Numbers Are In
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on October 7, 2009 at 4:00 PM.

The long-awaited Congressional Budget Office report on the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform bill was finally released this afternoon.

What's the news? The bill would cost $829 billion over the next decade, achieve $81 billion in deficit reduction, and cover 94% of the population.

According to CBO and JCT's assessment, enacting the Chairman's mark, as amended, would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $81 billion over the 2010-2019 period. The estimate includes a projected net cost of $518 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage. That net cost itself reflects a gross total of $829 billion in credits and subsidies provided through the exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers; those costs are partly offset by $201 billion in revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans and $110 billion in net savings from other sources. The net cost of the coverage expansions would be more than offset by the combination of other spending changes that CBO estimates would save $404 billion over the 10 years and other provisions that JCT and CBO estimate would increase federal revenues by $196 billion over the same period. In subsequent years, the collective effect of those provisions would probably be continued reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty.

By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 29 million, leaving about 25 million nonelderly residents uninsured (about one-third of whom would be unauthorized immigrants). Under the proposal, the share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage would rise from about 83 percent currently to about 94 percent. Roughly 23 million people would purchase their own coverage through the new insurance exchanges, and there would be roughly 14 million more enrollees in Medicaid and CHIP than is projected under current law. Relative to currently projected levels, the number of people either purchasing individual coverage outside the exchanges or obtaining coverage through employers would decline by several million.

At first blush, it's a mixed bag.

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Health Care: Not All Republicans Are on the Crazy Train -- Just the Ones in Congress
Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos on October 7, 2009 at 10:30 AM.

Guns Kill People ... Who Own Guns
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 6, 2009 at 10:39 AM.

The debate over guns strikes me as odd. I can't quite grasp why it's viewed as a left-right issue -- a matter of ideology -- as opposed to a rural-urban divide. I've owned guns myself when I lived in the boondocks, but in a city, packed in like sardines with lunatics of all stripes, I'd prefer there be as few guns as possible within range of my windows.

Obviously, it's not easy to have a liberal gun policy in rural areas and stricter controls in cities, but in my mind, that tension should at least form the parameters of debate (and if you look carefully at who's on which side, it often does; think about Rudy Giuliani's outspoken support for gun control, or the fact that even the most progressive Dems from rural districts oppose it).

But gun-rights absolutists -- I don't like "gun nuts" -- answer that dense cities are precisely where firearms come in handiest. After all, you never know when you'll have to fend off a band of roaming zombies in the big city.

And similar arguments extend to just about everywhere they'd like to carry. In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, one pro-gun blogger wrote that the lesson we needed to learn was:

...we should be crusading to abolish 'gun free zones.' History has shown us time and again that, rather than protecting children, gun free zones actually endanger them. They endanger them by creating a magnet for homicidal psychopaths who know they will meet no resistance, and they endanger them by preventing responsible adults from deploying the means to defend the innocent and counter the threat of the evil.

That's built on a profoundly silly idea -- that we're all potential John Waynes who just need to be in the right place at the right time in order to heroically save the day with our shiny heaters. Ordinary people, if heavily armed, can be their own SWAT teams! Same for home defense -- the cops might take minutes to respond to a call, but your H & K is right there in the drawer, loaded and ready for bear.

I've always thought there was more mindless machismo to the argument than common sense, and a new study appears to back up that view:

In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

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Video: Fox Accuses Obama of Never Having Supported a Public Option
Posted by Jed Lewison, Daily Kos on October 6, 2009 at 9:36 AM.

If you're paying any attention to what's actually going on in the world, watching Fox can be a dizzying affair. One minute, they are accusing President Obama of being the driving force being a government conspiracy to take over health care in the guise of the public option, and the next minute they are saying that he's been an avowed opponent of the public option, at least since his speech to Congress on September 9.

Take, for example, America's Newsroom which yesterday accused President Obama of hypocrisy by working behind-the-scenes (as reported by the L.A. Times) to bolster Senate support for the public option.

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North Dakota Dems Ask Conrad to Support a Public Option
Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos on October 6, 2009 at 7:15 AM.

It's not just Nebraska. Seems that North Dakota Dems are much more in line with their Sen. Dorgan than Conrad, and they've made that clear to him.

The North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party met in Fargo, N.D., on September 19, 2009, and passed a unanimous resolution directing the party's Executive Director to send a letter to North Dakota's Congressional Delegation, letting them know where the North Dakota Dem-NPL Party stands.

The Dem-NPL's Executive Director wrote a letter to remind the congressional delegation that the party voted last year to urge congress to enact universal, single-payer legislation.  In the event the delegation member could not find it within himself to support universal, single-payer, they were asked to support the public option.

Of course, Conrad could argue back that he is supporting a public option, just the one he calls co-ops. Somehow I don't think the North Dakota Dems, who have actually demanded single-payer, would settle for that.

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Socialized Profits
Posted by on October 5, 2009 at 10:20 AM.

A wild story out of Maine.

Anthem Health Plans of Maine, a subsidiary of WellPoint, is suing the state because they want to increase premium rates by 18.5% on their 12,000 individual insurance policy holders, so they can guarantee themselves a 3% profit margin. This story shows how silly it would be to solely rely on regulation to rein in insurance industry practices.

Like many other states, Anthem Health Plans hold a monopoly on the individual insurance market in Maine, controlling 79% of all the plans. Also like many other states, they are licensed to sell insurance through the Department of Insurance, who must clear all rate increases prior to implementation. Originally, Anthem Health Plans were a nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield corporation licensed to practice in Maine since 1939. In 1999, Anthem bought the business and began to operate it as a for-profit company. Since that point, Anthem has raised premium rates 10 times, and 8 of those times have been double-digit rate increases.

Jan-99: 20.4%
Nov-99: 15.7%
Jan-01: 23.5%
Feb-02: 12.7%
Jan-03: 3.4%
Mar-05: 14.5%
Mar-06: 16.3%
Jan-07: 16.7%
Jul-07: 1.3%
Jan-08: 12.5%

The average individual Maine rate-payer is paying four times as much for insurance than they did ten years ago.

But this isn't good enough for Anthem Health Plans. They first proposed a 14.5% rate increase for its individual insurance products, then they revised it up to 18.1% and finally 18.5%. This is an average increase. Some plans would see increase of 24.5%, some 38.4%, and for its Preventive Care and Supplemental Care Accident rider, which is part of 1/3 of all their policies, Anthem proposed a rate increase of 58.2%. This amounts to Maine consumers paying $12 million more in annual premium dollars for the exact same level of benefits.

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Does John Boehner Spend All of His Time in a Giant Hamster Ball?
Posted by Hunter, Daily Kos on October 3, 2009 at 5:38 AM.

Minority Leader John Boehner, to Politico:

"I'm still trying to find the first American to talk to who's in favor of the public option, other than a member of  Congress or the administration" said Boehner, whose sole recent foray into a public discussion of health care reform was a tea-party-style event in Ohio a few weeks back. "I've not talked to one and I get to a lot of places," he told reporters at his weekly press availability. "I've not had anyone come up to me -- I know I'm inviting them -- and lobby for the public option."

Just ponder for a moment about what it means if John Boehner isn't lying -- because as we know, it's wrong for politicians to lie and they almost never, ever do -- but that he really, honestly has never met anyone who was in favor of the public option during this entire debate.

Let us all pause to reflect the sheer magnitude of the insular, self-inflating bubble that would be required of Boehner to never meet or talk to a single American that thought that way, when 2/3rds of the country do, and the majority of people in his own state do. He must roll to and from work in a giant, government-provided hamster ball.