Yesterday, Byron Doran announced that he will bring a bill to the floor that will attempt to blow up the White House deal with PhRMA, specifically the part about reimportation of drugs from Candada. He stands a good chance — he’s got Republican co-sponsors in Snowe and McCain for the bill he introduced in March: [...]

When the Senate Finance Committee starts work again on Tuesday things should get heated. Here are some of the more interesting amendments to watch out for. Free Choice Amendment – Wyden C1 : What it hopes to do: It would allow employees who do not like their current employer provided health insurance to ask for [...]

It is not often that progressives and the Wall Street Journal are in complete agreement, but sometimes the facts are plain for everyone to see. The Wall Street Journal is running a story today about what a massive boon to the for-profit health insurance corporations Baucus’s health care bill would be. The health-system overhaul proposed [...]

The Los Angeles Times highlighted today a troubling aspect of Baucus’s health care reform bill. The bill basically gives a non-governmental non-profit, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners the power to write law. From Baucus’s Mark: Enforcement Mechanism. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) will devise an NAIC Model Regulation within 12 months of [...]

The fact that a Blue Dog has supported a public option in the past does not mean that they will support one now — their principles tend to be lobbyist-flexible. But Nate Silver’s number crunching indicates that most of those who have done so in the past probably have majority support for a public option in their districts, so come 2010, they will have some explaining to do about why they flip-flopped. That’s particularly true for those in California like Cardoza, Thompson and Schiff, who have significant Democratic majorities in their districts.

“Fiscal responsibility” is the last thing the Blue Dogs are interested in. Their prescription drug and Medicare positions alone add $148 billion to the cost of the bill without adding any value, and their insistence on “paygo” means those cost gets passed on directly to consumers in the form of higher premiums.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Today on Meet the Press, former President Bill Clinton talked positively about Sen. Snowe’s trigger proposal. Bill Clinton seems to be mirroring Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid who also had some very positive words for Snowe’s worthless trigger idea. We should be expecting [...]

Jim Cooper says we’ve misstated his position on the public option. Which of many positions is he talking about?

With Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now saying he thinks a trigger is a “pretty doggone good idea,” it is important to know what supporting a trigger says to the American people. To support the trigger idea you first need to already accept most of the arguments for a public option. You must believe that [...]

The Blue Dogs don’t seem to be particularly proud of this letter. The signatures on the hard copy are illegible and we’ve only been able to decipher 39 of them. There are no names printed across the bottom of the signatures as there normally would be, and the text of the letter on the Blue Dog website doesn’t list the signatories.

If you can figure out the proud owner of the 40th signature and help them claim authorship of this piece of gibberish, let us know.