During a hearing Rep. Dennis Kucinich got a simple but powerful admission from top executives at the largest insurance companies in the country. Kucinich asked, “Do you believe that a health insurers refusal to pay for a patient’s cancer treatment can directly or indirectly cause harm or death to that patient?” In turn each of [...]

Back before the August recess a deal was struck with a group of Blue Dogs, lead by Rep. Mike Ross, in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The agreement was to make the public option weaker by not allowing it to pay modified Medicare rates. This deal dramatically reduced the cost savings that would come [...]

Three important changes which address a few of my own concerns with the Baucus bill.

Because I guess independents are who we’re looking at to turn out for the 2010 midterms:

“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding.” 

Take that, Nico Pitney.

Note to self:  be nicer to Glenn Beck.

Ben Smith gets a quote from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Gerry McEntee’s — er, “colorful” description of the Max Baucus bill:

“Gerry has much wisdom,” Trumka said in an interview today, referring to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, who attacked the bill last week. “We don’t think that the way to provide benefits for everybody is to tax people’s benefits so they end up losing their benefits.”

McEntee, as you’ll recall, led the AFL-CIO convention in a chant of “bullshit” in response to the Baucus bill.  Which, I would concur, is the response of someone with “much wisdom.”

We have reserved time during the Arkansas-Alabama football game this weekend.  Razorback football games are like national holidays in Arkansas — and it’s a road game so EVERYONE will be watching on TV.  

Can you help us reach our goal of $78,000 to make sure that people in Arkansas know that Mike Ross needs to act like a Democrat, or we’ll find someone who will?

The Politico is reporting that Mike Ross sold his pharmacy business in 2007, while a member of Congress. USA Drug, a large pharmacy chain with an important stake in health care reform, overpaid for the property by roughly $160,000.

Throughout this entire health care reform debate, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) has been the biggest advocate of the CBO. He demanded that CBO score health care reform over ten years. He also demanded the CBO must examine the bill and conclude that it would not increase the deficit over the next 20 years. Yet, when [...]

Because everyone has a right to the American dream.

I highly recommend read this new Reuters story on how useless Conrad’s idea of small statewide co-ops would be. The story quotes several experts who all agree with what most of the progressive community has been saying for months. The co-ops would be so legally restricted by Baucus’s bill that they would have little to no impact on health insurance in this country.