slinkerwink

The Congressional Budget Office just said that a public option based on Medicare reimbursement rates would save the government hundreds of millions dollars in comparison to a public option that would have to individually negotiate reimbursement rates with medical providers. This goes against the Blue Dogs’s so-called fiscal conservatism in opposing a robust public option. [...]

Our favorite Democratic ‘svengali’, Rahm Emanuel, just said that he didn’t think the Senate would be able to pass a public option in spite of the three public option amendments offered so far by Senators Rockefeller, Schumer, and Cantwell. I guess he takes conservative Senators like Kent Conrad, Nelson, and Baucus at their word when [...]

Here’s an interesting catch this morning. The group, Americans For Stable Quality Care, which is a PhRMA-backed group along with AMA, Families USA, and the Federation of American Hospitals, is running ads like these below: The ad itself pushes support of the White House health care plan, and the Baucus Senate Finance Committee bill by [...]

Senator Rockefeller pointed out that there was a gigantic loophole in the Baucus bill that would leave half of Americans subject to potential discrimination by private insurers. Apparently due to existing federal law, large companies can call themselves "self-insurers" even though they provide coverage through a major insurance company. These sort of self-insurance plans are [...]

I don’t get why this is treated as a surprise, given the news reports that several administration officials, including Rahm, and Peter Orszag, were quoted as being supportive of the trigger on the public option. They’re not making their support for co-operatives or a "trigger" on the public option a secret when they say that [...]

There’s a new problem that just cropped up for the ethically-challenged Blue Dog, Rep. Mike Ross, on the heels of news reports about his possibly illegal pharmacy sale to a major pharmacy chain with a major stake in health insurance reform. It seems that CREW, an ethics watchdog group, has just filed a complaint with [...]

Earlier, reading the comments during the liveblogging of the Senate Finance Committee mark-up, there were those who cheered when Senator Snowe voted against the Hatch amendment with other Democrats. They shouldn’t be cheering when Senator Snowe decides to vote with the Democrats on health insurance reform because it means the final bill will likely have [...]

Pelosi’s spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, pushed back against recent news reports that Speaker Pelosi was going to drop the deal that she had made with the Blue Dog Democrats not to have the public option be pegged to Medicare plus rates in order to be competitive. Here’s what he said below: Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami emailed [...]

Jon Walker wrote earlier about Speaker Nancy Pelosi backing off on her deal with the Blue Dogs in order to get the bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, but there’s more to the article about that story. Towards the last paragraph, you get this juicy little tidbit—the Blue Dogs are still planning to push the co-op [...]

The latest report is that there are over 540 amendments filed for the mark-up process of the bill by Senator Baucus in the Senate Finance Committee. According to Politico’s Live Pulse column, the amendments will be divided into three distinct subject areas: delivery system reform, coverage, and financing. The Senate Finance Committee staff says that [...]