slinkerwink

The Hill reports that President Obama was booed when he brought up the Baucus bill at his health insurance reform rally at the University of Maryland:

Yesterday, Rockefeller was indignant about the colossal policy failure that Baucus’s bill is, and said that he wouldn’t vote for the Baucus Finance bill in its present form: I have sat besides Max Baucus for 22 years on the Finance Committee. … I’m probably one of his best friend among Democrats. But I cannot agree with him [...]

I wrote a few days ago about how the legislative trigger on the public option was nothing more than a con job pulled on us by insurance lobbyists through politicians like Senator Baucus, Conrad, Nelson, and "moderate" Democrats in the House, including White House administration officials like Rahm Emmanuel who suggested the "trigger" on the [...]

Rep. Mike Ross, who flip-flopped on the public option and has authored an amendment that seems like a copycat of Max Baucus’s no-good, terribly bad bill, has been in secretive talks with a Republican, Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), for weeks. Guess what? Rep. Boustany’s the one that’s scheduled to give the GOP address to President Obama’s [...]

Greg Sargent over at The Plum Line made this astonishing find about the White House purposefully hiding support for the public option in its memo that’s being circulated to Democrats in Congress: The memo, by Obama pollster Joel Benenson, doesn’t mention the public option (the White House may not be committed to it) and largely cites general [...]

Rep. Xavier Becerra, who’s taken thousands of dollars in donations from private insurers such as AHIP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and thousands of dollars from pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and medical-device makers, just happily said that he was in favor of President Obama’s plan to force us to buy health insurance that we can’t afford without a public [...]

It just keeps on coming from Rep. Stark today–telling like it is, and giving the Blue Dog Democrats hell in the process. Here’s more from his interview with reporters today:  Moderate Blue Dog Democrats ”just want to cause trouble,” said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. ”They’re [...]

Rep. Stark says that the co-ops, favored by Blue Cross Dogs, and Senate "moderates" are nothing more than a scam and a shoddy substitute for the public option in health care reform. Here’s what he said to the Huffington Post below: "There aren’t many of you listening who remember the co-ops in the ’30s, which was kind [...]

Now, as if on cue, some of the Blue Dog Democrats are picking up on Steny Hoyer’s message about the public option "having to go" for the passage of the bill in the House of Representatives. Rep. Jason Altmire, who’s one of the leading Blue Dog Democrats in the House, just said: The House’s healthcare [...]

Steny Hoyer, patron saint of the Blue Dog Democrats, just got off a conference call with reporters in which he said that in order for the health bill to pass the House of Representatives, that the public option would be tossed overboard as an essential part of the package. Hoyer (D-Md.) emphasized his support for [...]