The push by lobbyists of Citibank, JP Morgan, Sallie Mae and other student lenders to kill student loan reform is working. Kent Conrad is trying to keep the President’s plan from going through reconciliation this year, which means it can’t pass for another year — and guarantees that the Wall Street banks can keep carving [...]

Conrad’s state-based co-ops idea was once seen as the great “compromise” for health care reform and the public option issue. It is an idea which never really picked up broad support, and recently seems to be on the outs. The latest CBO report on the Baucus bill might just be the nail in the coffin [...]

A few days ago, I wrote  that the CBO screwed up Ron Wyden’s amendment by failing to fully score it, after telling Wyden that they had.  As a result, Max Baucus wouldn’t let it come up for a vote on the Senate Finance Committee.  Wyden is now threatening to vote against the entire bill, which [...]

Yesterday, I wrote about the terrible idea Sen. Carper has been trying to sell as an “alternative” to the public option. Thanks to a report from Politico it appears that the idea is even worse than I first thought. Carper’s proposal would leave decisions and solutions up to the states. While Snowe’s amendment sets only [...]

Sen. Enzi introduced an amendment to lower the actuarial value of the lowest quality plans (bronze level) that could be sold on the exchange from 65% to 60%. His amendment will allow insurance companies to offer plans that cover even less of the cost of medical treatment than Baucus originally proposed. The amendment would mean [...]

According to the Las Vegas Sun, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that he thought Snowe’s trigger proposal was, a “pretty doggone good idea.” I think the whole idea of a trigger is inherently flawed. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich did a good job explaining that Washington is full of lobbyists whose job it is [...]

Ezra Klein made an excellent catch the other day. Sen. Kent Conrad’s said during the Senate Finance Committee hearing: They’re not government-run systems in Germany, in Japan, in Switzerland, in France, in Belgium — all of them contain costs, have universal coverage, have very high quality care and yet are not government-run systems. The problem [...]

In an interview with Bloomberg.com, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag talked about his support for so-called "co-ops" and "triggers." Orszag signaled the administration doesn’t consider a government-run insurance program essential to the legislation. He suggested it would be sufficient to either create nonprofit insurance-purchasing cooperatives or set “triggers” to activate a public option if [...]

Mike Ross (D-Ark) sent a letter to his constituents praising the Baucus bill.

Ross used most of the letter to strongly endorse Conrad’s small, state-based co-ops idea. This should surprise no one given the overwhelming evidence that Ross has been working directly and/or indirectly with Conrad to get the co-ops idea included in the House bill.