“What’s the CBO score?” is one way to judge between competing health reform efforts, but hardly the best way. How about asking the questions raised by Faithful Reform in Health Care: how many lives will be saved, and how many jobs preserved?

Harold Pollack ran the numbers and is very pleased that the Senate bill will eventually spend a lot of money on subsidies going to private insurance companies to make insurance affordable for the uninsured: As others have noted, Democrats are on the brink of enacting an imperfect but historic bill that will cover 30 million [...]

Ezra Klein has done the discussion on health reform a big disservice by making false claims about what could, in fact, start a race to the bottom in the insurance market. He writes: What it doesn’t allow is for insurers to simply sell their wares in any state. Aetna could not, for instance, decide that [...]

The White House/Olympia Snowe/Joe Lieberman/ConservaDem apologists are starting to rally around this new “alternative” to the public option. This “alternative” is nothing at all even like a public option. It is an OPM run exchanges for current, private, non-profit insurance companies. I suspect we will soon see apologists claiming this idea would resemble the all-payer [...]

Politico is reporting that Snowe, Lincoln, and Landrieu have submitted an amendment that would effectively eliminate all state regulations concerning what insurance companies must cover: SA 2859 Snowe/Landrieu/Lincoln – nationwide plans: deletes state opt out language, adds rating requirements to plan requirements If you live in a state with strong minimum benefit insurance regulations (California, [...]

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) just released a study of the version of the health care reform bill, H.R. 3200, reported out by the Ways and Means Committee.* The study had some positive news for the robust public option tied to Medicare rates. The public option would on average have premiums 11 [...]

According to separate lawsuits filed in Texas and Delaware last week a wealthy Republican donor funneled $75,000 from a Texas oil services company to Sen. Norm Coleman through the insurance company that employs Norm’s wife, Laurie.

In last night’s debate, Sarah Palin took pains to remind the audience that she is a mother who knows how hard it is to raise kids without health insurance. She said she remembered what it was like to sit around the kitchen table with Todd and worry about how they were going to pay out of pocket for health insurance.

Yet, Palin’s inaction on child health insurance as governor of Alaska suggests that she doesn’t remember the bad old days as vividly as she claims.