Today, Kent Conrad (D-ND) basically declared the current Senate bill–with a plan to pass fixes using reconciliation–dead. Conrad said the only way forward is that the Senate bill must first pass completely unchanged in the House. There is simply not (nor will there be) the votes for that in the House. From TPM: “The only [...]

With the loss of their 60th vote in the Senate, Democrats are going to need to find a new way to pass health care reform. The most popular idea is for the House to pass the Senate bill as is with many important “fixes” passed just before or at effectively the exact same moment using [...]

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) today stated that he is open to the reconciliation sidecar strategy for passing health care reform. This plan would have the House pass the Senate bill as is, with a reconciliation measure to fix the Senate bill effectively being passed at the same time. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) made clear his [...]

Well, that did not take long. Earlier today, I wrote how closely the new “grand compromise” on the public option at least seemed to closely resemble the theoretical alternative I wrote about several months ago based on several smart ideas. At the time, I predicted that these ideas would be no more tolerable to the [...]

The risk adjustment mechanisms are probably the single most important component to any managed competition health care system. The Dutch Ministry of Health realized that it is the Achilles heel of a regulated private health insurance system. Risk adjusters force insurers to compete on quality instead of by simply trying to avoid signing up/dropping sicker [...]

There is some good news and bad news today on how Harry Reid plans to pay for health care reform. It looks like instead of increasing the Medicare tax for people making over $250,000 (as was reported earlier), Reid is thinking about applying the Medicare tax to those individual’s capital gains. This seems like a [...]

Carper has a super new very awful public option “alternative”, which is a basically a trigger for a co-op. Jane clearly lays out the progressive block strategy and why reform must have a public option to pass. If you care about the progressive block strategy, you need to read this. The left will not be fooled [...]

Throughout this health care reform legislative process, I have been very critical of the part Sen. Kent Conrad has played in health care reform. I’ve been especially critical of his co-ops idea and his opposition to the public option. But since the House agreed to decouple the public option from Medicare rates, Conrad has expressed [...]

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) is at it again. Not happy with all his previous terrible “alternatives” to the public option that he helped create, Carper is now crafting a top-secret new “Plan B,” according to the CongressDaily. Just how bad is Carper’s Plan B?Well, from what is being reported, it could be his worst idea [...]

The Washington Times has a story about Mark Warner addressing one of the biggest unspoken problems in the health care reform debate. “I wish the president would have started the debate by explaining to the American people that our current health care system is not financially sustainable, for even another decade,” Mr. Warner said. “Driving [...]