There are two very simple, straight forward things you can do with Medicare if you want to make a big reduction in the deficit: you can either destroy Medicare, or vastly expand it. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has stepped forward for the Republican Party to endorse the “destroy Medicare” solution as the best way to [...]

After the health care law passed, we were promised a massive, $125 million PR campaign staffed with top quality talent that would really sell the new law to the American people. In a fascinating article, Politico found that this promised campaign essentially crashed and burned: Wal-Mart Watch founder Andrew Grossman unveiled the Health Information Campaign [...]

There are many legitimate diverging opinions about the quality of the new health care reform law, what shouldn’t be in dispute is the well-documented fact that it was a corporate sellout, or at least contained several large very specific sellouts to large corporate interests. Yet David Leonhardt, who must have been hiding under a rock [...]

Again, some of my darkest predictions about the new health care law are coming true. With businesses again clamoring for corporate tax reduction, the go-to in Pay-Go-obsessed Washington are the affordability subsidies for people who will be using the new health care exchanges. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that he supported the House Republicans’ [...]

According to the Boston Globe, the CEO of the nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is going to get a retirement package worth $8.6 million after only six years on the job. From the Boston Globe: Cleve L. Killingsworth, who abruptly resigned last March as chief executive of the nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield [...]

I, along with much of FDL, am often painted by both the media and the Obama administration as on the outer-left-wing of political thought—a group of progressive extremists well outside the mainstream. The reality is both far more boring and sad. Recent polling has caused me to go issue by issue to examine public support [...]

In addition to two different single-payer designs presented to the Vermont legislature by Dr. William Hsiao, his group of policy experts also included Option 2 – The Public Option. The “public option” proposal is very unimpressive and uncreative. It seems like it didn’t get very serious attention from a commission clearly more focused single payer. [...]

Yesterday, Dr. William Hsiao presented a draft proposal by health care policy analysts to the Vermont legislature about the creation of a single payer health care system in the state. According to the report, adopting single payer would result in roughly 25 percent savings on health care between 2015 and 2024. The report contained two [...]

Today, Dr. William Hsiao presented to the Vermont legislature a draft proposal for three different health care systems for the state. They include: Option 1 – government-run single payer Option 2 -  public option Option 3 – public/private single-payer (You can find the full report, presentations, and the statement from Hsiao here at the Vermont [...]

Connecticut is poised to be on the leading progressive edge of what is possible under the new federal health care law by providing a rather robust state-based public option. If the state adopts the proposed SustiNet health plan (PDF) it would integrate the many different group insurance plans the state currently provides into a unified [...]