Public option voted down, twice, by cowardly Dems
The Senate Finance Committee voted twice this afternoon against the creation of a government-run health insurance plan, or “public option.” Members of the panel first voted 15 to 8 against Senator John...
View Article30 Democratic Senators demand a public option
A few days ago, I mentioned that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown was rumored to be assembling a coalition to demand that Majority Leader Harry Reid include a “robust, Medicare-like public option” in the...
View ArticleHill Aides: More Senators Would Back Public Plan If Obama Pushed Harder
A clip from today’s Huffington Post: There is a growing sense on Capitol Hill that the White House’s refusal to weigh in more forcefully in the health care debate could come at the cost of a public...
View ArticleWhy cover the elderly and not the newborn?
Nicholas Kristof raises a really interesting question in today’s New York Times. Here’s a clip. …Yet although America’s elderly are now cared for, our children are not. A Johns Hopkins study found that...
View ArticleThe status of Obamacare
I don’t have time to write a coherent piece this evening on the current status of the healthcare legislation winding its way through the Senate, but I did want to pass along a few links that I think...
View ArticleA retired surgeon speaks out on healthcare reform
Retired surgeon John Gary Maxwell, a professor emeritus at both the University of North Carolina and the University of Utah medical schools, recently penned an editorial on healthcare reform entitled...
View ArticleRobert Reich on the death of the public option
As usual, I agree with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Here’s a clip from his most recent article: The public option is dead, killed by a handful of senators from small states who are mostly...
View ArticleCould the Public Option be back on the table?
I haven’t done any poking around to verify it yet, but, according to this note that I just received from MoveOn, it looks like the public option might be trying to dig its way out of the grave… Here’s...
View ArticleToday’s “bipartisan” healthcare summit
I don’t have a lot of time to read up on today’s televised 6-hour healthcare summit in DC, but I did want to start a thread, in case anyone out there watched it and wanted to comment… The accompanying...
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The economic tape worm that is the U.S. healthcare industry
I just happened across and interesting graph in the New York Times, showing what, according to a non-partisan research organization called the Commonwealth Fund, we as a nation would have saved had we...
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Armed with just one of Trump’s tweets, Bernie Sanders attempts to fight off...
I’m usually pretty wary of gimmicks, but I think the fact that Bernie Sanders took to the floor of the U.S. Senate this afternoon, during a debate on the repeal of Obamacare, accompanied by one of...
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While we were making golden shower jokes, the Senate voted to kill the...
As we were all fully engaged in discussing presidential water sports yesterday, and whether or not it would even be possible for a germaphobe-in-chief to property enjoy a golden shower, the real work...
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Marking the first day of the Trump administration with Debbie Dingell and...
This weekend’s episode of the Saturday Six Pack, our first under the Trump administration, will be told in two parts. First, we will be talking with people on the ground in D.C., and elsewhere, about...
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The question is, can we kill the Senate health care bill before the Senate...
I’m not one to underestimate the political cunning Mitch McConnell, but it certainly looks like the Senate version of Trumpcare may be destined to go down in flames. [Which isn’t to say, of course,...
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The Republicans attempt to jam through Amy Coney Barrett as the nation burns...
It’s hard, when presented with a story about Trump campaign surrogate Rudy Giuliani being caught on tape fondling himself in the presence of a young woman in a hotel room, to focus on anything else....
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