Health Care Bill Debate Resumes Tomorrow...Pelosi's Caving In

Health Care Debate Resumes With WH Meet


The health care debate resumes in earnest on Tuesday after more than a week of quiet following Senate passage of its landmark bill on Christmas Eve.

The four relevant House chairmen will meet with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team at 1 o'clock in the speaker's Capitol office to start setting the parameters for negotiations with the Senate.

Then, Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Nev.) will head to the White House for an early-evening meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss the final bill, according to Democratic officials. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and party Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) will participate in the meeting via conference call because neither has returned to Washington from the holiday break.

House negotiators have their work cut out for them because Reid – and his wavering moderates – will be reluctant to make any changes that would upset the fragile accords that paved the way for last month's historic, hard-fought, party-line vote to approve the Senate bill. This spells trouble for the public option, but there are plenty of other substantive differences between the two bills that could give House leaders a foothold to make other changes.

Democrats in the House are expected to push for increased subsidies for the lowest-income Americans who don't qualify for Medicaid. On the eve of the Senate vote, Democratic aides in the House also suggested they would push for a blend of new taxes to help pay for the subsidies and new programs created by the bill. That could include a tax on high-end insurance plans at a higher threshold organized labor could accept along with a tax on the wealthiest Americans.





But House aides acknowledge they don't have much room to maneuver. For starters, congressional negotiators need to keep the final 10-year price tag below $900 billion, forcing Democrats to pick priorities, since the House bill costs more than $1 trillion compared with a Senate measure that would cost an estimated $871 billion over the next decade.

House leaders also want the Senate to adopt a national insurance exchange, instead of the state-by-state exchanges established under the Senate bill, and add tougher mandates for employers and individuals. And, of course, Democrats get another chance to spar over the public option, coverage for abortion and whether illegal immigrants can purchase insurance through the exchanges.

Other issues are sure to pop up. For example, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wants to squeeze more money from drugmakers by reimbursing them at a lower rate for seniors who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid, and a pair of senators is pushing to include more money for the state-run Children's Health Insurance Program, while the House bill would fold it into the new exchange program.

Congressional Democrats are embarking on an abbreviated negotiation to save Reid the hassle of overcoming more procedural hurdles, but that means the resulting negotiations will be held behind closed-doors as the various stakeholders push for final changes. Liberal Democrats in the House have taken exception with the revised process, but most aides argue a drawn-out conference negotiation would give Senate Republicans too many opportunities to derail the process.

The White House is expected to take a very active role in melding the two bills after keeping quiet publicly during negotiations in the House and Senate. Obama's top aides took a much more hands-on role crafting the Senate bill, so it includes administration priorities that the House bill lacks, like the tax on high-end health care plans and language giving an outside panel the authority to increase efficiency and advocate cost-containment under Medicare.

They also want to make sure congressional negotiators wrap up work as quickly as possible so the administration and its congressional allies can turn their attention to the economy and job creation. That means bartering with lawmakers on other issues. According to TalkingPointsMemo, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus might relent in their push to let undocumented immigrants buy insurance on the exchange if the president pushes a comprehensive overhaul of the country's immigration laws – one that grants immigrants who seek a path to citizenship the right to purchase this insurance.

During the Tuesday session, the speaker is expected to set loose parameters for the abbreviated conference negotiations with the four chairmen with jurisdiction over the final legislation, Waxman, Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaugher (D-N.Y.) and Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.).

Democrats are also scheduled to hold a caucus meeting on Thursday at noon in the Capitol. But since few lawmakers are expected to be in town to attend, party leaders are setting up a conference call that will give every member a chance to participate in the dialogue and hear how the process will work. Aides suggested Pelosi might even walk her members through some of her early priorities for the final bill. The speaker also wants to hear from her members frequently as the process moves along.


Sources: Politico, MSNBC, The Ed Show, Youtube

Maxine Waters Slams Senate Health Care Bill! Bad For Consumers!

Congresswoman Maxine Waters joins Ed Schultz on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" to discuss her concerns regarding the Senate Health Care "reform" bill and how House-Senate Conference talks might play out.

Congresswoman Waters states to Ed that via the Senate version, many states like (North Carolina) will continue running Health Care Monopolies (Blue Cross/ Blue Shield) and charging Consumers high premiums.

She then goes on to explain how (because Speaker Pelosi is caving in i.e., NO Public Option!) many Key U.S. House members (including her) are being kept out of the Conference talks which will more than likely prove to be detrimental when discussing issues like Insurance Exchanges, Taxes, etc.,

Such a foolish move by Democrat Leaders won't be good for the 2010 and 2012 elections.








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Sources: MSNBC, The Ed Show, Huffington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Health Care Lobbyists Now Wooing House Dems...Public Option Is Dead!

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Health Lobby Takes Fight To The States


Like about a dozen other states, Florida is debating a proposed amendment to its state constitution that would try to block, at least symbolically, much of the proposed federal health care overhaul on the grounds that it tramples individual liberty.

But what unites the proposal’s legislative backers is more than ideology. Its 42 co-sponsors, all Republicans, were almost all recipients of outsized campaign contributions from major health care interests, a total of about $765,000 in 2008, according to a new study by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan group based in Helena, Mont.

It is just one example of how insurance companies, hospitals and other health care interests have been positioning themselves in statehouses around the country to influence the outcome of the proposed health care overhaul. Around the 2008 election, the groups that provide health care contributed about $102 million to state political campaigns across the country, surpassing the $89 million the same donors spent at the federal level, according to the institute.

Any federal legislation is likely to supersede state constitutional amendments. But backers of the state measures say they want to send a message to Congress and also lay groundwork for fights about elements of the health care package that are expected to be left up to the states.

Some proposals floated around Capitol Hill, for example, would allow individual states to “opt in” or “opt out” of regional health insurance markets or government-sponsored insurers.

“We would be essentially telegraphing our intentions,” said State Senator Carey Baker, a Florida Republican and lead sponsor of the state’s proposal. “If there was an opt-in, we are essentially stating now that we are not going to opt in.”

Advocates of a sweeping overhaul by the federal government, on the other hand, say the magnitude of the health care industry’s contributions shows the dangers of leaving such a question up to individual states, where campaign finance and ethics rules vary from strict to negligible.

“The states are the next battle,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now, “and the insurers and health care industry are primed up and ready to go. The industry has enormous power at the state level, and very few states have state-level consumer groups that are able to lobby effectively against them.”

Last year, for example, the drug industry poured more than $20 million into political contributions in states around the country. In California alone, the industry spent an additional $80 million on advertising to beat back a California ballot measure intended to push down drug prices.

Now, speaking on condition of anonymity because the pharmaceutical trade group is officially backing the federal overhaul, industry lobbyists say they are eyeing Congressional proposals that would expand a state’s Medicaid obligations, and are preparing to fight efforts to make some of it up by paying less for drugs. (A spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures said many states were contemplating just that.)

The idea of amending state constitutions to block the core of the federal health care legislation, including the requirement that individuals and businesses buy insurance, began at the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona, the state where the first such measure will appear on the ballot next year.

“The measures are an opportunity for people to make their views known in a tangible way, to generate some rumble at the grass roots,” said Clint Bolick, a lawyer at the Goldwater Institute who helped devise the idea.

From there, though, the concept was picked up by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-friendly conservative group that coordinates activity among statehouses. Five of the 24 members of its “free enterprise board” are executives of drug companies and its health care “task force” is overseen in part by a four-member panel composed of government-relations officials for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of insurers, the medical company Johnson & Johnson and the drug makers Bayer and Hoffmann-La Roche.

The group adopted Arizona’s proposed amendment as a model, and it was introduced in 14 state legislatures around the country. Lawmakers in several others are reportedly considering it as well.

“We are trying to prepare, and trying to send a message that there is no reason for those decisions to get made at the federal level,” said Representative Linda L. Upmeyer, a Republican who is leading the council’s efforts in Iowa.

The states where the amendment has been introduced are also places where the health care industry has spent heavily on political contributions in recent years, according to figures from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Over the last six years, health care interests have spent $394 million on contributions in states around the country; about $73 million of that went to those 14 states. Of that, health insurance companies spent $18.2 million, according to the institute.

In Florida, where health interests have given a total of about $32 million over the last six years, the state medical association has become an especially important backer of the proposed amendment. In contrast to the national American Medical Association, the state chapter has come out firmly against the current Congressional proposals, and a spokeswoman said the Florida group had embraced the proposed state amendment “to protect Florida from being forced into a federal government mandate that would hurt patients.”

Dr. Madelyn E. Butler, president elect of the Florida Medical Association, said, “We are trying to ameliorate the effects of national health care reform on the State of Florida.”

James Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said he too supported the proposal, which could be on the ballot in 2010 or more likely in 2012. Whatever its legal weight, Mr. Greer said, its mere presence on the ballot would give it political force.

“It will energize Republicans and independents who want to vote against Democrats and the policies of the Democratic Congress,” Mr. Greer said.


Sources: NY Times, CBS News, Face The Nation

House Dems "Dithering" On Public Option...Pssst! Its Dead!

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Public Option May Be Dropped From Final Health Care Bill



House Democrats are signaling that a final health care bill will drop the government-run public health insurance option favored by liberals but rejected by conservatives from both parties.

A House-Senate conference committee will begin negotiations next month on merging health care bills passed by the Democratic majorities in each chamber.

However, voting in both chambers was extremely close, raising concerns that a compromise might fail to win the necessary final approval.

One of the main differences between the two measures is the public option. The House bill contains the public option as a competitor to private insurers in a national heath insurance exchange open to people now unable to get coverage, but the Senate version lacks a public option.

President Obama, who has made health care reform his top domestic priority this year, has expressed general support for a public option but stops short of insisting on the provision.

Liberal Democrats in the House have said they want to keep the public option, but one of their leaders -- Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the chamber's third-ranking Democrat -- said Sunday that he could vote for a bill without the government insurance plan.

"We want a public option to do basically three things: create more choice for insurers, create more competition for insurance companies and to contain costs," Clyburn said on the CBS program "Face the Nation." "So if we can come up with a process by which these three things can be done, then I'm all for it. Whether or not we label it a public option or not is of no consequence."

The Senate health care bill required the support of all 60 members of the Democratic caucus to overcome a Republican filibuster. Such precarious support allowed individual moderates in the Democratic caucus to wield major influence on the bill, with at least two -- Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Ben Nelson of Nebraska -- saying they would oppose the measure if it contained the public option.

On Sunday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, acknowledged the reality of the Senate politics. Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about the public option, Van Hollen said, "It's not dead, but we also recognize that the Senate was able to just muster the 60 votes."

The House could drop the public option if "there are other mechanisms in whatever bill comes out that will keep down premiums," Van Hollen said.

Supporters of a public option say it would provide nonprofit competition to private insurers that would bring down costs, but opponents contend that it is the first step toward a government takeover of the health care system.

In place of a public option, the Senate bill includes a provision allowing private insurers to offer nonprofit coverage overseen by a government agency.

Both the House and Senate bills would permit the creation of nonprofit private insurance cooperatives to increase competition.



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Sources: AP, CNN, CBS, Face The Nation, MSNBC, Politico, Google Maps

Michael Steele's Reaction To Senate Health Care Bill Final Vote

(Published Dec. 23, 2009) Same Trojan Horse Just Under a Different Name


Tomorrow, early Christmas Eve morning, Harry Reid plans a final vote in the Senate to pass his government-run health care bill. One of the only reasons why Reid has been able to get this far was by dropping the “public option,” thus calming the fears of moderate Democrats who couldn’t defend to their constituents this measure as a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system. (I.E. nationalizing America’s health care).

Below are passages from a piece that appeared in National Review Online this morning, written by my close friend Kay Coles James, a former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), discussing Reid’s new plan. Unfortunately, as Mrs. James writes, “given the statutory requirements, this arrangement seems to be a ‘public option’ in ‘private’ option disguise…”

Instead of a “public option” Reid’s new bill sets the OPM as the new proprietor for his government-run health care plan—the same Trojan Horse to a single-payer system, just under a different name.

Section 1334 of Reid’s bill calls on OPM to administer a new set of “multi-state” health plans for the general public. These plans, one of which must be non-profit, would “compete” against the other private health plans in the states. But given the statutory requirements, this arrangement seems to be a “public option” in “private” option disguise. Why? Because OPM would not merely serve as the umpire overseeing competition among private health plans. It would also become a health-plan sponsor, fielding its own team of players to compete against the existing private plans in every state. That’s a very different role for OPM and the inherent conflicts are obvious…

That’s worrisome indeed. It gives political appointees at OPM the means to manipulate rules for the benefit of the government’s “own team.” As a result, OPM could crowd out the private insurance providers, forcing millions of Americans to lose or be transitioned out of their existing health coverage...

Taxpayers worried about the dangers of the proposed “Public Option” should be no less alarmed by the Senate’s proposed new role for OPM.


Sources: GOP.com, National Review Online, Think Progress, Youtube, Zimbio

Obama Claims He Never Promised Public Option, Not True!...Here's Proof!

Obama Tries To Distance Himself From The Public Option


Now that the Senate has firmly rejected the public option, President Obama is trying his darnedest to distance himself from the controversial, and failed, proposal. But that may be harder than he thought.

In an American Urban Radio interview yesterday, he said, "this is not the most important aspect of this bill." And today he told The Washington Post, "I didn't campaign on the public option."

But that's not true. In a campaign position paper on health care, Obama mentions the public plan eight times. The Obama-Biden campaign wrote:


Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be provided for people and families who need it. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and meet the same standards for quality and efficiency. Insurers would be required to justify an above-average premium increase to the Exchange. (h/t: Think Progress)

Candidate Obama also signed on to the principles set down by the Progressive group Health Care for America Now, the biggest proponent of a government-run plan. Those principles included support for a Public Option:

Everyone gets a choice of health insurance plans, including the right to keep your current insurance, choose another private plan or to join a public health insurance plan.

And while it's true that reform will include many of the reforms he ran on, it's not accurate for the president to claim he didn't run on passing a Public Option.








Obama Repeatedly Touted Public Option Before Refusing To Push For It In The Final Hours


In recent days, there has been an uproar in the progressive community over the Senate’s decision to drop the public option from its health care bill in order to reach the crucial 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Given that many liberals backed a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system, the public option was seen as a political compromise.

“I didn’t campaign on the Public Option,” President Obama told the Washington Post. But he touted the public option on his campaign website and spoke frequently in support of it during the first year of his presidency, citing its essential value in holding the private insurance industry accountable and providing competition:

– In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]

– During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09]

– While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a Public Option.” [7/17/09]

– During a conference call with Progressive Bloggers, the President said he continues “to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” [7/20/09]

– Obama told NBC’s David Gregory that a public option “should be a part of this [health care bill],” while rebuking claims that the plan was “dead.” [9/20/09]

Despite all this overt advocacy for the public option, it appears that Obama was reticent to apply the political pressure necessary to get the plan in the final hours of congressional negotiation. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — who threatened to filibuster the creation of any new public plan or expansion of Medicare — told the Huffington Post that he “didn’t really have direct input from the White House” on the public option and was never specifically asked to support it.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), one of the most ardent backers of public insurance, blamed the demise of the public option on a “lack of support from the administration.” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) — perhaps the most visible defender of the public option in the entire health care debate — went even further, saying that Obama’s lack of support for congressional progressives amounted to him being “half-pregnant” with the health insurance and drug industries.

Update "All I'll say, I was surprised to hear this because I had assumed all along that the White House was pushing strongly for the public option," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said. "I just assumed that."

Update In response to a questionnaire from the Washington Post, then-candidate Obama said, “My plan builds on and improves our current insurance system, which most Americans continue to rely upon, and creates a new public health plan for those currently without coverage.”


Sources: Politico, Think Progress, Washington Post, Health Care For American Now, AP, Whitehouse.gov, Youtube

Senate Dems Consider Revisiting Public Option...2010 Elections

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Public Option Tensions Linger


Just hours after a critical Monday morning vote in the Senate, Democrats were already talking about future changes to the health reform effort in hopes of calming a revolt among liberal activists.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, predicted the government health insurance option long favored by liberals would be part of that second look.

“It will be revisited,” Harkin said. “This is just the beginning. … What we’re building is a starter home, not a mansion. And guess what? We have room for expansions and additions later on.”

But if progressives were relying on President Barack Obama to make a hard push for the public option during the House-Senate negotiations on a final bill — a hope that liberals held out for months — the president downplayed the importance of it Monday in some of his toughest language yet about why he didn’t consider the idea critical to reform.

“As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect of this bill — the House bill or the Senate bill,” Obama said of the public option, adding that it “is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights.”

Only “a few million people” would have benefited from the public option, he said, in an interview with American Urban Radio, acknowledging the idea’s limited reach in a way Democrats had declined to do throughout the year.

Even in the afterglow of Monday’s successful test vote, which moved health care reform closer to enactment than at any point in the past two decades, Democrats are unlikely to paper over the divisions caused by the public option anytime soon.

Within minutes of the 60-40 vote, two of the final holdouts, Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, were threatening to withhold their support if the bill drifts closer to the House bill, which includes a public option and different ways to pay for reform.

“Conferences with the House often split the difference. This is a very fragile balance that brought 60 together,” Lieberman said. “So I think it’s critically important, if we’re going to adopt health care reform legislation, that the bill that comes back from conference is essentially what passed the Senate. I know that’s asking a lot of our colleagues in the House, but that’s the practicality of where we are.”

The Senate voted Monday at 1 a.m. to begin moving the health care bill to final passage, effectively assuring its approval later this week. But Republicans yesterday signaled that they are planning to stick with their plan to force Democrats to take the final health reform vote on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m.

Republicans on Monday also continued their attacks on the reform bill, criticizing the last-minute deals cut by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to secure 60 votes and saying that Democrats are trying to force a bad idea on the country with a series of rushed votes and a lack of debate.

"It was quite arrogant: "We know best. You all sit down and shut up’ — meaning the American people. ‘And Republicans, we don’t need to deal with you. You just sit down and shut up, and we’ll take care of this for you.’ Very arrogant".

The President and the Leadership said, "Make history".

Well, that’s what you talk about when you don’t have the Polls on your side. And of course, a lot of things that have happened in history have not been good,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on Sean Hannity’s radio show Monday.

Next up would be a House-Senate conference to work on a final compromise. House members traditionally resent being dictated to by the upper chamber, but some House Democrats have acknowledged they may have little choice but to stick with the bulk of the Senate bill, if they hope to preserve health reform.

Reid (D-Nev.) said he has not yet focused on the compromises or concessions that could come in the conference committee.

“We have to pass this bill in the Senate first, and that is our direction, that is our guiding light,” Reid said. “And we’ll worry about next steps at a later time. We are going to finish this bill before Christmas.”

House leadership aides say they aren’t getting much sense from their bosses of what their priorities will be heading into negotiations with the Senate, but most suggest Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will hold out for some changes, however slight, to make sure their rank and file are comfortable.

And no one wants to hear Lieberman dictate policy to the House — even if he’s correct about the effect of changes on the delicate balance of votes in the Senate.

“I don’t think the House members care what Joe Lieberman has to say,” said one House Democratic leadership aide. “Joe Lieberman has absolutely no say in the Democratic Caucus. I don’t think anything he said makes a bit of difference. ... It shouldn’t be for the Senate to come in and say, ‘Take it or leave it.’”

Most Democrats in the House acknowledge that they don’t have much room to work with the Senate, so changes will most likely nibble around the edges of a final compromise. This might mean pushing the Senate to move up its implementation date for programs that it voted to go into effect later than their counterparts in the House bill. The Senate bill, for example, starts the insurance exchanges a year later than the House. And the House bill would close a gap in prescription-drug coverage next year, while Senate negotiators, who agreed just last week to close the gap, still haven’t settled on a start date for expanded drug coverage.

Aides in the House are split over whether abortion opponents in their caucus will accept softened restrictions along the lines of those in the Senate bill. A number of first- and second-term Democrats are listening closely to the Roman Catholic Church, which has already come out against the Senate bill. So anti-abortion Democrats in the House might have more leverage than their colleagues in the Senate to force tougher restrictions.

House leaders also might make another push to insert the public option — even though few expect it to succeed, given Reid’s inability to add it to the Senate bill.

“It makes sense for us to go one more round,” the same aide said. “It’s worth it to our base.”

But no one expects a single issue to scuttle the entire package once leaders have enough of their members on the record voting for this bill. Democrats have begun to see the finish line, aides said, which gives them an added incentive to keep from going off course.

Whatever negotiations the two chambers hold, most House aides don’t expect the talks to stretch on because the White House and the party’s congressional leaders want to wrap up work as quickly as possible so that they can pivot next year to the economy and job creation.

Senate Democrats sought to maintain the momentum from the early-morning test vote, announcing later Monday an endorsement from the American Medical Association. But at the same time, Reid was forced to defend a series of narrowly crafted provisions in the Senate reform bill that benefit individual states, saying “it doesn’t speak well” of senators who didn’t secure such deals.

“There are 100 senators here, and I don’t know that there’s a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that isn’t important to them,” Reid said. “If they don’t have something in it important to them then it doesn’t speak well of them.”

He likened the legislation to the Defense Department appropriations bill, which passed Saturday and is thick with earmarks and other provisions benefitting individual members and even private corporations.

“That’s what legislation’s all about,” Reid said of the compromises. “It’s the art of compromise. In this great country of ours, Nevada has many different problems than does New Hampshire. Michigan has many different problems than does Georgia.”

Reid made the remarks as he accepted the AMA endorsement. The legislation lacks the group’s No. 1 priority — a permanent fix to doctors’ Medicare reimbursement rates, which perennially threaten doctors with deep cuts. But the endorsement could help the group get action on a fix after reform is finished, which is what it is pushing for now.

The so-called doc fix is one of the first elements of health care reform that Democrats would address if they pass the comprehensive bill early next year.

Asked whether Democrats would reopen the public option debate next year, Harkin said: “You never know. I believe it is so vital and so important, it will be revisited.”



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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Google Maps

Health Care Stocks Are Hot Again, Lobbyists Win!

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Health Care Insurance Company Stocks "On Fire!" – They’re Winning, We’re Losing



If you need a guide to the health reform debate in Washington, take a look at health insurance company stocks.

When the debate is going the right way – towards quality, affordable health care for everyone, towards getting people out from under the insurance industry’s crushing monopoly – insurance company stocks take a dive. When the debate is moving against what America wants – towards more private industry, less insurance regulations, and the like – health care stocks soar.

Right now, they’re soaring. The Indianapolis Star goes into more detail:

Shares of the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant surged to a 52-week high Thursday as the prospects for a new government-run "public option" health plan faded amid intense Senate debate. WellPoint rivals Cigna and UnitedHealth Group also hit 52-week highs.

It’s a sign, more than one observer suggested, of victory for private health insurers, which strenuously fought the Public Option.

"Obviously, the market thinks WellPoint’s a winner," said Daniel Evans, chief executive of Clarian Health, an Indianapolis-based hospital system. "If the public option is no longer on the table, then WellPoint is a winner because it’s not threatened by a government competitor."

Wall Street is what has turned our nation’s health care companies into profiteers.

16 years ago, before most of the insurance companies were publicly traded, they spent 95% of premium dollars on health care. That level is comparable to Medicare, which spends 97% of premium dollars on care. But once these companies went public and started trading on Wall Street, the relentless drive for profit drove down that percentage to where it sits today, at 81%.

Wall Street pressures directly caused insurance companies to deny more care. Wall Street accelerated the process by which insurance companies deny as much care as they can, which forces more people into bankruptcy (when they have to pay out of pocket for care their insurance company won’t cover) and leaves millions uninsured (if you’re bankrupt, it’s hard to pay premiums). And being uninsured can be a death sentence.

The way Wall Street responds to the health care debate drives these companies. When insurance company stock prices catch fire as the public health insurance option is killed in the Senate, you can bet that these companies are watching and feel supported in their effort to kill any and all health reform that would hurt their bottom line.

Wall Street-run health care is the driving reason that if the insurance companies win, we lose.

Wall Street run health care is making huge profits right now. It’s also making Americans sicker and sicker. A health care reform bill that does not take away Wall Street’s power – one without a public option, one that doesn’t mandate insurers spend 90% of their premiums on care, one without strict regulations on denying care or charging more to certain customers – will tacitly support the way the health care business works now, with Wall Street in charge.

The Senate bill, in too many ways, is the Wall Street bill. The House bill stands up to Wall Street. That’s presents real problems for the American people, problems that must be fixed before this bill is sent to the President’s desk.



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Sources: Firedoglake, The Indianapolis Star, MSNBC, Morning Joe Show, AP, Google Maps

Feingold Angry Over Loss Of Public Option, Snowe Voting No

Feingold: Obama Responsible For Loss Of Public Option

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) formally announced on Sunday that he would support the Senate's final version of health care reform. But in doing so he cast blame for the loss of a public option for insurance coverage partially on the president's shoulders and urged House and Senate negotiators to re-insert the government-run plan back into the legislation during conference committee.

From the Wisconsin Democrat's press office came the following statement:

I've been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.


But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high. This bill significantly expands coverage and helps protect Wisconsinites from high costs and insurance company abuses, such as denying or restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The bill also improves a flawed Medicare formula that denies Wisconsin fair reimbursement rates, encourages the kind of low-cost, high-value care practiced in our state, increases access to home and community-based long-term care, and reduces federal budget deficits by $132 billion over the next decade.

One of the prominent progressives in Congress, Feingold's statement gives voice to the frustration that many Democrats have felt when watching the health care debate unfold. The Obama White House, quite consciously, refused to draw a line around the public plan even as Senate Democrats practically begged for them to do so.

The decision may have been strategically astute -- positioning the president appropriately for when the public option was to meet its natural sacrifice. But it also opens the president to criticism like Feingold's and it feeds the meme of Obama's timidity.




Olympia Snowe Will Vote Against Health Care Reform


Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), considered one of very few Republicans who might vote for the Senate health care bill, said Sunday that she would not.

"This process denies us the opportunity to thoroughly and carefully and deliberately evaluate what's at stake," she said on CBS.

She also told the New York Times it was a rushed vote on a "a take-it-or-leave-it package."

Democrats no longer need Snowe's vote -- but the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen points out that they courted her anyway only to have her object over the debate's speed.

I just can't figure out what on earth Snowe is talking about. She voted with Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee reform plan, but now appears to be looking for an excuse to oppose the effort. But to sound even remotely credible, Snowe will have to do better than this.

Snowe has been complaining about the speed of the legislative process since July, but therein lies the point: how could this possibl[y] get slower?



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Sources: Huffington Post, CBS News, The Hill, Washington Monthly, Google Maps

David Axelrod Dispatched To Diffuse Recent Obama Admin Backlash

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White House Thrusts David Axelrod Into Fire


President Barack Obama seemed to be getting it from all sides last week. Republicans blasted him for trying to cut a backroom deal on health care and for putting international concerns about climate change before American jobs. Meanwhile, environmentalists panned an international climate change deal he brokered, abortion rights supporters and opponents complained he was ignoring their concerns, and his own base accused him of selling out to special interests and moderate lawmakers on health care.

So on Sunday, the White House dispatched messaging guru David Axelrod to three of the five top Sunday shows to answer those criticisms, absorb fresh broadsides and tamp down some controversy of his own making.

Last week, Axelrod emerged as the administration’s go-to defender of Democratic efforts to win Senate passage of a health care overhaul bill before Christmas.

But, in the course of defending compromises the White House and Senate Democratic leaders struck to win the support of individual lawmakers, Axelrod inflamed progressive activists by blasting a re-emergent liberal champion in the health care fight: former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

On Thursday, Axelrod said Dean’s criticisms of the bill were “predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions” and that “to defeat a bill that will bend the curve on this inexorable rise in health care costs is insane.”

In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Axelrod said, “I didn’t say he was insane. I want to make that clear.” Though he conceded that his attack was “probably an unfortunate choice of words,” Axelrod again dismissed some of Dean’s criticisms, namely that stripping from the Senate bill both the so-called public option and a proposed Medicare expansion would stifle any real reform by leaving insurance companies in control.

“Gov. Dean’s main concern was that he called this a giveaway to the insurance companies, but his facts were wrong,” Axelrod told Stephanopoulos. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Axelrod told host David Gregory that “when you look at the bill in its totality, it doesn’t square up with his critique.”

On NBC, Dean also got his moment at the megaphone and said the left has been “very disappointed” by the Senate’s shelving of the public option. “We don’t think that there has been much fight in the White House for that,” he said, asserting that the Senate bill falls well short of the type of reform Obama promised during his campaign and could make an already difficult Democratic 2010 election cycle even harder.

The Medicare expansion, which would have added millions of people to the federal programs rolls within months of enactment, “would have made 2010 a lot easier for us,” said Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman.

But Axelrod dismissed such predictions. “I think we’re gonna have a good result next — next November,” Axelrod told Gregory.

Axelrod pushed back against criticism from both supporters and opponents of abortion rights over language inserted into the bill to appease Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) that would strengthen restrictions on federal funding of abortion.

“The fact is, it really doesn’t change the status quo,” Axelrod told Gregory. “And that’s what we’re after.”

Echoing criticism from both Republicans and open government advocates, CNN’s John King, host of “State of the Union,” pointed out that the agreement to win Nelson’s support — which also included a boost in Medicaid funding for Nebraska, as well as deals that brought on board wavering Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) — were reached “behind closed doors, pretty much traditional Washington politics.”

During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to make government more transparent and less beholden to special interests, and King asked Axelrod, “Is it what the president promised during the campaign?”

“John, I don’t think that there has been a more intensely covered debate than this health care debate,” Axelrod said. “So I challenge the notion that it hasn’t been a transparent process.”

King also asked Axelrod to respond to criticism that the deal Obama brokered late last week in Copenhagen to limit climate change — which the White House touted as a major breakthrough — contained no sanctions for noncompliance.

“Nobody says that this is the end of the road,” Axelrod said, suggesting that the talks may have collapsed without Obama’s intervention.


Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Meet The Press

Dean: Compromised Senate Health Care Bill Will Hurt Dems In 2010

Dean: Health Care Bill Could Hurt Dems In 2010


Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean on Sunday predicted the Democratic health care overhaul – as currently construed – could hurt the party’s chances in the 2010 midterm elections.

Dean, who clashed bitterly last week with the White House over compromises Democrats made in their effort to push through health care reform, said that the bill pending in the Senate “will be so complicated that the Republicans will make it a target, and we'll have a hard time explaining it.”

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Dean particularly bemoaned Senate Democratic leaders’ shelving last week of a proposed Medicare expansion that would have added millions of people to the federal programs rolls within months of enactment.

“That would have made 2010 a lot easier for us,” said Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman.



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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Meet The Press, Google Maps

Democrat Left Revolt Likely To Occur During 2010 Elections

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Under Pres. Obama, the Left feels left out



The outrage among some of America’s most vocal liberals at President Barack Obama’s failure to expand government-run health care caps a year of disappointments for Obama’s allies on the left and raises worrying questions for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

The revolt led by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean comes after a series of more contained disappointments among traditional Democratic constituencies that invested heavily in Obama — unions, gays, civil libertarians, Hispanics, and anti-war Democrats, among others — who have seen specific promises deferred and grand hopes of systematic change denied by an administration that has found itself severely limited by a combination of economic realities, congressional imperatives, and tactical choices.

The disillusion has produced a growing tide of organizing energy — and money — among liberals aimed at dragging the White House back to where many supporters believe Obama's heart really lies. Union presidents have discarded their talking points and are openly sparring with the White House, while gay rights activists threaten civil disobedience, the ACLU keeps litigating, and congressional Hispanic leaders work to force their issues into the debate.

But while those actions may actually create politically useful space to the president’s left, the other consequence of disillusion is what polls have found to be deepening apathy among Democratic voters.

“This has been a fairly transactional presidency, and the president did nothing to insulate himself from the compromises — which were inevitable — by making it clear at the outset what his values were on some of these important issues,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who has pushed for more liberal versions of health care reform. “While being transactional may help you get through the days in Washington and get things on the scoreboard, it creates a weird disconnect that most people in the country don’t know what you want and don’t feel they should rally to your side.”

The gap between promises of sweeping change and standard-issue Democratic Party policy platform was evident during Obama’s campaign.

Unlike most Democrats, Obama won the nomination without the support of liberal union leaders, bloggers, and members of Congress, most of whom rallied around him only after he had effectively become the Democratic nominee. Running as an outsider, he wasn’t forced to match his sweeping pledges of change to specific commitments to interest groups, and some current claims of betrayal may have more to do with the hope Obama inspired than with the commitments he made.

The abrupt pivot from the politics of hope to the politics of the possible began the day before Obama was elected, when word leaked that he had offered the post of White House chief of staff to Rahm Emanuel, a Washington veteran and dealmaker who represented little of what Obama had campaigned on. And the administration has come through on that promise, with ambitious goals — notably health care reforms — pursued more through back room deals with industry than mass mobilizations of ordinary citizens.

Perhaps the first to complain were gays and lesbians, who found an administration living in the shadow of Bill Clinton’s disastrous attempt early in his first term to end a ban on gays in the military. Obama had promised on the campaign trail to be a “fierce advocate” on behalf of gay rights and to fight to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. But as a series of states legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, he offered minor gestures, such as naming a gay ambassador to New Zealand.

“I don’t think anyone expected too much. He created those expectations,” said David Mixner, a gay activist who said the Obama letdown was worse than that of the early Clinton years, when Mixner, a major Clinton fundraiser, was arrested outside the White House in protest. Mixner said he’s even more disappointed by Obama.

“He really came to the American people and said, ‘I’m going to represent powerful change — and I think people believed him',” he said.

Hispanic leaders have also found themselves losing patience with the Obama White House. The president promised to make immigration reform a “top priority” during his first year in office, and he won overwhelming Hispanic support against a southwestern Republican, John McCain, once known for his appeal to Hispanic voters.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, fed up with the delay, finally introduced legislation this week over the conspicuous silence of a distracted White House.

“We have a president who received a mandate and addressed the [immigration] issue specifically as one he would aggressively pursue,” said Texas Rep. Charlie Gonzalez. “We told people this is what we’re going to do and we need to do it — and you need to do it not just in good faith, but you need to make a really sincere and all-out effort.”

He said he’s optimistic a bill will pass next year but remarked on the White House silence, so far, on the new legislation.

“There has to be some acknowledgement that a bill has been filed,” Gonzalez said.

Obama’s foreign policy has produced some of the sharpest breaks with the left, though anti-war activists — attracted to his initial opposition to the Iraq war — were always suspicious of his tough talk on Afghanistan and moderate views on Iraq. Civil libertarians have bridled at one of Obama’s most dramatic deferred promises, his aim to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in his first year in office; instead, the aides leading that charge were purged.

The discomfort among labor unions that has been brought most dramatically to the fore by the health care debate. Union leaders spent much of the year repeating to an increasingly skeptical press the evidently hollow promise that the White House would fight for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill aimed at making organizing easier.

The act never came close to congressional passage, and the White House barely lifted a finger to help it. Now labor is particularly incensed by a plan to tax expensive health care plans such as those held by many public workers. Even the union leader closest to the White House, SEIU President Andrew Stern, felt obliged Thursday to press Obama on his own commitments.

“President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign,” Stern wrote members. “His call of ‘Yes We Can’ was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself. We all stood shoulder to shoulder with the president during his hard-fought campaign. And, we will continue to stand with him, but he must fight for the reform we all know is possible.”

Labor insiders say their leaders were genuinely shocked by the shape of the final legislation.

“We thought it would be a little less robust,” one said. “But they went and pulled the rug right out.”

The administration and its allies argue that it has merely reckoned with reality.

“I think everybody who is part of the Obama coalition recognized that the first order of business had to be the economy and that we needed to focus on that and that we need to continue to focus on that until it turns around,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen told POLITICO Thursday. “In talking to labor, their No. 1 priority was getting the economy turned around.”

And it wasn’t just the economy. A united Republican opposition scuttled hopes of a new politics. Presidential efforts would not have won for interest groups’ prized priorities the required 60 votes in the Senate, according to administration officials. And the passage of health care reform, one official predicted, will send Obama’s approval rating up past 60% and restore his supporters’ enthusiasm.

“Some of the analysis we've seen about the base of our party might be more of a temporal argument about where things are now,” Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) told POLITICO. "Give him a little more time.”

But for now, the anger has consequences. With established liberal organizations biting their tongues and standing with the White House, others are filling the gap, raising money and getting attention by attacking Obama from his left. The old Dean campaign organization, Democracy for America, has returned to join the health care debate with an attack on the individual mandate.

The blog FireDogLake has developed a political action arm aiming darts at Emanuel. And the new Progressive Change Campaign Committee has carved out a role as the MoveOn.org of the left flank.

“We will be publicly shaming President Obama until he threatens Joe Lieberman's committee chairmanship and hits the campaign trail for the public option in states like Maine and Connecticut,” said one of the group’s founders, Adam Green. “If at the end of the day, President Obama is so weak that he can't get Joe Lieberman in line, progressives will be perfectly fine killing the current corporate-giveaway bill and starting over again in reconciliation.”

Labor Democrats argue that one of the reasons for the 1994 Republican landslide was union voters’ alienation over the White House’s trade politics. It could happen again next year.

“Midlevel union leaders sat on their their hands in the midterm election — when the turnout programs are more critical,” said Steve Rosenthal, a veteran union political consultant. “If [health care] goes through with a tax on benefits and no public option, and then there’s no action on the Employee Free Choice Act, it’ll be a disaster.”



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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Firedoglake, MoveOn.org, AFL-CIO, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Google Maps

"Progressive Standard Bearer" MoveOn.org Also Opposes Senate Bill

MoveOn opposes Senate bill


Progressive Standard Bearer MoveOn.org is opposing the Senate bill and asking its millions of members to sign a petition calling on liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Russ Feingold to block the bill's passage until it can be strengthened.

From the email:

Dear MoveOn.org member,

The latest Senate health care bill has no public option. No expansion of Medicare. And it does too little to guarantee that uninsured Americans will actually be able afford the coverage they'll be required to purchase.

Former insurance executive Wendell Potter put it best: the bill is "a big bailout to the health insurance industry.

But it's not too late to fix the bill. And as Joe Lieberman has shown, just one senator willing to stand in the way can force legislation to be changed dramatically.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a strong proponent of the public option, has already made clear that he's opposed to the legislation in its current form—and he could decide to block it until it's fixed.

But there's enormous pressure from all sides to pass a bill quickly, no matter how weak it is. Let's show Bernie and other progressives that we're counting on them to block this version of the bill—and we'll get their backs if they do.

Can you sign our petition opposing the current Senate health care bill? Clicking here will add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/block/o.pl?id=&t=3

The petition reads: "America needs real health care reform—not a massive giveaway to the insurance companies. Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressives should block this bill until it's fixed."

Despite this latest setback, we can still win the health care fight. The House has already passed a strong health care bill with a real public option. It would cover millions of uninsured Americans, offer real competition to the insurance companies, and reduce costs in the long run.

MoveOn members overwhelmingly support the House bill. But it's clear from member feedback and surveys that the majority of MoveOn members oppose the Senate bill as it now stands.

And recent polls showing growing opposition among grassroots progressives generally—the very folks Democrats in Washington count on to volunteer and donate to their campaigns.

One found that one-third of Democratic voters will be less likely to vote next year if Congress doesn't pass a public option.

So to get real reform, we need to immediately send a powerful message to Senate progressives like Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Russ Feingold that we're counting on them to block this bill until it's fixed.

Click here to add your name to the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/block/o.pl?id=&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

–Kat, Joan, Michael, Ilya, and the rest of the team


Sources: MoveOn.org, Politico, The Nation, Wikipedia