The wingers are now making up studies in their desperate, last-ditch effort to kill health reform bill. On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said: "The New England Journal of Medicine has published a report and did a survey, and they said the impact of reform on primary care physicians, 46 percent, they say, feel reform will force them out … Read More
Stay Classy, Anti-Health Care Reform People
Supporters and opponents of health care reform assembled outside Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy's (D-Ohio) office yesterday, and it was quite contentious. Present was a man holding a sign, explaining that he has Parkinson's and needs health care reform to pass. When he sat on the pavement near the reform opponents, a conservative activist proceeded to lecture the man: "You're looking … Read More
Where We Are With Health Care Reform
Well, the bottom line is this: after moments of debate and Tea Party protests and misinformation and subcommittee reports, etc., Congress is getting set to vote on health care reform. That's where we're at. Oh, I supposed I could talk about the minutae of parliamentary procedures, like everybody else, but your eyes will glaze over. Basically, Democrats in the House … Read More
Two Pictures Of A Thousand Words
Nate Silver at 538 did something kind of clever: Gallup did something pretty cool in connection with their latest health care survey, which was to provide the verbatim responses (.xls) of the rationales given by people who would tell their Congressman to vote for or against the current health care bills, respectively. I ran the responses through Wordle, a word-cloud … Read More
Tom Toles Is Right
Just wait a couple years and this will happen: By the way, I'm well-aware that health care reform is — finally, after months of debating — on the doorstep. And whether it passes the House or not — well, Democrats think they have the votes, but nobody knows for sure. Obama is working the phones getting the Democrats in line; … Read More
Rush Says He’ll Leave U.S. If Health Care Passes
From Think Progress: CALLER: If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself? And the second part of that is, what would happen to the doctors, do they have to participate in the federal program, or could they opt out of it? […] LIMBAUGH: My guess in even in Canada and even in the UK, … Read More
Palin Slips Up And Gives Kudos To Canadian Health Care
Oops. Sarah gave a little talky-talk and something slipped out: The vocal opponent of health care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse. "We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," she said. "And I think now, … Read More
Bad Analogy Of The Month
The Managing Editor of World Nut Net Daily, David Kupelian, has some thoughts about health care reform: The spectacle of a far leftist president literally forcing socialized medicine down the throat of an unwilling center-right America is….. I love how idiots use the word "literally" when they literally mean "figuratively". But let's back up and start again…. The spectacle of a far … Read More
Congress Rules!
I hate all the gibberish about parliamentary proceedings, but I think it comes down to this: If the minority party can use the filibuster to do an end-run around the majority-wins rules of Congress, then the majority party is well within its rights to do an end-run around the filibuster by using "reconcilliation". That's it. That's all I have to say. … Read More
Health Care Summit Wrapup
The news much of the and blogosphere seems interested in scoring the summit, as if it were a "debate" (I've seen actual news outlets refer to it as a debate, which it wasn't). I have no interest in that. It wasn't about scoring political points. To the extent that someone did, that's nice, but who cares? [UPDATE: To its credit, … Read More
The Heath Care Summit: The First Point Of Contention
Part of the problem with getting health care reform done, is that both sides are arguing from a different set of facts, rather than opposing policy. This, of course, shouldn't be: facts are facts. Watch this disagreement between President Obama and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on the issue of whether health care premiums would go up under the Senate Dems' … Read More
The White House Health Care Summit
I'm not sure what the point of it is. Ostensibly, the point is for the two parties to get together on national television for six hours and hammer out some concrete proposals for reforming health care in this country. Early reports indicate that the Republicans are coming to the table with "No. No. No. No. No. Let's scrap everything and start … Read More
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) Gets In Trouble For Telling The Truth
This rocked the House yesterday, and this video is No. 4 on Youtube: For those who don't have video, here's Firedoglake's description of the event: Anthony Weiner just made a fiery speech in the middle of the House debate on repealing the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption. Angered by a motion to recommit, he lashed out, saying “the Republican Party is … Read More
Democratic Attempts To Reform Health Care Are Pretty Much Like Republican’s Plans From The Past
This chart, shameless lifted from Kaisir Health News, shows rather dramatically how conservativism of the Republicans have taken hold over the past 15 years. Seventeen years ago, Republican Senator John Chaffee (R-RI), a moderate (now deceased), proposed a health care bill. In many ways, it is very similar to the Senate Bill passed last December (which in itself is very similar … Read More
White House Shame Of Non-Existent GOP Health Care Plan Continues
More like this, please, posted on the White House website (emphasis is mine): The President believes strongly that Thursday’s bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform will be most productive if both sides come to the table with a unified plan to start discussion – and if the public has the opportunity to inspect those proposals up close before the meeting happens. … Read More