Healthcare
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What about Kerry’s Work on the Exchanges? (Updated)
Not sure. Ezra Klein criticizes Howard Dean's opposition to the current Senate bill by saying that there will be cost controls through the prudent purchaser limits in the exchanges: What's so strange about Dean's objection is that the exchanges in the Senate bill (pdf) do act as "prudent purchasers," that is to say, they set
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Healthcare Boondoggle (Updated)
Somebody explain to me why this bill as it stands is worth passing. I haven't read a thing yet that's convinced me. Sure there are a few improvements here and there, but are they worth the price? I recognize that the game isn't over, and substantive improvements can be added–and it starts with dumping the
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Healthcare Bill, Yes or No?
Obama can say that you're getting a lot, but also saying that it "covers everyone," as if there's a big new benefit is a big stretch. Nothing will have changed on that count except changing the law to force people to buy private insurance if they don't get it from their employer. I guess you
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Quote of the Day: Yglesias (Updated)
The Senate Republican caucus is organized, like the House caucuses of both parties, like a partisan political organization whose objective is to advance the shared policy objectives of the party. The Senate Democratic caucus, by contrast, is organized like a fun country club trying to recruit members. Join Team Democrat and Vote However You Want
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Fighting for Healthcare Update
For many years, it's been centrist and conservative-leaning senators who have been scoring legislative victories by digging in their heels, so this represented a quite dramatic turnabout. It is difficult to remember the last time that progressives won a legislative victory by laying down firm demands and sticking to them. In the House, the Congressional
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Fighting for Healthcare Update
I'm feeling pretty good about getting a decent bill. We've come a long way from where we were in August. The insurance industry and its shills on the hill have overreached and have no credibility, and a broad consensus has developed that the Public Option is the only way to keep down costs. There are
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Heathcare Reform Debate Today
Just listened to Grassley and his argument on C-Span against Rockefeller's public option amendment to the Finance Committee bill. It's hard to believe that this guy was ever taken seriously. He comes across as a senile ideologue. Perhaps in that his electoral charm lies. Any Iowans want to help me understand that better? Hatch, at
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Now We’re Getting Serious
I was wondering what was taking so long for this kind of approach to be tried: Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell What's been lacking is imagination and creative thinking in promoting most Progressive initiatives. Where's the Uncle Tom's Cabin for healthcare reform?
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Divided and Conquered
Frank Rich's column on Sunday, and Glenn Greenwald's post today about the wildly incoherent Glenn Beck are clarifying regarding the middle ground between left and right in this country. After quoting Rich's column pointing out that Beck's view that "Wall Street owns our government," and that "Our government and these gigantic corporations have merged" is
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Blue Dog Exposure (Updated)
Yesterday I wrote that if in fact the tide has shifted, as I think it has, toward more robust healthcare reform being possible, then Blue Dogs will have an increasingly harder time defending their opposition to a good bill that serves the public interest. Blue Dogs are not moderates, if by moderate we mean having