Posts Tagged ‘Healthcare’
NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option
Posted in Healthcare Reform, tagged Health, health care, Health Care Reform, Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care, Obama Public Option, Pelosi Public Option, Politics News, Public Option, Robert Gibbs on March 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Miles Mogulescu | Huff Post | March 16, 2010
For months I’ve been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. (See here, here and here). I’ve been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.
Hopefully, that’s changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn’s confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:
“That’s a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he’s talking about the hospital industry’s specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry’s got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you’re interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product.”
Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal to him.
My Darling… Would you Join My HMO?
Posted in Healthcare, tagged failure, Healthcare, marriage, private insurance on December 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »
We’ve all heard of “shotgun weddings,” but here in the USofA, our first-rate, employment-based private insurance system has led to a whole new form of marriage-the “stethoscope” wedding.
The writer of this CNN article lays out why she found herself becoming a “Mrs.” I will say that this is indeed an act of love, and I will personally vouch that it isn’t an unusual catalyst; my own worries about a red-headed girl’s health was a factor in my own mind for moving up our wedding date (and I’ve never told her that, and I expect you to STFU as well 🙂 ) In my own case, I’d definitely have done it anyway, but I have to wonder…. how many people are doing this PRIMARILY because our system sucks so bad? How many of them will wind up divorced later?
And isn’t it a damned obscenity that gay people cannot do this for a loved one in most states?
I’d never been one of those girls who’d dreamt about her perfect wedding. The white wedding dress, the exorbitant costs, the fuss over a big, shiny rock — none of it ever appealed to me.
I wanted to find a lifelong partner, and a family sounded nice, too, but honestly? I never cared much about that piece of paper.
Senate Passes Health Care Overhaul Bill
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, tagged Healthcare on December 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., spoke at the White House after Senate voted on the health care bill on Thursday. - Luke Sharrett/The New York Times
ROBERT PEAR | NYT | December 24, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Thursday to reinvent the nation’s health care system, passing a bill to guarantee access to health insurance for tens of millions of Americans and to rein in health costs as proposed by President Obama.
The 60-to-39 party-line vote, on the 25th straight day of debate on the legislation, brings Democrats a step closer to a goal they have pursued for decades. It clears the way for negotiations with the House, which passed a broadly similar bill last month by a vote of 220 to 215.
If the two chambers can strike a deal, as seems likely, the resulting product would vastly expand the role and responsibilities of the federal government. It would, as lawmakers said repeatedly in the debate, touch the lives of nearly all Americans.
The bill would require most Americans to have health insurance, would add 15 million people to the Medicaid rolls and would subsidize private coverage for low- and middle-income people, at a cost to the government of $871 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Is Lieberman Afraid To Debate Maddow On Health Care Reform? (VIDEO)
Posted in health care, Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, Joe Lieberman, Rachel Maddow, Video, tagged health care, Health Care Reform, Healthcare, Joe Lieberman, lieberman, Maddow, Rachel Maddow, Video on October 29, 2009| 1 Comment »
Joe Lieberman is afraid to debate Rachel Maddow on health reform.
Think Progress- By Faiz Shakir at 10:40 am
For the past couple of nights on her MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow has skewered Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for his stated willingness to filibuster health reform. Decrying his “demonstrably and obviously untrue arguments” about the public option, Maddow told her audience last night that Lieberman could end up being “the reason we won’t get health reform if we don’t get health reform.” For his part, Lieberman appears afraid of defending his views to Maddow’s face. Last night, Maddow reported:
I also want to tell our viewers that we invited Senator Lieberman to come onto this show tonight. His office did not even bother to respond to our requests.
Senator Lieberman, you should know you have an open invitation — as you long have had — to come on this show. I promise you will get a fair shake. Actually, at this point, I promise to not only buy you a shake, I will buy you a cookie if you come on this show.
Watch it:
Baucus And Conrad: Matchstick Men Of Health Care Reform
Posted in health care, Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, tagged Blue Dog Democrats, Centrist Democrats, Conservadems, health care, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Healthcare, Joe Lieberman, Kent Conrad, Larry David, Max Baucus, Moderate Democrats, Obama Health Care, Public Option on September 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »
There’s one positive political aspect to this epic fight for health care reform. We now know for sure which congressional Democrats have to be vigorously challenged and defeated the next time they come up for re-election.
The health care reform debate has forced the toxic slag to gurgle to the surface and consequently revealed a few Democratic senators who, at every turn in this process, have proved to be far more interested in protecting their own asses by way of protecting the asses of their bosses in the health care mafia.
Suffice to say, Joe Lieberman has to be sending lots of “thank you” gift baskets and ponies and backrubs to the offices of Max Baucus and Kent Conrad. In fact, Baucus and Conrad — the matchstick men of health care reform — have been so insufferable, I almost forgot about Lieberman. Almost.
In fact, apart from the Republicans from whom we expected outlandish lies and cartoonish behavior, Baucus and Conrad have been much more obstructionist and damaging to real health care reform, chiefly because they possess a disproportionate level of power in relation to the nine people in the upper Midwest they represent, and because their ideas would be laughable if they weren’t so ineffectual and dangerous.
To wit: Baucus Plan is just as craptastical as we all suspected it might be.
Olbermann’s “Special Comment” On Wednesday Will Be On Health Care
Posted in health care, Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, Keith Olbermann, tagged Countdown, health care, Healthcare, Keith Olbermann, Keith Olbermann Special Comment, Keith Olbermann Special Comment Health Care Reform on October 6, 2009| 1 Comment »
Keith Olbermann To Deliver Hour-Long “Special Comment” On Health Care
First Posted: 10- 6-09 12:21 PM | Updated: 10- 6-09 12:29 PM
Keith Olbermann will deliver an hour-long “Special Comment” on health care Wednesday night, MSNBC announced Tuesday.
Wednesday’s “Countdown” will be devoted entirely to “Health Care Reform: The Fight Against Death.” According to a network release, it will focus on “the need for and meaning of health care reform in the United States” and Olbermann will “propose group action by patients, and how patients can reclaim the debate over health care reform.”
Olbermann has, thus far, delivered two “Special Comments” related to health care reform: one, on August 3, slamming members of congress for being in the pocket of the health care lobby; and another on August 10, calling Sarah Palin’s “death panel” claims “dangerously irresponsible.”
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