The Wash Post’s Ezra Klein interviewed the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and found massive differences when looking at health care costs in the US and other countries.
Yes, it’s not even close.

Gee, I wonder why we’re going bankrupt…
And those are just 3 graphs! Want to see the other 19? Click here to download the whole report [...]

Ahh, I “love” the political critters in the House. Why?
Just watch…

Here’s the thing, the reason these folks can get away with nonsense like this is because congressional districts have been so gerrymandered as to be almost completely red or blue. And given that Rep. Foxx is from North Carolina’s 5th district (very safely Republican) [...]

Slowly, but surely, we’ll be getting health care reform in a matter of months. That is, if Democrats don’t overplay their hand.
From NY Times:
The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus of Montana, described “a sense of inevitability, the sense that, yes, we’re going to pass health reform.” In interviews, senior advisers to the president said [...]

Well, at least the opt out version.
Here’s Joe…
“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”
And guess what? They [...]

So it looks as if the Senate’s bill will be released tomorrow and WSJ shares the broad strokes…
Employers with more than 50 workers wouldn’t be required to provide health insurance, but they would face fines of up to $750 per employee if even part of their work force received a government subsidy to buy health [...]

Danielle Ivory pens a shocking piece about yet another case of an insurance company acting completely immoral.
From Huff Post:
Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month’s worth of anti-AIDS medicine.
Only later did [...]

They helped conduct it, but the backlash at the incoherence of the findings has forced them to place the blame back on the folks who commissioned it, AHIP.
From Politico:
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the authors of AHIP’s report, put out a statement last night that basically said, “Hey, we weren’t paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, [...]

I’ve been following the stories today about that “study” (pdf) by the insurance industry and while I understand why it’s getting so much play, I have a hard time believing why anybody would believe what they have to say about their own products becoming more expensive.
Let’s run down some reasons…

First, if the insurance companies want [...]

SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK: THE INDEPENDENTS’ STORY
By: Jackie Salit
When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.
Independents swung decisively to Barack Obama in the 2008 [...]

Not only that it’s fully paid for.
That’s the latest report from the CBO and it’s encouraging to say the very least.
Here’s more from The Hill:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a cost estimate of the healthcare reform bill under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee, concluding it would increase federal spending by $829 billion over [...]

Regardless of what you think about the current health care legislation being debated on Capitol Hill, being able to read it before it goes to the floor for a vote is the right thing to do and I’m glad to see a Senator from Missouri calling for it.
But will the Dems listen?
From Politico:
As the health [...]

Stepping out of the shadows and into the spotlight today is Dem Senator Tom Carper from Delaware. He’s offering a third way on health care that could garner enough bipartisan support to pass.
Essentially, it gives states the option to choose between private co-ops or a public option. Pretty easy.
Here’s more…
Carper wants to allow states to [...]

This is a very smart little slide deck and I’d love to hear what you think.
Personally, I think it gives a fairly unbiased view of what’s going on and what this reform debate means to all of us.

In other news, a government run public option is dead……..again.

I’m starting to notice some poll numbers that suggest an interesting trend. Basically, Americans aren’t necessarily happy with Obama’s health care plans, but they trust Republicans a LOT less.
Take a recent CBS/NY Times poll as an example:

52% of Americans trust Obama to make the right decisions for health, while only 27% feel Republicans are more [...]

I write one, Jason writes one, I write another, and Jason writes another.
And so I write this…

Perhaps he’s seeing the bipartisan/populist writing on the wall?

So, will the Baucus bill begin to get some traction in conservative circles?
More as it develop…

“We finally have a bipartisan health-care bill, the Baucus bill–both sides hate it equally.”
- Huckabee talking to Values Voters conference (via @thenote)
I think he meant it as a slight, but when neither side is getting what they want…that’s a pretty good sign to me that you’ve found something that both sides should be agreeing on.
We [...]

This is partially in response to Jason’s post over at Poligazette that the Baucus bill doesn’t represent bipartisan compromise and the lion’s share of blame shouldn’t fall on Republicans to accept it. In fact, he states that the tenor of this debate (which he claims liberals are equally responsible for) is the real reason why [...]

Here are the facts. Racism has been rising steadily over the last few months. In recent polls, President Obama’s job approval number has dropped from 70% to 50%. This means the percentage of racists in this country has risen from 30% to 50% – a 67% increase in only eight months! Even more alarming, close to one out of two Americans are now racist. We have reached a tipping point. If this trend continues, the racists will soon be in a majority. Now, more than ever, we need the pundits and sages of the mainstream media to speak out.

The bill that Baucus passed today didn’t have a public option in it. Let me repeat that…Baucus’ bill had NO PUBLIC OPTION in it.
Yes, there are decentralized not-for-profit co-ops, but that’s definitely not a public option as had been proposed.
Here’s more about what’s in the bill, from Politico:
The bill requires individuals to buy insurance, or [...]