Senate Healthcare Deliberations and Votes: Live Blog

The healthcare just give us anything and we’ll declare victory health insurance industry gift bag reform discussions have reached a Senate showdown point.  The 60 votes needed on a procedural vote to move debate forward will be sought this evening, supposedly at 8pm; but another 60 will then be needed for cloture.  What will Harry [...]

It’s your body… what do you think?

Most of you probably know that I’m a 19 year survivor of a extremely rare form of cervical cancer. The Pap smear came back perfectly normal for me when I had 4th stage, invasive Cancer. As a result of all that I have a doctor daughter doing her residency as an ob/gyn and [...]

Congressional Dems get their marching orders on healthcare from the WH: “Just give us anything and we’ll declare victory.”

This morning on my way to work I was listening to the Bill Press radio show.  I know, I know, he’s a kool-aid slurper supreme.  But this morning, his guest John Conyers (D-MI) dropped several bombs on the show and exposed some significant disenchantment with the president.  Let’s just say there were “oh snap!” moments [...]

Gross Evidence of Rent-Seeking

It’s not often that you get enough evidence of rent-seeking you can actually find it entered into a public record. Leave it to Stupakistan to show the incredible power of insurance and other nondepository financial institutions to leave their fingerprints without shame on the public policy debate over the healthcare payments system. It [...]

Coakley for President

It’s about damn time this started being said. (h/t Suburban Guerrilla):
Coakley, in her boldest gamble of the campaign, said that fighting for women’s access to abortions was more important than passing the overall bill, despite its aim of providing coverage for 36 million people, establishing a public insurance option, and prohibiting insurers from discriminating [...]

You have no rights

The Stupak amendment, the greatest rollback of rights for women in decades is now in that thing the House has been calling a “Health Care” bill. (Links from Reclusive Leftist, The Confluence, WiredLeft.)
But women are just, as always, the expendable canaries in the coal mine. Their rights are toast, which means so are [...]

Gratuitious ratings scheme or just good information?

Over at Townhall.com they’ve sparked a debate over whether Dr. Nancy, from MSNBC, was looking for a ratings boost or reporting on important information.  It stems from an on-air depiction of a breast-self exam demonstrated on a local news station, WJLA in Washington DC.  Dr. Nancy led her segment off with a clip of the [...]

Congressman Dennis Kucinich asks: “Is this the best we can do?”

Yesterday Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) issued the following statement in anticipation of today’s release of the House bill on health care insurance reform:

“If this is the best we can do, then it is time to ask ourselves whether the two-party system is truly capable of representing the American people or whether the system has been so [...]

Clueless Joe Lieberman

Politico says Lieberman will block any health care reform bill containing a public option.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.
Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health [...]

Obama told us so

There’s some amazement floating around (e.g. Digby, TPM) about this:
President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by [...]