Insurers, Too, Must Be Held Accountable Our friend Stephen in NYC, who has contributed good ideas to this blog before, shares his experience in enrolling with an insurer. Stephen makes the very important point that the news media (including us bloggers) would serve...
health care reform
“Kill the Bill” vs. “Stop the War”: A Tale of Two Protests
[cross-posted at Daily Kos] Has anyone besides us found it kind of odd that there’s been so much “fire and brimstone” about the health care reform bill compared to Bush’s Iraq War? The first thing we’ll say about the violence and threats following Congress’s passage...
Senator Vitter “Friends” Levees Not War,
Files to Repeal Health Care Reform Law
Just when we were trying to get our attention back on flood-protection infrastructure and coastal restoration . . . We try to get along nice with everyone, but still we were surprised to receive a “Dear Friend” e-mail from Louisiana’s Republican senator David Vitter...
John Boehner: “Hell No You Can’t!”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0oWzRnnLTg
Health Reform: Feeling Better Already
“. . . what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” —Senator Edward M. Kennedy to President Obama “We will go through the gate. If the gate is...
Back on the Blog
Did you miss us? We apologize for a longer-than-usual absence, but there was a family medical emergency involving coronary intensive care that showed us all too dramatically (as though we didn’t already appreciate it) the life-or-death urgency of access to good health...
Health Care Summit Shows Sharp Contrast in Political Philosophies
We’ll soon have more to say about Thursday’s health care reform summit, but first wanted to share some good observations written by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post (a sharp, gifted young blogger-reporter who knows policy like a wonk but explains it in plain...
Health Reform Chronicles: Reconciliation Is “Nuclear Option” When Democrats Do It
Scare Tactics Unlimited: From “Death Panels” to “Nuclear Option” On the eve of the health care reform summit convened today by President Obama, Republican senators, echoed by their chorus of Beck, Limbaugh, Drudge, et al., are smearing as a “nuclear option” the Senate...
Mr. President, Press Senate for Public Option Through Reconciliation
An open letter to President Obama on the eve of the bipartisan health care reform summit: February 24, 2010 Dear President Obama: I am writing to you as an Organizing for America volunteer to thank you for calling Thursday’s health reform summit, getting the ball...
“We don’t quit. I don’t quit.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PWQtCDaYY&feature=featured “To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.” —President Obama, Jan. 27, 2010 That was our...
OMG! Wake-Up Calls and Queasy Stomachs
Two posts that should be read in full—“A Wake-Up Call” by Robert Kuttner on what the Massachusetts special election for senator tells us about the Rahm Emanuel White House’s wrong priorities—and another by a reader at Talking Points Memo who was calling voters in...
“Winter of Our Discontent”
In the already-dark of the shortest day of the year, the first day of winter, rather than denying the obvious it feels appropriate to acknowledge a certain lowness of spirits, a mood that the holidays will warm temporarily but not dispel altogether. “Winter of our...
Obama, Lieberman, Emanuel—
All Skewered as Not “Tough Enough to Govern”
Joe Conason in a hard-hitting Truthout op-ed rips Joe Lieberman for demanding, and President Obama and his chief of staff and “self-styled tough guy from Chicago” Rahm Emanuel for bowing to the gutting of the elements of real reform in the Senate health care...
Senate Dems, Stop: Go to Reconciliation (51 Votes)
“Not Health, Not Care, Not Reform” Ed. Note: The writer of this post volunteered for about a half-dozen Organizing for America phone banks to ask voters to call their senators to press for a public option. The Senate Democrats’ over-compromised health reform...
“We Need Strong Leadership” on Health Care Reform
Talking Points Memo reports that Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, released a statement Tuesday that calls “troubling” the White House and Senate Democrats’ compromises on the public option—by this point a mere shadow of the...
It’s Not About You—It’s All About Joe
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETAFMgGTMiQ&feature=player_embedded When long-serving Connecticut senator Joseph Isidore Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to telecommunications executive Ned Lamont in August 2006, rather than bow out as defeated candidates...
Homeless on Veterans’ Day
We reprint the following editorial from today’s New York Times as a reminder that a grateful nation owes its veterans more than ceremonies and nice words. Also, we salute the admirable commitment of General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to improving...
Read the Senators’ Mail—About Health Care Reform
We fax and mail a lot of letters to members of Congress—often demanding robust flood protection and coastal restoration for Louisiana, and in recent months pressing for health care reform with a strong public option. Sometimes they write back. Below are excerpts from...
Public-Supported Health Care Has Worked for You, Joe Lieberman
“. . . individual senators being able to hold up legislation, which in a sense is an extension of the filibuster . . . it’s just unfair.” —Joseph Lieberman, 1994 Following is a letter we’ve faxed and mailed to the WDC office of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. (We tried...
Thanks, Harry! Now Let’s Push Harder
Damn liberals are never satisfied . . . Encouraged but not satisfied by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement yesterday of the inclusion of an opt-out version of a public option in the Senate health reform bill that he will bring to a vote, we sent the...