health insurance

Following up on Daphne’s piece about the hold-up on Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel, this Roll Call story by Jessica Brady got published on Saturday, so it hasn’t received much attention. It should. Regina Benjamin, the president’s nominee for surgeon general, is being kept out of her job because of [...]

As the debate over health care reform rages on, there’s been almost no attention to the fact that health and medical malpractice insurance companies since 1945 have been exempt from the federal antitrust laws aimed at keeping every other private market competitive. The McCarran-Ferguson Act has allowed insurance companies to dominate markets and reap enormous [...]

When it comes to health care, at least, following the polls can be tricky.
Take this latest one Sam Stein reports on for The Huffington Post, showing that 77 percent of Americans think it’s important to have a “choice” between government-run health insurance and private coverage.  That poll comes from Survey USA. Meanwhile, Rasmussen Reports  found [...]

Since its inception, the health insurance industry has fought doctors over payments, dropped patients when they’ve gotten sick and denied coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. The tactics make perfect sense: Insurance companies aren’t designed to make people well, they’re designed to reap profits for shareholders.
Which, as Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley points out today, [...]

It’s got to be this one from OurCountryDeservesBetter PAC. It cites “Obama’s own doctor” as an opponent of President Obama’s health care plan, even though Dr. David Scheiner wants a bigger and more expensive plan than the president. It cites Dick Morris and his wife Eileen McGann as health care “experts.” It’s nearly as good [...]

Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline, both Republicans from Minnesota, are now arguing against the so-called “public option” because it will be cheaper than private insurance. And we all know that if there’s one thing Americans don’t want, it’s to pay less for their health care.
The Minnesota Independent has the details.

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, is well known on Capitol Hill for his harsh criticisms of anything tax-hike related, including the possibility that Democrats would allow expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts on the nation’s wealthiest people. Yet here’s Gregg today telling MSNBC that a new [...]

The tobacco industry is fighting a lonely battle against health insurance for poor kids.
A coalition of tobacco industry groups ran a full-page ad in the influential Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, on Monday warning President-elect Barack Obama that a proposed tobacco tax hike to cover the expansion of the popular State Child Health Insurance Program [...]

While the McCain campaign’s attacks on Sen. Barack Obama’s connection to former Weatherman William Ayers will likely dominate today’s news cycle, the Wall Street Journal is out with a story this morning with far larger implications for millions of Americans.
According to the newspaper: