health reform

Even if he ultimately opposes health reform legislation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says he would probably vote to bring the bill to the floor, reports The New Haven Register:
U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., whose vote could be crucial to breaking an expected GOP filibuster on health care legislation, Thursday said he would consider voting [...]

Arguing that the town hall forums of August have “changed the direction” of the health care reform debate, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), said Thursday that he nonetheless expects a bill to pass before Christmas — though it “may be kind of miniature to what we’re talking about.”
Grassley, on the front lines of the year’s thorny [...]

Suggesting that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin “leave the room” in the debate over end-of-life counseling, conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer today takes on the accusation that the Democrats’ strategy for health reform would create government-backed committees to euthanize seniors, as Palin has charged.
[T]here are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and [...]

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), suffering from incurable brain cancer, has privately asked Massachusetts officials to alter state law to allow a temporary appointment to fill his seat in the event it becomes vacant, the Boston Globe reports this morning. Current state law requires that vacated congressional seats be filled by special election.
Although Kennedy, who is [...]

It’s no news that the Obama administration has pushed hard for the creation of a public-plan option to accompany whatever health care reform overhaul the Democrats come up with this year. But Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, has just softened that stand.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television airing Friday, [...]

When the talk of health care reform was generic — and therefore unthreatening — the insurance lobby joined a number of other powerful voices in the health care industry to announce its support. But with the Democrats pushing ever-harder to ensure the inclusion of a public plan option, the push-back is beginning to emerge. From [...]

Former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is about the furthest thing from a bleeding-heart apologist for criminal behavior. But in his column in today’s Washington Post, Gerson makes a good case in support of needle exchange programs to combat HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among illegal drug users.
Critics claim that needle-exchange programs create a [...]

Federally sponsored single-payer health care might be off the table as Congress debates its health reform strategy this summer, but if some House lawmakers get their way, there would be nothing to prevent states from offering that model.
The House Education & Labor Committee voted today in favor of an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich [...]

In the wake of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s party-line passage of sweeping health reform legislation this morning, all eyes are now on Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who’s still scrambling to craft a proposal that can win GOP votes.
To succeed, Baucus will have to stray decidedly from the HELP [...]

Here’s some persistence you don’t see everyday from a press corps charged with monitoring Congress: MSNBC’s David Shuster grilling Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) Monday on the relationship between the $223,000 Carper’s taken from insurance companies in the last four years and his opposition to the public plan option those same companies are trying desperately to [...]