Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), a longtime supporter of a single-payer health care system, has been doing much of the liberal grumbling today in the face of headlines indicating that the Obama administration would accept a health reform strategy absent a government-backed insurance option.
Weiner went on More…
A statement this afternoon from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leaves no mystery as to where the California Democrat stands on the public insurance option that’s been so contentious as the year’s health reform debate swirls on.
“A public option,” she says, “is the best option to lower costs, More…
Tough to say if this is good news or bad news for public plan fans. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) apparently “doesn’t have an opinion on the public option, because he believes the issue is ‘moot,’” according to TPMDC, citing Conrad’s office.
This revelation might be unremarkable, except that More…
As the Obama administration appears ever-more willing to accept a health reform plan absent a government-backed insurance option, it’s worth noting how well competition within the private insurance marketplace has kept plans affordable in recent years. And here’s a hint: it hasn’t.
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. More…
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 More…
House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled their long-awaited proposal to overhaul the nation’s health care system, including the creation of a government-backed insurance plan to compete with private companies — a sticking point among most congressional Republicans and a number of conservative-leaning Democrats.
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 More…
In the wake of recent damning testimony and reports outlining the tactics used by insurance companies to bolster bottom lines, The New York Times today takes a swipe at the industry, arguing that its propensity to drop sick patients rather than take on expensive claims — a practice More…
This one comes from New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who today offers this advice to the congressional Democrats currently drafting health reform legislation:
1) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
2) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
And his reasoning is simple. Insurance companies — More…
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