Jack Kingston, R-Ga, on the Democratic health care bill: “This bill is a wrecking ball to the entire economy,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia. “ We need targeted specific reforms to help people who have fallen through the health care cracks.” Ezra Klein, on the Republican bill unveiled just the other day: The …
Wired for wankery
Josh Marshall has said that the reason for the bizarre disconnect between national media and reality is simply that “Washington is wired for control”, that years of Republican political dominance has made it so that most of the important non-elected players see the world through Republican eyes. It’s certainly true that Official Washington’s perspective is …
They Got Nothing… Except the Media
Why is this not a bigger story: Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance in …
Dumping Will Kill Us All
The last time I wrote about the health care bill my post took for granted that any Public Option measure would include provisions to block private insurers from dumping sick and old clients. The reason is simple. If insurers can drop expensive clients for essentially any reason then the existence of a public option will …
Give ’em enough thread
I’ll give you a question to discuss: does Obama’s waffling on the exact nature of the public option (which I agree is puzzling) make him look like Jimmy Carter, Richard, Nixon, Adolf Hitler, or all of the above? Update. Mao, Stalin, Neville Chamberlain, Don Draper, and Felix the Cat are also acceptable choices here.
Health care salon money well spent
Kaplan goes double barrel anti-public option. I wonder if Ezra will have the balls to call them on it. Update. To summarize here’s shorter Hiatt/Samuelson: the public option may not fully address increases in health care costs, so we shouldn’t have one.
Mein Kaus
Atrios writes of the neocons: When the American empire crumbles, future historians will point to the fact that anyone took any of these people seriously as the main reason… The thing I always wonder is: how did the neocons amass so much influence? Everything they attempt fails and, when you consider how unpersuasive their arguments …