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Health Care Tag

Harry Reid just completed his press conference in which he committed to pushing a "public option" through the Senate. What form of public option? The Opt-Out form. What is the Opt-Out form? Let's see what the legislative language says.Does Reid have the votes to stop...

The Democratic push on health care restructuring focuses on costs and control. But there are some questions the Democrats are avoiding: Instead of solely considering costs, shouldn't we ask if Americans are willing to die sooner from cancer, to give up access to specialists, to...

Alan Grayson, Democratic Congressman from Florida, is building his claim to fame on the accusation that 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. Grayson even has started a website to count the dead. Grayson bases this number on a study released by...

With each passing day, I am becoming more and more convinced that the Obama administration's sustained and crude attacks on Fox News are a big diversion.Sure, the attacks on Fox News are unprecedented in the post-Nixon era. Barack Milhous Obama may not be change we...

The process by which Democratic leaders are strong-arming various groups to coerce support for health care restructuring is a warning sign to all about the abuse of government power which will take place if the Democratic proposals pass.The Democrats shook down the pharmaceutical industry to...

When everyone was talking about the Baucus Bill (the Senate Finance Committee proposal), there was no actual Baucus Bill (something I quietly pointed out). Now there is a real Baucus Bill, and it is a whopping 1502 pages. (h/t The Note)The actual Bill was released...

On Saturday morning, Barack Obama gave a rip-roarin' speech lashing out at the insurance industry.Obama finally found his mark, a villain he could love to hate. After months of corporate lobbyist wheeler-dealering, in which Obama's minions squeezed advertising dollars out of Big Pharma and others,...

Barack Obama is on another "it's all Bush's fault" tear again. This time, using the tired campaign theme of cleaning up Bush's mess:Another way of putting it is when, you know, I'm busy and Nancy busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess –-...

Politico has an article today on a secret arrangement struck last April among corporate lobbyists, the Obama administration, and Senator Max Baucus, exchanging favorable treatment for corporate interests for advertising dollars in support of Democratic health care reform:At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists,...

There is one supreme Democratic idiocy in the health care debate which has not received enough attention. The entire focus of the Democratic proposals -- whether HR3200, the Senate HELP Committee bill, the Baucus Concepts, or the Obama non-plan -- is to increase the cost...

Karl Marx famously wrote that "history always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, and the second as farce."Barack Obama has reversed these historical forces. With Obama, farce repeats itself as history.As a neophyte politician, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate when he...

Ezra Klein, in his post Don't Read The Bill!, defends Max Baucus' plan to have the Senate Finance Committee vote on the Chairman's mark, which is a summary of provisions which eventually could be reduced to legislative language. Klein writes that people should not read...

The CBO is doing its best to score the Baucus Health Care Concepts (it's not a Bill), but it really is an exercise in hypothesis and speculation, and not only because there is no actual legislation.The main problem is that the Baucus Concepts make assumptions...

You can find an e-mail submission form for Maine Senator Olympia Snowe by clicking here.Snowe is the key vote on the Senate Finance Committee because she is the only Republican on the Committee who might vote in favor of the non-Bill markup language. If Snowe...

The internet is alive with the sound of people analyzing the CBO's "scoring" of the Max Baucus aka Senate Finance Committee Health Care Bill. Before everyone gets too deeply into their thoughts, please keep in mind the following (get ready, all CAPS, bold, indented signifies...

As pointed out here first, the Democratic health care restructuring plans put the IRS in the forefront of health care mandate enforcement (the Democratic HELP Committee version even gives the IRS the ability to set mandate tax rates -- why is no one talking about...

A slow awakening of our reality is sinking in on many fronts. One of those realities is that we have moved ever more drastically from a nation led by doers to a nation led by non-doers.Some formulate this as The Doers vs. The 'Thinkers' but...

Scrolling through the excellent TaxProf Blog reminded me of a fundamental dynamic in American politics. A large percentage of voters pay no federal income taxes: 47% Will Pay $0 Income Tax in 2009.But that doesn't tell the full story. For whom do these non-tax paying...