Health Care For America Now

NEWS

Obama: Now or never for health reform - Associated Press

President Obama warned Thursday that if Congress doesn't deliver health care legislation by the end of the year, the opportunity will be lost, a plea to political supporters to pressure lawmakers to act.

Groups urge NBC to pull health care ad - Politico

Progressive health care reform groups demanded on Thursday that Washington’s NBC television affiliate refuse to air a 30-minute infomercial funded by a conservative group opposed to creating a public insurance plan.

Kennedy's Health-Care Measure To Require Employers to Chip In - Washington Post

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) is circulating the outlines of sweeping health-care legislation that would require every American to have insurance and would mandate that employers contribute to workers' coverage.

Nelson Now Open To Public Health Care, Baucus Will Fight For It - Huffington Post

The push to include a public health care option as part of a system-wide overhaul benefited from two major boosts Wednesday. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the chairman of the Finance Committee and lead health care negotiator, is "fighting tooth and nail to include that in any final deal," his chief of staff John Selib said at a town hall meeting in Montana, according to the Billings Gazette.

The Doctor Will See You—In Three Months - Business Week (old but good)

In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems. Take Susan M., a 54-year-old human resources executive in New York City. She faithfully makes an appointment for a mammogram every April, knowing the wait will be at least six weeks. She went in for her routine screening at the end of May, then had another because the first wasn't clear. That second X-ray showed an abnormality, and the doctor wanted to perform a needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure. His first available date: mid-August. "I completely freaked out," Susan says. "I couldn't imagine spending the summer with this hanging over my head." After many calls to five different facilities, she found a clinic that agreed to read her existing mammograms on June 25 and promised to schedule a follow-up MRI and biopsy if needed within 10 days. A full month had passed since the first suspicious X-rays. Ultimately, she was told the abnormality was nothing to worry about, but she should have another mammogram in six months. Taking no chances, she made an appointment on the spot. "The system is clearly broken," she laments.

OPINION

Health-plan opposition - Winston-Salem Journal

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has unfairly jumped the gun on President Barack Obama by preparing a public-relations campaign to oppose his still unannounced health care-reform package.

The Great $2 Billion Cost Cut "Promise" Meets Another Obstacle - The Health Care Blog

It turns out that the hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical organizations who announced with great fanfare a couple of weeks ago their plan to cut/maybe think about cutting* $2 trillion/maybe nothing* from their costs may have been even more devious/disingenuous/stupid* than was apparent at the time. [*choose one]

Healthcare Reform: Ben Nelson Doesn’t Know If He Didn’t Support a Public Plan - Firedoglake

Ben Nelson sure didn't like the idea of a "public plan" when he spoke to CQ: "He called the inclusion of a public plan in legislation a “deal-breaker” for him."

CBO Decides Against Crazy Ruling That Would Kill Health Reform - Ezra Klein

This is going to be one of those posts where I try to convince you that a dull, technical decision by the Congressional Budget Office is really a very big deal. Here goes: The CBO has decided against counting premiums paid under an individual mandate as a tax. In other words, if the government says you have to purchase health insurance, and you give Aetna $50 to purchase some health insurance, the CBO has decided that you're not, in fact, paying a $50 tax to the government. That $50 will not be included in the price tag of the health reform bill.

Will Unions Kill Health Care Reform? - Ezra Klein

I have bad dreams. Nightmares, really. They used to be pretty rare. Every fortnight, maybe. But ever since the public employee union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees took a knife to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), they've been coming more frequently.

Party of No… Ideas - Congress Matters

Whoops. Rob Portman, a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, has now admitted in an interview that the GOP doesn’t have a position on health care. Worse, he says he came to that conclusion after multiple discussions with GOP Congressional leaders about the issue.