I basically knew everything the President said in his press conference today, but let’s parse a bit of it: 1) The tax cut deal is going down in flames specifically because of Democrats. You would think that a Democratic President wouldn’t have to call out his own party if he didn’t need the votes. 2) [...]

OK, here’s the draft document for the cat food commission co-chair’s mark. In addition, there’s a page with specific “illustrative cuts”, $100 billion in domestic spending and $100 billion in military spending. Between the two, you can get a sense of what Bowles and Simpson have planned. Keep in mind that this is more of [...]

Tom Daschle’s admission that the public option was tossed in a deal with the hospital industry may come as news to a lot of people, if it gets wide attention. It’s significant that Daschle tried to clarify his statement to Igor Volsky at The Wonk Room, even though his book contains the same information: In [...]

I mentioned this in The Roundup yesterday, but this move from the insurance industry is predictable, but nonetheless takes some gumption. Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start [...]

I’m going to be counter-intuitive and say that I don’t fear the cat food commission mucking around with Medicare at all, and that this story from Brian Beutler about the internal deliberations only confirms my suspicions. As you can see, the Democrats on the commission don’t want to deal with health care in any way [...]

At the NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) conference yesterday, regulators approved the medical loss ratio “blank” – the form that will get sent to health insurers to determine how much of their premium revenue gets spent on medical care. And in an unexpected early victory, the NAIC rejected many of the procedures that the [...]

Jon Walker had a post earlier today noting published reports that the Democrats would not pursue reconciliation instructions in their budget resolution, making it impossible to pass any legislation with a 50-vote threshold. This would represent a surrender of a key tool to make progress without relying on Republicans who are hell-bent on obstruction. Somewhere [...]

I’m about three years behind on my book-reading, and so I’m just getting around to finishing Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal. In the book, written in mid-2007, there is a long chapter on universal health care as a foundational issue for any return to power for Democrats. I thought it would be useful [...]

Blanche Lincoln is celebrating the Passover holiday with some chutzpah: Lincoln’s obstructionism on healthcare and a host of other fronts persuaded Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter–a rising star in the state–to challenge her in the Democratic primary on May 18. Halter helped organize a free healthcare clinic for a thousand Arkansans in November 2009 and [...]

All challengers to Senate incumbents right now should be making a big issue of the chamber leaving town before coming up with a solution to expiring benefits for the jobless, both on unemployment insurance and COBRA. Congress’ two-week break assures that these measures will expire, and the retroactive fix promised by Harry Reid is needlessly [...]

The never-ending odyssey of health care legislation isn’t over. Democrats, showing unusual spunk, forced Republicans to go deep into the night to vote on their amendments, all of which failed with the Democratic caucus holding together. This was basically the “make them filibuster” moment that, we are often told, would captivate the nation and force [...]