Who's That Guy?

That's my friend Marc on the right. The reasonable one. The one not screaming.



The photo's from the NYT's Magazine and an article about older voters and Obama. Marc's the HCAN lead organizer in Pennsylvania.

NYT: Majority Rules

I tried to snag a little quiet time on Friday - still reachable but generally offline compared to my usual incessant connectivity.

The calls didn't slow, and it wasn't much of a break, but it is why I haven't posted here since Thursday.

In case you missed it, you should check out this great editorial from the NYT that explains why reconciliation may be the only way to go now. Referring to the bipartisan gang of six Senators that represent less than 3% of the country:

Even if the group reaches an agreement, which is by no means certain, its compromise is unlikely to win support from a Republican Party that seems bent on delay. Leading Senate Republicans have seen little in the emerging compromise that they are willing to support.

Two of the Republicans working on the compromise — Charles Grassley of Iowa and Michael Enzi of Wyoming — have said they would not vote for a bill that could not win broad support, which Mr. Enzi defined as 75 to 80 senators, implying that roughly half of the Senate’s Republicans must sign on. That is unlikely — no matter how good or bipartisan or middle-of-the-road any bill may be.

I don't think leading Republicans could be more transparent about their intentions to do and say anything to stop reform. When Congress gets back next week, it's time to put the charade of bipartisanship to bed once and for all. Let's have less focus on the improbable act of getting political opponents to agree and more focus on the possible - getting everyone access to quality, affordable health care. That's what passing a good bill should be about.

Survey Says: X

How do Steele and his cohorts sleep at night? Any self-respecting Republican should be ashamed of the RNC's latest.










Click through to The Washington Independent to see the whole survey and cover letter.

Facebook Fail

I'm sure he's a lovely guy, but I'm also pretty sure I don't know him, and Facebook shouldn't be suggesting I add him as a friend:

Restating the Obvious

As far as I'm concerned, Senator Max Baucus, wavering Democrats, and the White House all need to have a good long chat with Wendell Potter. Kristof today:

Opponents suggest that a “government takeover” of health care will be a milestone on the road to “socialized medicine,” and when he hears those terms, Wendell Potter cringes. He’s embarrassed that opponents are using a playbook that he helped devise.

“Over the years I helped craft this messaging and deliver it,” he noted.

Mr. Potter was an executive in the health insurance industry for nearly 20 years before his conscience got the better of him.

(...)

The insurers are open to one kind of reform — universal coverage through mandates and subsidies, so as to give them more customers and more profits. But they don’t want the reforms that will most help patients, such as a public insurance option, enforced competition and tighter regulation.

(...)

What’s un-American isn’t a greater government role in health care but an existing system in which Americans without insurance get health care, if at all, in livestock pens.

Read the whole thing here.

When Good Bills Go Bad

Bob Cesca:

If they're going to name the final healthcare reform bill after Senator Kennedy, we ought to be demanding with voices as powerful and booming as the late senator's...

The bill must not suck.

But if it does, they should perhaps name it after Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley. The Blame Baucus and Grassley for This Sucky Act bill.

He goes on to explain what a lousy bill looks like:

Without a public plan, mandates would transform what would otherwise be a landmark reform bill into a massive and perpetual handout to the healthcare industry. You and I would have no choice but to pay a monthly tribute to the worthless bastards at UnitedHealth, CIGNA, Aetna and Blue Cross every month until we died, went broke or reached the age of 65.

Read the whole thing here.

On Kennedy

Chez says it well so for thoughts close to my own, I'll steer you his direction for the time being.

This is HCAN's official statement:

Health Care for America Now joins the nation in mourning the passing of Senator Kennedy, for whom our mission - winning a guarantee of good health care for all - was his life¹s work. We dedicate ourselves in the next few weeks to realizing the vision, passion, and hopes of this great American, firmly in the knowledge that enacting health care reform will rightly be seen as Ted Kennedy's legacy.

Say Anything II

Today's hatemail suggests we pay more attention to points farthest north and south:



Related: Say Anything

Chart The Course

CAF's got the latest health care reform-related chart, and it rocks:

In The News

Politico:

Faced with a souring public mood on health care reform, Democrats and their supporters are launching a national grassroots push Wednesday to show lawmakers that the majority of Americans still support overhauling the system.

Reform supporters are planning to hold more than 500 events between Wednesday and when lawmakers return to Washington Sept. 8, ranging from neighborhood organized phone banks to professionally staffed rallies with hundreds of people.

(...)

“We want members of Congress to get back to work and pass reform that means something. We need affordable care. We need real insurance regulation. And we need a strong public health insurance option,” said HCAN spokeswoman Jacki Schechner. “It’s doable and we expect it to get done now.”

AP:

Supporters of President Barack Obama's health care agenda are ramping up their efforts with rallies and bus tours starting this week, aiming to counter increasing public skepticism leading up to Congress' post-Labor Day return to Washington.

"We want to send members of Congress back to D.C. with the real message, which is that the majority of the public want comprehensive health care reform and we want it now," said Jacki Schechner, spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, an umbrella organization of groups pushing for a comprehensive health care overhaul.

"We want to make sure members of Congress understand the last couple of weeks is not where the majority of the public is," said Schechner, referring to rowdy town hall meetings dominated by critics of the Democrats' plans.

(...)

Say Anything

I get my fair share of nasty emails these days. It's not worth highlighting any of the venom, but sometimes there's a gem I can't resist sharing.

Today's hatemail actually came through over the weekend, and really, the subject line is all you need to know:

CNN.com Fail

Someone tipped me off to a recent quiz about health care reform linked off the CNN.com homepage. Question 2 was this:



The public option is voluntary, not mandatory. That's true. But CNN believes the government pays for the public option. That's false.

People would pay premiums the same way they would to private insurance. The option is covered 100% by premiums. There is $2 billion in start-up funding, but that’s all paid back in the first 10 years. It’s completely self-sustaining after that.

Enrollees in the public option are eligible for the same affordability credits that enrollees in all the private plans are eligible for. There are no special taxpayer subsidies for the public option. It’s a big misconception. It’s not like Medicare which is paid for with taxpayer dollars and people are automatically enrolled. No one is automatically enrolled in the public option, and it’s not funded by taxpayer dollars.

I sent a note to Elizabeth Cohen (because I heard she repeated this mistake on the air) and to an online producer I know. The latter got back to me and said he passed my note up the food chain. I haven't heard back from Elizabeth yet. I don't mind as long as she and the rest of the network start reporting the facts correctly.

The public option's taking enough heat as is. It'd be nice if the press didn't contribute to the misinformation train by not doing its homework.

You're Not Helping

Whether or not you believe single-payer is the way to go, you're going to have to agree this is not the best way to sell your plan (found by Nick/h/t CF for sending it my way):

The Truth Lives

Americans United for Change has a new ad out that really just tells it like it is:

What's Your Sign?

First there was the t-shirt. Now there's the lawn sign.

Donate $10 to HCAN, and we'll send you a sign to show your neighbors you're on board with reform. Donate $18, and we'll send out two signs - one to you and one to a volunteer in the field.

Poll Position

Front page of HuffPo:



It's the poll part that makes me particularly giddy. See, Survey USA took the same question NBC/WSJ pollsters dropped and asked it themselves. And not only did support for the choice of a public option go up a point from 76 to 77%, but the amount of people who think that choice is "extremely important" jumped from 41 to 58%.

Score!

So yesterday, we made noise about an NBC/WSJ poll the network was heavily publicizing. The numbers weren't great for the public health insurance option compared to polls past which led us to do some digging. Turned out the pollsters dropped the only question that asked about giving everyone the choice of a public health insurance option.

NBC responded saying "choice" was a biased word (b/c who doesn't like choice!?!) even though that is EXACTLY what the Obama/Democratic health care plan is - more choice.

Sam Stein did a great piece this morning about the Republican pollster behind the missing question:

The Republican half of the bipartisan team of pollsters behind a new, controversial poll on health care has longstanding ties to the health insurance industry that critics say biased the results.

This afternoon, he posts an even better follow-up:

NBC To Test Public Option As Choice And Alternative In Next Survey

(...)

NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd told the Huffington Post on Wednesday afternoon that pollsters Bill McInturff and Peter Hart will ask respondents two questions regarding the public plan for their September study.

The first: "Would you favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies?"

The second: "In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance?"

The inclusion of both questions should provide an interesting window into how slight changes in messaging can (or don't) drastically alter the health care debate.

(...)

Winning is fun. I could get used to it.

UPDATE: Not so fast. One additional point from a veteran pollster: The second question should read, ""In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan administered by big insurance companies for their health insurance?" That addition would make the question truly balanced and neutral.

Filler

I know I know. I'm slacking again. Forgive me. It's been six shades of insane busy here. Until I can find spare time to weigh in with an original thought and/or opinion, here's a little HCAN in the news to keep you occupied.

Washington Post:

Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now said the idea was destined to become a flash point for the Obama administration as it began the health-care debate.

"They couldn't have avoided it," said Kirsch, an early proponent of the public option idea. "It was impossible. It was always going to be something that progressives really cared for."

Kirsch said early criticism of the concept by conservatives and insurance industry groups helped solidify liberal support for it.

"The right went on the attack," he said. "As a result, the issue got tremendously elevated. Because the right attacked it aggressively, it became a centerpiece of the battle."

(...)

Groups pushing for a public plan urged the White House on Tuesday to stick to its guns.

"They made a decision in June to be more public in their support for the public option," Kirsch said. "I think that was the right decision. They should stick with that, because it keeps their base with them."

New York Times:

“The largest seven insurers cover more than 100 million people, a third of the market,” said Mr. Potter, who bases his figures on federal securities filings.

In a capitalist economy, the drive to consolidate should come as no surprise. “Insurance companies need to grow their earnings per share to satisfy Wall Street investors,” said Avram Goldstein, research director for Health Care for America Now, a coalition of groups favoring a health care overhaul that includes a government-run public insurance plan to compete with private insurers

The practical question is whether this consolidation is driving up the price of premiums. In a report issued at the end of May, Mr. Goldstein’s group concluded that it is.

“Premiums have risen four times faster than wages in the last nine years,” said Mr. Goldstein. “We feel that shrinking competition among insurers is a major cause of this kind of dramatic increase.”

Let's wrap with a fun one: NBC/WSJ dropped a "choice" question from their polling, and we called them out on it. The explanation? "Choice" is a biased word. From Media Matters:

On Hardball earlier this evening, NBC's Chuck Todd claimed that they changed the wording because the word "choice" "biased" the question.

Todd didn't explain what is "biased" about describing a plan that offers people a choice between a public plan and private insurance as offering a choice between a public plan and private insurance.

Aside from the absurdity of describing the original question as "biased," it is important to note that the first question frames the topic of a public plan in terms of its effect on consumers -- it indicates that they would have a choice between a public plan and private insurance. The new wording frames it in terms of the plan's effect on private insurance companies by emphasizing that they would face competition. The new wording is only passingly about consumers.

It should come as no surprise that a poll question that adopts the insurance companies' point of view yields results less favorable for a public plan than one that focuses on the impact on consumers.

Another New Ad

We're up today in DC, NC, and seven Congressional districts with "Shoes" which goes after Republicans who are fighting reform. This is the national spot:

Just Say No

The following is copied from a great short document we (HCAN) put together about co-ops and why they are not an acceptable substitute for a strong national public health insurance option.

Co-ops – “Destined to Fail”

A proposal being discussed in the Senate would allow for the creation of health care co-ops instead of establishing a new public health insurance plan option. Experience with co-ops suggests they would have no more ability than today’s non-profit health plans to enter most local markets or rein in costs.

A Gift to Insurance Companies

• A Wall Street health industry analyst sums it up: “As the co-ops are currently described, we think they would be a big positive for the managed care groups [publicly traded insurance companies], but it seems to us that they would be destined to fail from the moment of creation.” -- Carl McDonald, Oppenheimer and Co., June 13, 2009.

• A co-op model is a handout to the industry. First, a co-op will not be able to compete with the insurance industry the way a true public option will. Second, most of the co-op’s core operations would be outsourced in lucrative contracts to insurance companies to operate the plan.

Can’t Lower Costs

• State-based or regional co-ops, run by their members, would be too weak to stand up against the insurance industry conglomerates, unlike a national public health insurance plan.

• Co-ops would be too small to attract provider participation or to strike bargains with providers, unlike insurers that already have established networks strengthened by backroom deals with providers. In fact, according to one Wall Street analyst, “providers would have very little reason to deal with them, since the co-ops have no volume or leverage.”

• Democrats and Republicans have agreed that delivery system reform is key to the success of health care reform and the sustainability of our American health care system. A weak co-op structure won’t have the weight or the know-how to accomplish these goals.

Impractical

• Co-ops have been tried and failed before. Rural health cooperatives started after the Great Depression were killed by physician boycotts, the lack of financial wherewithal of the cooperatives themselves, and the eventual withdrawal of government support.

• Forming 50 state co-ops would take an enormous investment of time and federal capital. The design under consideration requires prospective beneficiaries to invest in a plan years before it actually exists.

“Non-Profit” Doesn’t Mean Public

• Non-profit status doesn’t guarantee good behavior. According to Senator Barbara Mikulski, Maryland’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan went from “non-profit to profiteering.” According to a report in Health Affairs, “Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland and its sister plan in the District of Columbia were poster children of nonprofit corruption and incompetence, squandering their assets on ego-building but money-losing diversification initiatives and on lavish executive lifestyles that devoted more days per year to jetting around the globe than to paying insurance claims back home.”

• Co-ops would be indistinguishable from today’s non-profit plans which generally are compelled to act in ways that do not serve the public’s interest in order to “compete” with for-profit plans. Today, nearly half of privately insured people are enrolled in non-profit health plans and yet costs have sky-rocketed.

• Held to the same level of scrutiny, non-profit insurers would exhibit the same greed and lack of public accountability Senator Charles Grassley has found in repeated investigations of non-profit hospitals.

Enough Already

How much more do you need to know? From FirstRead:

GOP support most important to Grassley

In an interview today on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan," Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R) said he'd vote against any health-care reform bill coming out of the committee unless it has wide support from Republicans -- even if the legislation contains EVERYTHING Grassley wants.

"I am negotiating for Republicans," he said. "If I can't negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I'm not a good negotiator."

When NBC's Chuck Todd, in a follow-up question on the show, asked the Iowa Republican if he'd vote against what Grassley might consider to be a "good deal" -- i.e., gets everything he asks for from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D) -- Grassley replied, "It isn't a good deal if I can't sell my product to more Republicans."

In short, Grassley says he's willing to walk away from legislation in which he gets everything he wants. Over to you, Max Baucus...

Public Interest

I actually don't believe this is correct. I think reporters spend a lot of time hearing what they want to hear and creating the narrative they'd like to see play out.

However, were it to be true, abandoning the public health insurance option for the sake of bipartisan "agreement" would be a really really really bad idea, and as Richard explains in his most recent blog post, Obama would lose his base:

If scuttling the public option won't quiet the right, it will definitely quiet the left. And that would be disastrous to the prospects of Democrats passing legislation this fall. Giving people an alternative to the private health insurance industry is the one issue that highly motivates progressives. Over and over again at Health Care for America Now, it is what our tens of thousands of activists -- from grassroots community people to high-dollar Democratic donors -- want to talk about. For them it has become the measure of whether health reform is about real change or just a cosmetic lift to a broken system.

It's very important to recognize why it's that measure though. The public health insurance option is the only way we will be able to put some real pressure on the private health insurance industry. If we just regulate without giving insurance companies competition, they will keep on doing what they do now. None of the real bad practices will go away.

And co-ops are a joke. They would be too small to do what a strong, national public option could accomplish and are a poorly veiled strategy to kill off substantial competition. For what reason? Some strange ideological objection to the government working for the people?

Insurance lobbyists are having an effect. And it's despicable. Some lawmakers are more concerned about the health of corporations' bottom lines than the health of their constituents and their families.

That's what's at stake. It's that simple.

I'm Just Saying

Richard debates Dick Armey on Newshour and buries him.

Less than 24 hours later, Armey leaves his real job (as in the one that is not leading a crazy right wing anti-health reform campaign).

You do the math.

You Can Quote Me

I got to make a couple of important points today - on Foxnews.com of all places - about our field memo and those rowdy health care town halls (emphases mine):

Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for HCAN, told FOXNews.com that the group sent the memo after many of its 120 field organizers in 44 states encountered screaming and shouting at the town halls.

"Not that the opposition caught anyone off guard," she said. "The level of screaming and shouting and lack of intelligent discourse caught people off guard."

Schechner noted that the memo does not emphasize any one tactic, but rather coordination with lawmakers to facilitate the town hall. She rejected the notion that the memo is designed to undermine democracy.

"We would love to have more conversation," she said. "What undermines democracy is the screaming and yelling and not allowing people to talk.

"There's a very important detail being lost here. There are details of health care not being explained because no one can get a word in edgewise," she said, adding that the town halls are intended for lawmakers to explain those details. "That legitimate conversation is not happening because there's such an angry din of noise."

Schechner said the memo has already helping lawmakers like Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who was rushed by protesters at earlier town halls where one held a sign showing Doggett with devil's horns. But now the town halls are more orderly, she said.

One Rotten Apple

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is so into recycling that he recycles John McCain's health care plan in an OpEd in the WSJ today.

Not only does his position show he's completely out of touch with his progressive customer base, but it also shows he's not at all concerned with what's best for his lower wage employees. For example, who's got $2500 disposable income sitting around just in case they get sick?

Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

Yes. Lower cost for you. More out-of-pocket for your employees.

Plus, how offensive is the "so you spend your health care dollars more wisely" argument? Who goes to the doctor for fun? Who's using health care benefits recklessly? You know, just because. Spare me, Mr. Mackey. You found a slimy way to cut corners, and you should be wholly ashamed.

More from John here.

Sale or No Sale

I was tempted, but I didn't.



p.s. I knew I had seen the Bucket o' Balls and Shovel combo somewhere before. It was Chez' choice for Picture of the Week a few months back. Of course, the strange novelty snack wasn't on clearance back then.

That takes the need for self-restraint to a whole new level.

Potter to Press: Do Your Job!

Levana's got a fabulous post up on the HCAN blog right now about Wendell Potter - the former insurance industry executive who's been speaking out. He did a press conference on Capitol Hill today and let the press have it:

Former Insurance Executive Wendell Potter Challenges Media - Do some investigative reporting!

Here's a snippet:

Potter describes in detail the campaigns that he personally witnessed from the 1993-94 debates until he left the industry. A clear pattern emerged. Here he describes a specific PR firm, APCO and their involvement in the health care debate:

The insurance industry has funded several other front groups since [1993] whenever the industry was under attack. It formed the Coalition for Affordable Quality Healthcare to try to improve the image of managed care in response to a constant stream of negative stories that appeared in the media in the late ‘90s and the first years of this decade.

It funded another group with a different name about the same time when lawyers began filing class action lawsuits on behalf of doctors and patients. Like the Health Benefits Coalition, this one, called America’s Health Insurers, was created by and run out of a powerful Washington-based PR firm, APCO Worldwide.

APCO is perhaps best known for setting up a front group for the tobacco industry in the early ‘90s. Philip Morris reportedly hired APCO to organize a front group called The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition in 1993 to help fight public health efforts following the ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency that secondhand tobacco smoke was a carcinogen.

. . .

APCO . . . also activated conservative allies and enlisted the support of conservative talk show hosts, writers and editorial page editors to warn against a “government-takeover” of the U.S. care system. That is a term the industry uses often to scare people away from any additional involvement of the government in health care.

Health Care America also placed ads in newspapers. One such ad, which appeared in Capitol Hill newspapers, carried this message, “In America, you wait in line to see a movie. In government-run health care systems, you wait to see a doctor.”

APCO’s work on behalf of the industry included feeding talking points to conservatives in the media and in Congress and to place columns and op-eds written for the industry’s friends in conservative and free-market think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage, CATO, the Manhattan Institute and the Galen Institute.

By the way, you will not find America’s Health Insurers among the clients APCO lists on its web site. That’s because the work it does for AHIP is largely covert.

After Potter carefully described this pattern in detail, several reporters asked him to give specific examples of how that is happening now in the current debate. Since he has been out of the industry for a year now, of course, he cannot say—but he had a good idea for the reporters in the room. Potter, who worked as a journalist early in his career suggested, “Why don’t you do some investigative reporting?”
______________________

Read the whole post here.

New Ad

From the Main Street Alliance - a national coalition of small business owners fighting for good health care reform:

Read The Bill?

Angry mobs at town halls are screaming "Read the bill!" but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that not a single person yelling and not listening has actually done so himself. I say that with confidence because I am getting my fair share of emails from people who insist H.R. 3200 (the House health care reform bill) does everything from ration care for the elderly to let the federal government access your bank accounts for mandatory funds transfers. It would be funnier if so many people didn't believe it was true.

H.R. 3200 is a long bill, but it's online. Totally transparent. You are welcome to read it for yourself here (pdf) or here.

Or if you don't want to read the whole thing, the Energy & Commerce Committee has fact sheets galore online here. For example, check out

What's In The Health Care Reform Bill For You?

or

Meeting Health Care Needs of Senior Citizens & People With Disabilities.

And remember, we now have a Fight the Smears page. Cut and paste the text and email it back to anyone who's spreading lies and misinformation.

Happening Now

Well, in about 9 minutes. 9pm EST. Join us online.

When Dumb Questions Dress Up Like Journalism

Someone just sent me this:

"Is there any merit to conservative charges that healthcare reform could lead to euthanasia or 'death panels?'"
Please submit responses by 4pm tomorrow.
Best,
Eric Zimmermann
The Hill newspaper
eric.zimmermann@thehill.com

Here was my response:

No. That’s not even marginally subjective. Please stop perpetuating this kind of ridiculous misinformation.

The Hill? I'm surprised. They're usually one of the good better guys.

(The image above is from Yahoo! news and corresponds with this write about Obama's town hall in NH today.)

It Ought To Be A Law

Happy Monday.

As the misinformation and lies about health care reform continue, the White House has launched a new "reality check" website.

Perhaps the most disturbing counter-argument that's started to emerge is this whole comparison to Hitler and the Nazis. I first heard it from a caller on a radio show I did Friday afternoon, and then about an hour later, Sarah Palin regurgitated the same crap on Facebook.

I'm reminded once again of Godwin's Law which Mike Godwin explained himself in Wired back in 1994:

I developed Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Urban Dictionary:

There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

I'm all for it. Who's with me?

Today's Must-Read

I don't want to inadvertently depress you on a gorgeous Friday afternoon, but this BusinessWeek article is a must-read for anyone even marginally interested in the health care reform landscape. It explains exactly why we have to keep the pressure on. Democrats in Congress are being courted by the insurance industry - heavily courted - and while much damage may already be done, we've still got a fighting chance if we continue to mobilize and remind Congress it should be working for us - not kowtowing to special interest influence. Here's a snippet of the write primarily focused on UnitedHealth:

A fundamental question about the health overhaul is what minimum standards will apply to the coverage all Americans will be required to have. UnitedHealth has been exchanging a high volume of information on the topic with members of the Senate Finance Committee and their staff. Stevens, the former British health aide, regularly scans PowerPoint presentations generated by the committee staff that attempt to calculate the actuarial value of proposed benefit packages. Senators stung by the projected $1 trillion price tag are winnowing down the required coverage levels to cut costs.

This is good news for UnitedHealth, which benefits when patients pick up more of the tab. In late spring, the Finance Committee was assuming a 76% reimbursement rate on average, meaning consumers would be responsible for paying the remaining 24% of their medical bills, in addition to their insurance premiums. Stevens and his UnitedHealth colleagues urged a more industry-friendly ratio. Subsequently the committee reduced the reimbursement figure to 65%, suggesting a 35% contribution by consumers—more in line with what the big insurer wants. The final figures are still being debated.

The rest of the article is equally infuriating. But as I've said before, getting mad is good if it makes you want to take action.

On that note, here's our new page explaining how you can get involved during Take Action August.

And now we've got a Fight the Smears page where you can cut and paste an email to send back in response to anyone who forwards you lies about health care reform.

Pebble Beak

Here's a case of birdbrained being a good thing. I'm not one to post science stories on a regular basis, but this one's kind of neat:

Bird experiment shows Aesop's fable may be true

You can see video of the rook here. The good stuff starts about :45 in.

Sad News

TMZ is reporting filmmaker John Hughes died today of a heart attack.

It's safe to say his movies defined the 80s.

They definitely had an impact on my teenage years. I even named my first (and only) car Jake based on Molly Ringwald's love interest in Sixteen Candles.

John Hughes was 59 years old. (AP)

6 of One...

I've known about this for a couple of days but forgot to pass it along. One little frustrating factoid:

...a bipartisan group of Senators from six of the smallest and whitest states in the country are holding health care hostage on the Senate finance committee.

The Senators "negotiating" health care reform represent "less than 3% of the population and only 1.6 million non-whites." (TPMCafe)

Joel Achenbach says it well today:

Max Baucus is the leader of the group (and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee). He's from Montana, where the people are outnumbered by bears.

There's Chuck Grassley from Iowa (where just last year he cut the ribbon on the state's first escalator), and Mike Enzi, from Wyoming, which has a smaller population than the District of Columbia. There's Olympia Snowe from Maine, which, back in my day, was a part of Massachusetts, and really should have stayed that way. There's Jeff Bingaman from New Mexico, almost every square inch of which is covered by uninhabited desert, forests, craggy mountains or salt flats. And finally there's Kent Conrad, from North Dakota, which is so forlorn it makes South Dakota seem like Southern California.

For even more context, Joel points to Matt Yglesias who notes:

Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population, less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California.

Old Yeller

If you haven't yet read Bob Cesca's piece about the hypocrisy of senior citizens railing against government health care, you should:

I don't claim to know the full stories behind the variety of senior citizens who have been recruited to disrupt these town halls, but one thing is clear. They're participating in a corporate lobbyist-driven campaign to prevent the rest of us from acquiring the same affordable, reliable public health care they enjoy. In other words, their government-run health care is excellent. So excellent that it can't be shared. And they're so intensely motivated in this selfishness that they're volunteering their time to infiltrate town hall meetings and loudly ambush public officials at the request of lobbyists who are very simply lying to and exploiting them.

It's on HuffPo here.

Call to Arms

Richard's got a strong new blog post up at HuffPo:

History buffs will recognize The Guns of August as Barbara Tuchman's classic history of World War I. The reference works now because August 2009 just opened with trench warfare on health care reform. Unfortunately, the right-wing mob is seeing some early superficial success. We need to enter the battlefield immediately to defend the President's top priority, providing a guarantee of good, affordable health care to all this year. This is a call to arms for the army of activists who powered President Obama to the White House.

Read the whole thing here.

Maddening

About 1000 people turned out for a rally in Chicago yesterday in support of health care reform. 2 dozen showed up with signs, stood off to the side, and shouted against. Is that the story you get from this report? Me neither.

 

Here are some photos from the rally. For reform:







Against reform:





Even mix? Not even close.

Funny Morning Photo

Sorry I skipped posting yesterday. Hopefully, a little AM chuckle will help you forgive me. Just snapped this shot on the walk home from the gym:



Is this the best solution for a bad car smell? Really?

Mad Me

Well, here's something fun. AMC let's you make your own Mad Men avatar. It's a fitting distraction considering I watched 5 episodes of Season 2 this weekend and am planning to try and finish in time for Season 3's debut on the 16th.

Meanwhile, this is the full scene I created online. That's supposed to me - the blond drinking the martini at work. (I know. It looks nothing like me, and it's missing a nose. Humor me.)

Kind Of Awesome

Look who just requested to follow me on Twitter:



Maybe I can teach him how to spell.