Insurers will need to report publicly how they spend premium dollars beginning next year, according to the new rules. The regulations also specify that insurance companies in the individual and small-group markets need to spend at least 80% of the premium dollars they collect on medical care and quality improvement activities; those in the large-group market must spend at least 85%.posted by electroboy at 11:16 AM on December 13, 2010 [4 favorites]
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandated that HHS issue the regulations and implement them by Jan. 1, 2011.
Yes We Can -- Unless Republicans Don't Want ToGiven the number of Republicans in the Senate, that's actually an appropriate summary of the actual Senate rule. Snarking about it isn't going to help change that fact, and I frankly doubt that trying to convince other liberals that Obama is the second coming of Dubya is going to help change it, either.
Yesposted by saulgoodman at 1:59 PM on December 13, 2010 [4 favorites]WeObama all by himself through sheer charisma and force of willCanhad better regardless of how insane the degree of deliberate opposition he encounters or we'll drop him faster than Jimmy Carter to join in on the Republican pile-on.
So these Senate rules that make his agenda impossible were passed after the election somehow?No, but these Senate rules that make Joe Beese's agenda impossible have existed for quite some time.
Blah blah blah. They couldn't do anything if the Democrats didn't let them, right? That is how the Senate works.In theory, yes, that is how it works. But if you're actually laboring under the false impression that the Democratic caucus in the Senate, or the House, or indeed even among the American people marches in lockstep to anywhere near the degree that Republicans do, I frankly don't think you've been paying much attention.
Oh, they insist that they want bipartisan action. But in the coming weeks McConnell’s party will three times vote against even allowing debate on the matter to proceed in the Senate—all part of a deliberate strategy, openly articulated by McConnell, of forcing the G.O.P. to play “team ball” and vote no on everything Obama proposes, regardless of principle or conviction, in hopes of fielding a “bigger team” after this fall’s midterm elections. Never mind that taxpayer bailouts are precisely what this bill is intended to avoid. The Republicans know—as one of their party’s leading message and polling gurus, Frank Luntz, has advised them—that “big bank bailout” is a catchphrase guaranteed to spark public opposition. Never mind, too, that when Boehner says the bill will “protect the biggest banks in America and harm the smallest banks” he knows that this is untrue, and that in fact the biggest banks are all lobbying fiercely to block it, with Republican help.And from the New Yorker article:
Under McConnell, Republicans have consistently consumed as much of the Senate’s calendar as possible with legislative maneuvering. The strategy is not to extend deliberation of the Senate’s agenda but to prevent it. Tom Harkin, who first proposed reform of the filibuster in 1995, called his Republican colleagues “nihilists,” who want to create chaos because it serves their ideology. “If there’s chaos, things will tend toward simple solutions,” Harkin said. “In chaos people don’t listen to reason.” McConnell did not respond to requests for an interview, but he has often argued that the Republican strategy reflects the views of a majority of Americans. In March, he told the Times, “To the extent that they”—the Democrats—“want to do things that we think are in the political center and would be helpful to the country, we’ll be helpful. To the extent they are trying to turn us into a Western European country, we are not going to be helpful.”I really wonder how much better off if the GOP had moderated in response to the 2008 election instead of embracing cynicism. I have the feeling Obama could have been a truly great and transformative president.
One of the mysteries of the Senate is how Mitch McConnell has been able to keep his members in line, on vote after vote. Why do moderates with years of experience and their own power base back home—Richard Lugar, of Indiana; Susan Collins, of Maine; George Voinovich, of Ohio—keep siding with the more extreme members of their caucus? Alexander said that McConnell listens well to all his members, adding, “When you have your back against the wall and the gallows are hanging in front of you, it tends to unify. Operating with forty members—it concentrates the mind.”
Lindsey Graham described to the Times how McConnell exhorted his caucus after the disastrous 2008 election: “He said if we didn’t stick together on big things, we wouldn’t be relevant.”
So the problem is a lack of purists, too much compromising. Yes, in fact I have noticed that.Oh, quit the theatrics. "Lack of purists" and "too much compromising" are not the same thing, and can't be so easily amalgamated outside of propaganda.
The Republicans get what they want anyway.The Republican platform includes, for example, support for a federal Constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, and for explicitly extending Constitutionally-guaranteed rights to fetuses.
They want gay marriage banned. Gay people can't cross most state lines and still be considered married. They got what they want on the federal level with DOMA. I mean seriously, you are gonna look at the state of how the law treats gay people right now and tell me the Republicans aren't on top? Get real.Where have I argued that Republican desires have no influence on federal laws? Of course there are a lot of abhorrent things that the government does that the Republicans like, and I never said otherwise.
Can you lay out the path to passing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage that is different in any way if McCain is in the White House instead of Obama. Guess what? President doesn't even have to sign it.I'm sorry, are you seriously asking me to explain how Republicans would possibly get what they want, when I'm contradicting you saying that Republicans get what they want?
Similarly, the Court upheld a ban on the growth of marijuana intended for medical use on the grounds that Congress could rationally conclude that this growth might make enforcement of drug laws more difficult by creating an otherwise lawful source of marijuana that could be diverted into the illicit market:The only reason we aren't blocking medicalized marijuana laws now, in a break with previous administrations, is because the current DOJ has as a matter of policy committed to defer to state authority on the issue despite having the legal authority to override the states on the basis of interstate commerce clause juris prudence.In assessing the scope of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause, we stress that the task before us is a modest one. We need not determine whether respondents' activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a “rational basis” exists for so concluding. Given the enforcement difficulties that attend distinguishing between marijuana cultivated locally and marijuana grown elsewhere, 21 U.S.C. § 801(5), and concerns about diversion into illicit channels, we have no difficulty concluding that Congress had a rational basis for believing that failure to regulate the intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana would leave a gaping hole in the CSA. Gonzales v. Raich
« Older Geeky Bibliopegy.... | Beethoven... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:48 AM on December 13, 2010 [45 favorites]