The Senate votes to bring health care bill (text in an amendment) to floor, 60-39. Major concessions extracted by holdout senators. Other analysis here and here. Differences between this and the House bill.
posted by shivohum on Nov 22, 2009 - 74 comments

What should we do instead of the Obama health reform bill?
posted by reenum on Nov 20, 2009 - 99 comments

Lawmakers attempt to target elective cosmetic surgery to pay for health reform in the United States. Simply an inviting target? The idea isn't that new, it was shelved once before. Now it's back. There is opposition as botox sales have already been dropping off.
posted by IvoShandor on Nov 20, 2009 - 31 comments

Yesterday, the little-noticed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force caused a stir by releasing new guidelines discouraging routine mammography for women under age 50 and breast self-examinations at any age. (Comparison chart of new and old guidelines here.) The American Cancer Society immediately registered its strong disagreement; meanwhile, the National Breast Cancer Coalition came out in strong support of the new guidelines, saying:

The over-emphasis on the importance of screening, despite a lack of strong evidence, has been elevated to such a degree that some even equate screening with prevention of breast cancer. The National Breast Cancer Coalition hopes that today’s release of the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) revised recommendations will put the brakes on this run-away train and will put screening and its limitations into proper perspective.

The House of Representatives just passed the health reform bill in a vote of 220-215.
posted by reenum on Nov 7, 2009 - 425 comments

Representative Alan Grayson (Dem- Florida) has recently been supporting the Democrats health care plan. Well, 'support' is an understatement. His first speech on the subject outlined the Republicans plan: "Don't get sick. And if you do, die quickly." After mass outrage from the GOP, Grayson made an apology, but not to the GOP. Instead, he apologized to the 44,000 Americans who die each year due to lack of insurance. Yesterday, Grayson took the floor and named the number of people expected to die in each Republican representative district. This time, the Republicans tried to stop him.
posted by Taft on Nov 5, 2009 - 169 comments

Health Care debate summarized via massive pig
posted by Taft on Nov 2, 2009 - 25 comments

An insurance industry CEO explains why health care in the U.S. costs so much. Full set of charts here (1.29 mb pdf)
posted by gman on Nov 2, 2009 - 89 comments

Joe Lieberman... Deal or No Deal?! (SLYT) A campaign ad for Ned Lamont has suddenly become very relevant, considering Sen. Joe Lieberman's recent statement threatening to block any health care legislation with a public option. "I accused him of, after 20 years, dithering on that topic," said Ned Lamont yesterday. "As far as I can tell, a filibuster is one more dither."
posted by markkraft on Oct 28, 2009 - 123 comments

Health care around the world
-Hawaii: The state has had success over 35 years of requiring employers to provide health care benefits.
-Singapore: Its health care is first class, cheap and market-driven.
-Taiwan: "more than 80 percent of the population is happy with the system"
-China: "300 million people have no coverage at all"
-Dutch: "America is going to go Dutch"
-US: "I just wanted to flag for colleagues that their bosses should be careful using the talking point that under the Dem bill, Americans who don't like the coverage they have, will be able to choose something else... more than 90 percent of Americans will remain barred from shopping for insurance in the exchange."
posted by kliuless on Oct 23, 2009 - 45 comments

They were very resentful about people in prison for horrendous crimes getting better medical care than their families.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker on Oct 17, 2009 - 46 comments

Rachel Maddow interviews Americans for Prosperity's Tim Phillips. [more inside]
posted by sloe on Oct 16, 2009 - 54 comments

The Senate Finance Committee has approved the plan proposed by Max Baucus.
posted by reenum on Oct 13, 2009 - 177 comments

Michelle Cottle takes a look at the rise of Betsy "Death Panels" McCaughey - No Exit: The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey: Since her earliest days in the spotlight, McCaughey has presented herself as a just-the-facts-please, above-the-fray political outsider. In reality, she has proved devastatingly adept at manipulating charts and stats to suit her ideological (and personal) ambitions. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor on Oct 7, 2009 - 48 comments

What kind of health insurance would you have as a federal government employee? The Office of Personnel Management would like to help you decide among the gazillion plan choices you have. Perhaps you are a Congress member? Then head on down to the Attending Physician of the United States, "It's one of the, quote, benefits of being in Congress," Kagen said. "They have physicians and nurses that will see you on the spot, on the beck and call." (link to single page print version). [more inside]
posted by sio42 on Sep 30, 2009 - 42 comments

The same billionaires for Bush are baaaaack, and now they want to profit from health care.
posted by twoleftfeet on Sep 26, 2009 - 15 comments

something terrible is happening
posted by philip-random on Sep 23, 2009 - 24 comments

How my factual error found its way into Obama's health care speech.
posted by shakespeherian on Sep 18, 2009 - 43 comments

Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus has released the "chairman's mark" (his draft) of health-care legislation, America's Healthy Future Act. [more inside]
posted by Hypnotic Chick on Sep 16, 2009 - 81 comments

Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a genetic disorder affecting 600,000 Americans and 12.5 million people worldwide. Large cysts grow on the kidneys causing urinary problems, elevated blood pressure, and eventually renal failure. Although there is no cure for PKD, patients are generally good candidates for kidney transplants. For patients on Medicare, the transplants are covered, but the needed anti-rejection medication is not after 3 years. The health care bill [pdf] currently in the House contains a provision to change that. [more inside]
posted by albrecht on Sep 14, 2009 - 15 comments

"Employer Requirement in Baucus Health Package Would Have Unintended Effect of Discouraging Hiring of Low-Income and Minority Workers." Robert Reich channels his inner Don Draper to sell the public option, while Josh Marshall wonders if the current plans are even a good idea. Rep. Raul Grijalva claims that progressives in the house arn't Prepared to Surrender on the public option, and Obama's Speech before congress is tomorrow. [more inside]
posted by delmoi on Sep 8, 2009 - 66 comments

Al Franken shows a revolutionary way to deal with an upset crowd - talk to them like adults.
posted by jbickers on Sep 4, 2009 - 111 comments

A Day Without Cats on the Internet Because why should all the fun on 09/09/09 be for Beatles fans, Apple geeks, 99-cent-store customers and post-apocalyptic steampunk ragdolls. Oh, and also President Obama. Is there anybody NOT doing something special on 09/09/09? Maybe... Satan? (long boring talk by nutcase about Large Hadron Collider and Nostrdamus) [more inside]
posted by wendell on Sep 2, 2009 - 38 comments

People are starting to get a little worn out on Healthcare coverage, or at least, a little worn out on the way it's been covered. Thank god our own grrarrgh00 isn't listening. Because someone has to spread the truth about Obama's nazi socialist communist granny killing satanist witchcraft healthcare reform.
posted by tylerfulltilt on Aug 30, 2009 - 63 comments

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World by T.R. Reid (Washington Post)
posted by blue_beetle on Aug 26, 2009 - 141 comments

The healthcare debate explained on the back of 4 napkins. Napkin 1: The health care equation. Napkin 2: It's not about health care. Napkin 3: The plans on the table. Napkin 4: What's it mean to me?
posted by lunit on Aug 26, 2009 - 95 comments

Edward M. Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts, has died at age 77. After a rocky youth (including scandals of cheating and reckless driving), Kennedy followed his brothers into politics, making health care his cause, and eventually went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Anticipating his own death, he had been trying to create a quick transition for his replacement as a vote on health care reform rapidly approached.
posted by ocherdraco on Aug 25, 2009 - 659 comments

Healthcare reform has agitated right-wing extremists and moneyed interests in the United States for some time — during the presidencies of FDR and Truman as well as Clinton and Obama, most recently — but where do the objections originate from, and particularly those which are known to be based on complete untruths? Some of these lies start with or are repeated by well-known right-wing media personalities, but there are other people who get the ball rolling, who are perhaps less well-known. Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey originated one of the current myths more commonly known as "death panels", but despite her attempts to market herself as a folksy voice fighting for the well-being of senior citizens, she has been an effective advocate for the interests of private health insurance companies since the early 1990s. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 22, 2009 - 167 comments

The Deadly Cost of Swooping In to Save a Life (single-page version): Deregulation and America's health care system combine to make medical helicopters increasingly dangerous.
posted by parudox on Aug 20, 2009 - 28 comments

Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table - I have no interest in doing it! Congressman Barney Frank confronts a woman at a town hall meeting who compared Obama to Hitler.
posted by crossoverman on Aug 19, 2009 - 350 comments

How American Health Care Killed My Father After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem. (via mr) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Aug 18, 2009 - 144 comments

The Views From Your Sickbed: Andrew Sullivan's readers share stories about health care in the United States.
posted by lalex on Aug 17, 2009 - 65 comments

The Obama administration signaled today it is ready to entirely abandon the public option, i.e. giving Americans the choice of government-run health insurance (AP, Daily Kos, Politico, Hill). Further, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius indicated that end-of-life counseling was "probably off the table", presumably due to Republican "death panel" commentary.
posted by WCityMike on Aug 16, 2009 - 491 comments

E.D. Kain with a moderate conservative solution to the health care crisis
posted by reenum on Aug 13, 2009 - 88 comments

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market (WHMI) writes a Wall Street Journal op-ed about teh evil Obamacare. Customers seem to disagree with his stance, and are reviewing their options.
posted by georg_cantor on Aug 12, 2009 - 347 comments

After the Remote Area Medical (RAM) Expedition visited Wise County in rural Virginia, they made their next stop at the Fabulous Forum, in urban Los Angeles.
posted by jaimev on Aug 12, 2009 - 14 comments

With inadequate access to basic health care (WHO .doc summary), impoverished Afghans turn to cheap and available opium as 'medicine' for pain relief, cough suppression and other ailments. The level of addiction among children is at a critical level. Jawed Taiman's film Addicted in Afghanistan provides some further perspective. [more inside]
posted by uaudio on Aug 11, 2009 - 35 comments

A simple question shows how complex the issue is. Chris at "Cynical C" asks his fellow citizens where they get thier health care (insurance) from and the incredible diversity of the current options and situations is immediately apparent. Quite spontaneously (but surely not unexpectedly), the question of "How much does it cost you?" becomes an essential part of the answers. Outsiders opine and tell stories and commiserate. [more inside]
posted by sid abotu on Aug 4, 2009 - 117 comments

An article of an american sociologist about being sick in Europe.
posted by - on Jul 28, 2009 - 150 comments

Why We Must Ration Health Care by Peter Singer.
posted by grouse on Jul 19, 2009 - 93 comments

Three committees of the United States House of Representatives have released the House's version of healthcare reform--the America's Affordable Health Choices Act. The bill [1000 page pdf] [summary] introduces a Health Insurance Exchange, minimum standards for benefit packages, protections for consumers, and a "level playing field" public insurance option with the right to use Medicare rates for the first three years. Initial reactions are positive.
posted by nasreddin on Jul 14, 2009 - 112 comments

Can You Spot a Lobbyist? Who made up the bulk of the audience when Congress began work on health care reform legislation? Lobbyists, according to this photo ID-crowdsourcing project, part of Dollar Politics, a new NPR investigative series. Bill Moyers shines some sunlight too, with Some Choice Words for 'The Select Few.'
posted by Miko on Jul 14, 2009 - 33 comments

Bill Moyers Interviews Former Cigna PR Chief Wendell Potter Cigna's former head of Corporate Communications discusses about how Insurance companies have fought against public health care in the U.S, How wallstreet's demands drive up profits, how they do it, and why he quit. transcript
posted by delmoi on Jul 11, 2009 - 129 comments

How I lost my health insurance at the hairstylist's is one story among millions about the insanity of US health care. 59% of the American public and 59% of physicians support single-payer national health insurance, but in a recent prime time town-hall meeting on health reform proposals, ABC did not air a single question about single-payer. HELP is on the way. At a HELP hearing on single-payer, Kucinich pwned a doctor who claimed Canadian health care was worse than the US's.
posted by shetterly on Jul 8, 2009 - 561 comments

Debate over government-funded services heats up. [SLSO]
posted by boo_radley on Jun 30, 2009 - 47 comments

How Safeway Is Cutting Health-Care Costs - "At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior... 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior... 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable." [1,2] cf. Wyden's Third Way & Healthcare CEOs Shoot Themselves in the Foot [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jun 21, 2009 - 130 comments

The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care. Via Musings of a Distractible Mind.
posted by zinfandel on May 28, 2009 - 40 comments

Single-payer health care advocates arrested at Senate hearing. On May 5, 2009 advocates of a U.S. national health care program disrupted a Senate Finance Committee event to call for single-payer healthcare to be part of the discussion. The eight protesters were subsequently arrested. The protesters included representatives of Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors the The United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676. Committee Chair Max Baucus (D - Montana), who has received more money in contributions from health insurance companies than any other member of Congress, favors requiring Americans to purchase private health insurance from those companies. Baucus, who has previously said that single-payer is "off the table," responded to the doctors and their fellow activists with, “I want you to know I care deeply about your views," and then, "we need more police [to eject protesters]."
posted by univac on May 6, 2009 - 146 comments

"We're a demonstration project, if you would, of all the things that can go wrong at once." "You know Yolanda, I think most people watching this interview think to themselves that if they get cancer and they don't have health insurance that somebody’s going to take care of them," Pelley remarked. "No, no, there's nobody to take care of you," she said. [more inside]
posted by availablelight on Apr 6, 2009 - 85 comments

Julie Louise Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H., first female director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is resigning her post effective January 20th. While subject to criticism for her management of the agency and failure to mollify the autism community over issues of vaccine safety, she was a straight (if silenced) shooter on global warming and her efforts to restructure the CDC as a prevention-oriented agency are to be commended.
posted by The White Hat on Jan 10, 2009 - 27 comments