By Nikki Schwab, Washington Whispers
U.S.News & World Report
September 16, 2009

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's
healthcare proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus
bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30
years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing
in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health
insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare
lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

The Baucus bill leaves out some of the president's goals for
healthcare reform, such as the controversial public option. While more
palatable to Senate moderates, the Baucus proposal also drew criticism
from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, who said yesterday he would not vote for
it in its current form. "I'm glad Senator Rockefeller is not going to
vote for it. I wouldn't vote for it at all under any circumstances,"
Dean added. Instead, Dean said Senate Democrats should and would end up
using the reconciliation process to pass a plan with the public option.
"It can be done, and that's how it will be done," Dean said, pointing
out that a majority of Senate Democrats still support a more robust
bill.

story at USnews.com

Bill Maher
Host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"
Posted: September 11, 2009 06:48 PM
The Huffington Post

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. And no, I'm not being gratuitously crude when I say that. I refer to the case of Van Jones, and I'm sure you know who Van Jones is. At least I hope you do, because I haven't a clue, or at least I didn't until this week, when I found out he was the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he became the Scary Negro of the Week on Fox News, where, let's be honest, they still feel threatened by Harry Belafonte.

Now, I know that right now, I'm supposed to be all re-injected with yes-we-can fever after the big health care speech, and it was a great speech -- when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face.

What got Van Jones fired was they caught him on tape saying that Republicans are assholes. And they call it "news." And Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like we dropped "end of life counseling" from health care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page.

[ continued ]

How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it

MATT TAIBBI
Rolling Stone | rollingstone.com
Posted Sep 03, 2009 11:33 AM

Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

[ continued ]

PacifiCare's Denials 40%, Cigna’s 33% in First Half of 2009

More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured
patients, even when recommended by a patient's physician, are rejected
by California's largest private insurers, amounting to very real death
panels in practice daily in the nation's biggest state, according to
data released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association/National
Nurses Organizing Committee.

CNA/NNOC researchers analyzed data reported by the insurers to the
California Department of Managed Care. From 2002 through June 30, 2009,
six of the largest insurers operating in California rejected 47.7
million claims for care -- 22 percent of all claims.

The data will be presented by Don DeMoro, director of CNA/NNOC's
research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, at
CNA/NNOC's biennial convention next Tuesday, Sept. 8 in San Francisco.
The convention will also feature a panel presentation from nurse
leaders in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia exploding the myths
about their national healthcare systems.

press release

By Alexander Bolton | The Hill
Posted: 08/24/09 06:59 AM [ET]

Howard Dean has emerged as President Barack Obama’s chief antagonist from the left on healthcare reform, raising questions over whether Obama made a mistake by snubbing Dean for a position in his administration.

Dean’s strong advocacy for creating a broad government-run health insurance program, known as the public option, has become a headache for Obama while at the same time giving liberals a powerful spokesman with national credibility.

Dean, who once declared himself a representative of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” has been traveling the nation this summer offering his own views on Obama’s healthcare proposal. His uncompromising stance is reminiscent of his 2004 presidential campaign that took many Democrats by surprise, and has begun to symbolize a rift between the president and those activists who played a major role in electing him.

[ continued ]

from Democracy Now!:

We speak to Rep. Raul Grijalva, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on the latest in the debate over healthcare reform. Grijalva has threatened to vote against any healthcare legislation that does not include a public health insurance option. He also recently co-wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, criticizing her for saying that the public option is not the essential element of comprehensive reform.

click here for Amy Goodman's interview with
Rep. Grijalva

The entire movie 'Sicko' by Michael Moore can be seen online here:

(Make sure you allow javascript, and allow access to "video.google.com". If you have any problems viewing, click here to open a new window.)

“I don’t give a damn about the health insurance people being in business or out of business. I want a system that works,” says Dean, physician, six-term Vermont governor, Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. We speak to Dean hours after the House Ways and Means Committee approved legislation to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system and expand insurance coverage. By a 23-to-18 vote, the committee backed key elements of President Obama’s blueprint for healthcare, including the creation of a new government health plan and requirements for employers to offer health insurance to workers or contribute to its cost. To help fund the changes to the healthcare system, the House committee also agreed to impose a surtax on families with incomes of more than $350,000 a year. Meanwhile, the conservative American Medical Association has just come out in support of the House bill, saying “the status quo is unacceptable.” Howard Dean’s solution embraces President Obama’s healthcare plan but argues that the reform bill is “not worth passing unless the American people have the choice of signing up for a public option—a real public option.”

video and transcript of Howard Dean on Democracy Now! for the full hour broadcast

President Obama’s first 100 days in office was the subject of much scrutiny last week. Pundits offered analysis, criticisms and even grades on the President’s record so far on a range of issues such as the economy, the environment and healthcare reform. But what about other issues like torture, wiretapping, his use of the State Secrets Act, and his plans for the withdrawal from Iraq and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan? We speak to Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.). [includes rush transcript]

story at democracynow.org