I was on a conference call with White House budget director Peter Orszag and Office of Health Reform chief Nancy-Ann DeParle today, and both of them were adamant that the health care reform moving through Congress would cut costs over the long term and “move us into the future of health care,” as Orszag put it.

Ralph Freidin MD, is an internist. Dr. Freidin traveled from Massachusetts to Little Rock, Arkansas last week to volunteer his professional services at the Little Rock Free Health Clinic, which I also attended. He was assigned to The Line.

A couple of weeks ago, the USDA put numbers to the reality that has appeared, anecdotally, all over the country: more and more people in this country don’t have enough food. Almost 15% of the country had at least some food insecurity last year. 5 million more kids faced hunger last year than the year before.

That means the food banks that have helped such families fill the gap are slammed, facing far more demand than they can meet.

The story is that the release of visitor logs is scheduled for the last Friday of every month, and this was moved up because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but nonetheless, the White House released a document dump right before Thanksgiving of another 1,600 records of visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Dana Perino pronounces: “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”

The White House has raised yet another trial balloon about empowering a deficit-cutting commission, a day after meeting with key Senators in favor of the idea.

You remember Joe Szakos, right? He’s the courageous head of the Virginia Organizing Project, our affiliate in VA. He’s also an Anthem Blue Cross customer, and his rates just increased 14%. The same week, he received an email from Blue Cross bashing a public health insurance option.

“When this president and open-borders, illegal-alien-amnesty advocates say, ‘You can’t deport them,’ my answer is, ‘You wanna bet?’ Because this is the United States.” Lou Dobbs on 60 Minutes, 2007 The only chance Lou had in politics was to keep blaming those sneaky Mexicans for everything from terrorism to leprosy, in order to cobble together [...]

If HCAN’s ads on behalf of Lincoln were a surprise to anyone, they shouldn’t have been. They will continue to operate as part of the Democratic party infrastructure moving to protect their “own,” and if health care reform happens in the mean time, that is always going to be a secondary concern.

Employer based insurance is shrinking, but that doesn’t affect insurance company profits. The public option is part of a critical transition.