The insurance industry is already looking for ways to game this requirement.

If Obama/Rahm want to triangulate against progressives (and they do), they’re not the only ones who can make cause with people on the other side of the aisle. If that’s what it takes to shake up the corporate domination if our political system, we’ve done it before and we can do it again. Because working within the traditional political order to support “progressives” whose conviction lasts only as long as it doesn’t matter just doesn’t seem to be working.

We thought Bernie Sanders would be a Senator with more bite than bark on health care reform. Green Mountain Daily and FDL Action team up to challenge Bernie Sanders.

Lost in the blizzard like white out of other concerns by the push by the Obama Administration and Congress to handwrap a huge present for the rapacious healthcare insurance industry, has been intelligent coverage of the breakdown of Barack Obama’s naive and feckless judicial policy and the emerging harm to the U.S. Federal Court system it portends.

Maybe that is starting to change.

Louise Slaughter (D-NY), a co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus and the Chair of the House Rules Committee, has laid down a powerful marker, signaling that the Senate’s bill should be defeated, and suggesting that the Congress start over from scratch.

Now that the first (although least controversial of my ideas) to fix the terrible Senate bill appears likely to be adopted in the conference committee, now is no time to let up. I see their one improvement, and raise them another 15 changes that need to be made. Here are 16 more ideas to add to my original list of 35 ideas. . .

The Senate just passed a third and final cloture vote, by a count of 60-39, on the health care bill. In prior votes today, Jim Bunning did not vote, so I would assume in advance of a roll call, that he was the missing vote. All members of the Democratic caucus voted for cloture. Tom [...]

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it.
Sign our petition to AG Holder: investigate Rahm Emanuel.

The most critical failing of the Senate bill is that it still leaves the private insurance companies unchecked. They will not face competition from a public option, there will not be a truly robust risk adjustment mechanism to de-incentivize cherry picking, and the state insurance commissioners meant to enforce the new regulations will lack the will and/or the funding to take them on. Rules without a policeman strong enough to enforce them are just empty promises.

The fallout over President Obama’s comment that he did not campaign on the public option continued today. FDL’s slinkerwink found video evidence of the President discussing a “public plan” in 2007, ironically as part of a presentation to Planned Parenthood about reproductive care. In it, he claimed that reproductive care was basic care and that the public plan would have to include reproductive care coverage (that’s two, two, two capitulations in one).