Some Connecticut legislators are seriously looking into creating a Basic Health Plan for people who make between 133 and 200 percent of the federal poverty level, instead of forcing them to use the new private health insurance exchanges.

During Thursday night’s GOP debate, a woman from Florida told the candidates she’d lost her job and with it her health insurance. What would each of the candidates do to get her covered or otherwise provide the health care she needed?

You had to listen carefully, but the effective answer they all gave her was, “this is your problem, not ours.”

As Obama buys into the deficit hysteria of the GOP, he is endangering not only the social safety net on which millions depend, but also his own particular job. One aspect of the 2012 election calculus that I don’t think Team Obama realizes is that a deal like this will throw away any hope he has of holding onto the Catholic voters that supported him in 2008.

In states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida, Catholics are a sizable chunk of the electorate, and Obama cannot afford to alienate them. If he caves to the GOP on the debt ceiling negotiations and sacrifices Social Security and Medicare to protect the tax gimmicks so beloved by the MOTUs and banksters, these voters will not be happy.

Just let those states sink in: Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. Obama’s not going to win them without significant Catholic support, and cutting the social safety net is NOT going to help get those votes.

My wife and I bought 5 shares of WellPoint (or Anthem, or Blue Cross) in 2005 and have been coming to these annual meetings since. We’re all getting to know each other. Many of the WellPoint employees seem to genuinely like us. But not all.

Vermont leads race to the bottom in insurance regulation. Maybe you’ll get lucky and your insurance policy will pay off in full. By the way, house prices never fall.

The excise tax, by only accelerating this cost-shifting trend that, for the past several years, has so far failed to control cost, won’t bend the cost curve.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Obama’s health care reform scheme becoming law, it is important to note that the number of uninsured people in America has remained roughly the same, or actually increased slightly, in the last year–and the cost of health insurance has continued to rise.

The CEO of the nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is going to get a retirement package worth $8.6 million after only six years on the job.

Even though it has been almost a year since health care reform was passed, the concerned industry groups are still donating millions to members of Congress.

In case you were worried that the new health care law, the so-called “government takeover of health care,” was going to hurt the profits of the completely unnecessary private health insurance middlemen, don’t be.