The notion that the health insurance exchanges required by the Affordable Care Act would reduce health care costs using “competition” between concentrated health insurers was always one or more unbridgeable chasms away from a plausible theory.

But the myths of competitive markets are so deeply ingrained in our political discourse it was inevitable that a nominal Democratic President not constrained by conceptual coherence and a corrupt Congress would try to sell us the conceit as the only politically feasible model for health care reform. The economists — not to mention international experience — told us it was gibberish, but nobody cared.

The markup in the House Judiciary Committee of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has begun. Observers expect at least two days of markups, and the bill wouldn’t see the House floor until sometime thereafter, probably next year. There are over 60 amendments on the bill, and opponents on the committee are dragging out the proceedings. Rep. Zoe Lofgren refused to waive the reading of the bill, so Judiciary staffers needed to spend an hour doing that.

Understand that this bill is getting a hearing, and a markup, because very wealthy interests want it to pass. It so happens that very wealthy interests want it to fail, but that puts it on the agenda as well, because both sides can go to their funders and raise money off the threat of the bill passing or failing. This becomes a bonanza for K Street lobbyists. There are over 1,000 of them working on SOPA.

In a surprise move, Paul Ryan found a Democratic partner to propose a new Medicare plan that does not fully privatize it, but instead keeps fee-for-service Medicare as an option alongside a premium support plan. This is the same proposal that the front-running Republican Presidential candidates have made.

Sen. Ron Wyden joined Rep. Darrell Issa, of all people, in announcing the counter-offer. The “Copyright Alliance,” the umbrella trade group pushing the Internet censorship bill, didn’t like it, so it’s making the right enemies. There’s a bit more on the alternative here. Rather than turning federal judges into mediators of international copyright disputes, this proposal at least puts the question in the right venue.

In effect, Wyden would put a hold on the legislation, forcing a series of time-consuming votes to get Protect IP passed. Republicans do this routinely. But with so much on the calendar and not much time to get it all done, this could at least block the bill for the rest of the year.

Make no mistake, not only did Sen. Wyden get this colloquy into the Senate record, but there appear to have been several threats hiding behind the Senate blather. DiFi has said she thinks the way to fix a secret law is to change it in a secret committee meeting. But Wyden et al have made it clear that if she doesn’t agree to fix it in her secret committee meeting, he will try to do so on the Senate floor.

The big rush to extend PATRIOT is about making sure this geolocation tracking doesn’t shut down over the Memorial Day weekend.

Right now, opposition to PATRIOT excesses is still mostly a Democratic issue (though Rand Paul definitely took the leadership role Russ Feingold would have had in the past). Until more Republicans join Paul, Heller, and Lee in opposing PATRIOT, it’ll remain on the books, particularly so long as we have a Democratic President whom Democratic Senators are happy to have wielding such power.

I mean, are we supposed to worry that the government can’t conduct timely surveillance on a non-U.S. person ‘lone wolf’ terrorist such as an individual who has self radicalized and responds to international terrorist calls to attack the United States,” when the government has never had a need to use this authority, not even with Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, who was a “a non-U.S. person ‘lone wolf’ terrorist such as an individual who has self radicalized and responds to international terrorist calls to attack the United States”?

Wyden and Udall are trying to swap out that language to require that the information both be relevant to an investigation and be tied to some suspected terrorist (or Julian Assange).