Idaho first to sign law aimed at health care plan

3/16/2010 by John Miller, Associated Press Writer - (AP) Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance. ∴ Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states. Read more of AP article... Read More......

Michael Gerson: Snowe's party of one

WASHINGTON POST, 10/21/2009 by Michael Gerson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler who says, "Interesting.") - "There are 18 states, as columnist Mark Shields recently pointed out to me, that have gone Democratic in each of the past five presidential elections. Of the 36 senators who represent those states, only two are Republicans. Both are from Maine, one of the last, storm-lashed, surf-pounded footholds of the Yankee GOP. So it is hardly shocking that the lone Republican supporter of Democratic health reform on the Senate Finance Committee should be Maine's Olympia Snowe. ∴ Snowe has taken a beating in the conservative media as part of the "turncoat caucus" and for being a RINO -- Republican in Name Only. But such criticism fails to take a syllogism into account. The GOP can't be a national party without winning in the Northeast; Republicans can't win in the Northeast without ideological heretics; therefore, the GOP will not be a national party without ideological heretics."

Mr. Gerson states why "Non-Maine Republicans object to the Senate Finance bill for three substantive reasons that will be difficult to address without fundamentally changing the direction of reform." He also explains why Sen. Snowe will remain lonely. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Health Care: Clear Majority Now Backs Plan

WASHINGTON POST, 10/20/2009 by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - Americans still divided on overall packages. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

About that health-reform cost study

WASHINGTON POST, 10/20/2009 by Karen Ignagni (Hat tip: John Detweiler) - It has been alleged that health insurers commissioned a report recently from PricewaterhouseCoopers as part of a last-ditch effort to kill health-care reform. A relentless public relations campaign has attacked the messengers -- our association, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and PricewaterhouseCoopers -- as a way of discrediting the findings that major provisions in the Senate Finance Committee proposal will have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of health-care coverage.

Let me be clear and direct: Health plans continue to strongly support reform. In fact, last year we proposed new insurance market rules and consumer protections to achieve universal coverage, remove restrictions on preexisting conditions and end the practice of basing premiums on health status or gender. We firmly believe that all the cost concerns the report raised can be resolved. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

A Summer Obama Drama

WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2009 by Fred Hiatt (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - Here are two versions of the summer sizzler “President Obama and the Exploding Deficit,” playing in a cineplex near you:
In Version One, President Obama pronounces himself ready to make hard political choices to tame the federal debt. But after spending a trillion dollars to extinguish an inherited economic crisis, he proceeds to insist — as if nothing had happened — on the biggest expansion of federal government spending since Medicare: guaranteed health insurance for all.

He claims to want a bipartisan bill but refuses to consider any component that might offend a Democratic constituency, no matter how essential to a coherent plan: no malpractice reform (trial lawyers), no taxing of employer-provided health-care benefits (unions), no means-testing of Medicare benefits (middle-class seniors. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Inside the Monstrous Obamacare Bureaucracy

CREATORS.COM (A Syndicate of Talent), July 2009 by Michelle Malkin - If you think government is too big and too costly, wait until Obamacare kicks in. The Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of the House Democrats' health care takeover plans at $1.5 trillion over 10 years. But the CBO's fine print included a telltale caveat:

"We have not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies, nor have we accounted for all of the proposal's likely effects on spending for other federal programs."

You don't need an accounting degree or clairvoyant powers. The administrative costs and spillover spending effects will be astronomical. Look at existing federal programs. In 1966, the Office of Management and Budget put the total taxpayer costs for Medicare at $64 million. In 2011, Medicare costs are expected to balloon to nearly $500 billion. Medicaid cost $770 million in 1966. By 2011, that program will cost taxpayers an estimated $264 billion. The Virginia-based Council for Affordable Health Insurance estimated that the administrative expenses of both programs last decade were 66 percent higher than those of private sector health insurance companies. Read more at Creative.com... Read More......

CBO Chief: Health Bills To Increase Federal Costs

The bomb!
CQ POLITICS, 7/16/2009 by David Clarke and Edward Epstein, CQ Staff - The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday. ∴ That is not a message likely to sit well with congressional Democrats or the Obama administration, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., said Thursday she thinks lawmakers can find ways to wring more costs out of the health system as they continue work on their bills. Read more at CQ Politics... Read More......

The Public Option: "It's Not An Option"

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, 7/15/2009 (Hat tip: Linda Weimer) - "...It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." Read more at IBD...

Oregon's U.S. Congressmen

• Blumenauer, Earl (D), Oregon 3rd - DC (202) 225-4811, Portland (503) 231-2300
• DeFazio, Peter (D), Oregon, 4th - DC (202) 225-6416, Eugene (541) 465-6732
• Schrader, Kurt (D), Oregon, 5th - DC (202) 225-5711, Salem (503) 588-9100
• Walden, Greg (R), Oregon, 2nd - DC (202) 225-6730, Medford (541) 776-4646
• Wu, David (D), Oregon, 1st - DC (202) 225-0855, Portland (503) 326-2901

DC Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Read More......