Healthcare Bill Weak on Reform?

At this point, I'm hoping they don't just pass a lame bill for political reasons.

“My assessment at this point,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Finance Committee, “is that the legislation is heavy on health and light on reform.”

There are a variety of ideas for attacking cost increases more aggressively, including setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals more rigorously and discouraging workers and employers from buying expensive health insurance policies that mask the true costs of treatment. NYT

See Wyden's idea for healthcare here. Under his plan (I have no idea why it hasn't been considered, but it probably has to do with this), we wouldn't get insurance from employers, but there would be a tradeoff of paying slightly more for guaranteed, comprehensive coverage:

According to that independent analysis, families who have incomes under $40,000 a year will have less out-of-pocket expenses under the HAA than they do now.

Families between $40,000 and $50,000 would pay about $81/year more - about $7 a month. Families between $50,000 and $150,000 would average between $327 and $341 per year more - about $28 a month.

In return for this modest increase these families would have guaranteed coverage that they could never lose, not if they get sick, not if they lose their jobs, not for any reason. This guaranteed coverage would be more comprehensive and include prevention benefits that would help you and your family improve their health. This new coverage would be fully portable - no longer would you need to stay in a job that paid less, or offered less opportunity, just to maintain health coverage. No longer would a parent need to work hours when they needed to be with their children just to maintain full time status for their health insurance.

Two camps at the White House:

The debate underscores a fundamental tension inside the White House between cost-containment idealists and pragmatists.

The first group includes officials like Peter R. Orszag, the budget director, and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the medical ethicist whose brother Rahm is the chief of staff. The second includes Rahm Emanuel and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the Office of Health Reform, who must contend with the realities of getting legislation passed. Read more at NYT

Glenn Beck Mentally Challenged?

Perhaps Glenn Beck has a larger problem and needs a mental health checkup. I'm sure he has insurance. The folks on Morning Joe mock Beck in wonder:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here is the eugenics program Morning Joe discussed. Beck has been lecturing on Hitler lately. The scary thing is whoever posted this video wrote: "Glenn Beck exposes government eugenics program." There is a mass ignorance out there that's astonishing, indeed. What's more astonishing is that there is a network that's devoted to this kind of entertainment:

Claire McCaskill Hammered by Wingnuts at Town Hall

Sen. Claire McCaskill is being hammered, booed and otherwise disrespected by some of folks at her town hall. Watch it here. There are a lot of rude shout outs and just plain uninformed people being rotten. Earlier today, people got out of control at Arlen Specter's town hall.
McCaskill tried to use reason. On the "death panels" she said: do you really think politicians are going to abuse senior citizens (they are the most reliable voting force)?
On government spending question, McCaskill asks: where were you on Medicare Part D? Frontline had a great program on how republicans passed Medicare Part D and boosted the national debt. Watch it here.

McCaskill reminds everyone that earlier they had all said a prayer. Some women were tossed out of the event for signs? I don't know what's up with the sign thing.
McCaskill could rival Obama for the cool cucumber award. She concludes the town hall saying by and large "this was a good meeting." Okay Sen. McCaskill. Talk about low standards. Whew. As the town hall went on, she did make headway in getting people to calm down.
I'll post video when it's up.

Partial video:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Obama to Rahm: I'm Coming for You

Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has a big spread in the New Yorker. This part made me chuckle:

Obama settled on Emanuel as early as last August. “It was months before the election when Barack said to me, ‘You know, Rahm would make a great chief of staff,’ ” Axelrod said. “He spent six years in the White House, knows this place inside and out, spent four or five years in Congress, and became a leader in a short period of time. He really understands the legislative process, he’s a friend who the President has known for a long time from Chicago, and whose loyalty is beyond question, and who thinks like a Chicagoan.”
Emanuel did not want the job. A few months before Election Day, Obama sent him an e-mail, with a warning: “Heads up, I’m coming for you.” Emanuel was a key negotiator in moving the TARP legislation through Congress, in October. After the bill cleared Congress, Obama, who supported it, sent Emanuel another e-mail. “I told you we made a great team,” he said. Emanuel wrote back, “I look forward to being your floor leader in the House.”
While Obama was wooing Rahm, Rahm’s older brother, Ezekiel, an oncologist and a bioethicist, served as a sounding board. “I probably spent half an hour every day being screamed at on the telephone by him,” he said. “ ‘I don’t want to do this. Why do I have to do this? Tell me I don’t have to do this.’ All of which said to me he knew he had to do it.” (Ezekiel told me that the rivalry among himself, Rahm, and their third brother, Ariel, a Hollywood agent who is the basis for the Ari Gold character on HBO’s “Entourage,” was so intense that they had to pursue careers in different cities. “We couldn’t possibly be within a thousand miles of each other, because the force fields just wouldn’t let it happen,” Ezekiel said. Rahm is now his boss; he works at the White House as an adviser to the budget director on health policy.) Read it all

Rahm has a fascinating family history:

manuel grew up in a political family. His Israeli-born father, Benjamin, was a member of the Irgun, a militant Zionist group from which the modern Likud Party eventually emerged. His mother, Marsha, was a civil-rights activist who was arrested several times. “We were attacked because we were white Jews with African-Americans,” Ezekiel said. When Martin Luther King, Jr., marched in Chicago in 1966, and was pelted with eggs, Marsha and her children marched along with him. Ezekiel told me that he knew Rahm would take the job of chief of staff because of Marsha’s father, Herman Smulivitz, a boxer and a union organizer. It was Herman who instilled in Rahm a commitment to service, and Rahm was particularly close to him.
When I asked Rahm about his grandfather, his eyes welled up with tears. “I’m a little too tired, a little too stressed,” he said. “It’s too emotional about Gramp.” He poured himself a glass of water and took a sip. Earlier, he had explained his decision in pragmatic terms: “If you got into public life to affect policy, and to affect the direction of the country, where could you do that on the most immediate basis? Everybody knows: chief of staff.”