Cruz praises Dershowitz's 'powerful and compelling' argument

Laurence Tribe: Dershowitz Defense Of Trump ‘Extreme’ And ‘Dangerous’ | ...

Senate Announces SEVERE Press Restrictions For Impeachment Trial

Todd Akin Talks About Elections, Civil Right And Voting RightsLaws | FOX2now.com – St. Louis News & Weather from KTVI Television FOX2

part two akin statement click link above ------
this is full Akin interview and one akin claims he misspoke

rape comments are a bit much and so is more

Todd Akin's advice for uninsured cancer patients: Sell your car

this is future of some if gop wins. let 'em die.

KTRS Akin Steelman debate

full debate

pulled Blunt ad

political ad pulled in Missouri Senate race. Wonder why?


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senate new healthcare bill

Although this bill is likely to change again, this is a link for folks wishing it.

Over 2000 pages and the index alone is 14 pages:

http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act.pdf


Although I have not read any but the highlights, I might point out that many things are not in this bill. Single-payer is not there nor is some other things.

Public option is greater than house version, but still lame in my opinion.

Kennedy healthcare proposal

This might interest folks:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/kennedy-affirms-support-for-public-healthcare-plan-2009-05-21.html



Kennedy affirms support for public healthcare plan
By Jeffrey Young

Posted: 05/21/09 02:46 PM [ET]
Liberals pushing for the creation of a federally run health insurance plan won a major victory Thursday when Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) strongly indicated his commitment to the policy, one of the most controversial elements of healthcare reform.Kennedy has co-sponsored a resolution introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and 26 other Democratic senators that declares the healthcare reform legislation the Senate will consider this summer must include a public plan option people can choose instead of private insurance. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also co-sponsored the resolution.

Though purely symbolic, this show of strength by 28 Democratic senators sends a clear signal to liberals that a public plan, one of the left’s top priorities and a component of President Obama’s healthcare platform, will be part of reform.Kennedy’s unequivocal support for the public plan marks a return of sorts to the front lines of the battle for healthcare reform. Kennedy has been absent for much of the year as he undergoes treatments for a brain tumor. Democrats are hopeful he will return next month to oversee his Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s markup of healthcare reform legislation.Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also indicated Thursday that his panel’s version of the healthcare reform bill also will include some type of public plan. “I do suspect that a version will be there,” Baucus said. “Now, by saying that, I don’t want to frighten people, particularly on the industry side. … All I’m saying is, there are ways to skin a cat. There are ways to find a solution.”The same group of Democratic senators, not including Kennedy, penned a letter to Kennedy and Baucus earlier this month stating their support for the public plan. The resolution does not specify what form the public plan must take. “Resolved, That the Senate recognizes that any efforts to reform our Nation’s health care system should include as an option the establishment of a federally-backed insurance pool to create options for American consumers,” the “Sense of the Senate” resolution reads, in part.



“This is about consumer choice and introducing competition in the health insurance market,” Brown said in a statement. “Private health insurers always manage to stay one step ahead of the sheriff’— finding new ways to limit care and pass costs along to the consumer. Giving Americans the choice of a quality, federally backed, health insurance option will keep private insurers honest and make healthcare affordable.”The options range from establishing a Medicare-like program to Sen. Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) bid to set up a plan that must abide by the same regulations as private insurers' to Sen. Olympia Snowe’s (R-Maine) proposal to establish a “fallback” public plan that would kick in if private insurers fail to meet certain benchmarks.Both committees plan to mark up legislation next month; the Senate is slated to vote on a combined bill in July. HELP Committee members Kennedy, Brown and Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Barbara Mikulksi (Md.), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Jack Reed (R.I.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) are sponsors of the resolution.Among Finance Committee members, Democratic Sens. Schumer, Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) and Robert Menendez (N.J.) are co-sponsors. Bingaman is also a Finance Committee member.Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), Ted Kaufman (Del.), Roland Burris (Ill.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Benjamin Cardin (Md.) also co-sponsored the resolution.
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Claire?

More reactions from single payer refjection in the senate

The unhappiness of single payer options being excluded from discussion is spreading and spreading fast. Some feel the dems have once again "flipped-flopped" on election positions.

Going to be very difficult the next election to recommend dems for elction and reelection.

This is from the Seattle Times and is copyrighted. I will withdraw if objections made and the intent of it being published here is to spark discussion. I am not a thief nor a US senator and do not believe in stealing:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2009221164_opinc15amygoodman.html

Health-care status quo pushing out single-payer advocates in nation's capital
By Amy Goodman

Syndicated columnist

Barack Obama appeared this week with health-industry bigwigs, proclaiming light at the end of the health-care tunnel. Among those gathered were executives from HMO giants Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Health Net Inc., and the health-insurance lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans; from the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association; from medical-device companies; and from the pharmaceutical industry, including the president and CEO of Merck and former Rep. Billy Tauzin, now president and CEO of PhRMA, the massive industry lobbying group. They have pledged to voluntarily shave some $2 trillion off U.S. health-care costs over 10 years. But these groups, which are heavily invested in the U.S. health-care status quo, have little incentive to actually make good on their promises.
This is beginning to look like a replay of the failed 1993 health-care reform efforts led by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Back then, the business interests took a hard line and waged a PR campaign, headlined by a fictitious middle-class couple, Harry and Louise, who feared a government-run health-care bureaucracy.

Still absent from the debate are advocates for single-payer, often referred to as "Canadian-style" health care. Single-payer health care is not "socialized medicine." According to Physicians for a National Health Program, single-payer means "the government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector."

A February CBS News poll found that 59 percent in the U.S. say the government should provide national health insurance.

Single-payer advocates have been protesting in Senate Finance Committee hearings, chaired by Democratic Montana Sen. Max Baucus. Last week, at a committee hearing with 15 industry speakers, not one represented the single-payer perspective. A group of single-payer advocates, including doctors and lawyers, filled the hearing room and, one by one, interrupted the proceedings.

Protester Adam Schneider yelled: "We need to have single-payer at the table. I have friends who have died, who don't have health care, whose health care did not withstand their personal health emergencies. ... Single-payer now!"

Baucus gaveled for order, guffawing, "We need more police." The single-payer movement has taken his words as a rallying cry. At a hearing Tuesday, five more were arrested. They call themselves the "Baucus 13."

One of the Baucus 13, Kevin Zeese, recently summarized Baucus' career campaign contributions:
"... from the insurance industry, $1,170,313; from health professionals, $1,016,276; pharmaceuticals/health-products industry, $734,605; hospitals/nursing homes, $541,891; health services/HMOs, $439,700."

That's almost $4 million from the very industries that have the most to gain or lose from health-care reform.

Another of the Baucus 13, Russell Mokhiber, co-founder of SinglePayerAction.org, has been charged with "disruption of Congress."

He was quick to respond: "I charge Baucus with disrupting Congress. It once was a democratic institution; now it's corrupt, because of people like him. He takes money from the industry and does their bidding. He won't even diffuse the situation by seating a single-payer advocate at the table."

As I traveled through Montana recently, from Missoula to Helena to Bozeman, health-care activists kept referring to Baucus as the "money man." Montana state Sen. Christine Kaufmann sponsored an amendment to the Montana Constitution, granting everyone in Montana "the right to quality health care regardless of ability to pay," or health care as a human right. It died in committee.

Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a single-payer advocate, said his position will not likely prevail in Washington: "I don't think there's any possibility that that will come out of this Congress." That's if things remain business as usual.

Mario Savio led the Free Speech Movement on the UC Berkeley campus. In 1964, he said: "There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

"Unless you're free," the Baucus 13 might add, "to speak." The current official debate has locked single-payer options out of the discussion, but also escalated the movement — from Healthcare-NOW! to Single Payer Action — to shut down the orderly functioning of the debate, until single-payer gets a seat at the table.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
2009, Amy Goodman
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Release small details of Senate Healthcare proposal

Although I have not studied the full details, this new, revised plan from the bannana republicans of the Senate Finance committee is not nearly half the plan of HR676. Also looks as if it keeps our insurance, HMO and drug buddies bottom line healthy while a continuation of letting these folks feast on tax dollars unabated.

I suggest everyone read this article and document linked below.
http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/042809%20Health%20Care%20Description%20of%20Policy%20Option.pdf released April 29, 2009
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http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/galston/archive/2009/05/13/a-peek-into-what-health-care-reform-will-look-like.aspx

A Peek Into What Health Care Reform Will Look Like

In advance of a meeting scheduled for Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee has released a 62-page description of policy options for expanding health insurance coverage. It is a revealing document, because we can glean from it the outlines of where the process now stands in the Senate--the body that will determine whether President Obama's top domestic priority lives or dies. Here is some of what we learn:

1. There is a substantial amount of bipartisan common ground, at least between committee chair Max Baucus and ranking member Charles Grassley.

2. The basic approach of the emerging bill tracks the system that Massachusetts enacted in 2006 with bipartisan support, including that of then-Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Ted Kennedy. The most important similarity is that individuals without coverage would buy plans through a "health insurance exchange" similar to the Massachusetts Connector. (One version of the plan contemplates a single national exchange; another proposes state-based exchanges with some connective tissue at the federal level.) Plans would be subject to uniform rules and would be required to offer at least four benefit options paying from a low of 76 percent to a high of 93 percent of anticipated health care expenses.

3. The approach is also broadly consistent with Barack Obama's campaign pledge that Americans satisfied with their current coverage (including public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid) can keep it.

4. To make plans affordable, individuals and families with adjusted gross incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level would receive sliding-scale subsidies in the form of refundable tax credits, paid in advance.

5. Everyone would be required to purchase a plan at least equal to the lowest-cost benefit option (the so-called "personal responsibility coverage requirement"). Non-compliers would be assessed an excise tax starting at 25 percent of the lowest-cost premium in the first year and rising to 75 percent by year three.

6. There is no agreement on the role of employers. In one option ("pay or play"), employers with more than $500,000 in annual payrolls who do not offer coverage at least equal to the lowest-cost option to their workers would be required to pay a sliding-scale excise tax based on total annual payroll. (Smaller businesses would pay $1,200 per year per employee; the largest firms would pay $6,000 per year per employee.) Another option exempts businesses altogether. Clearly this will be a flash-point in the forthcoming debate.

7. Nor is there agreement on the inclusion of public plans among the insurance choices. The document lays out three public options, ranging from a federal plan modeled on Medicare to plans run by the states, perhaps on an optional basis. The alternative to the public plan approach reads, in its entirety, "Option B does not include a public insurance option and instead relies on private options in a reformed and well-regulated private market." As has been widely reported, this issue will be hotly debated and may determine whether any final plan will receive support across party lines.

8. Medicaid eligibility and funding would expand significantly. For example, states would be required to make parents, pregnant women, and all children eligible if they are within 150 percent of the federal poverty level. And states would be required to maintain eligibility for all groups currently included in Medicaid. For the first five years, the federal government would bear the added costs. The state share would be phased in over the next five years: In each of those years, states would become responsible for an additional 20 percent of costs.
9. The state children's health insurance program S-CHIP would survive in modified form. While income eligibility would expand to 275 percent of the federal poverty level, the program would serve as a secondary payer, because enrollees would obtain primary coverage through the health insurance exchange.

While there is no discussion of costs in the document, most estimates of additional expenditures over the first ten years of the plan are in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion. This may prove an insuperable stumbling-block to comprehensive reform, especially if bipartisan cooperation breaks down and the Democratic leadership resorts to reconciliation as the vehicle for getting a bill done. (The reason is that the reconciliation process requires legislation to be deficit-neutral.) Congress has thus far given the cold shoulder to most of the administration's proposals for raising revenues dedicated to health reform--and the options that the administration has yet to embrace but still might (such as capping the tax exclusion for employer-provided benefits) also appear to be unpopular among many members of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office, moreover, is unlikely to certify that the new plan will yield significant offsetting savings. And, finally, sticker shock over constantly rising estimates of budget deficits precludes enacting an unfunded health insurance plan that would pile $150 billion per year on top of an annual deficit already projected to average more than $900 billion a year during the next decade. (The release of a worrisome report about the deteriorating fiscal condition of Social Security and Medicare has only intensified these concerns.)

It is entirely possible, then, that we could end up with substantial agreement on the architecture of reform and little agreement on how to pay for it. If so, Congress and the administration will have to decide whether to accept an affordable package of incremental gains that falls short of universal coverage. This would be a bitter pill for many health reform veterans to swallow, but eventually they may have no choice.

Posted: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 2:05 PM

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note: this is not a good deal from what I have read and urge folks to read some of the document. A bandaid on the problem this appears to be. Also, that "ran by the states": If the program is run by folks in the Missouri leglislature, then many folks in this area will be dead for those in my statehouse; many cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.

more details of today's arrest of single payer folks

The senate committee had single payer folks arrested. Then they went on to discuss how to tax your health care benefits. Good day for the senate, our buddies and I thought John McCain lost the election.

This, my friends, should be a great topic of conversation.

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Senate Considers Tax Increases For Healthcare Reform

Members of the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday weighed options to implement a federal tax increase to pay for a national healthcare plan.

The Committee is faced with the task of finding feasible options to pay for a healthcare plan that will cover 46 million uninsured people at an estimated cost of about $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

According to the Associated Press, the package is expected to include both spending cuts as well as tax hikes. Senators are weighing options that range from raising taxes on alcohol and sodas as well as restrictions on health care related tax breaks.

On the campaign trail last year, President Barack Obama criticized John McCain’s plan to tax benefits for employer-provided healthcare. Now, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is considering a similar plan, and Mr. Obama’s aides have reported that the president will consider the option as well.

Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the committee that the plan would encourage people to spend more on medical services.

"It gives the greatest benefit to those with the highest incomes, although they are the group that least needs help paying for health insurance," Greenstein said.

According to the AP, employer-provided health insurance is not taxed, resulting in lost federal revenue of about $250 billion each year.

Additionally, Medicare is expected to be out of funding needed to pay hospitals by 2019, although some suggest that the recession could exacerbate the problem, according to Reuters.
"Finding money that we can all agree on will not be easy," Baucus admitted.

At the start of the hearing, a group of nurses in attendance were outspoken in protesting their exclusion from the witness table as supporters of government-run health care programs.
Several others in the audience then spoke out in favor of a single-payer system before being removed from the hearing room, according to C-SPAN.

Five protestors have been arrested and charged with “Disruption of Congress,” according to a Capitol Police spokeswoman.
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On the Net:
Senate Finance Committee
Story from REDORBIT NEWS:http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=1687565Published: 2009/05/12 15:06:01 CDT© RedOrbit 2005

Ed Schultz asks a few good questions senate arrests of single-payer folks

This is a continuation of earlier stories and the story is making the rounds of television. Ed Schultz on his MSNBC show (airs weekdays at 5 PM central) asks some real questions. Why are single payer option folks not being heard and why at the healthcare summits/meetings are the decks being stacked in favor of insurance and drug companies? Good questions.

This is a treat and you might wish to take a few minutes to watch

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Another GOP hat in senate race Missouri

Tod Akin is the man. Here is a list of honors his folks putting out for a senate run in Missouri


Christian Coalition:
Only Missouri Congressman to get 100% ratings;100% lifetime rating;100% on 2004

Congressional ScoreCard.
Eagle Forum:
Akin has consistently received the highest ratings of US House Missourians;Highest in 109 th Congress, 1st Session (no percentiles assigned yet);100% in 108 th Congress, 2nd Session; 96% in 108 th Congress, 1st Session; 95% in 107th Congress, 2nd Session;Highest in 107th Congress, 1st Session (but no percentiles assigned).

Family Research Council: *
"True Blue Award" for pro-family work in 108 th and 107th Congresses.* The political "arm" spun off of Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family Ministries.

Concerned Women for America:
100% in 109th Congress, 1st Session;100% in 108th Congress;100% in 107th Congress (highest in Missouri).

English First:
100% in 2001 (when the votes were considered most important).

Campaign for Working Families:
100% in 109th Congress, 1st Session;100% in 108th Congress;100% in 107th Congress (only 100% in Missouri).

National Right to Life Committee: Akin has consistently received the highest ratings of US House Missourians;100% in 109th Congress, 1st Session; 91% in 108th Congress (would have been 100% except for Medicare vote);100% in 107th Congress;100% in Missouri State House by Missouri Right to Life;

Former Board Member of Missouri Right to Life.
showOdiogoReadNowButton ('156126', 'Will Akin "out conservative" all of them?', '7875', 290, 55);

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note, every one a right wing and some of these folks nutty as nutty can be. Were it peanut butter, I would buy right now. For senate, wonder why they did not post ratings by AFL-CIO or retiree groups