Baucus health bill would let private group write rules

Healthcare overhaul legislation moving through the Senate Finance Committee would put crucial rule-making authority in the hands of a private association of state insurance commissioners that consumer advocates fear is too closely tied to the industry.

The National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners currently writes model laws and regulations that individual states are free to accept or discard. Under the bill by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), it would craft a model rule governing "health insurance rating, issuance and marketing requirements" that would become "the new federal minimum standard without any further congressional action." States would be permitted to deviate from the standards only by appealing to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In effect, the bill would allow the group to write many of the new rules on issuing and marketing insurance to millions of uninsured Americans who would be required to purchase policies.

"The NAIC is clearly an organization that is dominated by the insurance industry," said California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a former state insurance commissioner.

Read it all at latimes.com

Mobilization for Health Care for All

On September 29th in New York City, the Mobilization for Health Care for All is launching a national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. We want the real "public option": Medicare for All, a single payer plan that cuts out the profit and puts patients first.

Insurance companies are the real death panels in America. They make billions in profit and millions for their CEOs while millions of Americans have no health insurance and over 45,000 die every year because they can't get the care they need. That's more than 120 people every day. These insurance companies deny care to their members and the American people for profit.

America deserves better, and that's why we voted for change. But the insurance companies are spending millions to confuse and scare the public to keep us from ending their grip on our health and our money. With teabagger town hall protestors and the right-wing noise machine on their side, they're winning. We can't let that happen. It's time to take the fight to the real villain in the health care debate.

When the civil rights movement faced a similar challenge in the struggle to end segregation, nonviolent civil disobedience moved the nation and made reform possible. Just like the lunch counter sit-ins did for the civil rights movement, we have to make it impossible for the media and our country to ignore how outrageous the status quo of private insurance is for the American people.

It only takes a small group of people to do a sit-in in your community, but our actions can inspire every American who has been abused by the insurance companies and believes it's time for real reform to fight for it. This campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience will continue until the insurance companies no longer stand between the American people and the health care that is our right.

Already, doctors, nurses, patients, and people just like you are signing up to be one of the 100 ordinary but courageous people who will launch this nonviolent battle to end private insurance abuse and win health care for all. Join us! We can't wait any longer - every day more people die because of the insurance company death panels. Sign Up!

Watch the video at YouTube. | Follow the campaign on Twitter

Poll: Big Majorities Dismiss Leading Right Wing Health Care Attacks As “Scare Tactics” |

Hard to believe some days, but apparently, a large portion of the country is still sane:

Buried in a new Bloomberg poll is evidence that solid majorities dismiss all the leading right wing health care talking points as “scare tactics.”

Read it all at The Plum Line

Rep. Donna Edwards on Healthcare Reform

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), Congressional Progressive Caucus, Member Talks Healthcare on CSpan's Washington Journal. Click here for the C-SPAN Video

Tracking The Money In The Health Care Debate

Millions of dollars are pouring into Capitol Hill this summer, as lobbyists jockey to have their clients' interests represented in three major pieces of legislation just beginning to take shape. The objects of the lobbyists' attention: massive bills on health care, banking regulation and energy.


In "Dollar Politics," a multipart, multimedia series beginning this week, NPR examines this extraordinary intersection between money and politics and what it could mean for public policy.

Two NPR correspondents attended the first legislative action on health care reform: a meeting of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. We also sent a photographer to take pictures — not of the senators, but of the audience, the people watching the committee meeting, many of them lobbyists.

These days, just about every interest has a lobbyist. Drug manufacturers, hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, marriage counselors, chiropractors, unions; they all have people working the Hill for them. And that's just a fraction of the groups. After all, the health care industry now represents one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

Read more at NPR