We’re now in the midst of four hours of final debate on the health care bill. After two hours of gabbing – double the time allotted thanks to GOP foot dragging – the House passed the rule on the bill 242-192 with 15 Dems joining all Republicans in voting Nay. The vote provided some hope for Dems that the final version will pass …
Nancy Pelosi
And We’re Off…
The House has just started debate on the rule on the health care bill. Thus far Rep. Tom Price, a George Republican, has objected to every speaker – mostly women Democratic representatives talking about women’s health care issues (note to GOP: the optics of Price bullying and yelling over these women ain’t great). If it’s gonna …
Tea Party Protesters Swarm the Hill
There was a moment at today’s tea party protests when an angry crowd of 10,000 stood facing the bulk of the House Republican conference on the steps to the Capitol chanting: “Throw them out!” Members looked at each other nervously, as if saying silently to one another: hopefully they mean throw the Democrats out?
With this …
Lofgren’s Bad Day
It’s safe to say that Thursday was an eminently bad day for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat. Lofgren, chair of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, thought much of the news cycle that day would revolve around a 20-page report clearing Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican who had been referred to the committee …
Medicaid: The OTHER Public Option
As I noted earlier, the real surprise in the House health care bill wasn’t the public plan–we had pretty much known for days that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t have the votes to pass her preferred version, the so-called “robust” public plan, which would have closely tied its reimbursements to health care providers to Medicare’s …
House Health Bill
is here, all 1,990 pages of it. I’m still trying to figure it out. But from the early details I’ve seen, it strikes me that the real news here is not the public option, but rather, the decision to expand Medicaid eligibility all the way up to 150% of poverty. That’s a significant increase from earlier versions, which went to 133%. Both …
UPDATE: Nonsense
Someone needs to explain to a few conservative bloggers what satire looks like. Your first clue might be when it mentions dates that are in the future.
Health Care: Public Option Smoke Signals
We are clearly at a very weird phase of this process, as David Kurtz explains here.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve got anything that resembles clarity, but I’m being told by a normally trustworthy source that at last night’s White House meeting, the President referred to the triggered public option as one of the ideas on the table …
AHIP Backlash
Finance Committee Finishes Its Work
It’s all over but the vote. The Senate Finance Committee–the most closely watched of the five congressional panels that have jurisdiction over health reform, and the final one to weigh in–worked until after 2 a.m. this morning, finishing its markup of health legislation.
Final passage is expected next week. The only suspense there …
Freaked Out Freshmen
Yes, they’re worried about seniors with paddle boards — in a sense.
As Speaker Pelosi right now meets with her caucus for the second time today and the third time this week as members try to come to consensus on a health care bill, here’s a story from this week’s dead tree edition on what has so many of her freshmen and …
Pelosi Chokes Up
The topic of the day on all the cable nets seems to be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s emotional plea for calm during her regular weekly briefing yesterday.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JTAKPcM3o]
Gosh Darn that Joe Wilson
The House of Representatives today took an hour to condemn rep. Joe Wilson for yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during his address of the Joint Session last week on health care reform. Wilson’s apology was accepted by Obama’s chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel but he refused to apologize a second time to his House colleagues …