Comparing the national mood in the summer of 2009 with the national mood in the summer of 2001 is a bit like comparing bald eagles with chickens. Not only are they different birds altogether, but they live in entirely different environments. In the summer of 2001, the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. In the summer of 2009, it stands at …
Health Care
Obama and PhRMA: Deal or No Deal?
Yesterday’s New York Times report of a behind-the-scenes deal between the White House and the drug lobby is causing no small degree of consternation among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Over at HuffPost, Ryan Grim is reporting that Senators received assurances from the White House that there was no deal that would prevent Medicare from …
Obama’s Secret Deal With The Drugmakers
Shrewd politics–or cynical ones? In today’s NYT, David Kirkpatrick shines a light on the secret deal that the Obama White House made with the pharmaceutical industry to keep it at the table in health reform negotiations. It turns out that even as they were applauding their deal to find $80 billion in savings, they weren’t telling us …
Health Reform: Euthanasia and Other Rumors
Harold Pollack dispenses with them (and their sources) here.
Re: YouTube Wars…
That “Shock Uncovered” video is from the very same health care forum that I posted about yesterday. And as I noted then, there was indeed a shock — to Obama, who showed up unprepared, and (I am convinced) without any real idea what, specifically, he wanted to do about health care reform.
As I also noted yesterday, that was not the …
YouTube Wars: The White House Vs. DrudgeReport
We live in a land where a person who goes by the name “NakedEmperor” with editing software and a laptop can rattle the President of the United States. On Monday, Matt Drudge began teasing this video on his website, a scattershot work of highly edited oppo.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk&hl=en&fs=1&]
On Tuesday, …
Playing Politics With Health Care In Texas
In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat held up Texas as “model citizen” in this difficult economy. And while I’ll take a back seat to no one in my regard for my home state, I have to take issue with Douthat’s suggestion that President Obama should be looking to Texas as he tries to figure out a way to fix health care. As …
Should Judd Apatow Have Been On TIME’s Cover?
Health care, schmelthcare…
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You can read Joel Stein’s profile of Apatow here.
Obama’s Health Care Learning Curve
The Washington Post is running excerpts from Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson’s new book about the 2008 campaign–must-read for political junkies, because the two veteran Washington Post reporters give us a lot of insights from the key players themselves. They also have access to important emails and documents, like Obama political strategist …
Health Insurance Reform?
My cover story on health care reform in this week’s TIME focuses in part on this famously eloquent President’s frustration at his inability to come up with a message at a time when, as he acknowledges, public opinion is slipping away from him. (Also, be sure you don’t miss Kate Pickert’s excellent click-through guide of what health …
Re: Not So Fast
Pushback on yet another front: The emerging deal the bipartisan negotiators of the Finance Committee (whom some of their colleagues have begun to refer to as “the Coalition of the Willing“) isn’t going over so well with all the Democrats on the panel.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, who chairs Finance’s health subcommittee (and who hasn’t …
Not So Fast
Just as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was heading to the mircophones yesterday to announce that “things are looking good” for his group of six bipartisan negotiators, one of those negotiators, Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, the top Republican on the HELP Committee, was putting out this statement:
Subject: Enzi: Deal Far From
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Obama Health Care Interview
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down the President Obama in the Oval Office to discuss the state of his health care reform effort. TIME.com has a few excerpts here. There will be more (much more) online in the coming days, and in the upcoming edition of the print magazine.