So according to the Times, the pharmaceutical companies are jacking up their prices high enough to cancel out the savings they promised Obama for the health care bill. Why am I not surprised?

What does it take for Democrats to understand how this works, anyway?

And in other healthcare reform news, the Washington Post reports what the usual suspects are up to:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama's health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation's economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.

The e-mail, written by the Chamber's senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: "The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document."

Well, of course it's assuming the outcome! They're paying someone good cash money to produce the outcome they want!

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(h/t Heather.)

I, for one, am thrilled that Dr. Dean is outside the White House, agitating for real healthcare reform. He's much more effective out here than on the inside, being back-stabbed by Rahm:

Howard Dean has emerged as President Barack Obama’s chief antagonist from the left on healthcare reform, raising questions over whether Obama made a mistake by snubbing Dean for a position in his administration.

Dean’s strong advocacy for creating a broad government-run health insurance program, known as the public option, has become a headache for Obama while at the same time giving liberals a powerful spokesman with national credibility.

Dean, who once declared himself a representative of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” has been traveling the nation this summer offering his own views on Obama’s healthcare proposal. His uncompromising stance is reminiscent of his 2004 presidential campaign that took many Democrats by surprise, and has begun to symbolize a rift between the president and those activists who played a major role in electing him.

Oh, yeah. Yoo hoo, over here! Remember us?

“Howard Dean has been the bully pulpit for the grass roots, expressing what the majority of Americans across the country are feeling but using his profile to make it newsworthy,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a liberal activist group that supports the public option.

“It might have been a blessing in disguise that Howard Dean was not brought into the admin because it has allowed him to be bully pulpit for the overwhelming majority of American people who support the public option.”

Soon after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a television interview that the public option is “not the essential element” of healthcare reform, Dean took a strong opposing stance.

“You can't really do health reform without it," Dean said of the public option in a television interview Monday, calling a major government role “the entirety of healthcare reform.” His comment spearheaded a week of liberal criticism of the administration’s mixed messages on healthcare reform. (Obama insisted on Thursday that his position on the public option has not changed and described it as “a good idea” but “not the only aspect.”)

His potential to torpedo the administration’s signature domestic proposal is somewhat ironic given Obama’s efforts to enlist potential adversaries in his administration rather than face their wrath.

Dean was once considered a candidate for secretary of Health and Human Services. Obama passed him over while appointing former rivals and potential adversaries to Cabinet posts. He named his primary rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State and asked Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a longtime critic of Democratic fiscal policy, to serve as secretary of Commerce.

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I am thoroughly disgusted by Obama's lack of effective leadership on this - and Congress's willingness to lard the bill for their contributors at our expense. It's very important that we keep the pressure on, because if we don't, we're going to be saddled with a very expensive dog of a health care "reform" bill.

I suggest you send this story to your congress creature and ask what they intend to do to protect our interests:

Reporting from Washington - Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.

The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers -- many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies' premiums.

"It's a bonanza," said Robert Laszewski, a health insurance executive for 20 years who now tracks reform legislation as president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates Inc.

Some insurance company leaders continue to profess concern about the unpredictable course of President Obama's massive healthcare initiative, and they vigorously oppose elements of his agenda. But Laszewski said the industry's reaction to early negotiations boiled down to a single word: "Hallelujah!"

The insurers' success so far can be explained in part by their lobbying efforts in the nation's capital and the districts of key lawmakers.

The bills vary in the degree to which they would empower government to be a competitor and a regulator of private insurance. But analysts said that based on the way things stand now, insurers would come out ahead.

"The insurers are going to do quite well," said Linda Blumberg, a health policy analyst at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. "They are going to have this very stable pool, they're going to have people getting subsidies to help them buy coverage and . . . they will be paid the full costs of the benefits that they provide -- plus their administrative costs."

One of the Democratic proposals that most concerns insurers is the creation of a "public option" insurance plan. The industry launched a campaign on Capitol Hill against it, grounded in a study published by the Lewin Group, a health policy consulting firm that is owned by UnitedHealth Group. The lobbyists contended that a government-run plan, which would have favorable tax and regulatory treatment, would undermine private insurers.

More Kabuki. After reading Taibbi's article, It's clear the public option is already gutted and not worth fighting for in its present form.

[...] Undermining support for the public option wasn't the only gain scored by insurance lobbyists.

In May, the Senate Finance Committee discussed requiring that insurers reimburse at least 76% of policyholders' medical costs under their most affordable plans. Now the committee is considering setting that rate as low as 65%, meaning insurers would be required to cover just about two-thirds of patients' healthcare bills. According to a committee aide, the change was being considered so that companies could hold down premiums for the policies.

Most group health plans cover 80% to 90% or more of a policyholder's medical bills, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Industry officials urged that the government set the floor lower so insurers could provide flexible, more affordable plans.

[...] Consumer advocates argue that a lower government minimum might quickly become the industry standard, placing a greater financial burden on patients and their families.

"These are a bad deal for consumers," said J. Robert Hunter, a former Texas insurance commissioner who works with the Consumer Federation of America.

Meanwhile, companies would probably see a benefit by providing less insurance "per premium dollar," Hunter said.

"It would be quite a windfall," said Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna insurance company who has become an industry whistle-blower.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders' appearance on the Rachel Maddow show last week really stuck in Bill O'Reilly's craw like a chicken bone, so he tried to spit it out by naming Sanders a "Pinhead" on The O'Reilly Factor last night.

Here's what Sanders said:

Sanders: We need to do grass roots organizing. I'll tell you what else we need to do. We need to understand that it is very, very hard for the president or anybody else to take on, not just the Republican Party - that's the easy part - to take on all of right-wing talk radio which covers 90 percent of talk show hosts, a whole FOX Network which is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party.

O'Reilly's response: To make fun of Sanders' thick New England accent and insist that Sanders' charge was "false" -- though of course he had no way of proving otherwise. Especially since Sanders is saying something every sane person who watches Fox (admittedly, those numbers are shrinking) can see for themselves.

Though to be more precise, Fox actually is an arm of movement conservatism, and the GOP is the movement's political home. So they are both components of the same ideological movement, which means that Fox isn't really an arm of the GOP, but rather its ideological partner and cohort. The difference, though, is purely a matter of nuance, since the result and effect are exactly the same.

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After claiming that former Majority Leader Dick Armey's FreedomWorks is a grass roots organization, their President Max Pappas encourages a CCC caller to sign up for their organization, and tells another caller that there is no way for them to tamp down on the behavior of these tea baggers showing up to protest at these town hall meetings.

From Think Progress:

FreedomWorks, an industry-backed right-wing group led by former GOP congressman Dick Armey, has been heavily engaged in organizing conservatives to ambush Democratic members of Congress supporting health care reform at town halls across the country during the August recess. Its “astroturf” campaign is designed to present the appearance of wide-spread public discontent with health care reform, but the reality is that the town halls have become forums for disruption, extremism and even violence.

[.....]

Another caller who claimed to be from the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) — a group that claims the U.S. is a European country and was founded by a “longtime white-power activist” — praised Pappas. “I want to salute you, you’re a true patriot,” he told Pappas, who later urged the CCC member to join FreedomWorks. “[I]f the caller wants to join FreedomWorks, it’s free. You can sign up on our website and we’ll keep you up to dated on what’s going on on Capitol Hill,” he said.

Transcript and h/t to Think Progress for a good part of it.

CALLER: Hey Max I want to salute you, you’re a true patriot. I belong to a small group out here called Council of Conservative Citizens and once you get out of the major cities and you get out into the Midwest you realize that the average American just wants to go to work, work hard, be patriotic, pay his bills and hope that the government stays out of his way. What’s happened over the last six, eight months isn’t just a progression of the Democratic Party.

This Mr. Obama is way past Democrat/Republican, it’s a socialist view that the government can take care of everybody, and you’re seeing average folks all across America just finally getting fed up and saying “This is enough. What can I do?”. And when we have our little meetings and when we went down to the tea parties, I guess I’m one of those mob people. It’s comical. Ah, we just want to say “No”, we’re Americans and you know, the old expression is that I might not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it.

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Even after admitting the involvement of groups like Right Principles and other lobbyists groups, Dobbs and Crowley attempt to paint the movement as grass roots, rather than being funded by the insurance and health care industries. Dobbs and Crowley also ignore that groups like CPR are now taking credit for ginning up the outbursts at the town hall rallies.

DOBBS: Joining me now for more our senior political analyst Candy Crowley -- Candy, what do you make of these protests and we just heard Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, obviously mocking these people and saying fairly straightforwardly that this is organized protests. Is that true?

CROWLEY: Well, listen, there is no doubt there are a lot of conservative groups out there who are using their Web sites to encourage people to go to their town hall meetings. But this is not some subterranean movement that they don't want people to know about. And there are groups that you heard of before, some of them well heeled, Conservatives for Patient's Rights.

They've had a number of ads against a sort of Obama style health care reform. They are now on their Web site trying to reach out to some of these groups -- the tea party people that we saw on tax day. Others are saying, you know, here's where the town hall meetings are and schedules like that. There's another group, Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, I'm sure you're familiar with that...

DOBBS: Sure.

CROWLEY: ... is a conservative social group. If you go on that Web site, you can see indeed where there are town hall meetings. Now, there's also an interesting place called Right Principles and I just talked to the head of that group. Now -- and his name is Robert McDuffie and he wrote a memo that has gone all over the Web about how to rock the town hall meeting. And it's very lengthy and it says, you know, go in there and stand up, you know...

DOBBS: Does it suggest whether that be a Democratic or Republican town hall meeting?

CROWLEY: It does not, but this is a group that's definitely protesting the current form of health care reform, as they see it. And he said -- and I said, so, you're starting this movement. He said you know anybody that thinks that a guy sitting in Connecticut with a Web site can influence someone in Texas to go to a town hall meeting, you know, is crazy.

I wrote this for -- he says he wrote it for grassroots activists in Connecticut. He is indeed connected to those -- was a volunteer for those who put together the tea party on tax day. And he said, but you know -- he sort of tapped into -- he said you know people come to him and say I write my congressman and then I get back a letter that doesn't even respond or I get back a letter like I'm on the other side.

And he said he just feels his frustration, so they all sort of say this is not some big master plan, but it is a loosely knit group of various conservatives who are -- the insurance industry also sending a representative to 30 states trying to urge people sympathetic to them to go to these town hall meetings, so yes there is this -- there are lots of groups out there doing this.

But it doesn't seem to be some master plan of sending people who don't understand what they're talking about. They're trying to urge like-minded people to go to these town hall meetings, which they say is what town hall meetings are about.

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On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Michelle Malkin tries to claim that the tea party movement is grass roots, and that it's 1993 all over again with health care reform.

Malkin: It's going to be a monumental month on the ground, and we've seen this percolating since February, and I've been covering the tea party movement, these counter-insurgencies on tax payer rights groups, and I think that this administration and the Democrats have vastly underestimated just how grass roots this movement is. And I think it's been, I think it's been comforting to think that it comes from the top...

Stephanopoulos: And it's a grass roots movement organized around what? What is the issue?

Malkin: Around larger government, reckless spending, and not only the redistribution of wealth, but now the redistribution of health. And I think that the White House has failed to counter the basic notion that people's health care "rights" or entitlements are going to be redistributed by social engineers. And we've seen these "town halls gone wild", that's the phrase now and I think as these law makers go back they're going to face the heat. These You Tube videos are viral, and to me it's actually very reminiscent of Hillary-Care fifteen years ago today. You probably remember this. When Hillary went to Seattle to sell the health care plan it was really a turning point when she was booed, directly, and I'm, I lived and reported in Seattle for three years. That was an extraordinary event. And we're going to see a replay of that.

The other guests go on to explain why these times have very little in common with 1993 when Hillary Clinton was trying to push health care reform.

Think Progress has the break down on how absurd Malkin's remarks are trying to claim that the tea bag movement is even remotely a grass roots one. Media Matters has some rebuttal on her new book: Malkin distorts Michelle Obama biography to attack her and her father as corrupt.

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Good God. They really are wishing and hoping for a terrorist attack.

Michael Scheuer, on Glenn Beck's show last night:

Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

I guess the wingnuts have given up the pretense of decency and normalcy. Now they're rooting for another terrorist attack, so that we stoopid Americans will finally WAKE UP! to the nature of the evil that conspires against us ...

Actually, we're becoming quite awake indeed. And it isn't bin Laden who scares us right now. More like Glenn Beck and his guests.

From what I hear, despite Arlen's efforts to reassure state Dems, Sestak is running anyway. Should be interesting!

A few days after he switched parties, Sen. Arlen Specter went on Meet the Press and hotly denied reports he had promised President Obama he would be a "loyal Democrat."

In dozens of conference calls and meetings since then, Specter has been trying to reassure Democratic elected officials, county chairs, and party activists around Pennsylvania of the opposite proposition: that he can be counted upon to support the president.

Participants in these efforts say that Specter has been relaxed and direct as he lays out his case, dwelling on instances in which he bucked his former Republican Party during a 29-year Senate career. Specter has been received well, they say, though some skeptics are eager for a Democrat with a more liberal record to challenge him in the 2010 primary.

"I've read about his diligence before, but I've been really impressed to see how they're reaching down to the very base of the grass roots," said Jack Hanna of Indiana County, chairman of the state party's Southwest caucus, who was on two conference calls with Specter. "The guy's on top of it."

This weekend, Specter faces the biggest public test so far of his appeal to party regulars, appearing at the Democratic State Committee spring meeting in Pittsburgh. He is scheduled to host a dessert reception after a fund-raising dinner tonight and to make a major speech tomorrow.

U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak of Delaware County, who has said he intends to run against Specter for the Democratic nomination, also plans to attend.

On Monday, Specter had a breakfast meeting with Democratic leaders in Montgomery County, moved on to Delaware County for lunch, and met with Chester County leaders in the evening.

At the Montgomery gathering, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fort Washington, Specter faced a couple of challenging questions about his support for key elements of former President George W. Bush's agenda, including the tax cuts for the wealthy and the Iraq war.

"He was one of the enablers in the Senate because, as a moderate with a lot of seniority, he was in a position to stand up to Bush," said Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel. "I have a hard time getting past that."

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While the GOP struggles to find someone -- anyone -- to be the leader who'll get them out of the political wilderness, their current leader, and the man who did more to lead them into that wilderness, is starting to make it clear he's chosen the figurehead to replace George W. Bush:

Sarah Palin.

On Monday's Rush broadcast, he dissed the GOP's current "reconnect" efforts, and said they were all missing the boat -- because Palin wasn't there:

If Jeb wants to run around and say that they've got something and we don't have anything -- I mean, the Democrats got something. We have to admit it. If we don't have something, it's the fault of the people that Jeb is meeting with in Arlington, Virginia, not conservatives and not conservatism and not the grass roots!

Ah, the -- what's -- I have to laugh. Specter and all these people talk about how far right the party's moving? It's the exact opposite. This party has muddled its identity to the point that they have to do this tour to come up with a new brand, that they're rebrand the Republican -- why? Because in many places, you can't distinguish it from the Democratic Party.

Something else you have to understand. These people hate Palin, too. They despise Sarah Palin. They fear Sarah Palin. They don't like her, either. She's -- according to them, she's embarrassing. A lot of this is aimed at Sarah Palin. When you -- when you -- when you strip all the talk that the Reagan era is over and we got to stop all this nostalgia and stuff, clearly, in last year's campaign, the most prominent, articulate voice for standard run-of-the-mill good old-fashioned American conservatism was Sarah Palin.

Now, everybody on this "speak to America" tour has presidential perspirations. Mitt Romney's out there. He wants to be president again. Jeb may some day. Eric Cantor, some of the others, McCain -- I don't think he does, but you never know. So this is -- this is -- this is an early campaign event, 2012 presidential campaign, primary campaign, with everybody there but Sarah Palin.

And then, yesterday, he was even more explicit:

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Bernie Sanders weighs in on what the differences are between President Obama's budget, what the Conservadems are going to agree to, and what the Republicans are going to try to block. Sanders feels that if the Democrats are forced to get sixty votes for anything they'd like through the Congress it will be watered down and likely not be worth passing. Always one to fight the good fight, Sanders tells us what most of us here anyway already know. It's going to take a strong grass roots movement to combat all the special interest dollars flowing into the campaign coffers of members of Congress.

Olbermann: There's a quote in The Atlantic magazine from an unnamed White official who says these pro-budget ads won't hurt, won't help. What do you think on this? Should the President's supporters be calling their Congressman's and their Senator's offices and saying look this is what I voted for. Don't screw this up.

Sanders: I think so. I think what we need to never forget Keith is that here in Washington we have enormously powerful special interests. You know the financial institutions in the last ten years spent five billion dollars so that we can deregulate Wall Street and that got us to where we are today.

The insurance companies and the drug companies make huge amounts of money keeping us the only nation in the industrialized world without a national health care program. So what we need to combat that enormous power of the big money interests is a strong grass roots movement.

Senator Sanders apparently had a busy day preceeding this interview. He took time to come on the set of Democracy Now: Sen. Sanders Blocking Vote to Confirm Obama Nominee Who Worked to Deregulate Credit Default Swaps.

He also shot down Senator Judd Gregg over his priorities for Americans during a committee meeting on the budget: Senator Sanders "You'll Give Billionaires Tax Cuts But No Health Care For The Middle Class!