Pam Martens: Wall Street's killer instinct spells death knell for jobs

OurFuture: Colorado Springs, conservatism's shining city

Multi Medium: Great moments in rationalization

AMERICAblog News: HHS investigating Blue Cross of CA for raising rates 39%

They gave us a republic: Nightowl Newswrap

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Elemental Praxis, BITTER LAWYER, First of the Month

DOWNLOADS: 1475

PLAYS: 667

Embed

Information always has a soothing effect on me, and I'm feeling much calmer after tonight's White House conference call. Obama advisor David Axelrod and White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle took the time to answer our questions.

I started by asking about the recent maneuver to block imported drugs. I said it was "shameless," not only because Candidate Obama ran on the issue of allowing Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada, but because the FDA already does site inspections in those same plants they were calling unsafe. (Basically, in order to sell any drugs in America, your manufacturing facility must meet the same standards as an American plant.)

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they would be submitting an HHS bill in the near future - they'd "just this week" gotten funding to address any safety concerns, but more importantly, to start putting an infrastructure in place to import drugs.

My other question (as a former reporter who frequently covered insurance corruption) was about using state insurance commissioners to enforce new insurance regulations.

I said that in many states, insurance commissioners were pretty much owned by the local insurance companies, and I was skeptical as to whether making them the enforcers would actually work.

DeParle said HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius, a former state insurance commissioner, was not one of "those" commissioners, and she would be overseeing state departments. Sebelius already met with state insurance commissioners, she said, and having found a wide discrepancy in authority from state to state, got language inserted in the bill that would give them additional powers. (DeParle noted that the West Virginia commissioner didn't even have the authority to see if insurance companies were solvent.)

DeParle said this was the widest expansion of insurance regulation in 20 years.

David Axelrod also chimed in, noting these changes were part of the reason why the insurance industry has opposed the bills so stringently. If this was a giveaway, he said, they wouldn’t be lobbying so hard to defeat the bill.

I have to give it to Axelrod on this: Without even a little exaggeration, I'd say that standardizing state oversight is probably the insurance industry's worst nightmare. They've always taken advantage of a hodgepodge of weak state regulations, sprinkling generous political contributions along the way to buy off state legislators. So this bill is really what you want from federal regulation: Overriding weak state laws that trample consumers.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (956)

PLAYS: (2686)

Embed

h/t David

From This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz get into one of those discussions over this week's breast screening recommendations in which the Republican simply constructs an alternate reality:

BLACKBURN: ... Debbie is right when she says they forgot about people. Indeed, they did. But we have to realize, this group that made this recommendation, this isn't some outside group. This is a part of HHS. And when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's an independent group. That is not accurate.

BLACKBURN: ... 118 -- when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It is not a part of HHS.

BLACKBURN: No, it is a part of HHS.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, it is not.

BLACKBURN: And when you look at what is going to happen with these 118 new bureaucracies with 62 directives that are given by the health choices commissioner on what insurance can be offered in this country after 2013 and what is going to be paid, you know that this is the bureaucrat in the exam room. This is how it's going to happen.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha...

BLACKBURN: And this is the first step.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha, there's an insurance company bureaucrat in the -- in between the patient and her doctor right now.

BLACKBURN: This is breast cancer. Well, and people don't like that, and we need to get rid of...

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And your bill -- your -- your alternative...

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: We need to get rid of all of those insurance bureaucrats.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: ... does nothing to...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop this right now.

Yes, George. Because your job is to provide a showcase. You're not supposed to confront the guests when they make things up.

Newshoggers: Obama's insistence on sheltering the toxic fallout survivors of Bush's criminal policies has already poisoned his presidency for me

TAPPED: WTF? In the wake of George Tiller's assassination, Obama has appointed Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), to head the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services. Kelley has made it clear that she seeks to reduce access to abortion. 

Corrente: Robert Reich on how Olympia Snowe's "trigger" will kill the public option

Emptywheel: All the News the NYT does not see fit to print

Mugsy’s Rap Sheet: We don't always agree with the president, but we haven't accused him of treason. Sign the petition to censure Senator Inhofe for his dishonest and destructive attacks on Obama

WEB TV News: Tired of the same old TV propaganda? You can get some of the rest of the world's here (hat tip CW)

OK, this might be a bogus report, but the Politico mentioned Blue Dog Jim Cooper as a possible replacement for Daschle.

But some potential replacements for Daschle could include former Vermont Gov. and DNC Chair Howard Dean, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.)

Digby writes about the media's suck up to Cooper's foray into the health care debate under Clinton:

Jim Cooper is an enemy of universal health care. He will, however, work to ensure that the insurance industry and the Big Pharma gets more of your tax dollars.

Read this report and weep.

The country cannot afford another giveaway to Big Insurance and Pharma and desperately needs a complete overhaul of the system in order to get costs into line and get people covered. This recession is going to end up making more than 50 million people without health insurance, very possibly more than that. Many more are terribly underinsured. Obama cannot put some slimy Blue Dog opportunist in charge of it.

Make sure to read Digby's entire post. I Like Howard Dean very much and hope he gets the job, but what Obama cannot do is appoint fraking Blue Dogs to help pass Universal Health Care. It's going to be a tough fight even if Americans voted in Obama to do exactly that. You can be sure that the media will adopt right wing talking points and feature members from the conservatives in Congress and Gingrich types to set the tone to help defeat universal health care. The economic stimulus debate so far has been a primer for what's to come.

DOWNLOAD (163)

PLAY (235)

Not a good day for the Obama administration:

Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle on Tuesday withdrew his nomination to oversee the Health and Human Services Department, just a few hours after another Obama nominee also withdrew.

Both had controversies with taxes and cited distractions over that as their reasons for withdrawing.

In a White House statement, President Barack Obama said he accepted Daschle's withdrawal "with sadness and regret."

I gather that Daschle woke up, read the NYT editorial, realized he was going to be a major distraction for Obama, and opted out.

It's unfortunate, but probably the right decision.

DOWNLOAD (120)

PLAY (181)

So Tom Daschle is going to be Health and Human Services Secretary. Even the Republicans agree that it's a brilliant choice, since it will take someone with real knowledge of how to get things done in Congress to be an effective secretary here.

It's a key position because it means Daschle is going to be the point man on Obama's plans for health-care reform. Daschle already has laid out where he's going, and it's a decidedly progressive direction -- though, notably, it still falls short of a single-payer system.