Via the Plumline. You know, this wouldn't be difficult to fix. A phone interview with a staffer noting all major current issues and asking about any financial connection, and a release you sign to that effect before going on the air. In fact, it's so easy to do that I'd guess they just don't want to know.

I mean, why is a known GOP hack treated as an "expert," anyway?

Of course, if they fixed this, they'd have no one left to interview but neutral academic types and bloggers, but it would make for much more educational TV! Greg Sargent:

CNN has acknowledged in a statement to me that a high-profile Republican commentator who frequently discusses health care on the air is also the media buyer for one of the ad campaigns bankrolled by America’s Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group currently waging war against the White House and Dem reform proposals.

CNN tells me his ties to the industry will be disclosed in the future.

The CNN contributor, well-known GOP consultant Alex Castellanos, is best known for producing the racially-charged “Hands” ad, has repeatedly appeared on the network attacking Dem health care plans and the public option, which is strongly opposed by AHIP.

Castellanos’s consulting firm, National Media, also recently placed over $1 million of TV advertising for AHIP, according to info obtained by Media Matters. AHIP’s most recent $1 million ad buy attacks the health care plan as a threat to Medicare.

And in other CNN-related news, some real progress:

Some good news today-- we're raised enough to move forward with our TV ad buy with our partners at Media Matters and DropDobbs.com as part of the effort to hold CNN accountable for airing 260 hours of anti-immigrant hate (aka Lou Dobbs Tonight) a year.

We just sent this email out to our advocates, below. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners to keep the pressure on CNN.

Any help with blog coverage or social networking outreach would be much appreciated! I just tweeted this:

Spread the Word! RT @americasvoice: Success: Dobbs Ad to Air on CNN http://bit.ly/33FoZl #ri4a #CNN #p2 #immigration

Health care activists confront Horizon BCBSNJ Executive Tom Rubino outside Horizon headquarters in Newark NJ.

I was interested in this story, not the least because, well, this is my COBRA carrier and Horizon's crazy reimbursement rates are the reason why my doctor was kicked out of their network. But really, it could be anybody's insurer. (Oh, and please: If you're having a problem like this with an insurer, call your congressman's office. They usually have a staffer who does nothing but handle insurance problems for constituents.)

BAYONNE, N.J. -- One February morning, a courier arrived at the front desk of Bayonne Medical Center, trying to get to a patient's bedside. His mission: to deliver a letter from New Jersey's dominant health insurer warning that the patient would face a huge hospital bill if he did not leave right away.

Hospital security guards stopped the courier -- and 13 others who came soon after -- before they reached patients' rooms. But then came the faxes and, after that, the letters mailed to patients' doctors and homes. Told that her health plan would not pay for her to stay in the hospital, a 35-year-old social worker named Lisa with a severe lung infection was so unnerved that, tethered to an IV pole dripping antibiotics into her arm, she began to pack her gym bag before a staff member coaxed her back into bed.

The hardball tactics being used to pry patients from their sickbeds illustrate the colliding financial interests that pervade U.S. health care. It is a tug of war over where patients are treated, who decides how much care they receive and -- fundamentally -- which parts of the health-care industry gain or lose when people become ill.

The battle playing out in Bayonne has particular relevance as Congress tries to rewrite the rules that govern health care nationwide -- with hospitals, insurers, doctors and other stakeholders descending on Capitol Hill to angle for advantage. The bills before the House and the Senate would shift the system's balance of power that has evolved over decades -- a balance at the core of the dispute here.

Yet the fight over hospital patients in this working-class enclave also hints at the limits of what federal health-care changes would accomplish; none of the bills would legislate away the specific business practices that have escalated into a full-scale brawl between the city's only hospital and New Jersey's largest health insurer, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield. Lawsuits are flying in both directions, each side accusing the other of fraud, greed and underhanded behavior that harms consumers and increases medical costs. Bayonne accuses Horizon of harassing patients and not paying its bills. Horizon accuses Bayonne of price-gouging and interfering with its health plans.

Such a sharp clash of self-interests is evidence that President Obama may have been naive in suggesting early on that health care's stakeholders are now willing to set aside rivalries that have thwarted previous attempts at reform, said Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University who led a state commission on New Jersey's shaky hospital finances. "It's no different from Iraq with all the different tribes. . . . 'How does it affect the money flow to my interest group?' " he said. "They are all sitting in the woods with their machine guns, waiting to shoot."

In such a tense climate, Bayonne has become virtually the only hospital in the country that has withdrawn in protest from the "provider networks" of every major insurer, abandoning a tradeoff that has become a staple of the health-care system: Hospitals agree to be paid lower rates in exchange for knowing that insurers will steer patients to their beds. Bayonne is not, however, the only hospital at odds with Horizon. Four others have pulled out Horizon's network or are close to leaving.

So they're rolling out the heavy guns, hiding behind yet another astroturf front. I wonder why they're always hiding behind these fake grassroots organizations? Could it be they don't want people to know the kind of money the massive financial interests against health care reform are spending to stop it?

The new anti-health reform front group known as the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, is being managed by the lobbying firm known as the DCI Group. After being contacted by ThinkProgress this afternoon about its sponsorship of CPPR’s press conference last week, DCI Group staffers acknowledged that they coordinate PR for the front group. Not be confused with Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, another front group opposing health reform, CPPR has been organizing lobbying efforts against health reform and publishing op-eds across the country with misinformation about the public option.

Tom Synhorst, a former staffer to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Bob Dole, joined fellow right-wing operatives Doug Goodyear and Tim Hyde to form DCI Group in 1996. The firm quickly flourished working for the tobacco industry, coordinating a sophisticated astroturf campaign to build public opposition to tobacco regulations. Ironically, before helping to manage this “patients’ rights” campaign, DCI founded “Smokers’ Rights” groups across the country for the tobacco lobby. Indeed, DCI has specialized in manufacturing “grassroots” support — using telemarketers, PR events, and letter writing campaigns — to achieve policy results for narrow corporate interests:

– The DCI Group was retained by the pharmaceutical industry to whip up public opposition against House legislation that would permit the reimportation of FDA-approved drugs from Canada and elsewhere. [Washington Monthly, December/2003]

– The DCI Group worked with Republicans to form various “grassroots” front-groups to amplify President Bush’s call to privatize Social Security. [Center for Media and Democracy, 3/18/05]

– Chris LaCivita, a former DCI Group staffer, took a lead role in organizing the Swift Boat Veterans campaign to smear John Kerry and his war record. [CommonDreams, 8/31/04]

– The DCI Group was behind spoof videos mocking Al Gore and global warming. The firm has been retained by ExxonMobil to lobby. [Wall Street Journal, 8/3/06; Exxon Secrets, accessed 7/28/09

While it is unclear who is funding this latest CPPR front group, DCI has in the past worked for health insurance companies. In 2002, the American Prospect reported that DCI had been hired by the Health Benefits Coalition, a trade association of for-profit HMOs trying to “thwart congressional action on the patients’ bill of rights."

One of the things I've learned from my many years in journalism (and yes, even my short stint as a political staffer) is that when legislation is first proposed, people throw a bunch of crap on the wall and duke it out over the details. You know why they say it's like watching sausage being made? Because it's stomach-churning.

Several bloggers linked to this. They're taking the article in good faith and assume it's accurate in its conclusions (that the public option has been gutted and the idea of "reform" amounts to a bait and switch), and I just don't believe that.

The author doesn't even seem to understand how legislation is made. It's kind of like judging the way a finished room will look by painting a stripe on the wall: It's not the whole picture.

The bills are usually weakened at this point in the process - but they're fixed later in committee. One of the reasons it still works like this is so politicians can say, "I voted against that!" if part of a bill becomes controversial in his or her district. (Remember the thing with Kerry, where he said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I was against it"? He's right. All politicians do it.) Some of the same politicians who are screaming on the teevee against this will be a lot more reasonable once the cameras aren't running. The final committee work is what counts.

So really, the sky isn't falling. I would tell you if I thought it was. I mean, I'm not exactly known as Obama's biggest booster, am I?

I'd rather ward off the attacks from the insurance companies and the Blue Dogs instead. It's no secret that I think single payer is the best solution - but I'm not going to try to poison this compromise bill to prove a point.

The next best thing to single payer is structural change that really makes people understand and support the concept that health care can and should be accessible to everyone. This bill will do that, and we can improve from there.

I'm actually shocked to find the more I look at the long-term strategy here, the more I like it. The fact is, it will be a lot more politically difficult for members of Congress to vote against those future incremental improvements than to vote against the entire plan now. Once it's in place, and constituents start calling their elected officials with complaints about flaws in the bill, they're going to have to fix those problems - or at the very least, not get in the way of the solution.

Remember: Social Security only covered about half of the people when it first passed. It took almost 10 years to get there, but you couldn't take it away now. The voters would be furious.

We won't get there overnight, but this bill will at least be a decent start.

Somebody has to tell Sen. Tom Coburn that he was elected to office and is bound by their rules.

(UPI) -- Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said Thursday he would invoke privilege if asked about advice he gave to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., on handling an extramarital affair.

Coburn said he was talking to Ensign about his tryst with a former staffer in his capacities as a doctor and a man of the cloth, Roll Call reported.

"I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon," Coburn said. "That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the (Senate) Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody."

Doug Hampton, whose wife had engaged in an affair with Ensign, has claimed Coburn urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons millions of dollars after Hampton confronted Ensign about the affair.

"I categorically deny everything he said," Coburn said. Coburn said he has acted as a counselor to other lawmakers in the past. "Ya'll don't know about all the people I've counseled," he told Roll Call when asked why Ensign sought his help.

Coburn is bound by congressional law, I would imagine, and if he's going to stick his nose into salacious dealings that may cross the line, then he'll need to answer whatever questions come his way.

Some of you may recall from last week, this little racist gem from Rusty DePass, a GOP activist from South Carolina who referred to an escaped gorilla as an ancestor of Michelle Obama. And now, from the state of Tennessee, we bring you the Obama "Spook" photo e-mailed from a GOP Senator's office -- on an official state e-mail account, no less:

Sherri Goforth, a legislative staffer working for Sen. Diane Black, a Gallatin Republican, confirmed to Nashville Is Talking that she sent around an email depicting portraits of all the U.S. presidents — but on the last slot, where Barack Obama should be, there is just an empty black spot with two eyes (see right).

Get it? Huh? Not really…

When asked whether she understood the controversial nature of sending the email on her state account, Goforth replied, “I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button … I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.” Goforth told NIT she received a letter of reprimand from Sen. Black.

She's sick about it alright -- sick that she got caught and exposed as a racist -- not because she sent out a highly offensive, racist image of our president. Not to worry dear C&L'ers, Goforth is keeping her job, for the moment:

Update 2:Black confirmed that she had reprimanded Goforth verbally and in writing. She said no further action was anticipated.

Read on...

Wonkette had this to add:

NOTHING as funny as the idea of … people with dark complexions. Even when you’re just sending the Funnies to proper white folk, there is still often a “N.L.” who will complain about old-fashioned Southern comedy.