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MarketWatch:

A health-care overhaul proposed by Senate Democrats will cost $849 billion over 10 years, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, and slash the deficit by $127 billion over the next decade.

The price tag is just under President Barack Obama's target of $900 billion over 10 years.

The estimates, from the Congressional Budget Office, also showed that the bill would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 31 million people, said the Journal, citing a senior Senate leadership aide.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been anxiously awaiting the CBO's price tag for the bill before moving to debate on the Senate floor. The first procedural vote could come later this week on the bill. Obama wants to sign a health-care reform bill before the end of the year.

Like a bill that passed the House on Nov. 7, the Senate's bill aims to cover most Americans, bar insurers from denying coverage to sick people, set up insurance "exchanges" where people can shop for coverage and fine those who don't get insurance. It also sets up a government-run insurance plan, expected to enroll about 6 million people.

But Reid faces a number of hurdles in getting a bill through the Senate, including concerns about the measure's cost. Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., are among two of Reid's fellow Democrats who have openly worried about the cost of health-care reform.

Per what I've been told from Senate leadership offices, the Senate health care bill will:

• cut the budget deficit by $127 billion over 10 years
• cut the budget deficit by $650 billion in the second decade
• extend guaranteed coverage to more than 9% of Americans -- including a 31 million person reduction in the uninsured

Reid will probably file cloture on the motion to proceed tomorrow. The CBO's report should go up on the Senate Democrats site shortly.

This New York Times article gives the same scary media narrative repeated everywhere else in the past few days:

Despite new recommendations that most women start breast screening at 50 rather than 40, many doctors said Tuesday that they were simply not ready to make such a drastic change.

“It’s kind of hard to suggest that we should stop examining our patients and screening them,” said Dr. Annekathryn Goodman, director of the fellowship program in gynecological oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I would be cautious about changing a practice that seems to work.”

The recommendations, issued Monday by a federal advisory panel, reversed widely promoted guidelines and were intended to reduce overtreatment. The panel said the benefits of screening women in their 40s — saving one life for every 1,904 women screened for 10 years — were outweighed by the potential for unnecessary tests and treatment, and the accompanying anxiety. Women considered at high risk should continue to have early screening, the panel said.

So I'm reading all these stories and saying, "Where's the data about the risk from radiation?"

I finally found this important (and missing) piece of the puzzle in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Radiation causes 1 death for every 2,000 women screened annually starting at age 40, according to a study published in 2005 in the British Journal of Cancer. Another study shows that each mammogram increases the risk of breast cancer by 2 percent. Mammography also saves women's lives, so that's why it's a trade-off.

Here's some more info from Respectful Insolence, a medical research blog.

Got that? Statistically, some women have approximately as much chance of getting breast cancer from a mammogram as they have of it saving their lives. That's why it's considered a policy wash.

Yes, you might be one of those rare women saved by early detection. But you might also be someone who develops breast cancer from the yearly radiation exposure.

By the way, the policy change recommendation doesn't apply to women with symptoms. It's for screening mammograms only, not the diagnostic kind.

UPDATE: Sebelius tells women to "ignore" the recommendation. How about we give women all the information - and let them decide?

Boy, that's a pretty big jump. The new numbers include deaths indirectly caused by flu complications like pneumonia:

Swine flu has killed nearly 4,000 people in the US, including 540 children, officials said after devising a new counting method.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the new system is based on more precise figures provided by 10 states.

The previous estimated death toll from the H1N1 virus in the US was 672.

Latest figures show about 22 million Americans contracted the virus in six months with some 98,000 hospitalised.

"This is just the first six months and I am expecting all of these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise," said Dr Anne Schuchat of the CDC.

She said that, although still imprecise, the new statistics provide "a bigger picture of what has been going on in the first six months of the pandemic".

The CDC now estimates that 3,900 people in the US have died from the virus in the past six months.

Dr Schuchat said that in children under 18, an estimated eight million have had swine flu, with 36,000 hospitalised and 540 deaths.

The new estimated death toll for children is four times higher than the previous estimate.

"We will be updating the toll that the pandemic has taken... about every three to four weeks," she said.

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What a week. We've already seen Blue Dogs take women to the back of the bus (or was it the alley?) with Stupak's impressively Stupid Amendment. Now we're hearing that those who supposedly worry about "too much spending" when it comes to health care--you know, the meatloaf-brains who rejected the public option, which would create competition and actually bring down costs--are now blathering on about embracing "tort reform."

Because you'd really want to take away the rights of victims in a democracy to lower the health care costs by...wait for it...wait for it... ".5%" (according to the CBO).

All you really need to know is that Blue Dogs/GOPers (is there any difference?) are those in favor of this counterproductive course of action, yet if you do indeed need more, watch the heart wrenching videos recounting the tragic results of medical malpractice. To learn more about the 98,000 lives lost due to medical error each year--or 268 every day--go to 98,000 reasons, a website set up by the American Association for Justice. Once there send a message to your Senator: Remind them you won't have your rights further stripped away so they can scarf down more caviar with their contributors at Big Insurance.

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Last week over at StarkReports.com, I began asking Republican opponents of health care reform if they could tell me how many of their constituents are uninsured. I asked Joe Wilson, Steve King, Jim DeMint, Darryl Issa and Virginia Foxx. None of them could answer the question.

Today, after months of debate, the House vote is upon us. Steve King decided to rally the tea-baggers on the Capitol lawn one more time. About 15-25 other Republicans joined him on the stage at various times. I caught several of them as they made their way between their offices, the chamber and the rally. Once again, not a single republican I spoke with knew how many of their constituents are uninsured. The lonely guy in the middle of the video that did know? That's Dan Boren, a Blue Dog Democrat from Oklahoma...

Next up… Rep. Louie Gohmert (also in the first video) tells me my private insurance will be taken from me by this bill:

Finally, and I wish I could say the last video is shocking, but, alas, this is where we find ourselves today ... Representative Steven King, the leader of today’s anti-reform rally, tells a crowd that the Democratic bill requires the government to encourage suicide and/or assisted suicide. Not making it up; he’s explicit ... he uses those very words:

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Woot! I love it when we get some plain-spoken truth on the House Floor. Such a refreshing change from the Republican lies and fear-mongering.

The Republican record defies their rhetoric. Remember their so-called Prescription Drug Benefit for Seniors passed in the dark of the night? No one read the bill, didn’t know what was in it. Cost 700 billion dollars ‘cause that was subsidizing the pharmaceutical and insurance industry. But now, they’re worried about costs. It gave the seniors a donut hole.

Now their concern is not about what they’re stating. It’s about their patrons in the insurance industry. Because this bill has real reforms of the worst abuses of the insurance industry. It takes away their unfair anti-trust immunity, so they can no longer collude to drive up premium prices or restrict coverages. The Republicans would continue the anti-trust exemption. This bill outlaws the unfair pre-existing condition restriction. Republicans would continue that for the insurance industry. This bill would not allow the industry to cancel your policy even though you’ve been paying your premiums when you get sick. It’s called recission. The Republicans allowed that abuse to continue. This bill, on our side, outlaws the small print that limits your lifetime coverage, which bankrupts families every day in America. The Republicans allow it to continue.

And that’s not enough. They’ve opened up a new loophole, their so-called national plan: a company would only be regulated by the laws of the state in which it was based when it sold you a policy. If you live in Oregon, but you bought a policy that was written--and oh, by the way, they expand the definition of state to include the territories in the Mariana Islands—so if you’ve got a problem, call the Mariana Islands Insurance Commissioner. That’s the Republican plan and profits to the insurance industry!

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Darcy Burner, the leader of the Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation says that if the Stupak amendment passes, progressives should vote down the health care bill in the House.

Burner: It means that women who find they have cancer while they are pregnant won't get the choice of how to proceed, but those choices will instead be made by politicians in Washington, DC whose lives aren't the ones who are being destroyed. The idea that we would throw women under the bus in the process of doing health care reform is completely unacceptable.

Now the word I'm hearing is that the Senate is more progressive than the House on this issue and the belief is that it will come back from the conference committee without the Stupak amendment included.

If the bill that comes back from conference does have the Stupak amendment, then organizing will be huge.

They're released data from the earliest cases of swine flu deaths, showing that people over 50 who were admitted to the hospital were likelier to die. This has a different curve from seasonal flu deaths, where adult deaths are typically people over 80:

An analysis of more than 1,000 California patients hospitalized with H1N1 flu during the first four months of the pandemic found that infants were most likely to be admitted, and patients 50 and older were most likely to die once admitted.

In the first four months of the pandemic, H1N1, like the seasonal flu, was especially severe in older people, who are more likely to have underlying health conditions, says lead author Janice Louie, a public-health medical officer at the California Department of Public Health.

However, Louie says, unlike seasonal flu, older people are far less likely than children and young adults to contract the H1N1 flu in the first place. For that reason, the study won't lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add healthy older people to the list of priority groups for H1N1 vaccine, director Thomas Frieden told reporters Tuesday.

Of 1,088 patients hospitalized with H1N1 flu in California, 11%, or 118 patients, died, and 30%, or 340 patients, were admitted to intensive-care units, Louie and her co-authors report in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. In patients 50 and older, the death rate was up to 20%, compared with about 2% in hospitalized patients under age 18.

The study focuses on patients who were hospitalized between April 23 and Aug. 11. Whether H1N1, or swine flu, will eventually mutate and cause more severe illness is not yet known, Louie says: "Influenza is pretty unpredictable."

Nearly a third of all the hospitalized patients in her study were reported to have no underlying conditions, such as lung disease, associated with an increased risk of flu complications.

But a disproportionate number of them were obese, an observation that also has been made in other countries, the authors write. Obesity doesn't appear to be a risk factor for seasonal flu.

Of the 361 patients whose body mass index – or BMI, a number based on height and weight – was known, half were obese, and half of those patients were morbidly obese, defined as having a BMI over 39, or roughly 100 pounds overweight.

This is an amazingly arrogant video in many senses. We're supposed to believe that former Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent of this WMD Prevention Commission, a government-funded group, put together this snazzy and misleading video about H1N1 vaccines? Or did a Big Pharma lobbying group do it for them? It's hard to say, based on the lack of information as to the actual creator. The basic question is, is there really anything wrong with creating flu vaccine with eggs?

Here's the thing - back in the day, pharmaceuticals making vaccines needed a living medium in which to grow cultures, something that was cheap because they needed to make a lot. Something like... eggs! The FDA not only approved this process for flu vaccines, but also vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, and rabies. And the thing is, once the FDA approves a particular process and materials for a drug, if you want to update the process and/or materials, you have to start all over with the FDA approval process. That's expensive, especially if you have to pay off the research and development costs accrued.

Today the problem is that no large pharmaceutical firms want to get involved in vaccine production because of the time and cost involved. Many of our vaccines come from overseas plants today. That's part of the reason why the production of H1N1 vaccine was delayed, but to be clear, this is more about an overworked and underappreciated FDA than the need for new production facilities.

So why do these guys want to tell us about H1N1 vaccines? Do they really care about public health vaccines? Or do they really want some attention so that you'll listen to them talk about bioterrorism and their lobby friends can get some business to produce more BW agent vaccines? I'm thinking the latter. And then there's this part of the G-T comedy hour.

The consequences of ignoring these warnings could be dire. For example, one recent study from the intelligence community projected that a one- to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II. Clean-up and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.

Now in what universe does a small release of anthrax cause more deaths than all those Americans who died in WW2, when bio weapons experts like Bill Patrick have told us that 50 kilos of anthrax would be needed to take out Washington DC? I don't think the intel community endorses this scenario; rather, the G-T team got a powerpoint slide from a certain senior bioterrorism adviser to the former administration that effectively makes an anthrax attack worse than a nuclear weapon.

A source tells me that this study uses a point source generator inside of a city to cause 1.9 to 3.4 million exposed, with 450,000 people becoming ill and 380,000 dead. City-wide decontamination is needed and the projected economic cost is greater than $1.6 trillion. This is just a brilliant case of fiction, designed to get the attention of people who usually wouldn't stop to talk about bioterrorism. I doubt that any intel community expert would give this scenario the time of day - but Senators Graham and Talent don't know that. They just repeat what they've been told.

It's just sad.

Oh. My. God. In the "richest country in the world". There are no words for how unacceptable this is:

Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.

The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Your neighbor may be using some of these programs but it's not the kind of thing people want to talk about," Rank said.

The analysis was released Monday in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The authors say it's a medical issue pediatricians need to be aware of because children on food stamps are at risk for malnutrition and other ills linked with poverty.

"This is a real danger sign that we as a society need to do a lot more to protect children," Rank said.

Read more

My brother is an elementary school teacher in a mostly minority area, and we've talked about this before. He told me that the school lunch program is often the only meal many children at his school get each day. And we know how healthy those meals are. My brother (and other teachers) have taken to buying fresh fruit out of their own meager salaries to make available to these kids.

The ramifications of this heartbreaking demographic will reverberate over decades: in health statistics, in education levels, in our economy, in crime statistics. And it's a situation for which no one should be complacent.

Okay, maybe requiring minimum IQs as a standard to run for national office is a bit harsh, but can we at least insist that politicians prove that they are actually human and not some mindless automaton programmed with talking points?

(In the past,) Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Normally, this is where my head makes a very loud thunk against my desk at the stupidity, but instead I just find myself really angry at this illogical fear mongering and ugliness. But what can you expect from a politician ugly enough to call Matthew Shepard's murder "a hoax"?. Obviously her lip service towards valuing life doesn't really mean any living people.

Rep. Foxx, the lives of those 44,000 Americans who die needlessly every year because they do not have insurance is blood on your hands.

This should add an extra layer of safety to the vaccination process:

WASHINGTON - Independent health advisers will begin monitoring safety of the swine flu vaccine today, an extra step the government promised in this year’s unprecedented program to watch for possible side effects.

Decades of safe influenza inoculations mean specialists are not expecting problems with the swine flu vaccine, because it is made the same way as the regular winter flu vaccine. But systems to track the health of millions of Americans are being tapped to make sure - to spot any rare but real problems quickly, and to explain the inevitable false alarms when common disorders coincide with inoculation.

US health officials have spotted no concerns to date, said Dr. Bruce Gellin, head of the National Vaccine Program Office.

A specially appointed working group of independent experts will track the vaccine’s safety, too. Although the group will deliberate in private meetings, starting today, its charge is to raise a red flag if members feel the feds miss anything.

“Given the rapidity with which this particular vaccine was rolled out, there seems to be an extra-special obligation to make sure things remain as uncomplicated as they have in the past," said Dr. Marie McCormick of the Harvard School of Public Health, who chairs the working group.

So it may turn out that Harry Reid was the hero in the public option after all.

Much of the hoopla surrounding Reid's decision centers around a tense Thursday night meeting between President Obama and Senate health care principles--including Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)--at the White House. But according to sources briefed on White House-Senate health care negotiations, things began boiling over earlier in the week, when a key question was, Who's going to take the blame when the public option doesn't make it in to the base health care bill?

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On the morning of the meeting, anonymous sources--and even some high profile senators--came forward to say that Reid was leaning very heavily toward backing the public option. And that's the news he and other senators brought to the White House that night.

"Reid actually asked Schumer to make the pitch," the first source said. When he did, "Obama was less than responsive and asked questions that suggested he preferred an option that could get the trigger and bipartisan support."

How the meeting ended remains unclear. But what we do know is that, early Friday morning--hours after the parties went their separate ways--Politico's Mike Allen reported that, according to a top administration official, Obama's preference was still for triggers, and he'd let the senators know that...read on

And mcjoan says that reconciliation may still be on the table after all.

This is the correct answer to the bleating of Joe Lieberman, and Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson. If you don't want to be a part of the most critical domestic policy reform in generations, we can always do it without you.

"Sure, it's always an option," Reid said after leaving his press conference Monday, when he announced that he'd be pushing forward with a public health insurance option with an opt-out provision that would give states the right not to participate....

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who is in charge of corralling and counting votes, also said that reconciliation is still being considered. "The failsafe on this is reconciliation," Durbin said. "I hope we don't reach it because you can only do a limited amount of things on reconciliation."

Reid's comments were from Monday, before Joe put on his show, which could mean that Reid's now definitely put it on the table.

You know how much the Villagers hate this idea, so what that means to mean is it's awesome.

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Here's the audio form today's conference call with Speaker Pelosi about the release of the House bill.. Sorry, I'm a bit under the weather so I don't have the blow by blow, but I was able to get on the call and record it for you. She didn't know if she would allow amendments to the bill, but was against the idea. There were a few questions from bloggers that followed.

(I edited out just a few minutes because there was a technical problem when the conference service tried to connect bloggers to ask their questions.)

UPDATE I: To members of the media, please credit Crooksandliars.com if you use any portion of this audio. Thank you in advance.

UPDATE II:

mcjoan has a great write up of the conference call: Pelosi: House Bill is a "Manifestation of Rejecting Business as Usual"

Because there has been conflicting information this morning on whether amendments would be allowed for the bill, I asked Speaker Pelosi if that decision had been made. As of yet, she says she's been too busy getting the bill melded to focus on that, but that she "would have to be talked into it," but isn't closed. The fly in the ointment on amendments is Rep. Bart Stupak and threat to team up with Republicans "unless Democratic leaders allow a floor vote on an amendment that would add new restrictions on the use of federal funding for health plans that cover abortion with private dollars."

This complicates the issue of the single payer amendment that Rep. Anthony Weiner was promised he would be able to offer. When Chris Bowers asked about it, Pelosi said that she would be meeting with Weiner and Rep. Kucinich today or tomorrow. Additionally, Rep. Grijalva is continuing to push for the robust public option.

"I am not rolling over. I will insist on a Medicare-plus-five amendment on the Floor so that the full Caucus can vote on it. We are hopeful that the Rules Committee will allow this amendment, which has tremendous public support, to be voted on for the record."

Leadership, including Rules Committee chair Louise Slaughter, are going to have some interesting needle-threading to do on the rule for floor action and the amendment process on this one. The schedule has not yet been determined completely. It will be available for the next 72 hours for all members to access, then will be submitted as the manager's amendment Monday morning. Floor action could begin as soon as next Thursday. She said that it's possible to have a vote before Veterans Day, Nov. 11, but as of yet that's not decided.

The House has released its health care bill. I'm going on a conference call now, so I can't really discuss the bill, but you can read it here with many other links provided.

Mcjoan discusses it here.

House leadership has released this fact sheet on the key elements of the House healthcare reform bill that will begin in 2010 [pdf].

Among the most important of these front-loaded provision are the creation of the high risk pool, extension of COBRA benefits (which should also include some sort of subsidy program, since COBRA rates are often unaffordable, though select groups do receive assistance under the Recovery Act), upping the age that people can be covered by their parents' plans, and the increased funding for Community Health Centers are all very good starts for 2010. The most key for staunching the bleeding in our system, if you will, are the high risk pool and the Community Health Center funding. More of the uninsured will be able to get insurance through the pool and the CHCs, which are absolutely critical to providing care for the uninsured, will at least see some increased ability to do so.

A handful of the reforms will immediately address issues for Medicare beneficiaries, all solid reforms that should also provide some political help in 2010--seniors vote.

Looks like the Blue Dogs won a victory in this bill, but they wanted to kill the public option all together. And remember when the media said the public option was dead completely?

I'm on a conference call with Nancy Pelosi right now. At least she's coming on to discuss it with us for a few minutes. Many politicians would not.

Please leave your thoughts down below.

UPDATE: The House has not respected the PHarma deal cut by the White House and the Speaker is happy about that.