I deeply love the Netherlands and the Dutch people (although they do have a few politicians that give even our most hate-filled ones a run for their money) . I have spent some time in the country and feel such kinship there. The art, the culture, the history, I soaked it up like a sponge. How can you not love a country that gave the world artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh, and icons like Audrey Hepburn and Anne Frank? I even had a personal opportunity to experience their health care system after I slipped on a rainy street and sprained my wrist. Let me tell you, if most Americans had a chance to see what's it's like to walk into a clinic, get treated and walk out without a big bill, they'd be clamoring for even better Obamacare, not cheering for its elimination.

I promise you, Rick Santorum has never been to the Netherlands. But that pesky little fact wouldn't stop him from opining forth on the dangers of being elderly in Holland. Why, aged people don't even like to go into the hospital because of the rampant euthanasia taking place. No, seriously:

Earlier this month, Santorum brought up the subject of euthanasia at a forum hosted by conservative leader James Dobson.

“They have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily in hospitals, because they are older and sick,” Santorum said. “So elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country. Because they’re afraid because of budget purposes they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.”

Santorum also said some Dutch wear bracelets saying, “Don’t euthanize me.”Earlier this month, Santorum brought up the subject of euthanasia at a forum hosted by conservative leader James Dobson.

“They have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily in hospitals, because they are older and sick,” Santorum said. “So elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country. Because they’re afraid because of budget purposes they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.”

Santorum also said some Dutch wear bracelets saying, “Don’t euthanize me.”

Oh holy Flying Spaghetti Monster. Isn't there some rule about bearing false witness for these fundamentalists? Because the lie after lie coming out of Santorum's mouth is guaranteeing him a nice toasty place in hell. In fact, his lies are so outrageous, the Dutch have gotten up in arms:

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After having a painful miscarriage some years earlier, I spent a long period of time in my next pregnancy on pins and needles, worried that I might lose another pregnancy. And as it turned out, I did go into labor early. I stayed on bedrest for the last six weeks of the pregnancy and delivered my eldest about 3 weeks earlier than her due date. She was healthy, thank the deity of your choice. But I also had the luxury of having decent insurance, so I knew that I had options in the event that we could not stop the labor from progressive past the point of no return.

So how can you look at this story and not see it as the so-called "free market" deciding that poor people don't deserve those same options?

For years, a drug given to high-risk pregnant women to prevent premature births has cost $10 to $20 per injection. Next week, the price shoots up to $1,500, meaning the total cost during a pregnancy could be as much as $30,000.

The drug, a form of progesterone given as a weekly shot, has been made cheaply for years, mixed in special pharmacies that custom-compound treatments that are not federally approved. But KV Pharmaceutical recently won government approval to exclusively sell the drug, known as Makena (Mah-KEE'-Nah). The March of Dimes and many obstetricians supported that because it means quality will be more consistent and it will be easier to get.

It seems no one anticipated the dramatic price hike.

"That's a huge increase for something that can't be costing them that much to make. For crying out loud, this is about making money," said Dr. Roger Snow, deputy medical director for Massachusetts' Medicaid program.

Doctors say the price hike may deter low-income women from getting the drug, leading to more premature births. And it will certainly be a financial burden for health insurance companies and government programs.

Children born very prematurely may require extensive and expensive hospitalizations, and ongoing therapy and medical assistance, expenses that can drain and/or bankrupt even a well-off family. Will we really be the kind of society that tells people--on the basis of their bank account--that their unborn child doesn't deserve every fighting chance? There was no substantive need to raise the price of Makena so high.

Thankfully, the FDA is going to allow generic versions of the drug

KV Pharmaceuticals recently won FDA approval of its brand-name Makena (hydroxyprogesterone caproate), a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone. The drug is approved to lower the risk of some preterm births in women who have already had at least one previous preterm birth.

The approval seemed to be good news -- until KV announced that Makena would cost $1,500 a shot -- up from the $10 to $15 that compounding pharmacies charge.

After getting the approval, KV sent a letter to compounding pharmacies telling them that the FDA would enforce the company's exclusive right to make the drug.

"This is not correct," the FDA said today.

"In order to support access to this important drug, at this time and under this unique situation, FDA does not intend to take enforcement action against pharmacies that compound hydroxyprogesterone caproate based on a valid prescription for an individually identified patient unless the compounded products are unsafe, of substandard quality, or are not being compounded in accordance with appropriate standards for compounding sterile products," the FDA announced.

I think Marcy Wheeler makes the single most compelling argument here about the precedent of a private health insurance mandate:

And for those who promise we’ll go back and fix this later, once we achieve universal health care, understand what will have happened in the meantime. The idea, of course, is to establish some means to get people single payer coverage (before Lieberman, this would have been through a public option or Medicare buy-in) and, over time, expand it.

In fact, this bill will move toward single payer, too–though not the kind we want. For the large number of people who live in a place where there is limited competition, this bill will require them to get health care through the oligopoly or monopoly provider. It’ll work great for the provider: they will be able to dictate rates. But the Senate bill allows these blossoming single payer providers to keep up to 25% of the benefit in profits and marketing costs, and pass little of that benefit onto citizens. If we make private corporations our single payer, how are we going to convince them to cede control when we ask them to let the government be the single payer?

The reason this matters, though, is the power it gives the health care corporations. We can’t ditch Halliburton or Blackwater because they have become the sole primary contractor providing precisely the services they do. And so, like it or not, we’re dependent on them. And if we were to try to exercise oversight over them, we’d ultimately face the reality that we have no leverage over them, so we’d have to accept whatever they chose to provide. This bill gives the health care industry the leverage we’ve already given Halliburton and Blackwater.

It’s the 9.8% tithe that bothers me the most. But for those who think we can fix it, consider this, too. If the Senate bill passes, in its current form, it will mean that the health care industry was able to dictate–through their Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson–what they wanted the US Congress to do. They will have succeeded in dictating the precise terms of legislation.

Now, that’s not the first time that has happened. It certainly happened on telecom immunity. It certainly has happened, repeatedly, on Defense contracting (see also Randy Cunningham). But none of these egregious instances of corporations dictating legislation included a tithe–the requirement that citizens pay corporations to provide their service, rather than allowing the government to contract the service.

This is a fundamentally different relationship we’re talking about–one that gives corporations vast new powers. And the fact that–with one temper tantrum from Joe Lieberman–the corporations were able to dictate the terms of this new relationship deeply troubles me.

When this passes, it will become clear that Congress is no longer the sovereign of this nation. Rather, the corporations dictating the laws will be.

I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.

We’ve seen our Constitution and means of government under attack in the last 8 years. This does so in a different–but every bit as significant way. We don’t mandate tithing corporations in this country–at least not yet. And it troubles me that so many Democrats are rushing to do so, without considering the logical consequences.

Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders became the first to introduce a universal health care bill on the floor of the Senate. (see above video) While he eventually withdrew the bill after Republican delaying tactics, my hat is off to the Independent Senator from Vermont. He has always stood up for the people of his state and the country and he has big brass ones!

Now, Bernie has said that he will not vote for the current bill. More from The Hill:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said late Wednesday that he cannot support the Democrats' healthcare reform legislation in its current form.

Asked by Fox Business Network's Neil Cavuto asked Sanders if he could support the compromise bill. The senator replied "I’m struggling with this. As of this point I am not voting for the bill. And here’s why."

Sanders, who favors a single-payer healthcare system, said that he has informed the White House and Democratic leadership of his position.

"As of this moment. I am going to do my best to make this bill a better bill, a bill that I can vote for but I’ve indicated both to the White House and the Democratic leadership that my vote is not secure at this point," he said.

Sanders words come as Democratic leaders are now facing heat from the left over several compromises made in order to attract centrist votes. Read on...

Hooray for Bernie! Any notion that killing the public option or the Medicare buy in provision is a "centrist" idea is ridiculous -- it is a far right position, and one that lies well outside the mainstream of America and the Democratic Party platform. Holy Joe Lieberman has been shoving his mug in front of every camera he can find to gloat about how much power he wields in this debate, so I am thrilled to see Sanders step up to the plate and make it known that not everybody on Capitol Hill is going to roll over for the insurance lobby.

Just when you think he can't get any more insane and stupid, Glenn Beck manages to pluck yet another feather from the plumage:

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Oy.

Besides the conundrum of how it is that someone this clearly insane is given multiple national platforms to rant and rave as lucidly as the crazy homeless guy downtown, I really can't believe that we're now getting to the point that we're likening health care reform (something the majority of the country wants, mind you) to forced rape of a minor.

We had visitors from Denmark staying with us just recently, and they were just dumbfounded by the asinine and completely fact-free crap that passes for news coverage here, especially when it comes to health reform. From a country where universal health care is a given, listening to the fear-mongering on Fox News and other news channels I'm forced to watch for C&L made them wonder about the collective IQ of American citizens. Sadly, I was hard-pressed to defend us in the face of such loonies like Beck.

I take solace in the thought that when my children are my age, we will likely have fought mightily and won universal single payer health care for all Americans (because it really is the only thing that makes sense) and they'll look back at old tape of Glenn Beck and say, "Sheesh, no wonder it was such a battle, look at this idiocy," and shake their heads ruefully at the frightened, non-thinking people that watched him.

Good for Joe Sestak for recognizing the problem. Let your congress person know you support the bill, even if you can't afford COBRA yourself. Keeping health coverage on the political radar is an important step towards affordable universal health care:

Laura C. Trueman has spent much of her career promoting affordable health care. Now, she wishes she could find some herself.

Laid off from her marketing job at a managed-care company late last year, Trueman was able to keep her health insurance thanks to a provision in the federal stimulus bill that gave furloughed workers the right to purchase their old employer-based coverage at a 65% discount. The subsidies, which last up to nine months, were designed to give workers like Trueman time to get back on their feet.

Today, with the job market weak, Trueman is still without a job, and her family is bracing for an uncertain future. With the subsidies, she and her husband, a self-employed attorney were paying a manageable $460 a month for their health insurance; starting Dec. 1, the cost jumps to $1,313. They can ill afford the increase. They're already having trouble making their mortgage payment, and fear they might lose their Northern Virginia home.

“It has really made a huge difference for us,” she says of the insurance assistance, adding that the higher payment “would be a real stretch.”

Since 1985, a law known as COBRA has given laid off-workers the right to hold onto their employer-based health insurance for up to 18 months so long as they continue to pay the premiums, including payments that their employers used to make on their behalf.

In the past very few people could afford this option, but the government subsidies have changed that, and now enrollments appear to be growing sharply. Hewitt Associates, a Lincolnshire, Ill., consulting firm, recently estimated that the rate at which workers were opting for coverage under COBRA had doubled compared with pre-subsidy levels.

Although federal officials do not have figures on the number of people participating in the program, millions have been eligible. The law covers anyone laid off between Sept. 1 of last year and Dec. 31 of this year.

But with the first discounts having gone into effect March 1, many people are about to see the benefit expire, including many who remain unemployed. The Obama administration and some members of Congress are talking about whether to extend the subsidy. Some lawmakers aren't enthused because of budget concerns, but backers say the subsidy is a crucial lifeline for people still hunting for jobs.

Just this week, Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Penn., introduced legislation that would extend from 9 to 15 months the total allowable time an unemployed worker and her family could receive the subsidized COBRA assistance. The legislation would also extend the subsidies to people laid off through June 30, 2010, widening the window of eligibility by six months. A third provision would give an extra six months of undiscounted COBRA coverage to people who were laid off early in 2008 before the subsidy law took effect.

I was laid off in July 2007, just before the subsidies kicked in. But at this point, I'd be happy just to be eligible for another six months.

I've been a little down lately, because it seems too many people are in a state of learned helplessness and don't want to participate in our democracy if it involves stepping away from the computer.

But then I saw this letter from Michael Moore and I felt a lot better. Because it's still our country, and we can still make a difference:

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.

Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

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(h/t Mugsy)

I guess the UK is sick of hearing we namby-pamby Yanks brag on our health care system and trash theirs, disregarding the fact that the UK pays significantly less per capita for health care and achieves far better outcomes. And they've decided to push back:

Britons love to mock their National Health Service — just don't let anyone else poke fun at it.

They particularly resent the British universal health care system being used as a punching bag in the battle against President Barack Obama's proposed reforms.

Conservatives in the United States have relied on horror stories from Britain's system to warn Americans that Obama is trying to impose a socialized health care system that would give the government too much power.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old.

The superheated debate broadened this week to include renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a British icon who suffers from motor neurone disease. A U.S. newspaper wrote that under the British system Hawking would be allowed to die — an assertion that Hawking said was absurd.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking said, joining the ranks of those praising Britain's system.

Britons say the country's universal health care system, which provides free medical care, is far fairer than the current American system.

Behind the criticism is a popular British view that American society represents unbridled capitalism run amok, with catastrophic results for people left behind in the boom times like those of the last two decades.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is usually pro-American, blasted U.S. health care Friday, suggesting the delivery system is fine for the wealthy but not for the poor.

"If you can't pay, you have a very, very second-rate service or you can't get health service at all," he said.

Britain's left-leaning government has responded to criticism offering selected statistics that show England out performing the U.S. in health spending per capita, life expectancy and more.

Newspapers have jumped in, with the Daily Mirror calling the United States "the land of the fee" because of the way patients are forced to pay for medical services.

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Glenn Beck was in prime form last night. He warned everyone up front that he wasn't arguing that eugenics are about to descend on America.

But then it becomes clear that what he is arguing is that the Democrats and progressives in general and President Obama in general are just like the Nazis. And in case you didn't get it the first time, he caps the whole thing off by comparing a Nazi cartoon to liberals' dismissal of the teabaggers.

Of course, he knows he can get away with this kind of nonsense because, hey, if Rush can get away with it, he probably can, too.

And he makes plain that he completely supports Sarah Palin's intimations of "death panels" and subscribes to her view that universal health care will bring about euthanasia.

In other words, he's a "deather."

Oh, and as an added bonanza, he cries. Again. He always does this whenever he mentions his disabled daughter. Which reminds me: Why do these people who get all indignant when their families get mentioned always hold their families up for public displays of whatever political point they want to make? Just wondering.

File this one under "Deluxe Nutball Rant, with Nazis on the side."

True to his word, Obama is doing a full-press media blitz on healthcare reform:

President Barack Obama admitted that there is not enough money in the system to pay for medical coverage for the 46 million Americans who have none, and that to bridge the gap additional taxes will probably have to be levied on the nation’s wealthiest citizens.

The president focused on health care reform during a wide-ranging interview with TODAY’s Meredith Vieira that aired Tuesday. But he also covered subjects both trivial (his choice of jeans to wear to the All-Star Game) and deeply individual: a father’s five-year international battle to regain rightful custody of his son, and an American soldier being held captive in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Obama has told Congress he wants a universal health care plan before the nation’s lawmakers leave town for their traditional August recess. Given the enormous complexity and cost of the proposals being floated in the corridors of power, Vieira asked why the president is so insistent on a hard deadline.

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“Because if you don’t set a deadline in this town, nothing happens,” Obama replied. “The default in Washington is inaction and inertia. And there’s a reason why we haven’t had health care reform in 50 years. The deadline’s not being set by me; the deadline’s being set by the American people.”

Some Republicans have grabbed on the President’s crusade and made it a political battleground, with Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina going so far as to say, “If we are able to stop Obama on this, in new health care reform, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

When Vieira repeated that comment, Obama laughed.

“This is all about politics,” he explained. “That describes exactly an attitude that we’ve got to overcome, because what folks have in their minds is that, somehow, this is about me. It’s about politics and the ability to win back the House of Representatives. And people are thinking back to 1993 when President Clinton wasn’t able to get health care, and, right after that, the House Republicans won.”

The president agreed that he has a lot invested personally in achieving health care reform, but he also said that other Americans have a lot more at stake than he does.

“This is not as important to me as it is to the people who don’t have health care. I’ve got health care,” Obama told Vieira. “This isn’t as important to me as the family that’s gone bankrupt because they got a bunch of medical bills that they thought the insurance companies had covered that turned out they weren’t covered. So, yes, absolutely, I am deeply invested in getting this thing done. But this isn’t Washington sport. This isn’t about who’s up and who’s down. This is about solving an enormous problem for the American people.”