Health Care Reform

Media Matters has debunked the myth that a “New England Journal of Medicine study” found 46 percent of physicians prepared to “leave medicine or try to leave medicine” if health reform passes. But there is no Journal study. The numbers come from a “doctor search” company called The Medicus Firm. Investor’s Business Daily produced another [...]

Last week, Colorado Republicans opposed a bill that would expand health coverage for maternity and contraception partly on the grounds that some contraception terminates pregnancies rather than preventing them. As the Colorado Independent reported, the Republican lawmakers were missing the forest for the trees. Women on the individual insurance market here are more likely to [...]

Apparently one of the favorite Tea Party pastimes is hanging out with a few thousand of your best, most conservative friends and flooding the voice mail and email inboxes of out-of-state moderate Democrats who may be on the fence about Obama’s health care plan.
That way the actual constituents of such Dems – like Colorado’s John [...]

Greg Sargent has the scoop:
“Senator Harry Reid’s office says that if a final decision is made to pass health reform via reconciliation, the Majority Leader would support holding a reconciliation vote on the public option.”
The actual statement from Reid’s office, though, is odd.

BOSTON — The volunteers, journalists, and donors who entered the ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel on Tuesday were greeted by a kind of enthusiasm uncharacteristic to Massachusetts Republican campaigns. The room was packed only an hour after the polls closed. Among the throngs were Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, leaders of Tea Party Patriots, who’d flown in from Georgia and California to watch the final stretch of Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate bid. Meckler held up a Video camera, panning it across the room to capture the Brown supporters as they chatted and lined up for food and drinks.

On the ground in the Denver metro area, health care is being reformed for thousands of residents but the changes have nothing to do with pending federal health-care legislation. They come from the private sector. Kansas-based Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System is taking operational control of three hospitals formerly run by Exempla Health [...]

The news that Democrats in the House and Senate will likely marry their health reform bills in closed-door sessions — not in a formal conference committee — strays a long way from President Obama’s campaign-trail claim that the entire process would be televised for the world to see. And the discrepancy hasn’t been lost on [...]

As soon as the Senate passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Dec.24, Republicans and conservative activists started making a promise to voters. Give them a victory in the 2010 midterm elections, and they’ll repeal the bill.

Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress empowered to require Americans to buy health insurance, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) charged today.
“I am seriously concerned that the Democrats’ health reform bill violates the Constitution of the United States of America,” Ensign said in a statement. “Is it really constitutional for this body to tell all Americans that [...]

Unveiling a modified health reform bill on Saturday, Senate Democratic leaders appear to have cobbled together the 60 votes they’ll need to pass the most expansive overhaul to the nation’s health care system in generations. But winning that support comes at a steep cost.