All Life Is Problem Solving

It’s important to sharply distinguish strategy from tactics in health care reform. I think strategy is about your goal and overall orientation toward getting health care reform, while tactics are about the low-level things you do to get from point-to-point in getting the strategy implemented. Tactics are influenced by strategy in the sense that tactics […]

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Absent a substantial change in direction by Congressional Leadership and the President, I think it’s time to do whatever progressives can to kill the health care reform legislation currently moving through Congress, and then to immediately reset to Medicare for All, single payer. As HR 3962 bill sits now, it’s worse than no bill at […]

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As I wrote in Part One of this series, “deficit hawkism” is the ideology that prioritizes bringing tax revenues and Government expenditures into balance ahead of other far more essential national needs and priorities. Right now, deficit hawkism is becoming increasingly prevalent, and its expressions very strident. It’s not limited to Republicans, but is bipartisan. […]

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Alan Grayson appeared on Keith Olbermann’s show this evening defending the House compromise health care reform bill presented last week by Nancy Pelosi. In a repeat performance of his interview on Ed Schultz’s show a few days back Alan gave us his interpretation […]

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On reading my evaluation of the “band-aid” period between 2010 and 2013, specified in Nancy Pelosi’s compromise bill, Bonnie commented: ”I think the House ought to include a special subsidy for the 31,000 families of uninsured people who will die annually from lack of insurance during the band-aid period, so that they can afford to […]

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) is justly famous for saying that the Republican health care plan is for people to go ahead and die quickly when they get sick. But, a few days ago, in an appearance on Ed Schultz’s MSNBC show, he expressed […]

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We’ll see many policy analyses and evaluations of Nancy Pelosi’s compromise health care reform bill as it gets closer to a final vote. This one won’t be thorough, since the bill is one of daunting length (1990 pages) and complexity, and I haven’t had the time to do a really detailed analysis. But I’ll do […]

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Harry, this is real simple. You’re making the American people pay much too high a price for 60 votes. You’ve got other fish more important than getting 60 votes to fry. The first is that you’ve got to get a strong health insurance reform bill with a PO that will cut costs. The second is […]

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A few weeks back I did a diary called “Mis-directed Fury.” It focused on the reaction to the State opt-out idea on health care reform at FDL, and basically made the point that there are a lot more important things to get furious about than the State opt-out proposal. Today we have another explosion of […]

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The general reaction to Harry Reid’s announcement that he is including a public option in the Senate health care reform bill, along with a State opt-out has been to praise Harry for his courage and for “standing up for the American people.” Jane Hamsher, however, expresses her misgivings about the State level opt-out, because it […]

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