TPM Live Wire

Jillian Rayfield | February 10, 2010, 1:33PM

After slamming the Obama administration for “secret deliberations” and going back on his campaign promise to televise the health care debate, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) criticized the President yesterday for televising the bipartisan health care summit on Feb. 25, asking “is this a political event or is this going to be a real conversation?”

Boehner had been a rather vocal supporter of C-SPAN’s request to televise the earlier negotiations, writing to the network in January that “House Republicans strongly endorse your proposal and stand ready to work with you to make it a reality.”

Well now, it seems, the idea of televising the health care summit has Boehner a bit squeamish.

Last night, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren asked him what he thinks about the fact that it’s going to be televised, and added that “the American people are probably delighted that we’re getting this televised.” Source Article

The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner
First Posted: 10- 8-09 02:15 PM | Updated: 10- 8-09 03:39 PM

A CIGNA employee gave the finger — literally — to a woman whose daughter died after the insurance giant refused to cover her liver transplant.

Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan went to CIGNA’s Philadelphia headquarters, along with supporters from the California Nurses Association, to confront the CEO Edward Hanway over the death of her 17-year-old child.

In 2007, Nataline Sarkisyan was denied a liver transplant by the company, on the grounds that the operation was “too experimental” to be covered. Nine days later it changed its mind, in response to protests outside its office. It was too late: Nataline died hours later.

“CIGNA killed my daughter,” Nataline’s mother Hilda told security. “I want an apology.” Sarkisyan was not able to speak to Hanway; a communications specialist talked to her instead. After their conversation, employees heckled the group from a balcony; one man gave them the finger. CIGNA called the police and had the family and their friends escorted from the building. Source

The Huffington Post | Elyse Siegel
First Posted: 10- 8-09 11:05 AM | Updated: 10- 8-09 03:28 PM

A new Oklahoma law requires physicians to disclose detailed information on women’s abortions to the State’s Department Of Health, which will then post the collected data on a public website. The controversial measure comes into effect on November 1 and will cost $281,285 to implement, $256,285 each subsequent year to maintain.

Oklahoma women undergoing abortion procedures will be legally forced to reveal:

1) Date of abortion
2) County in which abortion is performed
3) Age of mother
4) Marital status of mother
5) Race of mother
6) Years of education of mother
7) State or foreign country of residence of mother
Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother

Source

Huffington Post
First Posted: 09-22-09 10:10 AM | Updated: 09-22-09 05:14 PM

Modern-day home mortgages have been so sliced and diced by rapacious financiers that some homeowners are successfully delaying — or even blocking — foreclosures through the simple tactic of demanding that banks produce the original mortgage note, which amazingly enough is often not so easy for them to do.

As the foreclosure rate continues to set new highs, a little-noticed legal provision that requires bankers, if challenged, to prove they hold the original mortgage documents before getting possession has spawned a minor homeowner rebellion, alternately called “produce the note” or “show me the note“. For homeowners trying desperately to keep their homes, the tactic is one way to buy some time — and maybe even get the upper hand on the lender. Source

TPM Cafe

By Roger Hickey – August 30, 2009, 9:34PM

Let’s get a few things straight:

 Until last year, Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s health care bill (co-authored with with Cong. John Dingell) was a bill known as Medicare for All. Not expensive private insurance for some, but Medicare [a public insurance plan] for All.

 Senator Kennedy encouraged candidate and then President Obama to make health care for all his first priority – during the campaign and as he took office.

 And Ted Kennedy remained in charge as his HELP (Health, Education and Labor and Pension) Committee wrote — and then passed – a new health care bill with a strong public insurance option for those who want it. Source

First Posted: 08-26-09 09:24 AM   |   Updated: 08-26-09 10:54 AM

Edward Kennedy, last of the Kennedy brothers and one of his generation’s foremost champions of the less fortunate, died last night with the “cause of his life” — universal health coverage — just out of his reach.

As he wrote in Newsweek just last month: “For four decades I have carried this cause–from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me–and more urgency–than ever before. But it’s always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.”

Nobody knows how the final vote will turn out in the Senate, where Republicans have so far put up a solid front of opposition, and conservative Democrats are dragging their feet on passage of the kind of far-reaching legislation Kennedy so ardently desired.

Kennedy’s vote had been considered as a critical one. But those hoping for a dramatic moment, like the one that took place last year, will no longer get their wish  Source

The Huffington Post |  Rachel Weiner
First Posted: 08-18-09 04:54 PM   |   Updated: 08-18-09 06:15 PM

While television cameras have focused on vocal opponents to health care reform, in many cases they have been outnumbered by supporters of the legislation in general and a public option in particular.

In Phoenix, Arizona, “Pro-Obama demonstrators appeared to outnumber the anti-Obama ones, with Phoenix police estimating the crowd at 1,200 to 2,000 at locations around the convention center.”

In Boulder, Colorado, “a few hundred residents of one of the nation’s more liberal congressional districts turned out Monday night to tell their congressman, Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, to keep that public option, however controversial politically, in the final bill.”  Source

Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

Author of Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families

<snip>

The pictures held the drama of the event and showed good tactics rather than the strong arm stuff that has been grabbing the news.

Sally Stevens (who the newspaper in the picture caption identified “as a woman who identified herself as Sally Stevens” –huh?) is a “Facebook friend” of mine. She often comments on various postings on my wall and has become a good barometer on a number of issues. She works for CulturePAC.com in the city and is a campaigner for fair and equitable economic development in New Orleans. At the town hall she seems to have gone up to Congressman Cao and dropped a load of medical bills addressed to her and demanded that Cao pay them for her, if he wasn’t going to stand for doing what needed to be done. She then left the hall. One thing for sure, they will send her bills every month without fail so she didn’t lose anything here. She may have helped gain a vote for health care reform. Source

I would suggest to everyone who is trapped by the healthcare machine that they do the same thing that Sally did. Send your unpaid bills to your Congressman or Senator! Tell them to pay the damn bill or fix the health care system. Send the bills to the President! Send them the bills!

~Susan~

by David Michael Green

www.opednews.com

The events of recent decades have been ominous.

The events of recent weeks more so.

It’s not so much, I guess, the visage of obese, over-fifty, white men angrily wrecking even the tattered remnants of the democratic process in this country that is most disturbing. We’ve seen that before.

I think it’s the willful ignorance translated into incoherent, and in fact ironically self-defeating, rage that I find most discouraging. Can we really live in a country populated by so many fools, people who can so readily, proudly and belligerently be made into tools of their own destruction? Can the greatest political, economic, cultural and military power on the world’s stage possibly be so incredibly backward at its core? Source