NewsTrust - U.S. Congress - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

The psychology of healthcare reform

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CNET News - By Adam Richardson - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - The House has passed the first comprehensive reform package of the health insurance industry in decades, which is now up for debate in the Senate. This is a highly complex issue, but there are some quite basic reasons why it's so difficult to accomplish significant reform, and in part these have to do with psychological responses to change and uncertainty.

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Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity Falsifying Footage To Make GOP Protest Appear Bigger

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 11 (Comedy News) - Sean Hannity and his team did more than cover the event. They not only inflated the number in attendance with their words, but actually used footage from a heavily-attended protest this summer to make this health care rally appear more popular. Hannity even pointed out that this was a huge crowd for a Thursday, when the protest footage they used was from a Saturday.

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A very bad deal to pass a very good bill

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - The final compromises before a bill comes to the floor are never very pretty. This one, however, is worse than I anticipated. Opposition from anti-abortion Democrats, driven in large part by aggressive activism from the Catholic Church, forced

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The Generals' Revolt

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:07:22 -0800

Rolling Stone - Nov. 04 -

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Republican calls for patient-centered wellness

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Yahoo! News - By Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - Immediate, obvious measures include reforming medical liability laws; ending exclusions for pre-existing conditions; expanding health savings accounts; providing tax credits for purchasing private health insurance; allowing association health plans; permitting health insurance purchases across state lines; encouraging individuals to insure against changes in health status; incentivizing preventative health care; and applying information technology to enhance transparency and increase efficiencies. All this can be achieved without trillions in new spending, taxes and government-dictated, radical changes to Americans’ current health care.

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Jon Stewart Takes On Media, Lieberman Over Public Option

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 29 (Comedy News) - After much debate and speculation, after every cable news network declared it dead one point or another, Senator Harry Reid announced that a public option would be included in the Senate health care reform bill, allowing millions of Americans to purchase government-run insurance.

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Ezra Klein on the House health care reform bill

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Oct. 29 (Interview) - So what exactly did the House put out this morning? Is it the Robust opt-out Public Option that Sen. Reid talked about? Ezra Klein: No. So to do a bit on defining terms here: Robust refers to a public option that can use Medicare's payment rates. That would let the public option save 20-30 percent against private insurance. Neither the House nor the Senate includes such an option. The House bill has a national public option that will set rates in the same way private insurers do (negotiating with providers). The Senate bill has a national public option that works the same way as the House's, save that it has an opt-out feature starting in 2014.

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Clean-energy transition promises brighter economic prospects

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Dean Allen, Maud Daudon - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - WITH the introduction of the Clean Energy Jobs bill in September, the U.S. Senate began work on repowering America's economy with a comprehensive climate and energy policy. As Washington business leaders involved in building our local clean-energy economy, we're delighted to see the other Washington moving ahead to restore American leadership in the most dynamic sector of the new economy.

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Harry Reid and the Blenders

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David M. Herszenhorn - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - The Senate Finance Committee had barely voted on the big health care legislation when the infinitesimally short attention span of Capitol Hill shifted to the next step. And it sounds like the debut of a 1950s doo-wop band: Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Harry Reid and the Bill Blenders.

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Rejecting reform again would be folly, Dole says

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Kansas City Star - By Barbara Shelly - Oct. 09 (Opinion) - Fifteen years ago, Bob Dole decided it was better to kill health care reform than to hand a Democratic president a historic victory. Since then, praise be, he’s reformed his thinking. In Kansas City this week, the former Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate added his voice — still strong at age 86 — to the push to help all Americans afford good health care. “This is one of the most important measures members of Congress will vote on in their lifetimes,” Dole told an audience at the Liberty Memorial auditorium.

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Send your medical bills to Max Baucus

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Comedy Central - By Stephen Colbert - Oct. 09 (Comedy News) - Senator Max Baucus will pay for your medical bills from the $3.2 million he's received from the health care industry.

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Health Care and the 'Predator State'

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Thomas Frank - Oct. 07 (Opinion) - In June 2008, I used this space to call on then-Sen. Barack Obama to add economist James K. Galbraith's book, "The Predator State," to his reading list. As an account of the capture of government by private interests, I thought it would make a far more useful guide to contemporary political economy than the market-glorifying texts that were still in fashion in those days.

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A Heroine of ’Capitalism’

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Lois Romano - Oct. 07 (Interview) - Elizabeth Warren is far from a household name, but that could change quickly, given her debut on the big screen this week in Michael Moore’s scathing assessment of the government’s handling of the banking crisis.

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Schumer, Cornyn and Health Care

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By George Stephanopoulos - Oct. 07 (Interview) - Sens. Schumer and Cornyn debate what to do next on health reform.

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Government-Run Health Care

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Neil Cavuto - Oct. 07 (Interview) - Key Democrat is confident health care reform will pass with a 'public option'?

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Doctors Debate Health Reform

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - Oct. 06 (Interview) - Former AMA President Dr. Donald Palmisano and Dr. Mandy Krauthamer debate the Senate Finance Committee's health care plan.

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Government-Run Health Care?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Neil Cavuto, Elijah Cummings - Oct. 06 (Interview) - Video interview by Fox anchor Neil Cavuto with Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), who expresses confidence that health care reform will pass with a public option.

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Reviving an option

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Oct. 04 (Editorial) - As discouraging as it was to watch certain members of the Senate Finance Committee treat the concept of affordable health insurance coverage as America's own Bolshevik Revolution last week, hope for a modicum of common sense in the U.S. Congress springs eternal. The battle over the public option isn't over yet, as there is at least one more card to play. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already promised, no matter what comes out of the full Senate, the health care reform bill approved by the House of Representatives will contain the public option. What happens in the inevitable conference committee is anyone's guess.

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Obama’s Dick Cheney Moment

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Benjamin Wittes - Sep. 28 (Opinion) - His decision not to consult Congress on detentions represents a virtually wholesale adoption of Bush’s failed policies.

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Banish the Cyber-Bigots

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael Gerson - Sep. 24 (Opinion) - The Internet could represent a flourishing of democracy. Instead it amplifies hate. The brutality of public debate on the Internet is due to one fact above all -- the option of anonymity

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Slater: Matt Latimer recalls Kay Bailey Hutchison 'purse boys' in new book 'Speechless'

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - By Wayne Slater - Sep. 18 (Comment) - Former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer admits being enamored of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison when he arrived as young staffer on Capitol Hill some years ago. "I thought a tough-talking Texas woman would be an ideal Republican presidential candidate someday," he writes in his new book, Speechless, which goes on sale next week. Then he met her.

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Kennedy, Modest and Honest

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jonathan Yardley - Sep. 17 (Review) - The late lion of the Senate sums up his life and times.

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How GOP can manage Tea Party

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By John Freehery - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - While the Tea Party movement presents a threat to the Obama administration, it also presents a challenge to congressional Republicans. After all, many of the protesters have as low a regard for the GOP as they do for the Democrats, and they hold the previous administration in as much as contempt as they do the Obama White House.

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Boy, Oh, Boy

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Maureen Dowd - Sep. 13 (Opinion) - Joe Wilson’s outburst in Congress revealed one thing: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

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After Obama's Speech, It's Back to Wooing the Skeptics

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Jay Newton-Small - Sep. 11 (Opinion) - No one in the nation's capital is naive enough to think that President Barack Obama's address before Congress Wednesday evening was somehow, in one fell swoop, going to overcome all the opposition to health-care reform, the power of his rhetoric winning over skeptics like a latter-day Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But after the President's impassioned, 47-minute speech drew thunderous applause and improved poll ratings, even some of the most jaded Democrats may have allowed themselves to think that, maybe, Obama's oratory really was a "game changer," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put it.

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