***HEALTHCARE FOR ALL INFORMATION PROJECT***
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http://www.ourfuture.org/healthcare

Contents:
1.  CBO-KAY! Senate HELP Bill Rebounds
2.  Important new report on public insurance plans from the Urban Institute
3.  Memo To Deficit Hawks: Public Plan Option Indisputably Saves Money
4.  Health Care Deform: Afraid of the public option? This is what America will look like without it
5.  WeWantThePublicOption.com
6.  Tell Congress: Take the Pledge!

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Drug manufacturers are not acting out of a charitable impulse. They are trying to forestall strong health reform legislation that would cost the industry more than it is promising. PhRMA took action in 2003 when adding a drug benefit to Medicare seemed inevitable and managed to keep a public health insurance plan—Medicare—from cutting drug costs. Now the threat of a new public health insurance option for people under 65 has spurred the powerful lobby into action once more, with promises of cooperation and voluntary discounts. Don’t be fooled! We can do better.

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When the CBO scored an early draft of the health care form bill from the Senate HELP committee as costing $1 trillion over 10 years but only covering one-third of the uninsured, obstructionists pounced and proclaimed the public plan option dead.

But the CBO had not assessed the cost of the public plan option, nor a mandate on most employers to either provide insurance or contribute to the public plan.

Now they have. And as serious reform advocates long claimed, including those two key provisions drops the 10-year cost of reform by nearly $400 billion, while achieving near universal coverage.

Will the self-proclaimed deficit hawks now embrace the public plan option since it would save money? Or will they come up with fresh excuses, such as fear-mongering that the public plan would decimate the private insurance industry?

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CBO: Public Plan Option and Employer Mandate Cuts Cost Of Reform

AP reports complete Kennedy-Dodd bill receives lower cost estimate from CBO: "The two senators said the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the proposal at $611.4 billion over 10 years, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago. The revising also "virtually eliminates" an earlier forecast that the proposal would cause many companies to drop coverage for their workers ... The letter indicated that the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes: the government-run health insurance option, which has drawn intense opposition from Republicans, and ... a $750 annual fee on employers for each full-time worker not offered coverage through their job. The fee would be set at $375 for part-time workers. Companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt. "

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On Monday, The International Trade Commission (ITC) unanimously voted to recommend that President Obama impose tariffs on the import of Chinese tires for three years. The new administration will have until September 17 to decide what, if any, relief to provide based on the ITC’s recommendation. Will Obama cave to the power of business lobbies and conservatives to follow in the footsteps of President Bush, or support a policy that will help our long term economy?

Chinese tires are one of the many goods that flood the US market because China manipulates its currency and unfairly subsidizes its manufacturing sector. Illegal government subsidies combined with exploited labor and the undervalued Yuan contribute to China’s ability to flood U.S. markets with cheap products, rendering domestic industry uncompetitive.

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If you wanted to get progressives more excited about the clean energy and climate protection bill that passed the House last week, you might be inclined to point to Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins HuffPost piece on the $1 billion in green jobs funding that was added at the last minute, including "[l]ocal access to quality jobs, through the creation of a green-construction, careers-demonstration program." Or the Environmental Capital post about the new green building codes: "The bill mandates that upon passage, all states move to adopt standards for residential and commercial structures that are at least 30 percent better than two widely accepted energy codes. The requirements get more strict over time, and states would get lots of money from the federal government to enforce them."

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FireDogLake will feature Eric Lotke’s 2044 on its book salon this Sunday evening. Please join them!
In 2044, the problem isn't Big Brother. It's Big Brother, Inc.

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Congress will be appointing a special commission to investigate the causes of the economic crisis and to determine who is to blame. This proposal originated among progressives who wanted to see a replay of the depression era Pecora Commission, which exposed the Wall Street corruption that laid the basis for the 1929 stock market crash and the depression that followed.

At the very least, a similar exposure of the greedheads at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and the rest could provide an element of justice to this disaster and possibly lay the basis for criminal prosecutions of the worst offenders. Undoubtedly there are many multi-millionaires at these institutions who would make far more appropriate prisoners than some of the 2 million current guests of our criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, there is a real possibility that the commission appointed by Congress may follow a different precedent. Instead of striving to uncover the truth, it may seek to conceal it.

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Wal-Mart Gives Momentum to Employer Mandate

White House holds health care town hall at 1:15 PM ET

Wal-Mart joins SEIU to back employer mandate to provide insurance. NYT: "But Wal-Mart’s embrace of the employer mandate may come at a price. In its letter, the company says that if Congress imposes a requirement that employers offer insurance, it must also offer a guarantee to business that health care costs will in fact be contained, perhaps through a so-called trigger mechanism that would impose reductions if certain spending targets were not met."

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The leadership of the Democratic party reminds me of the classic fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin.

In 2002 and 2004, the party's leadership was like the miller's daughter. Trapped in the castle tower with the seemingly impossible task of trying to spin straw into election gold. In desperation, they turned for help to an ugly dwarf (the young, ideological, progressive grassroots). While the miller's daughter only promised Rumpelstiltskin her first born in exchange for his aid, the party leadership promised much more. They promised the progressives almost anything and everything: Ending torture, closing Guantanamo, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, universal health care with a strong public plan, the Employee Free Choice Act, troops out of Iraq, etc.

To the surprise of almost everyone, the progressive grassroots succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. They turned the pile of useless straw into political dominance gold. The netroots raised on unprecedented level of political donations with small online contributions. In four years, the Democrats went from 45 Senators to 60, won a huge majority in the House, and elected the first black president with a large mandate.

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Why are all the alternatives to a robust public plan now being floated in the health care reform debate – cooperatives, state or regional plans, a “trigger” for the public plan, a public plan prohibited from bargaining with drug companies – such profoundly bad ideas?

For one simple reason: they would fail to rein in health care costs’ out-of-control growth rate.

And the effects of such a failure would very likely include not just unsustainable public budgets and the eventual collapse of universal health coverage but political calamity for the party that made the reform.

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Senate HELP Draft Bill Has Public Plan Option

Politico Pulse gets leak of Senate HELP cmte draft: "THE SENATE HELP COMMITTEE IS ABOUT TO COME OUT WITH A 'LEVEL PLAYING FIELD' OPTION SIMILAR TO WHAT SCHUMER PROPOSED IN MAY ... If HELP does go in this direction, it won't be as liberal as the House, but it will be a strong alternative to the coop plan that is the emerging idea in the Finance Committee, but that progressives hate."

Politico reports Republicans to launch health attack today: "Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have set up a public discussion at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston on Tuesday, hoping to gin up public opposition to the public plan."

Sen. Olympia Snowe tells AP she will only back a delayed "trigger" for public plan option: "Snowe said it would be unfair to include a government-run health insurance option that would take effect immediately."

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Word is circulating in Washington that members for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will be named this week.

The commission is supposed to resemble the 1930s Pecora commission that dug into the culprits behind the Great Depression and laid the groundwork for major bank reform. But that will only be true if the commission is run by aggressive seekers of truth, independent of the financial industry, willing to use their subpoena power, knowledgeable enough to have warned us of impeding crisis in the first place despite market cheerleading from the political and media establishments.

Will the maximum sentence given to Bernie Madoff, after he ruined the lives of many, put a renewed spotlight on the need for tough reforms?

OurFuture.org's Eric Lotke and Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein hope so.

As Lotke wrote:

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Bernard Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years in prison for one of the biggest investment frauds in Wall Street history. But there is no closure here. We can’t let Madoff’s sentence distract us from the underlying problems. This isn’t just about Madoff. This is about the system in which Madoff’s scam took place.

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The House passed the first comprehensive clean energy and climate protection bill on Friday, but exactly in the way I worried about last week -- not on a wave of grassroots momentum, but last-minute cajoling by House leaders and expense of White House political capital leaning on wavering congresspeople.

Right-leaning Dems in swing districts pleaded to the Speaker to allow them vote against without repercussion, and she had to count every head so she could let as many skittish congresspeople off the hook as possible.

In other words, the climate bill was perceived as a politically risky "tough vote", not a momentum-building easy vote.

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