Progressive Opinion

thedailybeast.com — As we gather in our respective bunkers awaiting the white smoke from the Supreme Court, I thought a little history discussion might be in order. We’ve heard conservatives say many times that the Warren Court overreached, legislated from the bench, and divided America. It’s typically called the most controversial court in American history, and we know the reasons why. But the numbers tell a very different story. Even though Roberts has reigned on Maryland Avenue for just seven years as opposed to Earl Warren’s 16, the Roberts nonet (more accurately, quintet) has issued far more aggressive and in-your-face 5-4 rulings on controversial and high-profile cases and done far more to divide the country. I don’t know what they’ll do on health care, but they already deserve to displace the Warren Court in the controversy sweepstakes.

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dailykos.com — Imagine for a moment that you're a soldier who gets pregnant from a rape. You want an abortion. If you were an employee of the State Department, your government health insurance would cover the cost. But because you're in the Army, it doesn't. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the New Hampshire Democrat, wants to change that. Her amendment to do so as part of the 2013 defense authorization bill passed the Senate Armed Services Committee late last month. But she has run into an obstacle: House Republicans. They want to keep things the way they are. The way things are is that thousands of American servicewomen report being assaulted each year, according to the military's own surveys. But given that the Pentagon estimates only one in seven rapes is reported, the actual number is several thousand a year. Thus, the number of pregnancies from rape in the military is several hundred a year.

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washingtonpost.com — On Tuesday, Mitt Romney outlined his plan to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Normally, the rest of this post would go into mind-numbingly granular detail on Romney’s plan. But as of now, there aren’t enough details to go into. The most comprehensive document the campaign has produced reads more like notes toward a plan than an actual plan. The part explaining what Romney would do spans 330 words. Those words are enough to lay out a basic vision. But the key to his plan comes in these nine words: “End tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance.” The problem is, there aren’t any words after that. The health-care system today is basically built atop the tax deduction for employer-based health care. That’s why most Americans under 65 who have health care have it through their employer. But how you end that deduction matters quite a lot.

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takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com — Republicans love to kvetch about “uncertainty” – employers’ uncertainty about the economy, for instance.  On his blog recently, Paul Krugman took apart a research paper purportedly showing that “policy uncertainty” is restraining the economy. And House Speaker John Boehner has claimed that uncertainty over the future of the Bush tax cuts is hurting business. About the only “uncertainty” they don’t talk about is the status of health care reform. That’s because this particular uncertainty was entirely manufactured by Republicans – who began plotting to undo the Affordable Care Act by re-legislating it in the courts before the ink was dry on Mr. Obama’s signature.

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tnr.com — A new internet video from the Romney campaign focuses on Ann Romney’s diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis and how it affected the rest of the family. The ad’s apparent purpose is to humanize Romney — to portray him as a sympathetic, loving husband. That's just fine. But if you have MS, or any other serious chronic illness, you need more than a devoted spouse. You need a way to pay your medical bills. And, historically, many people with MS have struggled with that. MS is a long-term, progressively debilitating disease, requiring ever more costly treatments and equipment. The Affordable Care Act will not fix all of these problems, but the health reform law will certainly make the situation better. But patients with chronic disease like MS will lose most or all those protections if Romney becomes president and, as he has promised, he repeals the Affordable Care Act.

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economix.blogs.nytimes.com — The world’s largest banks have been accused of many things in recent years, including taking excessive risk in the run-up to 2008, doing great damage to the American economy by blowing themselves up and then working hard to resist any sensible notions of financial reform. All of this is true, but it misses what is likely to be the most profound negative impact of the banks’ behavior on most Americans. The banks’ actions led directly to an increase in government debt, which in turn has made the reduction of that debt by “cutting runaway spending” a centerpiece of the Republican presidential campaign to date. As a result of this pressure, Medicare now stands on the brink of being eliminated as a viable form of social insurance. Yet the executives who lead these banks – and the politicians with whom they work closely – will not be held accountable this election season. How is this possible?

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economix.blogs.nytimes.com — The world’s largest banks have been accused of many things in recent years, including taking excessive risk in the run-up to 2008, doing great damage to the American economy by blowing themselves up and then working hard to resist any sensible notions of financial reform. All of this is true, but it misses what is likely to be the most profound negative impact of the banks’ behavior on most Americans. The banks’ actions led directly to an increase in government debt, which in turn has made the reduction of that debt by “cutting runaway spending” a centerpiece of the Republican presidential campaign to date. As a result of this pressure, Medicare now stands on the brink of being eliminated as a viable form of social insurance. Yet the executives who lead these banks – and the politicians with whom they work closely – will not be held accountable this election season. How is this possible?

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commondreams.org — There has never been any doubt in my mind that if I face another cancer diagnosis that requires prolonged treatments and has an uncertain outcome, I would rather die than fight it. As an insured American who knows first-hand how quickly a cancer in my body turns to full out trauma in my career and in my finances, I just cannot do it again nor can I ask my husband to risk his own life and security either. It wouldn’t be fair. It’s not that I believe every cancer is a death sentence. But I am 57 years old now -- old enough to be an expensive liability in our society, but too young to be covered by Medicare. If I face a serious illness like cancer again that costs me an awful lot in out-of-pocket expenses not covered by insurance, I will doom my husband to struggles he doesn’t need and that are not his fault. Bad enough that one of us should be sick, there is certainly no need for me to take him down with the ship.

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huffingtonpost.com — If there is a group of people more anxious about how the Supreme Court will rule on the health care reform law than President Obama and the millions of Americans who are already benefiting from it, it is health insurance executives. Not only have their companies been spending millions of dollars implementing the parts of the law that pertains to them -- and most of them do -- but they also have been counting on the law as very possibly the only thing that can preserve the free market system of health insurance in this country. This is why it is so ironic that defenders of the free market are the most vocal critics of the law and the ones hoping most ardently that the Court will declare it unconstitutional.

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truthdig.com — The night after President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act was being mercilessly attacked by U.S. Supreme Court conservatives, I was surprised to find a group of Obama volunteers cheerfully gathered in a nondescript office building east of Los Angeles to make phone calls for the president’s campaign. I wondered at their good spirits. It was as though they hadn’t heard about the hostile reception Obamacare had received at the Supreme Court. But, as I learned, they knew about it and were fully aware of the tough fight Obama faces in November, no doubt against Mitt Romney, who by then will have remade himself into a faux centrist. Many of their phone calls—even to old Obama supporters—require a hard sell. And they know what’s at stake, including future appointments to the Supreme Court. I saw that their good cheer stemmed from determination and the belief they are well prepared for the battle ahead.

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