NEWS

From the Hospital to Bankruptcy Court - New York Times

Some of the debtors sitting forlornly in this city’s old stone bankruptcy court have lost a job or gotten divorced. Others have been summoned to face their creditors because they spent mindlessly beyond their means. But all too often these days, they are there merely because they, or their children, got sick.

NC Health Insurer Being Probed For Campaign Against Public Option – TPM

BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina is being investigated by the state’s attorney general for a recent mailer and spate of robo-calls in opposition to the public option, according to a company spokesman.

Insurance Industry Antitrust Fight Headed To Conference Committee – Huffington Post

The insurance industry successfully fought off a Senate threat to revoke its antitrust exemption as part of health care reform, but the issue lives to fight one more battle in the conference committee negotiations that will take place between the two chambers.

Mark Halperin’s Mary Landrieu Photoshop: Pure Class - Huffington Post

As many of you know, Mark Halperin is this babbling idiot whom Time magazine hired to cobble together this insipid web product called "The Page," which is designed to scam people looking for trenchant, up-to-the-minute political news into giving Time many, many unnecessary ad impressions as you follow Halperin’s teasing links to his content. That content tends to be a really dumb listicle, or a one sentence piece of pure and unadulterated banality, or, if you are really lucky, a paragraph or two of analysis that’s either so conventional as to appear slam-dunk, or so witless that it’s completely laughable and wrong.

OPINION

The Filibuster is Bad - Matt Yglesias

Every couple of weeks some right-winger or other says to me something like “you sure were singing a different tune on the filibuster back when Democrats were in the minority!” I appreciate that it’s usually a safe bet to accuse people of being hypocritical on issues of congressional procedure, but I’ve really been exceedingly consistent on this point. Back during the 2005 “nuclear option” fight over filibustering circuit court nominees I urged Democrats to try to strike a bargain that would have ending all filibusters as its goal. Similarly, today when some people make the case that “you liberals may hate the filibuster now, but you’ll be glad it’s there next time the Republicans get in” I have to tell them that, no, I won’t.

Will Health Reform Opponents Face The Facts? – Larry McNeely

Over the weekend, the Senate commenced its historic debate on health reform legislation. So what are they talking about in what many call the world’s greatest deliberative body?

Is there a difference between voting no and voting to filibuster? - Ezra Klein

It’s common these days to hear conservative Democrats say that they view procedural votes as indistinguishable from actual votes. Voting against a bill, and voting against allowing a vote on the bill, are exactly the same, they say. Bruce Bartlett e-mails to say that that wasn’t always true, at least not when Republicans were in charge.

Prevention is Not Only Good Health Policy, It’s Good Economic Policy – The Health Care Blog

The current debate around how to best control burgeoning health costs, has  pushed the issue of prevention to the forefront. That’s right where it should be. By shifting our health care to be more pro-active and prevention-oriented, we can make a major impact on common and costly chronic diseases such as diabetes. In turn, this will help to secure the financial stability of our health care system and continued economic growth and prosperity.

Health Care Reform Goes Home for the Holiday - AFL-CIO

Senators are heading home for Thanksgiving this week, but when they return, they’ll begin debate on one of the most important priorities of our lifetime: health care reform.

(compiled for Health Care for America Now)