President Obama is rallying House Democrats to support a deal with organized labor on the excise tax. President Obama has convinced labor to support the deal after days of meetings and union threats to oppose health care reform. The deal is that instead of family health insurance plans worth more than $23,000 be taxed 40%, [...]
Discouraged House Democrats are meeting to discuss health care negotiations with the Senate. But at least two members will be absent from that meeting. As members left the House chamber for the first and last vote of the day to bring in the second session of the 111th Congress, I chatted with Representative David Wu [...]
Private health insurance companies showed the real power of their muscle after Saturday’s senate vote. Despite Harry Reid’s win in getting the 60 votes he need to move the health care bill forward, in the end, the legislation would do little to help working class Americans because it did not include a public option. In [...]
It is almost one year since President Obama took office, the expectations were high not only in America but across the world. In that time frame, President Obama’s approval rating has gone down by 20 percent in the polls as more people realized that he didn’t have a “vision for changing the world”, but instead [...]
The President and Senate Democrats want to push through some Health reform. But Howard Dean and other progressives want to play hardball and get a substantive plan passed–one that contains a real public option and holds the insurance comopanies accountable.
