When it comes to his role in health care issues, most Americans probably associate former Kansas Senator Bob Dole with Viagra. Yet this week, the 1996 GOP presidential candidate stood up (so to speak) for the cause of health care reform, issuing a joint statement with Democrat Tom Daschle urging "the joint leadership to get […]

As Democrats in the House are nearing a consensus on health care reform, Delaware's Tom Carper has introduced a potential compromise in the search of common ground in the Senate. Hoping to bridge the chasm between the watered down Baucus bill and the persistently popular public option, Carper has called for the creation of health […]

As Politico reported Monday, Republicans leaders took RNC chairman Michael Steele to the woodshed for his high profile role in the health care debate. Furious that Steele's so-called "seniors' bill of rights" committed the GOP to "no cuts to Medicare," the Congressional Republicans told their chairman to "quit meddling in policy." Of course, given the […]

That the elderly of all groups of Americans most strongly oppose President Obama on health care reform shows the success of Republican fear-mongering over supposed Medicare cuts and "death panels". And on Monday, the Washington Post did the GOP a great service in a piece titled, "On Medicare Spending, a Role Reversal." While exploring the […]

As previously detailed here, the state of Oklahoma has become the poster child for the often comic and always tragic contradictions of the Republican war on health care reform. A 2007 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked Oklahoma dead last in state health care performance. Yet in 2008, the Sooner State remained among the most […]

In his Washington Post column Sunday, David Broder provided some insight into the bi-curious political disposition of the Montana Senator Max Baucus. As he contemplated entering politics in the 1970's, Baucus apparently asked veteran New Dealer James Rowe, "Do you think I should run as a Republican or a Democrat?" So it should come as […]

With his seriously compromised and deeply flawed legislation, Senator Max Baucus has achieved rare bipartisan consensus on health care: virtually everyone from both parties hates his bill. But with his feeble acknowledgement that despite all of his kowtowing to his GOP colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee "no Republican has offered his or her support […]

Even as the watered down health care reform legislation from the Senate Finance Committee is finally being delivered to growing concerns, a new study is shining a spotlight on questions the Baucus bill fails to address. Following an analysis from PriceWaterhouseCoopers earlier this year, the survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation confirms American employers are […]

Back in April, the Daily Show's Jon Stewart offered some sound advice for frothing at the mouth Tea Baggers, "I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing." Now five months after their Tax Day outburst, thousands of vein-popping Obama opponents descended Saturday on Washington for Tea Party II. But while Glenn Beck's furious followers […]

When the GOP trotted out the hapless Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) to deliver the response to President Obama, the former cardiologist became just the latest Republican physician deployed to halt health care reform. As it turns out, the repentant Birther was an unfortunate choice to carry the GOP banner of tort reform, given his own […]