I wondered last night how the same liberals who foamed at the mouth about W. spending $600 billion on a foreign venture could in good conscience extol the virtues of multiple trillion dollar expansions of the federal budget deficit less than six months after taking complete control of the apparatus of state:
CQ:
Facing resistance from their own moderates to the [health care] legislation’s roughly $1 trillion price tag, House leaders have put off release of their draft legislation.
Brenda Bowers linked to a story about a group of Blue Dogs going against the grain:
The Blue Dog Democrats’ list of demands came on the eve of House Democratic leaders’ planned unveiling of their final bill Friday. The bill release was pushed back to Monday at the earliest and Democratic leaders agreed to devote Friday to meetings with the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs to work through their concerns.
These include the need for more cost containment measures, protections for small businesses and a focus on rural health care.
And since I’ve been trying to find out what the practitioners think of all the hoopla surrounding government financed health insurance, I thought this was interesting (from Brenda’s link):
Among the Blue Dogs’ concerns is the shape of a new public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. House leaders envision making payment rates to providers in the plan some 5 percent higher than Medicare payment rates. Blue Dogs say they can’t support any link to Medicare rates, which they say pays well below market rates and varies unfairly around the country.
Filed under: National , blue dogs, health care reform
Thanks for notice Jeff. Bb