This story has been floating around the last few days but rather than focus on the specific issue - banning denial of coverage for preexisting conditions for children, which I believe will be resolved by a forceful HHS reg and statement, I want to focus on the issue of regulatory capture:

Regulatory capture is a term used to refer to situations in which a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. [. . .] For public choice theorists, regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether.

A cogent rebuttal about concerns about regulatory capture regarding the health bills has never been provided to my satisfaction. More . .

Passover starts tonight.

Here's a funny thing from a recommended dkos diary:

I just found out that in 1798, the fifth congress passed and President John Adams signed into law "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen" authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance. I guess now President John Adams was a tyrant who took away Americans' freedom [. . .]

(Emphasis supplied.) While the argument (the individual mandate is constitutional) supposedly being supported by this historical artifact is unopposable given current jurisprudence, it just so happens that John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which did indeed, take away our freedoms. It was a pretty big deal. Maybe rephrase the "took away our freedoms" line? Just a thought.

Speaking for me only

More good stuff from Ezra Klein:

This bill is Clintonian: It achieves liberal ends through market means, and since conservatives frequently claim they are also in favor of access to medical care, it's not even clear that near-universal coverage can properly be called a liberal end. Not to mention that it's more conservative than the Great Triangulator himself was: It doesn't resemble his reforms so much as the Republican alternative to his reforms. But Democrats haven't gotten credit for that, in part because the opposition of Republicans meant they had to keep their liberals onboard, and that cut against trumpeting the conservative structure of the legislation.

But if President Mitt Romney had proposed this bill, a substantial number among his party would have stood with him on it, and no one would have trouble identifying what was conservative within it. And, to be fair, many Democrats would have fought the legislation every step of the way.

(Emphasis supplied.) Ezra has been great since the bill passed. The unanswered question though is the one I pose in my title.

Speaking for me only

Glenn Greenwald:

The New York Times' Peter Baker has an article today on Obama's leading candidates to replace Stevens, in which one finds this strange passage:

The president’s base hopes he will name a full-throated champion to counter Justice Antonin Scalia, the most forceful conservative on the bench. . . . The candidates who would most excite the left include the constitutional scholars Harold Hongju Koh, Cass R. Sunstein and Pamela S. Karlan.

Glenn seems convinced "the Left" won't be excited by Sunstein. I wish I could be so sure. At this point, I suspect that may not be true.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein:

What you're seeing here is the tension between being a conservative and being a Republican. It's not that you can't be both at the same time, but that you have to know which wins when ideological push comes to electoral shove. [. . . The health reforms] were defined as conservative as recently as two or three years ago. [. . . ]

NYTimes:

Senate Republicans learned early Thursday that they will be able to kill language in a measure altering President Barack Obama's newly enacted health care overhaul, meaning the bill will have to return to the House for final congressional approval.

Because of this, there is no reason not to try and add a public option via amendment. Yesterday I was critical of David Sirota's campaign to have Senator Bennet offer such an amendment. This new development changes that. I'm with Sirota now:

Speaking for me only

I prefer this to "Mission Accomplished" on health care (see Cenk Ugyur warning against "Mission Accomplished" on health care):

[W]e're not done. Even if the bill does a better job than CBO projects, health-care costs will still bankrupt us. This is one small step for cost, one giant leap for coverage. My great hope is that the bill makes the next steps easier. But there's still no guarantee we'll take them. And the debate and difficulty Congress had passing a bill that was too small and deeply compromised has left me very pessimistic about our system's capacity to make harder decisions. The danger is not that we can't solve our problems, but that we won't. And that's the biggest risk of all.

From Ezra Klein. Good post.

Speaking for me only

Strange approach imo:

Senate Judiciary Republicans are looking to defeat the lifetime judicial appointment of Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by painting him as President Barack Obama’s most extreme pick and a likely advocate of universal health care from the bench. [. . .] The argument against Liu, a law professor at the University of California-Berkley, is the first time that Republicans have injected the partisan health care debate into the confirmation of a judicial pick.

I've longed argued that the courts are indeed political. But it is interesting ground the GOP has chosen - making Liu a referendum on universal health care coverage seems a strange argument to make. I imagine it will manifest itself as a debate about the mandates. In any event, we will found out today at 2:30 at the Senate Judiciary committee hearing on Liu's nomination. It will be webcast and you can see it here.

Speaking for me only

David Sirota will be delivering a petition today to the offices of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) demanding Bennet offer a public option amendment to the health reconciliation fix. Sirota writes:

Facing an increasingly difficult Democratic primary challenge, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) has spent the last many weeks trumpeting himself as the Senate's main champion of the public option, issuing a letter demanding a reconciliation vote on the public option. [. . .] Politico reported that his campaign manager suggested Bennet would not offer the amendment because "we're not going (to) kill the bill to make a point." [. . . E]ven as he promises to "continue to push" for a public option, he is refusing to offer a public option amendment right now when it has the best chance of passing (ie. only needing 51 votes, rather than 60 later), somehow claiming that offering a public option amendment to a separate reconciliation "fix" bill would kill a bill that he acknowledges has already passed.

My guess is Bennet is following the Democratic leadership's orders not to offer any amendments - as the leadership is trying to prevent the separate reconciliation bill from having to be voted on again in the House [. . .]

Sirota is berating Bennet for honoring the deal made between Dems in the House and Senate on the reconciliation fixes. That's not fair. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, almost certainly at the behest of the White House, refused to push for a public option in the House version of the reconciliation bill. It is absurd to blame Bennet for the deal made by Obama and Pelosi. Of course, if this happens, all bets should be off:

In the words of Jonathan Chait:

a moderate Republican health care plan, by every substantive comparison or definition.

That does not mean it is not the right policy (I think it is not the right reform policy). But it certainly is not progressive reform. It has progressive elements, but the reform element of the health bill is not progressive. It is Republican reform.

Speaking for me only

Chris Bowers:

The goal is a more progressive Democratic caucus that still controls the House. We should be attempting to become majority partners in a governing coalition, not minority partners in a governing coalition (the current set-up), or majority partners in the loyal opposition.

Agreed.

Speaking for me only

Via Matt Taibbi:

As she inched toward the triumphant win, Nancy Pelosi issued a fact sheet about the bill that cheerfully quoted an E.J. Dionne editorial. The passage:

An op-ed by E.J. Dionne on Friday reveals that the current health reform legislation pending before Congress was “built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.”

The most progressive legislation since Medicare? Puhleeeaze.

Speaking for me only