Amy Goodman on Democracy Now stated “Republican lawmakers remained staunchly opposed to using the federal government to regulate health insurance.” Republicans want the current health care bill dumped in the trash and to start all over.

Goodman interviewed Trudy Lieberman (no relationship with Joe Lieberman that I know of) a contributing editor and blogger to Columbia Journalism Review. Lieberman noted, “as a country, we are still extremely divided….We have a deep cleavage in this country about how much government should do and how much government should not do.” She referred to the issue of how much regulation of insurance companies should government engage in.

Goodman quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Obama: “…a year ago…you (Obama) said ‘The public option is one way to keep the insurance companies honest and to increase competition.’”

Quoting Pelosi further, “the public option, which would save $120 billion, keep the insurance companies honest, and increase competition.” Pelosi continued, referring to Senator’s Enzi, Snowe and Durbin proposing exchanges “because the insurance companies opposed the public option. They couldn’t take the competition.”

So Goodman asked Lieberman “Why did President Obama drop the public option?”

Lieberman didn’t know but speculated that it was because, perhaps, campaign contributors to the Obama campaign, stakeholders such as insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, the business community led by the Chamber of Commerce, didn’t want the public option.

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Remember all the controversy a few months back about building a fence along the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants? Some $2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border – a finding that is being met with surprise, anger, and consternation by immigrant groups and at least some border residents. The entire length of the Mexico-United States border is 1952 miles long. [Border Fence Project]

Last September the [Christian Science Monitor] reported that “$6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new fencing over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.”

The Anderson Cooper video demonstrates that the border fence does not or will not work. The cost of building and maintaining the fence is exorbitant. Those billions of dollars can be put to better use. Health care reform certainly comes to mind. If you add in the billions of dollars spent, and still being spent in the war on Iraq, was a waste of money and lives. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is questionable as well. The United States has, during my lifetime alone, spent trillions of dollars in war. My lifetime experience includes World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The United States, as a nation, seems enamored with war. Only in World War II were we attacked by another country—Japan. We were not attacked by the countries of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

That tunnel under the border fence with Anderson Cooper was located at Otay Mesa which is at Tijuana. The tunnel would have permitted a flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics into the United States from Mexico.

Last spring President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint canceled plans to extend the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border beyond the 670 miles already completed or planned, symbolically breaking with a much-heralded approach to border security advocated by President George W. Bush. [Dallas Morning News] That should end the waste of money for the ineffective border fence project.

The US-Mexico border will re-emerge again as soon as Congress can get back to it from their arguing over health care reform. The question about security of the border will center around illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartel’s entry into the United States. [Politico]

It may well be that the security of the United States is in more danger from the drug cartels than either illegal immigration, terrorists or Al Qaida in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You might want to add citizens of the United States who are addicted to drugs and buy them from the drug cartels as threats to national security.

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The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Pfizer’s profits increased 26% over last year’s. Pfizer attributes the increase in profits from cutting costs.

The maker of cholesterol fighter Lipitor, impotence treatment Viagra and smoking cessation drug Chantix slashed costs on everything from manufacturing and marketing to research and development to produce a profit of $2.88 billion.

The $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth last Thursday cements Pfizer’s position atop the industry, and the combined company is expected to eliminate nearly 20,000 jobs by the time integration is complete.

The CEO of Pfizer is Jeff Kindler. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors. While CEO of Pfizer in 2008, Kindler earned a total compensation of $14,788,302, which included a base salary of $1,575,000, a cash bonus of $3,000,000, stocks granted of $7,553,015, and options granted of $2,222,026.

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The following story appeared in the St. Petersburg Times:

Monique Zimmerman-Stein and her husband, Gary Stein, have Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance through Stein’s job at the Hillsborough County Health Department. They pay $90 a week for coverage. But the insurance isn’t nearly enough.

Monique tries to picture what her girls must look like now that they’re 10 and 13. She hasn’t been able to see their faces in two years. Her days are long and dark and quiet

“I know I won’t ever see again. I’m not even asking for that,” Zimmerman-Stein said. “I just don’t think we should have to deal with constantly being harassed.”

Monique is 48. She and her two youngest daughters have Stickler’s syndrome [Wikipedia], a rare genetic disorder that causes joints to dissolve and retinas to detach. Monique lost her right eye at 16 and now sees only enough light through her left eye to tell night from day. She and her children are constantly in and out of doctors’ offices.

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Campaign contributors, current and former staffers and even lobbyists may be re-considering their ties to a man who once served as the GOP’s primary fund-raiser in the Senate.

At least three high-profile staffers have left Ensign’s orbit after the news broke of his affair with Cynthia Hampton. This includes the departure of ex-chief of staff John Lopez, ex-communications director Tory Mazzola and Mike Slanker, who worked with Ensign as the political director of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, which Ensign chaired.

OpenSecrets has a long dissertation about Ensign’s money contributors which is well worth reading, particularly if you live in Nevada. [Source: OpenSecrets]

Early last year, Senator John Ensign contacted a small circle of political and corporate supporters back home in Nevada — a casino designer, an airline executive, the head of a utility and several political consultants — seeking work for a close friend and top Washington aide, Douglas Hampton.

“He’s a competent guy, and he’s looking to come back to Nevada. Do you know of anything?” one patron recalled Mr. Ensign asking.

Reports the New York Times.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia. Ensign was looking for a way to get Doug Hampton out of Washington D.C.

Ensign told Michael Slanker that Mrs. Hampton was ill and Doug Hampton was weary of flying back and forth between Washington and Las Vegas; that Hampton would be returning to Nevada. None of that was true. Ensign was enlisting Slanker’s help in finding Doug Hampton a job in Las Vegas.

Slanker suggested Hampton could revive “Ensign Inc.,” where Slanker had served as Ensign’s top fund-raiser and political consultant. The company Mr. Slanker and his wife had formed to help run these campaigns, November Inc., had become dormant after the couple moved to Washington to help Mr. Ensign run the Republican committee in 2007.

Mr. Slanker said he proposed that the firm could be revived, giving Mr. Hampton a well-known base in Nevada political circles to start a small government affairs practice. “That afternoon, the senator and Mr. Slanker met with Mr. Hampton.”

“Whatever clients you can get — you can eat what you kill,” Mr. Slanker recalled telling Mr. Hampton of the deal.

Ensign agreed to help line up three or four clients who would pay Mr. Hampton enough to match or surpass his $144,000 Senate salary as an administrative assistant, Mr. Hampton said.

Senator Ensign lined up several donors as Hampton’s lobbying clients. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton. Hampton was lobbying the Senator though federal criminal laws prohibited him from doing so, and Ensign knew it, but they decided to ignore the law.

…trying to clean up the mess from the illicit relationship and distance himself from the Hamptons, he entangled political supporters, staff members and Senate colleagues, some of whom say they now feel he betrayed them.

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Senator Ensign of Nevada is no friend of Nevadans. He posted the following on his website:

Photo from the Las Vegas Sun: Senate Finance Committee members Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., left, and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., talk Tuesday on Capitol Hill before the committee’s debate on health care legislation. Ensign spoke at length about his opposition to a government-run insurance plan.

ENSIGN HELPS DEFEAT DEMOCRAT PUBLIC PLAN AMENDMENTS

Schumer and Rockefeller amendments would have included version of government takeover of health care in bill

Washington, D.C. – Senator John Ensign, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, today voted to defeat two amendments that would have attempted to include a version of a government-run plan in the healthcare reform bill.

“I strongly oppose a government takeover of our healthcare system in America and will continue to fight against Democrats’ attempts to include it in the bill,” Ensign said.  “A government takeover could force private insurers out of the industry and could force hundreds of millions of Americans, against their will, into government-run health care. A public plan, with one signature from President Obama, could destroy our healthcare industry as we know it and turn every one of our healthcare decisions over to government bureaucrats.”

Because the federal government will act as a competitor, a regulator, and a funder, a government-run plan would ultimately force private insurers out of business. The Congressional Budget Office Director has testified that it would be “extremely difficult” to create “a system where a public plan could compete on a level playing field” against private coverage.  The two amendments, offered by Democrat Senators Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller, would have included a version of the public plan in the Senate healthcare bill.

Fact is the healthcare insurance industry IS the problem.

The Las Vegas Sun carried the following in today’s news coverage:

John Ensign: Public option would be popular, so let’s not do it

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. John Ensign delivered one of the more curious arguments against a government-run, public health care option during a long and lofty Senate committee debate Tuesday.

People might like it and use it.

Then it would become popular, and too big to fail.

And the government would have to support it.

“Does anyone really believe this Congress will let this government program go away if it has a constituency?” Ensign asked his colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee. “To have a large program like this, once it’s started, you’re never going to get rid of it.”

The public option would be a government-run health care alternative to the private insurance market. It’s intended to provide an option for those currently without health insurance, and, through competition, rein in rising insurance costs.

It has become perhaps the most contentious element in the proposed health care legislation — dividing not only Democrats and Republicans, but also Democrats and Democrats — and is the focus of those trying to defeat the health care bill.

Supporters argue the public option would force insurance companies to compete for all the new business that health care reform would create. The insurance companies stand to gain millions of new customers as both the House and Senate bills require Americans to carry health insurance, just as most states require automobile insurance. More than 30 million Americans are uninsured.

The uninsured could choose to buy the government-run plan or private insurance (and the poor would qualify for an expanded Medicaid program). Those who ignore the new law and go without insurance would face fines.

Tuesday provided a first major test of the public option during an hours-long debate in the Senate Finance Committee, which is the final congressional panel to consider the bill. Committee members were considering two amendments to add the public option.

Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the leading advocate of the public option, delivered an impassioned speech.

Ensign helped hold up the Republican side of the opposition, sometimes drawing on his experience as a veterinarian. For the most part, his argument reflected Republicans’ contention that the new option would be a step toward socialized health care — that the public option would put private insurers out of business.

“All of this is a slippery slope toward complete government-run health care, complete government-run takeover of our health care system,” Ensign said.

Ensign scoffed at the suggestion, proposed in the amendments, that the public option would operate autonomously, relying on premiums paid by customers rather than federal funding. Once the plan got up and running, Ensign said, it would create its own constituency, and Congress would be afraid to kill it off even if it needed federal funding to survive, he said.

“As Ronald Reagan said, ‘The best way to ensure a life is to become a government program,’ ” Ensign said.

“These government programs start and they grow and they grow and they grow and they grow,” he said. “Government was set up to do the things we need it to do, not the things we want it to do.”

The amendments failed. Public option supporters vow to continue fighting on the Senate floor.

Ensign might be right. Should it be adopted, the public option might become too big to fail. Polls show most Americans — 65 percent, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News survey — support a public option.

Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com.

What a reason to defeat the public option proposed by Senator Rockefeller! People might like it? It is pretty clear who Senator Ensign is representing – the health insurance industry.

Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive wrote yesterday,

There are so many problems with the health care reform bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, it is little wonder that members of his committee have proposed more than 500 amendments to fix it. Unfortunately, some of the worst amendments that would make the bill even more of a gift to the health insurance industry are being offered by Republicans. If there is a God in heaven, they will not be adopted. But many other amendments are vital, including those that will make this key bill more like the better bills that have been reported out of four other Congressional committees. All of those bills call for the creation of a public insurance option, which is an absolutely critical element of reform. Without it, all of us who are not eligible for an existing government-run program, like the Medicare and VA programs, will be forced to buy coverage from the private insurance industry, which is dominated by a cartel of huge for-profit companies.

The adoption of an amendment to create a strong public option, supported by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and many others on the committee, is certainly job one. But there are many additional fixes that are necessary, including other amendments being offered by Senator Rockefeller. They are so important I have sent a letter to Senator Baucus and the other members of the committee urging them to adopt the Rockefeller amendments that will require private insurance companies to be more honest and transparent in their dealings with consumers and more accountable to federal and state governments that must regulate them. As I note in the letter, without those amendments, insurance companies will be able to continue their most discriminatory practices without either transparency or real accountability. Here is my letter:

September 23, 2009

The Honorable Max Baucus
Committee on Finance
United States Senate
219 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-6200

Dear Chairman Baucus:

As a former health insurance company executive, I am very concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability in the health insurance industry. That is why I urge you to incorporate Senator Rockefeller’s Amendments #C12 and #C13 into the America’s Healthy Future Act (AHFA), in particular with regard to the need for airtight regulations to protect consumer interests.

As proposed, AHFA will allow insurers to continue many of their most discriminatory practices without either transparency or real accountability: cost-shifting to their most vulnerable members through benefit designs that serve the needs of Wall Street; and rationing of care based on arbitrary opinions about what care is needed. In addition, there is no accountability for insurance companies to provide affordable and comprehensive health care coverage. A requirement that everyone buy health insurance accompanied by subsidies for people with low incomes does not ensure that Americans will have affordable care. The explosive cost growth in Massachusetts after health care reform is a case in point. And, AHFA has no mechanisms to enforce the insurance regulations that are included.

In addition, AHFA designates the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) to write key regulations. This is of great concern to me because this proposal delegates to the NAIC, a private organization, with rule-making authority that is generally reserved for an agency of the federal government. Any institution given the authority to define the rules that will determine health insurance coverage for millions of Americans must be completely independent of the insurance industry and have a demonstrated record of putting the concerns of consumers first. The institution must also have the will and the resources to carry out the rulemaking process in a transparent and unbiased manner, with opportunity for input from all interested parties at each stage of the process. Based on its traditional manner of conducting business, the NAIC fails to meet any of these standards. The NAIC does not operate independently of the insurance industry. In fact, the NAIC is a private corporation, funded, in large part, by the insurance industry itself. Without industry dollars, the NAIC would not operate as it does today. In addition, eight of the last 10 NAIC presidents, as well as numerous commissioners, have gone directly from their posts to industry positions, creating the distinct impression that leadership positions at NAIC are mere stepping stones to more lucrative careers in the insurance industry.

For all these reasons, as well as my inside knowledge of how easily insurance companies circumvent existing regulations, I support Senator Rockefeller’s Amendments #C12 and #C13 to AHFA, which will:

*Create a grant program for state insurance departments to help them better enforce market rules and protect consumers.

*Establish a federal role for private health insurance oversight and provide resources for the Department of Health and Human Services to hire expert staff to carry out these functions and coordinate with state regulators.

* Require health insurance plans to disclose clear, accurate, and timely information on their policies and practices to ensure that they do not circumvent new federal health insurance regulations.

* Add needed transparency requirements such as: establishing fair grievance and appeals procedures by health insurers; clarifying information for health professionals and freeing up time for patients by establishing transparency standards relating to reimbursement arrangements between health plans and providers; and requiring advance notice of plan changes so consumers get what they pay.

*Establish America’s Health Insurance Trust, a nonprofit, independent, consumer-driven organization that will evaluate and give ratings to all health insurance products offered through the National Health Insurance Exchange. Annual insurance product ratings will be based on factors such as affordability, adequacy, transparency, consumer satisfaction, provider satisfaction, and quality.

* Ensure that ombudsman offices in each state are open to consumers at all stages of the appeal process to allow for early intervention and increase the likelihood of successful appeals.

Health insurance reform requires that we not only create strong new consumer protections. It also requires that those rules be effectively enforced. American families and businesses must have health insurance that is accountable to them, not to Wall Street.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Wendell Potter, Senior Fellow on Health Care, Center for Media and Democracy

Cc: All Members of the Senate Finance Committee

[Source: Center for Media and Democracy]

Members of the Senate Finance Committee, yesterday, September 29, 2009  rejected Senator Rockefeller’s proposed amendment to the America’s Healthy Future Act even though each of them had Potter’s letter dated  September 23, 2009. Wonder if any of them even read his letter.

With evidence of corrupt U.S. border officials allowing illegal immigrants to enter the country in exchange for bribes, the FBI is concerned terrorists or materials that could be used in a terrorist attack might also slip through. [ABC News]

In one instance at the U.S.-Mexico border, FBI video surveillance obtained by ABC News caught a truck full of illegal immigrants pulling up to Customs and Border Protection officer Michael Gilliland, and being waved through his border inspection lane for $100,000, officials said.

And in Texas, an undercover FBI operation allegedly caught a deputy sheriff in the act.

“You can either pay me here or follow me all the way to Petula and you can pay the judge,” the deputy sheriff told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Mexican national, despite the agent having broken traffic laws.

“So the fine is $150 here,” the deputy sheriff was recorded as saying.

“You don’t have to worry about court or anything,” he said, after the undercover agent handed over $150 in cash.

The Gang of Six, three Republican and three Democratic senators in the group, all of them members of the Senate Finance Committee, received an average of $74,600 from health industry lobbyists, according to The San Francisco’s Chronicle’s analysis of records through June.

That is about 25 percent more than the average of $59,632 in such donations that the gang’s other Senate colleagues raked in from lobbyists for the pharmaceutical, hospital, insurance and nursing home industries, according to the analysis, which was based on records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, [Wikipedia] [VoteSmart] [OpenSecrets] the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee who is seen as key to influencing other conservatives, received the most this year – $223,600. Committee chair Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., [Wikipedia] [VoteSmart] [OpenSecrets] was second with $141,000.

Baucus’ $856 billion, 10-year bill, which is scheduled to be amended and voted on beginning Tuesday, has been criticized by liberals and conservatives across Capitol Hill.

Conservatives blasted the plan for increasing the tax burden on some Americans. The plan imposes a 35 percent excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 a year per person, or $21,000 a year per family.

Liberals dislike the Baucus plan because it does not allow consumers to choose a government-run insurance option, which could hold down costs by promoting competition with private insurers.

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