John Pilger reveals that Obama's first job after graduating from Columbia University was with Business International Corporation, which Obama does tell us in his book Dreams of My Father. What is new information is that Pilger says Business International has a long history of providing cover for the CIA and for infiltrating leftish unions. He says he knows that from what it did in his own country, Australia.

Oh. Barry, we barely knew ye.... Now, maybe that means nothing.... But, still, interesting. I'd like to have known that.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Heh. Go ahead, vent.

Updated: Diary by Kirk James Murphy MD, "Without a public option, Obama's health plan must die." More below.

Yahoo posts AP article about Obama administration seeming to capitulate on public plan. Will accept cooperatives. I'm not quoting from this article. There will be others. But you can read it.

She said cooperatives would provide the necessary "competition" for Big Insurance Parasites (BIP). Well, she didn't use the word parasite....

Note that Sen. Jay Rockefeller has asked the GAO to study health cooperatives since there are so few extant in the US: under 100, with only 2 0r 3 large ones and only the the large ones are licensed

Go give Susie some linky love -- She asks a very important question...in a very interesting way.

Come back and discuss: How do we communicate with elected politicians? How can they reach out to the "netroots"? How can such a diverse group make an impact? Pols can't read every prog/lefty/moderate blog--what can they do? What can we do?

Ryan Grim reports documentation of earlier reports that the Obama WH made a behind the scenes deal with Big Pharma: HuffPo got hold of a WH memo on the outcome of the meeting.

A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

CBS Evening News opened with a moving segment on the free health care day in Los Angeles, then moved on to cover the town hall meetings.

Rep. Anthony Weiner's meeting last was night was covered, but not for his outstanding solution --Medicare for All with a robust private option-- but because initially his staffers wouldn't let local TV cameras into the meeting. Weiner later let CBD local News 2 in, but told them it wasn't about Ch. 2 but "for his constituents."

This sign is from another meeting, but says what needs to be said:

Watch CBS Videos Online

WMCB writes about running a doctor's office, the incredible amount of time spent dealing with insurance companies on paperwork, appeals, rules, code entries, ad nauseam. Her first example is a doctor trying to treat a person in the early stages of flu--read and consider how this may work out if there is a swine flu epidemic. Note how CIGNA comes between the physician and the patient.

This is the first of a three part series.

Speaking of a real health care plan, her waitress said:

"This is the bailout for us and I want it, too.”

Which Susie made into:

...the perfect bumpersticker: “Healthcare reform: the bailout for the rest of us.” Like Festivus!

Although I'd go with "Medicare for All: the bailout for the rest of us."

Go read Susie for the backstory.

Commenter Kat at this Matt Yglesias post on Think Progress posted a link to her video on the good and the bad of having Canadian health care. The good: no bankruptcy, no run arounds, no denials of care. The bad: She misses living close to her family, especially as her parents are growing older.

I knew I'd come across the "Medicare for All with a Strong, Robust Private Option" somewhere recently. It was in a very useful comment posted by Good Grief on the Ed Schultz "Come to Medicare for All" diary at DKos this past Sunday (Sat?). I can't find how to link to a particular comment, so I'm pasting all of it. The comment is near the bottom.

The phrase "single payer with a robust private option" is in Point 2, and it seems to have been used in the CA single payer campaign:

I caught the tail end of Sen. Rockefeller's interview on NPR this evening, and he seemed to be saying the there must be an actual government run plan that can compete with the Big Insurance Parasites (BIP). One that is non-profit, but I missed the entire list of requirements.

Mcjoan wrote a diary at DKos titled "Rockefeller Rebelling?"about Rockefeller's appearance on The Ed Schultz Show on MSNBC (Is Schultz becoming the actual program for the people's interests?), and it looks like one Democrat is finally talking turkey about the amorphous "plans" being discussed. He's demanding detail and substance. She notes that it was Rockefeller who mentioned the Baucus gang's idea of dropping S-CHIP.

What they are willing to spend money on is what they value.

Uncounted, unaccounted for trillions for Banksters? Giving away cap-and-trade credits to energy companies? He lists some more and asks readers for more examples of how peopke's lives are clearly valued less than other things. Health care?

Update: How the July 22nd press conference presaged the health insurance, not public option approach.

Dear Friend,

If you’re like most Americans, there’s nothing more important to you about health care than peace of mind.

Given the status quo, that’s understandable. The current system often denies insurance due to pre-existing conditions, charges steep out-of-pocket fees – and sometimes isn’t there at all if you become seriously ill.

It’s time to fix our unsustainable insurance system and create a new foundation for health care security. That means guaranteeing your health care security and stability with eight basic consumer protections:

This is Potter's first TV interview since he left Cigna, which is somewhat amazing since he testified before Congress last month. CBS reported that a health industry whistleblower was going to testify, but did not bring him on for an interview? Wow.
'

Potter began his trip from health care spokesperson to reform advocate while back home in Tennessee. Potter attended a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds, and he tells Bill Moyers, "It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls."

NPR has posted a photo which showed many, many BHIP** lobbyists, possibly also some lobbyists for people's actual health care, and reporters do not know the names of many of them.

If any readers of this blog recognize any of the lobbyists, NPR's reporters would greatly appreciate the information.

Send in the ponies? In our dreams. Stirling's most recent post draws comparisons to the 1948-9 downturn, not only in depth of job losses but in the causes.

"You Are Here, in the Pit of a Depression" is how he titles this. Click through to see the chart

Quick hit: Found this at FDL posted by Eli:

[T]he National Park Service... has told activist Steve Lane he will be prosecuted if he attempts to demonstrate waterboarding at Thursday's anti-torture rally in Washington, D.C. The permit for the rally reads "Waterboarding exhibit will not be allowed for safety reasons."

Links at the post.

Can't make this stuff up.

The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it’s 1993.

And yes, I mean Democratic senators. The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans — Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! — hoping that someone still cares.

The conditions favor change, voters want and are comfortable with a government run "public plan," but, oh, those recalcitrant centrist Dems!

Now online from the July 2nd New York Review of Books, but posted June 3rd, is "The Health Reform We Need & Are Not Getting" by Arnold Relman, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. After discussing the factors causing the amazingly high cost of US healthcare, mostly commercialization of medical care and the effect of investor owned provisioning of care and for-profit insurance Relman notes:

When considered in the light of what has been said about health costs, the proposals now being debated in Washington seem to be missing the main target. They will expand insurance coverage in the short term, which is certainly needed, but they will create a system even less affordable than at present. (My emphasis)

and who is now in deep doodoo. Per Wired article posted at Truthout.

An NSA intelligence analyst was apparently investigated after accessing Clinton's personal correspondence in the database, the paper [NYTimes] reports, though it didn't say how many of Clinton's e-mails were captured or when the interception occurred.

[Warning: Virus detected when I clicked through to the NYTimes article; has happened other times going to the Times site.]

The database, codenamed Pinwale, allows NSA analysts to search through and read large volumes of e-mail messages, including correspondence to and from Americans. Pinwale is likely the end point for data sucked from internet backbones into NSA-run surveillance rooms at AT&T facilities around the country.

Gotta hand it to the Repub Lite Dems, they really know how to muck things up. Well, maybe they just know how to please their paymasters. Ian writes:

Seriously, this is just pathetic:

1) Lower the medicaid coverage rate from 150% to 100% of the Federal poverty line, 133% for kids and pregnant women (once you have the baby, too bad for you)
2) Subsidies stop at 300% of the poverty line (was 400%)
3) No Public Option mentioned
4) Insurance exchanges at the State level
5) Must buy insurance unless it costs more than 15% of your income

Noting how the MCM* has gone ga-ga over the wonders of Iranians taking to the streets to protest the recent presidential election results, I kept thinking about how the press had covered --or mostly not covered-- Federal investigations of, spying on, and local police actions against protesters at both national political conventions. And, of course, those beatings at some protest marches.

Guess a few thousand miles, and a government not favored by US policy makers, make protesters against that government praiseworthy and admirable. Just don't think about doing it here.

In the homeland? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Caro at Make Them Accountable * has this tidbit in a great aggregation of healthcare related news items, ranging from economists' takes to this from Jake Tapper about Gibbs' written statement declaring WH independence from Kennedy's bill:

"This is not the Administration’s bill," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy's health care reform legislation, "and it's not even the final Senate Committee bill."

That meeting that Ahmadinejad put off attending for one day? Just "the most important meeting of the 21st Century," per Michael Hudson.

[This meeting]...Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”

Hedges opens his essay with this paragraph:

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.