On a separate thread where folks are discussing possible legal challenges health care bill, I said I'd look around to see if there have been any challenges to Massachusetts mandatory coverage law and how they fared. This is by no means comprehensive:

Mass.
Against the Mass. law, I could find only one challenge and that was thrown out on what seem to be procedural grounds rather than on the merits. (I can't find the slip op. online to confirm).

Tea Party Challenges

Marcy Kaptur is on C-Span right now talking glowingly about the anti-women's rights addition to the Insurance Industry Protection Act.

Sigh.

Now somebody else [Christopher Smith] is up, talking about the huge number of babies who would have been killed and all the mothers who would have been wounded without the intervention of the brave right-to-life souls who got this amendment into the bill.

Eric Massa and Dennis Kucinich voted against the bill. Thank you.

Alan Grayson, John Conyers, and Anthony Weiner voted for the bill. Hard to blame them, as there are good things tucked into this bill among all the other stuff we could really have done without. Thanks, guys [not].

That's the kindest explanation I can think of.

Bloggeth the formerly-liberal perfesser a few days ago:

What this suggests is that the really important thing, for reformers, is to get the principle of universality established. Once that happens, there’s no going back.

Yeah, well, I guess it helps if you define universe.

[chart stolen adapted from the incomparable Ian Welsh]

You've read/heard the phrase bending the [cost] curve [downward] once or twice by now, and in case you've been a tad confused [or not] about what that means, basically it's what Canada did in 1970 when single payer went completely nationwide there.

The Hill is reporting that Democrats are 'rebranding' the public option as 'Medicare for All.':

Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.”

House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option.

Seems Congress has finally locked on to the fact that Medicare's pretty popular:

While much of the public is foggy on what a public option actually is, people understand Medicare. It also would place the new public option within the rubric of a familiar system rather than something new and unknown.