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   Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gnter Grass still thinks reunification was a bad idea.
 Forty years of writing from Taylor Branch, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Marjorie Williams, Joshua Micah Marshall, and more.
 With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.
 The best recent memoir from republican Washington is a hoax. That should tell you something.
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November 5, 2009
'I URGE CONGRESS TO LISTEN TO THE AARP'.... President Obama doesn't stop by the White House press briefing room unannounced very often, so it was interesting to see him make some brief remarks this afternoon about health care. In particular, the president touted formal endorsements today of the Democratic health care reform plan from the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) and the American Medical Association (AMA). "When it comes to the AARP, this is no small endorsement," Obama said. "For more than 50 years they have been a leader in the fight to reduce the costs of health care and expand coverage for our senior citizens. They are a nonpartisan organization and their board made their decision to endorse only after a careful, intensive, objective scrutiny of this bill. They're endorsing this bill because they know it will strengthen Medicare, not jeopardize it; they know it will protect the benefits our seniors receive, not cut them." He added, "The AARP knows this bill will make health care more affordable, they know it will make coverage more secure, they know it's a good deal for our seniors, and that's why we're thrilled that they're standing up for this effort." On the AMA, the president said the nation's largest group of physicians "would not be supporting it if they really believed that it would lead to government bureaucrats making decisions that are best left to doctors. They would not be with us if they believed that reform would in any way damage the critical and sacred doctor-patient relationship." AMA members are "supporting reform because they've seen firsthand what's broken about our health care system," Obama added. "They've seen what happens when patients can't get the care they need because some insurance company has decided to drop their coverage or water it down. They've seen what happens when a patient's forced to pay out-of-pocket costs of thousands of dollars that she doesn't have, to get the treatment she desperately needs. They've seen what happens when patients don't come in for regular checkups or screenings because either their insurance company doesn't cover them or they can't afford health insurance in the first place. And they've seen far, far too much of their time spent filling out forms and haggling with insurance company bureaucrats. So the doctors of America know what needs to be fixed about our health care system. They know that health insurance reform would go a long way toward doing that." "I urge Congress to listen to AARP, listen to the AMA, and pass this reform for hundreds of millions of Americans who will benefit from it," the president concluded. It created an interesting bookend -- on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, right-wing activists were having yet another rally based on paranoid fears and debunked nonsense; on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House was welcoming support from the nation's largest advocacy group for seniors and the nation's largest organization of medical doctors. —Steve Benen 2:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (17)Comments
What makes this more important is the fact that both groups held out for a very long time, paying attention to all the various versions bouncing around, and in the end came out in favor of the current House draft. I think that bodes well going forward! It created an interesting bookend -- on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, right-wing activists were having yet another rally based on paranoid fears and debunked nonsense; on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House was welcoming support from the nation's largest advocacy group for seniors and the nation's largest organization of medical doctors. Guess which end of Pennsylvania Ave. leads the news coverage, or at least gets a slot right after missing baby and all those corpses. Posted by: howie on November 5, 2009 at 2:43 PM | PERMALINKThis is a pet peeve of mine: neither the White House nor the Capitol is the "end" of Pennsylvania Avenue. Posted by: Bob on November 5, 2009 at 2:49 PM | PERMALINKBrilliant move. Well done, Obama team. This should make the evening news and the President will look like an adult trying to fix problems while the Republicans throw in their lot with the protesters' nihilist tantrum. With any luck Fox will now have an aneurysm trying to drum all the Marxists out of the AARP / AMA. Posted by: Norbert on November 5, 2009 at 2:50 PM | PERMALINKLook for the tea bagger movement to demonize the AARP next. "It created an interesting bookend ..." I wonder which "end" will get the most coverage in the MSM? The AARP and AMA are special interest groups with their own agenda. Congress should ignore them. Posted by: Al on November 5, 2009 at 2:57 PM | PERMALINKLooking at the pictures of the teabaggers with signs that have the pictures of piles of bodies at Dachau, I wonder how really sick and ignorant these people are, do they even know what it was like at Dachau, this is what they are comparing health care to. I was a child in WW2, living in England, had friends fathers in German concentration camps, know what the ones who were lucky enough to come home went through, also most did not live long after they returned. It sickens me to see the absolute ignorance out there. Posted by: JS on November 5, 2009 at 3:00 PM | PERMALINKOne only hopes the Blu dogs stop licking their tails and focus on what has occurred in the last 48 hours. Two Democrats were added to the House because these two Democrats campaigned for health care reform and climate change issues; supported the President of the USA, Obama.Now AARP and AMA are embracing the Health Care Reform. AARP represents people of all ages not just seniors. So Blue Dogs who love your moeny from miltary contractors that practice sodomy and Coporations that continue to rape and pillage Americans think again. If you vote for americans and with the moral issue in mind of Universal Health Care you may get elected next year! Posted by: mljohnston on November 5, 2009 at 3:24 PM | PERMALINKCorpses it is:
Fort Hood officials say one person is in custody. We've learned an incident has taken place at the sports dome, now known as the soldier readiness area. The Nolanville Fire Department tells News Channel 25 that they've been asked to bring all available EMS and Rescue personnel. Darnall Army Community Hospital reports they have received numerous victims. The spokeswoman could not confirm what types of injuries the victims were suffering. Temple ISD Schools Have Been locked down as part of this incident. The district's spokeswoman tells News Channel 25 Temple Police are placing officers at each TISD campus. The schools will dismiss as usual. Check back with KXXV.com; we'll have the latest details as they become available. Posted by: David W. on November 5, 2009 at 3:35 PM | PERMALINKAARP is open to anyone over 50, so they damned well ought to be for this reform package; the only question in my mind is, what took them so long? While their over-65 members are covered by Medicare, the fraction of their membership that's in the 50-64 age range has a really hard time getting affordable insurance if they lose their jobs. And getting into the years where you're more likely to need the insurance, too. So yeah, about time they got off the fence. Posted by: low-tech cyclist on November 5, 2009 at 4:44 PM | PERMALINKThe AMA also sent out a two page fax to physicians today supporting health care reform. Posted by: Ron Chusid on November 5, 2009 at 5:30 PM | PERMALINKAARP is the largest ins peddler in the country. Make no mistake...this bill is better than nothing at all but only touches on solving the mess of our HC system. It merely opens a door that has been firmly shut for decades. The PO is extremely important...even this current watered down version...for it opens a door for future expansion. We all know that not for profit single payer is what is needed to solve our HC needs...but we were not allowed to have it , not just yet. But the private ins profiteers must be regulated if we are to have any chance at all but...make no mistake...we are not getting what is best and what we demanded from this HC bill but were not 'allowed' and this makes a huge statement about the shape of our 'democracy'. Posted by: bjobotts on November 5, 2009 at 6:09 PM | PERMALINKYou know I went to a bigger Paul McCartney concert than that "Rally" they held. Just saying. :) Posted by: Lisa Harrigan on November 5, 2009 at 6:10 PM | PERMALINKSo far the MSN seems to be focused on the teabagger crowd with the endorsements from the AARP and AMA for the more progressive House bill getting little mention. Typical. Posted by: thorin-1 on November 5, 2009 at 6:43 PM | PERMALINKFrom the fax from the AMA I mentioned in a comment above: "Preserving the power of patients and their physicians to make health care decisions-rather than insurance companies or government officials-is of paramount importance to all physicians and to the AMA. While H.R. 3962 includes a number of new government oversight bodies, the AMA has not identified any new authority that would overpower the relationship between patients and their physicians. Furthermore, expanded coverage and choice should help empower patient and physician decision making." This sure debunks the GOP claims that heath are reform would result in bureaucrats making health care decisions instead of doctors. More on the endorsements and comments on both the Democratic and Republican plans here: Posted by: Ron Chusid on November 5, 2009 at 9:52 PM | PERMALINKPost a comment
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