Why there is no public option in Obamacare

When Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act was originally drafted, Democrat Max Baucus was a key legislator involved and Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. His committee took the lead role in drafting the act.

Baucus claimed that Elizabeth Fowler then his chief policy counsel was the main architect of the act. She actually drafted the act. Baucus is now US ambassador to China. Baucus himself has plenty of connections with health care lobbyists. Since 1998 Baucus has managed to attract more than $5.1 million in donations from insurance, pharmaceutical, and nursing industrie. A more detailed accounting can be found here. Congressional staff records show that 34 of his former staff are registered to lobby Congress with a third of them working on health care issues.
During committee meetings on Obamacare, Baucus showed his hostility to even considering any form of universal health care system of the types that almost all other advanced capitalist states have. At a meeting of the Senate Finance Meeting in May 2009 advocacy groups attended to protest their exclusion from the process as well as statements by Baucus that "single payer was not an option on the table". Baucus had eight protesters removed from the hearing . They were arrested for disrupting the meeting. Government by the corporations for the corporations demands that the people not disturb the process. At the very next meeting, Baucus had five more doctors and nurses removed from the meeting and arrested. Not only is the single payer system not an option, with Fowler drafting the legislation there is not even to be a public option : The former Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs at WellPoint, Elizabeth Fowler, is currently the Senior Counsel to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a leading opponent of the public option in health care reform.[27] The public option would see a government plan in competition with private plans.
Key staff and members of Congress rotate between the government and the corporate sector. Elizabeth Fowler, the architect of the Obamacare bill worked for WellPoint the largest health insurance provider in the US. She was Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs a post that involved informal lobbying for the firm. Before working for the firm she had also worked as Baucus' top aide on health care. After Obamacare was drafted, Fowler was replaced by another chief health counsel with corporate connections to the health care industry. Michelle Easton worked at Tarplin, Downs, and Young who among other activities lobbied for WellPoint. Fowler did not leave government when she left the position with Baucus.
 Given her stellar corporate connections and drafting of a bill that satisfied key corporate interests, Obama put Fowler in charge of implementing Obamacare and she became Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy at the National Economic Council. However, the revolving door keeps revolving as described in the appended video. Fowler has again passed through the door to take a senior position with Johnson and Johnson's "government affairs and policy group". When she left the government Fowler was deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the US Department of Health and Human Services.
 The Obama administration claims that Obama has done more to close the revolving door in the last ten years than any other president. This is probably true except that rather than closing the door it is still wide open but with policies that make it appear as if it has closed.. People who now pass through the door must lobby through intermediaries. White House spokesperson Nick Pappas says: “President Obama has done more in the past four years to close the revolving door of special interest influence than any President before him, namely by prohibiting executive branch appointees from accepting gifts from lobbyists, prohibiting former lobbyists from working on issues on which they lobbied, and by preventing appointees from lobbying the White House after working here. Our goal has been to reduce the influence of special interests in Washington – which we’ve done more than any Administration in history.” In the case of Obamacare these restrictions did not prevent the bill being virtually written by special interests. Fowler will not be able to directly lobby for Johnson and Johnson but she can certainly advise their lobbyists as to how it is done. With the Republicans gaining more power in the government it is unlikely that even the public option let alone a single payer system will be an issue for the media or most in government.

Affordable Care Act costs cause Walmart to drop coverage for 30,000 part-time employees

Back in 2011, Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer argued that Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, would result in some employers dropping their existing coverage and forcing employers onto the exchanges.

Henwood's original article can be found here. Paul Krugman, the well-known liberal economist, argued that this would not happen, and criticised a survey that predicted this would occur. Relying on another source Krugman suggests that the survey is not a reliable predictor of what will happen since most of the participants who answered the questionaire did not know how much on average they spent on health care per full-time employee: When asked how much their companies spend on medical and prescription drug benefits per full-time employee – something you might expect a health benefit pro to be intimately familiar with – 58.3% said they didn’t know. While this is correct, Henwood points out some neglected aspects in the criticism. The question was actually somewhat more complicated than described in the quote but even more telling only about 10 per cent of the respondents were health benefit pros. However, they are still quite capable of judging that they will be spending more under Obamacare.
Recent news reports in the Wall Street Journal support Henwood's prediction. Wal-Mart is both cutting coverage for 30,000 part-time workers--or associates as Walmart calls them--and also raising premiums for others. The moves are designed to contain costs as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Many companies are shifting more of their costs onto their employees. Wal-Mart with 1.4 million "associates" predicts that its health care costs will rise $500 million more than it had predicted for the year ending this coming January. Sally Welborn, senior vice president of global benefits said that the company had to keep its eye on costs but would not say how much Wal-Mart expected to save by its moves. Beginning in 2015 Obamacare will require large companies to provide health care coverage for most of their employees who work at least 30 hours per week or pay a penalty starting at 2,000 per worker. However, many companies are finding it cheaper to simply pay the penalty than provide the coverage. Individual employers are then forced to purchase coverage on government exchanges.
 Walmart is not the only corporation to join in the parade to drop coverage. Target has said it would stop offering benefits to part-time workers. Home Depot also ended coverage for 20,000 part-time workers. No doubt Obamacare does have some positive features. For instance, many more Americans now have health insurance when they had none before.
 Nevertheless Obamacare so criticized by the right wing is actually a conservative's dream and based upon conservative principles as an article by a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in the New York Times points out: The plan has few champions on the left precisely because it is not a government takeover of health care. It is not a single-payer system, nor “Medicare for all”; it does not include a “public option,” a health plan offered by a federal insurer. It is a ratification of market ideas, modified to address problems unique to health insurance. Yet, Obamacare is defended by many of the liberal left including Krugman no doubt as the lesser evil compared to what the Republicans might do.
According to Obama the Affordable Care Act is a great example of legislation not moulded by special interests as he claimed just after passge of the act: “Tonight, we pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. … We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people.” Even before he spoke the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America also hailed the health bill as important and historic. A Wall Street Journal blog hailed the act as a great opportunity for investors. Among the big winners are not only health care providers and pharmaceutical companies but the big health insurance companies as well, as even Forbes notes as well as others. Far from showing that the Obama administration can push back against undue influence of special interests, the Affordable Care Act shows the exact opposite.
The defender of the single payer system in the appended video is incorrect when he speaks of their being no co-pays at least in many systems. "Reforms" are constantly degrading existing universal systems with less coverage and increased co-pays to shift costs from the government onto the individual, although the Canadian system does not allow co-pays.

Satire video on Romney: Disillusionment video on Obama

 Every form of media is used in the U.S. 2012 election campaign for the presidency including You Tube music videos. There is a very clever and catchy video on Romney called ""I am a Romney Girl". The tune is for the 1990's hit Barbie Girl. The lyrics are critical of  Romney and his wealth. The Swiss Miss who is a Romney Girl is attracted by Romney's wealth and all the perks. She sings of tax shelters, Bain capital, and outsourcing in a very upbeat appealing way.  I just wonder if the upbeat rhythm of the song will not cancel out the informational content and actually make people feel favorably towards Romney. The video is funded by the Agenda Project Action Fund.
   The Obama video is downbeat compared to the Romney video. The tune is Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know".  The song is of promises not kept and disillusionment. Obamacare only went so far and then left the singer strapped like a dog to Romney's car. No doubt this is an allusion to Obamacare being copied from Romneycare and not a single payer system. There is also mention of drones a topic not very hot on the campaign trail! Personally I liked the Romney video much better than the Obama video at least in terms of entertainment value! The Obama video is produced by Just New Productions and can be found here.

Two Thirds of Americans want Supreme Court to strike down all or part of Obamacare bill

While the poll by the New York Times and CBS news finds that over two thirds favor overturning some or all of the Obama health care bill only 24 per cent said they hoped the court would affirm the entire bill as legal. A decision is expected by the end of June.

While 41 per cent wanted the court to strike down the entire bill 27 per cent wanted only the individual mandate forcing people to purchase insurance to be overturned. The mandate includes a penalty for not buying insurance. These numbers have not changed very much over recent months.

Not surprisingly Republicans were more opposed to the law than Democrats. Almost two thirds of Republicans thought the whole law should be jettisoned while 43 per cent of Democrats said all of the law should be upheld. Actually this is rather surprising because even among Democrats there is no majority for upholding the entire law.

Among independent voters a large majority of 70 per cent were in favor of seeing all or some of the law struck down. A majority even wanted to see the whole bill struck down. Only 22 per cent of the independents hoped the entire law would survive.

Whatever public opinion is most analysts think that it will have little influence on the Supreme Court decision..An article in the Georgetown Law Journal in 1910 said:“Supreme Court justices care more about the views of academics, journalists and other elites than they do about public opinion,” “This is true of nearly all justices and is especially true of swing justices, who often cast the critical votes in the court’s most visible decisions.” However the views of journalists, academics etc. are just as contradictory as those of the public so they might as well decide on the basis of their own expertise and views. After all they will probably be most influenced by those journalists and academics writing in favor of what they may tend to support in the first place. For more see this article.

Romney would deny coverage to uninsured people with preexisting conditions

According to David Edwards in this article the front-running presidential candidate Mitt Romney claims not only that the Obamacare law ought to overturned but that people with preexisting conditions should be denied coverage.

This certainly would seem to be the implication of what Romney said on a recent Jay Leno show. Leno said that he knew people who could not get insurance before the Obama health care bill passed. Leno told Romney that he thought that people with preexisting conditions should be covered by insurance.

Romney noted that people with preexisting conditions who had been insured before would continue to be insured even if Obamacare were overturned. Leno then says:“Suppose they were never insured?”

Romney replies:.“Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered,’” So if you cant get insurance because you have preexisting conditions Romney says you should not be insured. You must get insurance when you are well! Edwards conclusion seems correct from what Romney replied.

While Romney thinks people should get insurance when they are well one might think that he should be in favor or forcing them to do so as Obamacare does for everyone. For more see the full article. A video of the interview is at the bottom of the article.

Chris Hedges: Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed

It remains to be seen how many liberals will leave the Democrats. There seems little real change in US politics. The Afghan war goes on just as with Bush but with even more troops. Now the vaunted health care reform has done little but to boost health care industry stocks today. The sooner the left in the US gives up on the Democrats the better. The Democrats do not need to pay attention to the left because they have nowhere to go. However, the Wall Street money sees a rosy future and is turning their money spouts to the Republicans in the belief that the Democrats will become increasingly unpopular and have outlived their usefulness for the present. Would that the left had as much wisdom! This is from this site.

The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed

By Chris Hedges

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s decision to vote “yes” in Sunday’s House
action on the health care bill, although he had sworn to oppose
the legislation unless there was a public option, is a perfect
example of why I would never be a politician. I respect Kucinich.
As politicians go, he is about as good as they get, but he is
still a politician. He has to run for office. He has to raise
money. He has to placate the Democratic machine or risk
retaliation and defeat. And so he signed on to a bill that will do
nothing to ameliorate the suffering of many Americans, will force
tens of millions of people to fork over a lot of money for a
defective product and, in the end, will add to the ranks of our
uninsured.

The claims made by the proponents of the bill are the usual
deceptive corporate advertising. The bill will not expand coverage
to 30 million uninsured, especially since government subsidies
will not take effect until 2014. Families who cannot pay the high
premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be between 15
and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default,
increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can
unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize
local markets to shut out competitors. The $1.055 trillion spent
over the next decade will add new layers of bureaucratic red tape
to what is an unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable system.

The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this
reality is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said
recently: “This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the
insurance companies or are you for the American people?” Here is a
man who once championed the public option and now has sold his
soul. What is the point in supporting him or any of the other
Democrats? How much more craven can they get?

Take a look at the health care debacle in Massachusetts, a model
for what we will get nationwide. One in six people there who have
the mandated insurance say they cannot afford care, and tens of
thousands of people have been evicted from the state program
because of budget cuts. The 45,000 Americans who die each year
because they cannot afford coverage will not be saved under the
federal legislation. Half of all personal bankruptcies will still
be caused by an inability to pay astronomical medical bills. The
only good news is that health care stocks and bonuses for the
heads of these corporations are shooting upward. Chalk this up as
yet another victory for our feudal overlords and a defeat for the
serfs.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on
health care—$7,129 per capita—although 45.7 million Americans
remain without health coverage and millions more are inadequately
covered, meaning that if they get seriously ill they are not
covered. Fourteen thousand Americans a day are now losing their
health coverage. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates
that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars
spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Private
insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume 31 cents of every
health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single
nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year,
enough, Physicians for a National Health Plan points out, to
provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.
Check out www.healthcare-now.org. It has some of the best analysis.

This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good.
The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense.
It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street
bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies
on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care
lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the
bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The
bill is another example of why change will never come from within
the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by
corporations. The five largest private health insurers and their
trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6
million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the
world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the
last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009. The
Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from
both parties who hold key committee memberships have major
investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million
and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care
policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served
on the boards of several health care corporations. And as salaries
for most Americans have stagnated or declined during the past
decade, health insurance profits have risen by 480 percent.

Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out
advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including
papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe
movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet
between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between
40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of
registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit
health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to
discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the
population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate
state to frame all discussions.

Change will come only by building movements that stand in fierce
and uncompromising opposition to the Democrats and the
Republicans. If they can herd Kucinich and John Conyers, the
sponsors of House Resolution 676, a bill that would create a
publicly funded National Health Program by eliminating private
health insurers, onto the House floor to vote for this corporate
theft, what is the point in pretending there is any room left for
us in the party? And why should we waste our time with gutless
liberal groups such as Moveon.org, which felt the need to collect
more than $1 million to pressure House Democrats who had voted
“no” on the original bill to recant? What was this purportedly
anti-war group doing anyway serving as an obsequious recruiting
arm of the Obama election campaign? The longer we tie ourselves to
the Democrats and these bankrupt liberal organizations the more
ridiculous and impotent we appear.

“I’m ready to listen to the White House, if the White House is
ready to listen to the concerns about putting a public option in
this bill,” the old Kucinich said on the “Democracy Now!” radio
and television program before he flipped. “I mean, they can do
that. You know, they’re still cutting last-minute deals. Put the
public option back in. Make it a robust public option. Give the
people a chance to really negotiate rates with the insurance
companies … from the standpoint of having a public option. But
don’t just tell the people that you’re going to call this health
care reform, when you’re giving insurance companies an even more
powerful monopoly status in our economy.”

18 Myths about the Health Care Bill.

This is a critique of 18 claims about the health care bill and a critique of each of those claims. While some of the criticisms might be made by conservatives many more would appeal more to leftists and liberals. This is from firedoglake.

Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill
By: Jane Hamsher Friday March 19, 2010 8:58 am

I’ll be on the new CNN show with Jon King that premieres at noon ET, available for live stream here — jh

The Firedoglake health care team has been covering the debate in congress since it began last year.
We’ve also taken a detailed look at the bill, and have come up with 18 often stated myths about this health care reform bill.


Myth

Truth

1. This is a universal health care bill.


The bill is neither universal health care nor universal health insurance.

Per the CBO:

Total uninsured in 2019 with no bill: 54 million
Total uninsured in 2019 with Senate bill: 24 million (44%)

2. Insurance companies hate this bill


This bill is almost identical to the plan written by AHIP, the insurance company trade association, in 2009.
The original Senate Finance Committee bill was authored by a former Wellpoint VP. Since Congress released the first of its health care bills on October 30, 2009, health care stocks have risen 28.35%.

3. The bill will significantly bring down insurance premiums for most Americans.


The bill will not bring down premiums significantly, and certainly not the $2,500/year that the President promised.

Annual premiums in 2016, status quo / with bill:

Small group market, single: $7,800 / $7,800

Small group market, family: $19,300 / $19,200

Large Group market, single: $7,400 / $7,300

Large group market, family: $21,100 / $21,300

Individual market, single: $5,500 / $5,800*

Individual market, family: $13,100 / $15,200*

4. The bill will make health care affordable for middle class Americans.
The bill will impose a financial hardship on middle class Americans who will be forced to buy a product that they can’t afford to use.
A family of four making $66,370 will be forced to pay $5,243 per year for insurance. After basic necessities, this leaves them with $8,307 in discretionary income — out of which they would have to cover clothing, credit card and other debt, child care and education costs, in addition to $5,882 in annual out-of-pocket medical expenses for which families will be responsible.

5. This plan is similar to the Massachusetts plan, which makes health care affordable. Many Massachusetts residents forgo health care because they can’t afford it.
A 2009 study by the state of Massachusetts found that:

21% of residents forgo medical treatment because they can’t afford it, including 12% of children
18% have health insurance but can’t afford to use it

6. This bill provide health care to 31 million people who are currently uninsured.


This bill will mandate that millions of people who are currently uninsured must purchase insurance from private companies, or the IRS will collect up to 2% of their annual income in penalties. Some will be assisted with government subsidies.

7. You can keep the insurance you have if you like it.
The excise tax will result in employers switching to plans with higher co-pays and fewer covered services.
Older, less healthy employees with employer-based health care will be forced to pay much more in out-of-pocket expenses than they do now.

8. The “excise tax” will encourage employers to reduce the scope of health care benefits, and they will pass the savings on to employees in the form of higher wages.

There is insufficient evidence that employers pass savings from reduced benefits on to employees.


9. This bill employs nearly every cost control idea available to bring down costs.


This bill does not bring down costs and leaves out nearly every key cost control measure, including:
Public Option ($25-$110 billion)
Medicare buy-in
Drug reimportation ($19 billion)
Medicare drug price negotiation ($300 billion)
Shorter pathway to generic biologics ($71 billion)

10. The bill will require big companies like WalMart to provide insurance for their employees

The bill was written so that most WalMart employees will qualify for subsidies, and taxpayers will pick up a large portion of the cost of their coverage.

11. The bill “bends the cost curve” on health care.


The bill ignored proven ways to cut health care costs and still leaves 24 million people uninsured, all while slightly raising total annual costs by $234 million in 2019.
“Bends the cost curve” is a misleading and trivial claim, as the US would still spend far more for care than other advanced countries.

In 2009, health care costs were 17.3% of GDP.

Annual cost of health care in 2019, status quo: $4,670.6 billion (20.8% of GDP)

Annual cost of health care in 2019, Senate bill: $4,693.5 billion (20.9% of GDP)

12. The bill will provide immediate access to insurance for Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition. Access to the “high risk pool” is limited and the pool is underfunded. It will cover few people, and will run out of money in 2011 or 2012
Only those who have been uninsured for more than six months will qualify for the high risk pool. Only 0.7% of those without insurance now will get coverage, and the CMS report estimates it will run out of funding by 2011 or 2012.

13. The bill prohibits dropping people in individual plans from coverage when they get sick. The bill does not empower a regulatory body to keep people from being dropped when they’re sick.
There are already many states that have laws on the books prohibiting people from being dropped when they’re sick, but without an enforcement mechanism, there is little to hold the insurance companies in check.

14. The bill ensures consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to challenge new insurance plan decisions. The “internal appeals process” is in the hands of the insurance companies themselves, and the “external” one is up to each state.
Ensuring that consumers have access to “internal appeals” simply means the insurance companies have to review their own decisions. And it is the responsibility of each state to provide an “external appeals process,” as there is neither funding nor a regulatory mechanism for enforcement at the federal level.
15. This bill will stop insurance companies from hiking rates 30%-40% per year.


This bill does not limit insurance company rate hikes. Private insurers continue to be exempt from anti-trust laws, and are free to raise rates without fear of competition in many areas of the country.

16. When the bill passes, people will begin receiving benefits under this bill immediately


Most provisions in this bill, such as an end to the ban on pre-existing conditions for adults, do not take effect until 2014.
Six months from the date of passage, children could not be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing conditions, though insurance companies could charge more to cover them. Children would also be allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. There will be an elimination of lifetime coverage limits, a high risk pool for those who have been uninsured for more than 6 months, and community health centers will start receiving money.

17. The bill creates a pathway for single payer.


Bernie Sanders’ provision in the Senate bill does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, so no, it doesn’t create a pathway for single payer.

Obama told Dennis Kucinich that the Ohio Representative’s amendment is similar to Bernie Sanders’ provision in the Senate bill, and creates a pathway to single payer. Since the waiver does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, it is nearly impossible to see how it gets around the ERISA laws that stand in the way of any practical state single payer system.

18 The bill will end medical bankruptcy and provide all Americans with peace of mind.


Most people with medical bankruptcies already have insurance, and out-of-pocket expenses will continue to be a burden on the middle class.
In 2009, 1.5 million Americans declared bankruptcy
Of those, 62% were medically related
Three-quarters of those had health insurance
The Obama bill leaves 24 million without insurance
The maximum yearly out-of-pocket limit for a family will be $11,900 (PDF) on top of premiums
A family with serious medical problems that last for a few years could easily be financially crushed by medical costs
*Cost of premiums goes up somewhat due to subsidies and mandates of better coverage. CBO assumes that cost of individual policies goes down 7-10%, and that people will buy more generous policies.

Documentation:

March 11, Letter from Doug Elmendorf to Harry Reid (PDF)
The AHIP Plan in Context, Igor Volsky; The Max Baucus WellPoint/Liz Fowler Plan, Marcy Wheeler
CBO Score, 11-30-2009
“Affordable” Health Care, Marcy Wheeler
Gruber Doesn’t Reveal That 21% of Massachusetts Residents Can’t Afford Health Care, Marcy Wheeler; Massachusetts Survey (PDF)
Health Care on the Road to Neo-Feudalism, Marcy Wheeler
CMS: Excise Tax on Insurance Will Make Your Insurane Coverage Worse and Cause Almost No Reduction in NHE, Jon Walker
Employer Health Costs Do Not Drive Wage Trends, Lawrence Mishel
CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate, Congress Daily; Drug Importation Amendment Likely This Week, Politico; Medicare Part D IAF; A Monopoloy on Biologics Will Drain Health Care Resources, Lancet Student
MaxTax Is a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty, Marcy Wheeler
Estimated Financial Effects of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009,” as Proposed by the Senate Majority Leader on November 18, 2009, CMS (PDF)
ibid
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Health insurance companies hang onto their antitrust exemption, Protect Consumer Justice.org
What passage of health care reform would mean for the average American, DC Examiner
How to get a State Single Payer Opt-Out as Part of Reconciliation, Jon Walker
Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies, CNN.com; The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Section‐by‐Section Analysis (PDF)
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