'Max, You Work For Us' (by Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Demonstrators outside Max Baucus's Missoula MT office.
Click through to watch the video.

Paying for Universal Health Coverage (Editorial, New York Times)
For Congress and the administration to keep the promise of comprehensive health care reform, they will have to find the political will to pay for universal coverage and other investments that are needed right away but will not produce quick savings.
WRONG, New York Times, Congress and the administration don't HAVE to pay for universal coverage. After all, they didn't HAVE to pay for giving away trillions to the bankers and the insurance companies, did they? Isn't it strange that when it comes to helping the already rich keep their Picassos and their yachts, the money can be found, but when it comes to allowing ordinary families to keep their meager savings as opposed to losing it all to major illness, there's no money?

Limiting the Tax Exclusion for Employer-Sponsored Insurance Can Help Pay for Health Reform (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
Universal Coverage May Be Out of Reach Otherwise
Same comment here. The only thing stopping us from getting universal coverage is the fact that to do it, we have to take the profit out of what we now call health care. The health insurance executives demand their entitlement, too. They must be able to keep THEIR Picassos and yachts.

So let's start another us vs. them meme, shall we?
Will health insurance 'haves' pay for 'have-nots'? (MSNBC)
As part of a health insurance reform package now before Congress, some of the 164 million Americans who are covered by employer-provided health plans could be asked to give up at least part of the longstanding tax exemption granted to such compensation. It's an idea likely to be met with howls of opposition if it makes it into the final version of health insurance legislation that President Barack Obama is pushing. The idea of limiting the tax break for employer-provided insurance gained momentum last week, when Obama told senators that he'd consider it as one ingredient of the  health insurance reform bill he wants Congress to pass by early August, when the Senate starts a one-month recess...

Obama's new openness to the idea stands in contrast to what he said six months ago as a presidential candidate, when he harshly criticized his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, for proposing that employer-provided benefits should be taxed.

Harry and Louise Need Health Reform (by E.J. Dionne)
Fifty million new customers. Those may be the most important words to remember as the health care reform effort hits its stride this week. Many have expressed amazement that the interest groups historically opposed to fixing the health system seem ready to work with the reformers. Their public-spiritedness reflects enlightened self-interest: The health system is so unstable that even the drug industry and the insurance companies are worried that it will crash on top of them. Health care reform could bail out these interests by adding the currently uninsured -- fast approaching 50 million people -- to their customer base, and by preventing more individuals and employers from dropping insurance altogether...

So by all means, let's welcome the drug and insurance companies to the health care bargaining table. But let's also remember that they are sitting at that table as a matter of urgent necessity. Negotiators should bear in mind that health care reform is as vital for them as it is for the now underinsured Harry and Louise.
Forever the naïve one, aren't you, E.J.? Remember Krugman: 1. Don't trust the insurance companies. 2. Don't trust the insurance companies.

How DC Centrism Makes For Bad Politics and Bad Policy (by Mike Lux at Open Left, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
There's  been a lot of talk in Washington, DC lately of a "new, centrist compromise" gaining momentum in terms of how to fund health care reform, and that is taxing health care benefits. The problems? It's not new, it's only centrist in the bizarre inside-the-Beltway world of what qualifies for centrist, it's one sure way to make health care reform incredibly unpopular, and it's a bad policy idea. Remember how popular Ira Magaziner's "health alliances" were in the Clinton health reform battle? This would be worse.

How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do (by Robert Reich)
Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill. You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits...

The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.

Robert Reich Sounds the Alarm (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
You can contact your congress members and senators here or here. Let's fill those voice mail boxes, clog those fax machines, lead sit-ins in their offices. Surely you can afford to take a day off to save your country's future!

Single payer silence will be broken in the House, 6/10 at 10:30 AM (by gob at Corrente)
My local single payer activist sends the following: "The Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing titled 'Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option' on Wednesday, June 10th at 10:30am in 2175 Rayburn House Office Building. You may be able to watch via webcast. She adds: "Contact C-SPAN and let them know we would like them to carry it. C-SPAN's Main Number is: (202) 737-3220."

Howard Dean's Scream: 'We Need Real Health Insurance Reform' (Politics Daily)
Back in 2004, as a Democratic presidential hopeful, the former Vermont governor was outraged about the Iraq war. Now it's the U.S. health care system - in particular, at a union hall here Friday, the tale of a breast cancer survivor who said she was denied chemotherapy for months because she didn't have insurance. Without offering any details, she said she finally did manage to qualify for care - by divorcing her husband. "I had to get rid of him so that I could live," the woman told Dean. "I'm proud to say we're still together." She added tearfully that she can't get life insurance, "so if I die my family will pretty much be trying to figure out how to bury me."

"First of all, let me say just one thing," Dean said. And then, in the space of a tiny pause, he rocketed into high dudgeon. "There is not one other industrialized democracy on the face of this earth that somebody with that story would happen! Not one other country! Not one! How can America be like this? This is America for God's sakes," he shouted, to cheers and applause. "It just makes me furious."... "This is a disgrace and that is why we need real health insurance reform." This is Dean's latest crusade, prodding Congress - and prodding Americans to prod Congress - to pass the type of health care reform President Obama proposed last year on the campaign trail. That is, health care that gives people a choice between private insurance and a competing government-run plan.

Howard Dean on Real Healthcare Reform (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
If Obama really cared about actual healthcare reform, wouldn't he have picked Howard Dean to head it?