NEWS

House Committee Approves Health Care Bill - New York Times

The House Ways and Means Committee approved legislation early Friday to overhaul the health care system and expand insurance coverage after a marathon session in which Democrats easily turned back Republican efforts to amend the bill.

AMA endorses House Democrats’ health care bill - Associated Press

The American Medical Association on Thursday endorsed a liberal health overhaul bill that includes a public insurance option, a bold step for a traditionally conservative group with a checkered past on health reforms.

Senate Ends Health Care Talks For The Week With No Deal – Huffington Post

A bipartisan group of seven members of the Finance Committee huddled all day Thursday, hoping to hammer out a compromise piece of health care legislation that could be marked up in committee next week and passed through the Senate by the August recess.

Frank Luntz, Part Deux: Alex Castellanos – Media Matters

On July 7, 2009, Alex Castellanos issued a "GOP Health Care Strategy" memo to "GOP Health Care Advocates." Like the Frank Luntz-issued talking points, the Castellanos messaging has quickly been put into rotation by the GOP. And also like Frank Luntz, Castellanos comes with baggage of his own.

Budget Blow for Health Plan – Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON — Congress’s chief budget scorekeeper cast a new cloud over Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, telling lawmakers Thursday that the main proposals being considered would fail to contain costs — one of the primary goals — and could actually worsen the problem of rapidly escalating medical spending.

OPINION

CBO’s Douglas Elmendorf And Bending The Cost Curve With Health Reform – Think Progress

Today, in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Elmendorf suggested that the health care legislation before Congress does not achieve “the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.” “And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs,” Elmendorf said.

The Case for Funding Health-Care Reform With a Surtax on the Wealthy - Ezra Klein

"There is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority’s proposal to fund health-care legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households," writes The Washington Post’s editorial page.

AP Keeps Overstating Cost of Health Bill by $500 Billion – Matt Yglesias

It’s very hard to know exactly what the ten-year cost of a complicated piece of legislation will be. But the Congressional Budget Office is pretty good at doing these projections. And standard practice in the media is to use CBO figures when discussing the cost of legislation. Thus, when the CBO says the House health bill costs $1 trillion over ten years, I’m inclined to call it a bill that costs $1 trillion over ten years.

GOP to Uninsured: Drop Dead – The Health Care Blog

“We are now contemplating, Heaven save the mark, a bill that would tax the well for the benefit of the ill.”

An Interview With Sen. Ron Wyden - Ezra Klein

Few in the U.S. Senate have thought as long, or as hard, about health-care reform as Sen. Ron Wyden. And none have come up with as many innovative ideas for aiding the system. Wyden’s latest contribution to the debate, the Free Choice Act (which Jon Cohn explains here), seeks to shine light on the flip side of health-care reform: It’s all well and good to ensure that people who like what they have can keep it, but what about guaranteeing that people who don’t like what they have can change it? I spoke to Sen. Wyden earlier today. An edited transcript follows.