(VIDEO) In a speech broadcast on Canadian television, Michael Moore blasted the Democrats' healthcare bill as a gift to the health insurance industry, which he argued will make billions more as a result. "The health insurance companies are going to make an extra 70 billion dollars...What company wouldn't love this bill?"

A careful analysis of the bill shows that it is designed more for political goals than to eliminate financial barriers to health care. For example, the actual coverage doesn't even begin until 2013, opportunistically after the next presidential election, in 2012. Run on having accomplished "historic reform" but before anyone actually experiences how bad it is? How cynical is that?...The legislation institutionalizes permanent inequality in health care. Unlike Medicare where all beneficiaries have a single plan, this bill further divides the U.S. system into tiers based on ability to pay. It creates basic, enhanced, premium and premium-plus plans. A basic plan will provide only 70 percent of the coverage of a "reference benefit package," one that includes even fewer services than most insured people have today. The bill doesn't even mention coverage for essential services like vision and adult dental care except in the most costly premium-plus plan.

under the [Senate] health committee proposal, certain standards governing the nature and extent of covered benefits would apply only to policies sold inside the exchanges. All of those factors contribute to the possibility that insurers might offer cheaper, less comprehensive policies outside the exchanges and entice healthier people to leave the new markets. That would leave the exchanges responsible for sicker people who are more expensive to insure. Similarly, outside the exchange, the bill drafted by the Senate Finance Committee would not regulate the marketing of individual coverage, nor would it require that health plans be rated based on quality and price. Even within the exchanges, there could be limits to consumer protections. The health committee bill would not explicitly guarantee consumers the right to an external appeal when a health plan refuses to pay for medical services. The right to an external appeal is a hallmark of the health-benefits program for federal employees, which [supposedly] has served as a model for the proposed exchanges.

Instead of drawing on this excellent, time-tested model, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have pretended Medicare doesn't exist. Obama went so far as to say on several occasions, including in his address to Congress on health care reform, that while single-payer plans such as those in Canada and France might work well in those countries (indeed they do, and at much less cost than our insane "system" here!), introducing such a system here would mean "starting from scratch." Come again Barack? From scratch? Those countries modeled their systems, in part, on Medicare, which we had here first! And Medicare is actually a bigger program than the entire Canadian health care system!

“I have decided not to offer a single payer alternative to the health reform bill at this time. Given how fluid the negotiations are on the final push to get comprehensive health care reform that covers millions of Americans and contains costs through a public option, I became concerned that my amendment might undermine that important goal.”

Sure why not. Hell, let's just give Egypt some too. For the first time in two decades, Pakistan's air force is about to get new F-16 fighter jets.Pakistani military and government officials were on hand Tuesday at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth for ceremonies unveiling the first of 18 new F-16s to be delivered in the next year.And to highlight the continuing value of the F-16 to Lockheed and Fort Worth, the Defense Department announced that it had notified Congress of a possible sale of 24 F-16s to Egypt, along with spare engines, radars and weapons, a deal potentially worth about $3.2 billion.The Pakistan jet sale, worth roughly $2 billion, was authorized in 2006 by President George W. Bush. It was the first to Pakistan since 1990, when then-President George H.W. Bush cut off delivery of 28 previously purchased planes over the country's nuclear weapons development program. (boom boom) "Many people thought this day would never come," Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, said in remarks at the ceremony. "It's a historic and defining moment."

the rest of the industrial world has figured it out: Universal, single-payer or national health care systems. That's the reason why all those other countries cover everyone, have better patient outcomes, cause no one to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of medical bills, and spend less than half per capita on health care than we do. We could do it too, by reducing the starting age for Medicare from 65 to 0. There's still time to act. Call on your Congress member to support the vote coming up on the House floor on the Anthony Weiner amendment to protect, expand and improve Medicare for All. Senators have the same opportunity in a vote on Senate bill 703, being offered as a floor amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders. Democrats must also ensure that whatever bill passes includes a provision enabling states to set up their own single-payer systems. These votes are the true litmus tests of the Democrats' commitment to guaranteeing health care for all, and finally solving our health care crisis.

the proposal does not ensure that the fund will achieve the greatest global warming emissions reductions per dollar invested. With access to potentially unlimited loan guarantees and no requirement to cost-effectively reduce global warming emissions, increased electricity demand could be met with a high percentage of non-renewable energy sources, further eroding the ability of renewable energy resources to compete with coal, nuclear and other conventional resources.

NOW has long argued that single-payer health care is the best way to achieve the goal of universal, comprehensive and affordable care for everyone. We believe single-payer will give doctors and patients, not the government and not a profit-driven industry, the power to choose the best medical care for each patient. At minimum, any health care reform package must contain a strong public option, while also allowing states to create their own single-payer plans. NOW categorically rejects President Obama's promise to retain current "conscience refusal" laws, as stated last night. So-called conscience exemptions or refusals that allow health care providers -- physicians, nurses, clinics, pharmacies hospitals and even profit-driven insurance companies -- to refuse to provide any service that they claim offends their personal beliefs are untenable. Every woman in this country has a fundamental human right to the full range of reproductive health services, including a constitutional right to choose abortion.

now Obama has embedded into the health care bill a recessionary device—the automatic slashing of federal spending when health care costs inevitably go up. Obama also exaggerated the budgetary problem of health care when he said, “Our health care problem is our deficit problem.” Actually, war is our deficit problem—$3 trillion for Iraq, and more for Afghanistan. Actually, bailing out banks is our deficit problem—several trillion more, when you count the guarantees. And Obama misled the country when he said single-payer would require us to “build an entirely new system from scratch.” No, it wouldn’t. The system is in place. It’s called Medicare. And it works very well.

"I have no delusions about the muscle needed to overcome resistance from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. But I believe that for every American we may lose to a slash-and-burn TV ad funded by these businesses, we will gain five among those who are looking for a clear rationale for what we are trying to accomplish and an example for what it may look like. We also achieve something else: realignment of the political universe. Democrats understand the role of government and are proud of our signature achievement: Medicare. The Republicans care most about big business. I'll take that fight any day. And I'm hoping that the president will tell us on Wednesday that he is willing to do the same."

I thought it was weird when Olympia Snowe suddenly started pushing triggers. Rahm Emanuel has been lobbying for them since early in the year, and lately the White House has been trying to burnish the image of "triggers" by pressing liberal validators into service. And now...Olympia Snowe...That's great. Not satisfied with working through Blue Dogs any more, Rahm is now using Republicans to write his trillion dollar bailout of the health care industry. Is this a great country or what.

“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9th, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. …I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.” Quite a few oil company CEO’s and “defense” industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea of why that war is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm’s profits 231 percent: “It’s the Gold Rush.” What follows is a brief look at some of the outfits that cashed in, and at the multitudes that got took.

Apparently ready to abandon the idea, President Barack Obama's health secretary said Sunday a government alternative to private health insurance is "not the essential element" of the administration's health care overhaul. The White House indicated it could jettison the contentious public option and settle on insurance cooperatives as an acceptable alternative, a move embraced by some Republicans lawmakers who have strongly opposed the administration's approach so far. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the White House would be open to co-ops instead of a government-run public option, a sign Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory on the must-win showdown.

Dr. Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. A longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry, she has called for an end to market-driven delivery of health care in the United States. "If you keep health care in the hands of for-profit companies, you can do one or the other — increase coverage by putting more money into the system, or control costs by decreasing coverage. But you cannot do both unless you change the basic structure of the system...In Massachusetts [which enacted an individual mandate in 2006], there is no real price regulation. Essentially what the mandate does is say to people, you will go into this treacherous market and buy insurance at whatever price the companies choose to charge. In effect, it’s delivering a captive market to these profit-oriented companies. Massachusetts already spends one-third more on health care than other states, and costs are rising at unsustainable rates. As a result, they’re chipping away at benefits, dropping beneficiaries and increasing premiums and co-payments.

[Former senior Cigna executive] Potter was witness to the campaign against Michael Moore's healthcare documentary Sicko. The industry slammed the film as one-sided and politically motivated. Secret documents leaked from the American Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobby group, detailed the plan to paint Moore as a fringe radical. Potter now says the film "hit the nail on the head". "The Michael Moore movie that I saw was full of truth," he admits.

[transcript] Could it be that Harry and Louise are happier because this time, they're in on the deal? What to make of all this? I've asked two expert analysts of health care to help me out. Trudy Lieberman covers health care reform for the Columbia Journalism Review and directs the health and medicine reporting program at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. Marcia Angell, a physician herself, is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University Medical School and was the first woman Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She, too, has written widely and often about health care reform.

To sum up, “public option” advocates must choose between continuing to promote the “public option” and seeing their hopes for cost containment and universal coverage go up in smoke for another four years, and throwing their considerable influence behind single-payer legislation. At this late date in the 2009 session, it is unlikely that a single-payer bill could be passed even if unity within the universal coverage movement could be achieved. But if the “public option” wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline.

Speaking in his weekly radio and Internet address, President Obama said that the fast-rising cost of health care is placing an unsustainable burden on personal budgets, small businesses and the federal government. "Within a decade we'll spend one dollar out of every five we earn on health care -- and we'll keep getting less for our money," he said. "That's why fixing what's wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve; it's a necessity we cannot postpone any longer." Obama said that health-care reform can address rising costs by reining in profiteering by health insurers and providers, stoking competition in the industry, and creating a mechanism for building on the models of efficient care that exist around the country.

As the world gears up once again for a flu pandemic that may or may not arrive (it actually seems possible this time), we might want to remember some of the lessons of the last flu scare. One of these is that there are winners as well as losers in every high-profile outbreak of infectious disease. First and foremost among them, of course, is Big Pharma, which can always be counted on to have its hand out wherever human misery presents an opportunity to rake in some cash. In 2005, I reported on the bird flu scare for the Village Voice in a piece called “Capitalizing on the Flu.”... Then, as now, one of the two effective antidotes was a drug called Tamiflu. But this silver bullet came with side effects, as well as a high price tag. As I reported in 2005: With no vaccine in sight, the U.S. government, along with others, is belatedly stocking up on Tamiflu, a drug that supposedly offers some defense against bird flu. But last week Japanese newspapers told how children who were administered Tamiflu went mad and tried to kill themselves by jumping out of windows.