I started a new job today, so posts might be a little more sporadic than usual for a while. In the meantime,

There was an article about S 1955 in last Friday's (7 April) CongressDaily* that suggests the bill maybe be unpopular with some insurance industry people as well as consumer and health advocates.

The National Women's Law Center has some helpful information on the bill.

In other legislative news, word on the street the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 was passed out of the ethics committee after they met in secret and with no recorded vote and no comment.

[UPDATE] Here is a link to the CongressDaily article. It does require a subscription, though. For those of you without a subscription, though, here's the part that caught my attention:

But perhaps the most ominous warning comes from someone who represents insurers -- which under the bill actually stand to gain, by being allowed to offer the small business plans without the state mandates. "The new Enzi bill has as much potential for 'unintended consequences' as anything I have ever seen in Washington," says consultant Bob Laszewski.

With a wholesale churning of the state-regulated insurance market that the bill would undoubtedly cause, Laszewski wrote his clients last month, "it may be like that guy who jumped out of the airplane and his chute didn't open -- he had an unintended consequence during the transition."

Did the DeLay campaign organize an attack on Nick Lampson's press conference today?

That's what I'm hearing from Fort Bend County.

BREAKING! I will soon post photographs of a "demonstration" (read: violent disruption) of Nick Lampson's news conference this morning in Sugar Land. Tom DeLay's campaign and a member of the State Republican Executive Committee called for volunteers to meet on the first floor of the parking garage and disrupt Lampson's press conference.
One elderly Democratic woman was slightly injured when she was assaulted by a DeLay protester. The DeLay supporter first hit her in the face with a sign and then grabbed her hat and tried to pull it down over her eyes. Think about this: Your Congressman asked his supporters to go out and assault old women. Okay, "wreck" them.

[UPDATE] Juanita Jean has more on the DeLay camp's attack including photographs.

Blowing airhorns while a candidate is trying to speak? (So much for free speech, eh?) Intimidating parents holding their children? Knocking around elderly women? Talk about a complete and utter lack of class. All politics aside, Tom DeLay and his supporters should be ashamed of themselves.

Pathetic.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a great look at major flaws with "health savings accounts".

• HSAs would weaken the existing health insurance system and could actually increase the number of uninsured.



• HSAs shift risks to individuals, leave less-healthy individuals facing substantial costs, and potentially result in worse health outcomes.



• HSAs have little potential to improve the health insurance system.



• HSAs would significantly increase the federal budget deficit, especially in future decades when the nation already will be under fiscal strain.



• HSAs provide the largest tax breaks to those who least need help paying for health coverage.

Read the whole report to learn why this program is so bad for your health care.

In other health policy news, I received a request yesterday for some information about S 1955 - the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act of 2005.

I'm certainly no health policy expert, but on first glance it looks like this bill pulls a particularly irritating policy trick - it wraps something bad inside something potentially good. This is, I suspect, the result of a compromise with the insurance industry.

In short, it looks like the bill is intended to expand basic health insurance coverage to people who don't already have it by providing a new low cost insurance scheme to qualified small businesses - sounds good.

At the same time, it will create a national commission to overrule state mandated benefit requirements in an attempt to "harmonize standards" - sounds bad. And the threshold is very high - 45 states must have the same requirement in order for it to be acceptable.

The American Diabetes Association, for example, is concerned that some benefits such as medical supplies and screening required by some states would be cut in the harmonization.

Families USA has more in-depth analysis of S 1955 here.

And one last bit of health policy news:

The Center for Public Integrity has a new report showing that the pharmaceutical industry has spent $44 Million to keep drug prices high

Fighting a flurry of legislative and public policy initiatives aimed at reducing prices and slicing drug budgets, the pharmaceutical industry spent more than $44 million on lobbying state governments in 2003 and 2004, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of lobbying records has found.

The industry also funneled more than $8 million to the campaigns of candidates for various state offices over the same period, according to a Center analysis of state campaign money.

link via ThinkProgress

You'd almost be inclined to think the pharmaceutical companies were more concerned with high profits than public health.

The conservative plan to colonize occupy liberate Iraq has caused many people to seriously re-think their positions.

William Buckley now says the Iraq invasion is a failure. George Will has come to much the same conclusion. Francis Fukuyama abandoned the Neocons. Condi Rice says the government made thousands of errors in the Iraq project. And on Sunday, former CENTCOM Commander General Anthony Zinni said Rumsfeld should resign.

But, while some are coming to be critical of the invasion, others are sticking to their guns and coming up with eloquent well-reasoned arguments for the war.

Christopher Hitchens for example:

1. Did you support the invasion of Iraq?

Yes: I was an advocate before the fact, not a supporter.

2. Have you changed your position?

Not in the least: I wish only that Saddam had not been able to rely upon Russian and French protection and the influence of oil-for-food racketeers and other political scum.

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?

The United States and its allies should continue to stand for federal democracy, while making Iraq a killing-field for jihadists and fascists and a training ground for an army that will need to intervene again in other failed state/rogue state contexts.

Glenn Reynolds throws in his intellectual weight

1. Did you support the invasion of Iraq?

Yes.

2. Have you changed your position?

No. Sanctions were failing and Saddam was a threat, making any other action in the region impossible.

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?

Win.

And now Daniel Pipes explains the conservative mindset

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture.

Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.

That's right, he said icing.