Swampland

Health Reform and Public Opinion

Karen Tumulty — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:55:02 +0000

Few people have studied the effects of public opinion on health policy as extensively as Robert Blendon at the Harvard School of Public Health. In this post at Kaiser Health News, Blendon tells us that public support for health reform leaves little margin at the moment: When Medicare was enacted in 1965, 62 percent of the [...]

White House Meets With, Tells Off And Then Blogs About Lobbyists

Michael Scherer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:40:17 +0000

There is a gem of a blog post over at the White House website. Norm Eisen, the lawyer charged by President Obama to oversee and enforce ethics rules, has posted a blow-by-blow of his recent meeting with a group of lobbyists (and others) who are upset about the new White House policy that bars them [...]

Dems Go It Alone

Jay Newton-Small — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:53:05 +0000

I asked a lot of members over the weekend: why pass the bill now? After the August protests there had been much speculation that the House would wait for the Senate to act. Some members said that Speaker Pelosi didn't want them going home for another recess to face more Tea Party madness (the House, [...]

Iran Amok

Joe Klein — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:25:32 +0000

There are several possible responses to the appalling news that Iran seems to have brought espionage charges against three American hikers who wandered across the Kurdish border. Taken together with Iran's apparent decision not to agree to the nuclear treaty it had agreed to, this is yet another signal of the Iranian regime going off [...]

1,000 Words: Best Seats in the House Edition

Karen Tumulty — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:59:56 +0000

From our White House Photo Blog.

The National Health Council Responds

Michael Scherer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:56:18 +0000

A few weeks back, Karen Tumulty and I wrote a piece about the health care reform payday that appears to await the producers of biotechnology drugs. We discussed the wide array of third party groups and individuals who support the biotech industry's position on delaying generic competition for costly biologic drugs, and we noted that [...]

Who is Cao?

Jay Newton-Small — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:23:56 +0000

Joe Cao (pronounced Gow) is the name on most people's lips Inside the Beltway this morning. So, how did this freshman Republican escape GOP Whip Eric Cantor's hammer to vote with Democrats for health care reform, ruining Cantor's goal of unified opposition? Cao arrived in Houston at the age of eight with his parents and two [...]

House Passes Health Care Reform

Jay Newton-Small — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:07:59 +0000

The House of Representatives tonight passed 220-215 sweeping $1.2 trillion health care reform legislation. The bill garnered the support of just one Republican, Joe Cao of Louisiana; 39 Democrats voted against it. The vote, which looked uncertain even going into the House Rules Committee last night, came after the adoption 240-194 of an amendment sponsored by [...]

One GOP Vote?

Jay Newton-Small — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:00:20 +0000

After House GOP Whip Eric Cantor promised the Tea Partiers unified Republican opposition on Thursday, I assumed there wouldn't be any defections. After all, he succeeded in whipping total opposition to the stimulus and the budget. Word has it, though, that Republicans are worried about Rep. Joe Cao, a Louisiana Republican who took William "$90,000 in [...]

Anatomy of a Health Reform Deal

Amy Sullivan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:55:12 +0000

Don't the Democrats control Congress? How did Nancy Pelosi get to the point where she didn't have enough votes in her own caucus to pass health reform unless she paved the way for language that, as Jon Cohn puts it, "mak[es] it more likely that millions of American women will no longer be able to [...]