The worst health care reform ever?

Sarah Kliff and Matt Yglesias both have good summaries of Steve Brill’s monster Time article on healthcare costs.

I'm pretty skeptical that the GOP's strategy to force Senate Democrats to take embarrassing votes on the reconciliation bill will mean much in the November elections. Most voters don't follow the minutiae of congressional procedure, but nor are they stone-cold idiots. An ad saying that "so-and-so voted against a bill to stop the government from covering Viagra for child molesters" isn't going to move many voters, though it may make whoever approved the message look bad.

Brian Beutler’s item wherein Jay Rockefeller disses Kent Conrad is pretty funny. Conrad raised some objections to the idea of letting people aged 55-65 to buy into Medicare, and then:

Perched on the shores of the Minas Basin since 1670, the port of Parrsboro, N.S., has seen boom times, but these aren’t them. In the early days of this century, it has a third of the population it had in the early days of the last. No surprise: Parrsboro, pop. 1,300, is terribly understaffed for doctors.

In recent weeks, critics of the Affordable Care Act have turned their attention to Massachusetts, where there's some evidence that the reforms signed into law by Mitt Romney in 2005 are struggling. But the evidence that they're struggling has been, well, a bit weak: Emergency room visits haven't dropped. Gov. Deval Patrick has been tussling with insurers over rates.

By now, you're probably used to hearing about the $900 billion health-care bill. But what about the 150,000-life health-care bill?

The President, in an effort to demonstrate his desire for bipartisanship, has repeatedly tried to offer conservatives a deal on the issue of medical malpractice lawsuits since according to conservatives making malpractice litigation more favorable to defendants is key to reducing health care costs:

Turkmenistan on Friday insisted mystery explosions outside Ashgabat were caused by fireworks but unofficial sources said that a military arms depot had blown up in a potentially massive accident.The explosions took place Thursday afternoon at a military arms depot in the city of Abadan, just 20 kilometres (15 miles) outside Ashgabat, three concurring sources who asked not to be named told an AFP correspondent in Turkmenistan.