In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed -“An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

And when the Bill came to the desk of President John Adams for signature, I think it’s safe to assume that the man in that chair had a pretty good grasp on what the framers had in mind.

Read on to send your Republican relatives and friends decrying the unconstitutionality of Healthcare reform running for the hills.

According to Glenn Thrush of Politico, Harris created a stir at the orientation meeting by demanding to know why he had to wait a month after he was sworn in in January for his government-subsidized health care to kick in.

That’s right, incoming Republican Rep.  Andy Harris, who campaigned on repealing health care reform, just can’t wait to get his hands on his government health insurance.

After responding in a huff, he even asked if there was some way he could buy into the government care in advance, seemingly thinking there might be a government program similar to the so-called ‘public option’ championed by progressive Democrats in 2009.

Yeah, there are no words.

Obamacare came to New York in earnest Monday as the state started offering coverage for the uninsured with preexisting medical conditions.

Here are the details:

In March 2010, Congress passed the health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law created a temporary program until January 2014 that makes coverage available for individuals who have a pre-existing medical condition, have not had insurance for six months, and who are legal US residents.

This new program is called the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) and will be available throughout the country. In New York State, the PCIP plan is the NY Bridge Plan, administered by GHI, an EmblemHealth company.

PCIP plans will operate until the year 2014. At that time other provisions of health care reform will go into effect and state health benefit exchanges will be available for individuals to purchase coverage.

People who are eligible for the plan, which will have premiums running at a (relatively speaking) reasonable $421/month:

• Are legal US residents.
• Reside in New York State.
• Have one or more pre-existing medical conditions.
• Have not had health care coverage for the last six months.

Find more info about the NY Bridge Plan here.

Daily News

Hat tip: Elizabeth

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples.

Furthermore, the court found that Proposition 8 violates the due process and equal protection rights of same sex couples.  One of the things that needs to be highlighted is that the judge in the case was originally nominated by the-deity-of-all-Republicans President Reagan and therefore cannot be deemed ‘simply another liberal activist member of the judiciary’.  What’s even more ironic is that his original nomination was opposed by then Rep. Nancy Pelosi because she felt he was too insensitive to gays and lesbians in his work for the US Olympic Committee (this really happened).

The decision is AMAZING and is even better because of the fact that arguing against Prop 8 are the lawyers that represented Bush and Gore in Bush v. Gore from 2000. Yes, that’s right: W’s Solicitor General Ted Olsen is on board for the legalization of same sex marriage and working to make it happen.

What is even more interesting is the series of decisions made in the last few weeks by US District courts.  The first was the decision that the Arizona immigration laws are largely unconstitutional; the second the Prop 8 ruling; and the third was a decision in Virginia about healthcare reform.

The decision in Virginia hasn’t received nearly the same attention as the other two – but it is just as important.  In an attempt to undermine healthcare reform, Virginia passed a law exempting residents from the health insurance mandate passed by Congress earlier this year.  The lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the state law and says that Congress does not have the power to force people to have health insurance.  The administration filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit but a judge in VA ruled against the administration and provided the first legal victory against the reform law.  The ruling gives credibility to the notion that there is legitimate doubt about whether or not the Commerce clause grants Congress the right to mandate coverage.  If this case proceeds – and ultimately this will probably be decided by the Supreme Court – lasting healthcare reform may be far from certain.

Taken together the decisions highlight what a huge role that the judiciary plays in shaping American progress or impeding it (think Citizens United).  Judges matter, and their ability to apply the Constitution and support the enormity of rights and opportunities it expresses is forever our greatest advocate.  Today was yet another example that the Constitution is on our side in the fight for same sex marriage and that we continue to see progress (albeit wayyyy to slowly).

Watch the full length video here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CFF4732AD545287C

Every bill, as we all learned in grade school, has to be passed by both houses. On Christmas eve, the Senate passed a bill that was sent back to the House. At this point, two things could have happened.

In the first case, the House and Senate could have met in something called conference, and then agreed to a new bill which would then be sent back to each house of Congress for a vote. However, since Brown won in MA, it was expected that the Senate would not be able to muster the 60 votes to get around a fillibuster and pass any bill that came back from conference.

So instead, the House last night passed the Senate bill in its entirety. In the coming days, the President will sign that bill into law. However, to get all the votes on the Senate version of the bill in the House, everyone had to agree that the Senate bill would be amended by another, and entirely new bill. So last night, after voting on the Senate bill, the House voted on a budget bill that would amend the soon-to-be law. The reason it was a particular type of budget bill is so that the senate could pass it using a process known as reconciliation. For all intents and purposes the process of reconciliation means that a simple majority in the Senate can pass the bill.

There are obviously a lot of stories on the bills and process out there, some of the ones I found particularly interesting were:

• A good dissection from the Times of what’s in the bill;
• An analysis from the Times on the bill’s political benefits and costs to Democrats and Obama;
• Lastly from the Times, an outline of the legal fights expected to shape up over the bill;
• Dana Milbank on some of the the ugliness seen from demonstrators and even Republicans: “Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) likened the Democrats to Soviets. “Say no to totalitarianism!,” he said.
• WAPO on the PR blitz that Obama is planning, and
• The Politico does an anaylsis of lawmakers whose reelection prospects have been significantly imperiled by their announced support of—or opposition to—health care reform.

“health insurance companies should have to compete for our business as individual consumers. Forcing them to compete, even through a public option would be better than an individual mandate…”

and

the best way to pay for those with pre-existing conditions is to “spread their costs among the healthy, among the taxpayers.”

Article here.

Video:

After an impassioned speech and a few questions, it was my turn to stick myself in there and see if she could speak to the issue that I cared most about: fixing our wasteful, inefficient and immoral health care system. The question I asked, though not verbatim, went something like this:

Senator Gillibrand, I’d first like to thank you the recent letter you signed and sent to Harry Reid demanding that we use reconciliation to bring back the public option and score a big victory for the American people. [Applause]

As for going forward on health care reform in the near future, what are our chances that we will get the public option, the government run alternative that will provide real competition to the exploitative, wasteful, and inefficient health care corporate cartel that is gauging American workers and holding this nation back from progress? [Applause]

Okay, maybe I didn’t pull a Keith Olbermann and use the word “cartel,” but I did say pretty much everything else. At this point, although I was very impressed with what Gillibrand had been saying prior to my question, I was expecting the same old politician/focus-group-tested-response, like:

Great Question. We are currently working very hard to bring back the public option, and we will all do our best. We need to remember that the most important thing is not the specifics, but that we have some competition, not necessarily in the form of a government plan.

But she didn’t say that. Not even close. What she said actually greatly exceeded my expectations, slapping a big smile on my face and unleashing a wave of applause from the crowd. She began by saying that the public option will be hard to enact through reconciliation – a parliamentary procedure that only requires fifty-one votes instead of sixty – given that reconciliation is strictly a budgetary procedure and is thus supposed to be used only for budgetary issues. Albeit “budgetary issues” is vague, the idea here is that reconciliation is supposed to be used only when the budget has changed and the Congress must adjust existing programs to fit the new budget.

With this in mind, Gillibrand sought to find a way around this, and stumbled on something that progressives have been saying all year long. Instead of enacting a brand new “public option” program, why don’t we instead adjust the current public program already in existence – Medicare – to our current budget, i.e., expand Medicare for everyone? If we did this, it could be done completely through reconciliation.

This pronouncement sent me throwing victory fist pumps through the air like Ari Gold. Unbeknownst to most on the right, we already live in a country that has “socialized medicine”: it’s called Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration. And unlike the health care that we all have, these programs – although they have problems in their own right – are vastly more popular, more efficient, and a lot cheaper than private insurance.

So the takeaway: Gillibrand was asked about the public option, and responded with Medicare for all.