No Pause In The Debate: The Policy & Practice Podcast

From press conferences, interviews, and more around Washington, D.C.
Congress took a holiday last week to honor America’s military heroes both past and present, but the veterans of the health reform debate did not pause.
A breakaway group of physician organizations mounted a challenge to the American Medical Association’s backing of the House-passed reform bill.  Activists on [...]

Hey, AMA: Deal or No Deal?

From a press briefing at the U.S. Capitol with AARP, the American Medical Association, the Military Officers Association of America, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) held a press briefing Tuesday morning designed to get the word out that she was ready to end what has now become an annual “Kabuki dance” as she [...]

A Time to Amend… the Policy & Practice Podcast

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

From Washington, D.C.:

After a long summer of waiting, journalists, policy wonks, and the public can finally start poring over the details of the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health reform legislation. But the work is really just beginning for the committee’s chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D.-Mont.), who this week will have to [...]

Maneuvering Begins Anew: the Policy & Practice Podcast

From Washington, DC:
As Congress gets back to work after the August recess, President Obama urges Congress and the nation to get behind health reform, the Senate Finance Committee releases its draft version of a health reform bill,  and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee — another key player in health care politics — [...]

A Farewell to Ted: The Policy & Practice Podcast

From phone interviews and teleconferences.
A touch of somberness was added to the normally very quiet final week of August in Washington, as the nation and the nation’s capital absorbed the news that Ted Kennedy, the second-longest serving Senator, had died after a year-long battle with brain cancer.  The Democratic and fiercely liberal champion of civil [...]

History Repeats Itself

From the National Association of Health Underwriters Capitol Conference in Washington:
 
When the late President Harry S Truman tried to get a single-payer health care system passed into law six decades ago, he was opposed by a variety of interest groups, including the American Medical Association, which warned that a single-payer system was the equivalent of [...]