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...both sides - consulting their focus groups, no doubt - found that the message that most roused their troops was the same: a government takeover of health care. The tidbit in the plan that came closest to embodying that message was a worthy but relatively minor provision called the public option, which would offer something like Medicare as one of a menu of choices for several million Americans not receiving health insurance from their employers. For the right, this was socialism. For the left, it was a step toward stripping private insurers of their choke hold on the system. When the public...
...simply to move them. But that's not only extraordinarily difficult, it can also backfire - just ask anyone in the southeastern U.S. about the inexorable advance of the imported invasive species the kudzu vine. "For some species on the brink of extinction, physically moving them might be our only option," says Loarie, "but setting aside connected, heterogeneous landscapes that allow natural movement will almost certainly be an better use of conservation dollars...
Until Senate Majority Harry Reid decided to scrap a government-run insurance plan in order to get the 60 votes needed to pass health care reform legislation, Sen. Jay Rockefeller was one of the chamber's most ardent public option supporters. Without a public option, the West Virginia Democrat feared, insurers - fattened by billions of dollars in new government subsidies and a new requirement that most Americans purchase insurance - would run rampant, jacking up prices and padding profits and executive salaries. But Rockefeller and several other Democratic senators also had their eye on a different way to keep insurer profit...
...board; crucially, both of those bills would have ended the requirement in 2013, the year much of health reform only begins to take effect, while Reid's new provision would maintain the regulation in perpetuity. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who had advocated killing the public option-less Senate bill, said Monday on MSNBC that of the last-minute changes to the Senate bill made by Reid, the strengthening of the MLR regulations was "the most important thing of all ... It requires insurance companies not to take quite as much off the top of your premiums as they...
...company has thus far failed to heed calls by British Conservative politicians to fire CEO Richard Brown. Brown has apologized for the inconvenience the interrupted service has caused passengers, but says that sending more trains out to stall on the tracks beneath the channel simply isn't an option. Few clients were thanking him Monday for his caution. (Read: "European Train Travel: Working on the Railroad...