Word: reformer
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Somewhere, the ghost of Lyndon B. Johnson is smiling. Senator Olympia Snowe's lone Republican vote for health-care reform in the Senate Finance Committee didn't just advance an issue close to LBJ's heart--as President, the Texan signed Medicare into law--it was also a masterstroke in political leverage. And no one loved Senate politics more than he. Snowe's yea earned her--a member of a weakened minority, from the lovely but not very influential state of Maine--a voice in the small group hashing out the final version of the bill. In the Senate...
...homeowner and found it staggering that just the mortgage-interest and property-tax deductions amount to $96 billion per year. The elimination of those two deductions alone would virtually pay for health-care reform. I recall the fear expressed when the removal of interest deductions for auto loans and credit cards was first discussed. The bottom did not fall out of those sectors. Nor will it fall out of the housing market...
...Case for Health-Care Reform...
...often speak several times a week. Though Ignagni's group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), has long been leery of - and at other times downright hostile to - the health-care bills moving through Congress, an uneasy truce was holding between the insurers and a White House bent on reform. But just barely: when DeParle and a Senate aide asked Ignagni during the call to confirm a rumor that her industry was about to release a report attacking the measure being prepared by Senator Max Baucus, DeParle recalls, "she said, 'No, we are miles away from putting out a report...
Five days later, Ignagni released an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers that claimed, on the basis of a misleading reading of the bill, that reform could lead to a painful spike in insurance premiums for ordinary Americans. The episode shattered the thin trust between the Administration and the insurance lobby and set the stage for an ugly and very public war over the shape of the final measure. "I feel completely misled," said the Senate aide who was on the call. "There are a couple of things you have to have in this town, and your good name is one of them...