Healthcare

It happens in every recession: Medicaid enrollment leaps at precisely the same time that states are least able to afford the additional costs. The structural flaw has left state lawmakers threatening program cuts, Congress scrambling to find emergency funds to prevent a coverage crisis, and children’s health advocates urging an overhaul in the way Medicaid is funded. Trouble is, the Democrats’ health reform proposals do nothing to address the problem.

Tuesday was a day for Q and As with Norm Coleman, Michele Bachmann and Tom Petters. Coleman in the Harvard Crimson: “No regrets.” Bachmann in City Pages: “I’m proud.” Petters in federal court: “I apologize.” Al Franken got in on the game this morning on Minnesota Public Radio, where an interviewer said it sounds like he’d [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Nov. 5 rally in opposition to Democrat-led health care reform sure has generated press for the Sixth District Republican, but increasingly in ways she might not have anticipated. She ended up apologizing, sort of, for rally attendees who used imagery of Holocaust victims to express their dislike for reforms. Government watchdog group [...]

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann broke House rules by using her taxpayer-funded website to urge people to attend her Nov. 5 “Super Bowl of Freedom” rally, according to a complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

How to get a conservative to say “I’m sorry”: put your gripe on video. It worked for U.S. Rep. Steve Israel with his Minnesota counterpart, Michele Bachmann, and for cable host Jon Stewart with his opposite at Fox, Sean Hannity.

Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group is again dipping its toes in political waters by involving its employees in the health care debate. It emailed its 75,000 workers Tuesday urging them to contact their senators with concerns about health care reform. Form letters provided to employees, obtained by California-based Consumer Watchdog, claim that “Government-run health care will result [...]

When U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News TV show to celebrate her anti-health care reform rally, she said it had drawn as many as 45,000 — a figure almost everyone else put at 10,000. Then Hannity showed video that began with scenes of Bachmann’s Thursday rally under a clear fall [...]

As noted here Monday, social conservatives — distracted by concerns over abortion and the House health care reform bill — missed key provisions in the bill that benefit LGBT Americans. One group that apparently overlooked the measures, the Minnesota Family Council, confirms that assessment.

The furor over the Stupak amendment banning abortion in the House health bill was already highly charged. Now one conservative commentator has dared touch the third rail in the right-to-choose debate: optional knee surgery.

While abortion politics dominated conservative opposition to the health care reform package that barely passed the U.S. House on Saturday evening, several measures in the bill that are beneficial to LGBT Americans largely went unnoticed — especially by conservatives.