Insurers could not charge more to people in poor health or to women, as they do now. But they still could charge higher premiums due to family size, geographic location and age.

The House and the Senate health committee bills would limit age-related premiums so that a 64-year-old pays no more than twice as much an 18-year-old. But Senate Finance Committee negotiators are considering allowing as much as a 5-to-1 difference, a big savings for the young but a significantly higher cost for older people who are more likely to have health problems.    Link

NYT in its article "A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform" has this to say:

The legislation would trim Medicare payments for most services, as an incentive for hospitals and other health care providers to become more efficient. The providers make a plausible case that the cutbacks could inadvertently reduce beneficiaries' access to some types of care.

And later they add:

But some proposals could affect beneficiaries. The major bills in Congress would cut more than $150 billion over 10 years from federal payments to private health plans that care for more than 10 million Medicare beneficiaries.

Personally, I not that worried about this section of the proposal.  I think benefits will remain secure.  

In another sign of the urgency gripping the pro-health care reform camp, billionaire George Soros has pledged to sink $5 million into the fight, the group getting the money confirmed.

Soros -- whose operation carefully guards the privacy of such donations -- made the pledge to Health Care For America Now, the leading coalition of pro-reform groups, unions and providers, HCAN chief Richard Kirsch confirmed in an email that was forwarded to me.

At least one prominent conservative blogger said Gladney was "brutally attacked" by SEIU members outside the event. After watching the video, there's ample reason for skepticism.

Yesterday, about 200 conservative activists held a protest outside the SEIU office in St. Louis. Gladney was there -- bandaged and in a wheelchair

Grandmas and Unborn Babies Face Extermination by Obama's "Health" Care Plan

But my favorite part of the editorial deals with the British health-care system, which if you believe IBD is basically condemning the old and disabled to die.

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless," the editorial claims.

The Clintons have always been a complicated couple. An accomplished lawyer and politician in her own right, Hillary Rodham Clinton has struggled for decades to balance her interests and ambitions against [the former president's]. She has supported his career while looking to blaze a trail of her own -- at times proud of, and benefiting from, her husband's accomplishments, and at other times frustrated by his failings and his habit of overshadowing her, friends say

The biggest controversy of Bill Clinton's career -- an affair with a White House intern that led to impeachment proceedings -- engendered rare sympathy for his wife and helped her win a Senate seat. One of his biggest political miscues -- injecting race into her South Carolina primary with Obama -- helped seal her defeat in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Now, if news and news features can do that, you'd think they might also be so bold as to call by its proper name--misogyny--the phenomenon behind patterns and individual incidents of violence targeting women.

The Real Obama?

Eventually, however, a White-House brokered deal will emerge from the back rooms. And one of two things will happen.
One possibility is that Obama, to everyone's surprise, will come out with a strong bill much like the one he promised his supporters during the campaign. It is conceivable, after all, that the reason Obama hasn't publicly issued ultimatums and twisted arms and busted heads is that he believes it's best to do those things in private -- and only when the time is truly ripe. In this scenario, which I call the Obama-as-community-organizer scenario, the community's needs are finally met, but in a way such that even those who had thwarted the people's will are allowed to save face.

The other possibility -- well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store -- having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.

So far, the glimpses we've seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario.

As with today, the media had little sympathy for the protesters. The New York Times editorialized that "there's little reason to sympathize with the aggrieved affluent elderly," whose complaints were "short-sighted and narrow-minded." In the New Republic, one commentator condemned the "selfishness" of the "affluent elderly," and asked "so long as we continue to provide enormous subsidies to the affluent elderly, why shouldn't they help pay for the poor of their generation?" (You can read more, and find the sources for the enclosed in chapter four of my book on Medicare.

It is understandable that the Administration and Congressional Democrats are unhappy with push-back to their plans. But, August is proving to be rich in ironies. The Administration of a former teacher of constitutional law is unhappy that individuals are exercising their Constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Administration of a former community organizer is complaining about community organizing. Congressional Democrats have long relied on community organizing (and union members), and are suddenly appalled at organized communities.

And, perhaps the richest irony of all -- the organizer of the protest against Rostenkowski was Jan Schakowsky - then Director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens - and currently Democratic representative from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois, and chief deputy whip to Majority Leader Pelosi. You can read Schakowsky's account of the incident, her role, and her views on the importance of citizen involvement in government here - at a lecture she gave at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research in 2002, entitled "Why Citizen Activism Matters: The View From Washington."