The Baucus Bill has now been kicked to the curb by almost everyone who's heard anything about it. And rightly so. I'm going to kick it a little more myself, and give some specifics for doing so. In general, the Baucus bill has nothing to offer anyone, other than the health insurance industry.

On Sept. 13, 2009, Bloomberg published an article about Joseph Stiglitz'a recent assessment of the economy, in which he maintains that the banking crisis is actually worse than it was in 2007. The "too-big-to-fail" situation has actually worsened.

Health Insurance Companies continue to perpetuate the fairy tale about "cost-shfting"--the notion that the cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured is "shifted" onto the backs of insurance companies and their enrollees. This is an outright lie, and a whopper at that.

HR 3200's costs are due almost entirely to the Affordability Credits. The language pertaining to these credits is confusing and difficult to follow--possibly by design. Unlike IRS or tax credits which are defined and have limits, these Affordability Credits, which are subsidies to Insurance Companies, have NO limits.

Despite the Corporate media's overly optimistic and distorted reporting of today's employment report, the news was not good at all. The economy continues to lose jobs at a rapid rate. And without the multiple statistical manipulations used to concoct today's report, job losses in August would have been almost -300,000 or more.