Bill introduced to raise state sales tax but voters will get final say

A bill introduced today in the state House would raise the state sales tax by 0.3 percentage point for three years to "buy back" some of the cuts the Legislature is going to make to health care programs.

HEALTH CARE: Cantwell right on public option

Re: “Cantwell opposes Baucus health bill” (TNT, -17).

I was very pleased to read of Sen. Maria Cantwell’s opposition to the Baucus health bill. I was more pleased to read she will not support a bill that doesn’t include a public option and Medicare reform.

Hooray for Cantwell; she totally gets it. She understands that “significantly” reducing the cost of health care in this country is the key to providing health care to all citizens, which is what civilized countries do.

SEATTLE: Pelosi tours hospital, discusses reform

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that while she personally is against anti-abortion language in the House version of the health care bill, the amendment was necessary for the bill to pass.

Pelosi spoke during a visit Monday to Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center. She said the language to prohibit the new government insurance plan from covering abortions “would have been in the bill one way or another,” so backers of the bill thought it was better to have it as an amendment rather than as a provision that could jeopardize the entire measure.

The California Democrat said she and other backers of the bill will continue searching for common ground with abortion opponents.

HEALTH CARE: Profits won’t be given up easily

The health care industry does not want nationalized health care. Why? It’s pretty simple: profits.

Don’t expect big media to support nationalized health care either; the news hour is now a giant infomercial for Big Medicine. When we are talking about our health, profits need to take a back seat. Big medicine – no matter how they try to spin it – doesn’t like that idea.

This government needs to spend the next few billion dollars on people at home. If you are fortunate to have good health care coverage, as my wife and I do, don’t assume this will continue indefinitely.

INSURANCE: Health care reform bill is a disaster

Rep. Norm Dicks is convinced that 535 people in Washington, D.C., have the intelligence and right to decide what is acceptable health insurance coverage for every single person in the country. And if you don’t agree to play along with him and his like-minded Democrats, he wants you fined, arrested and put in jail.

He also thinks adding 111 new health commissions and panels, cutting hundreds of billion dollars from elderly health care, increasing an already bankrupt government’s spending obligations $1.6 trillion are the way to fix health care. As more is learned about the requirements of this bill, it is almost beyond belief that anyone would agree that it will be anything but a disaster for America.

Rep. Dicks’ support of this bill is proof that after 30 years in office, he is now just a partisan politician rather than a representative of the people in his district.