The Lady Doth Protesteth Too Much

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has proposed amending the Senate's health insurance reform bill to specifically include health insurance companies under antitrust laws.

The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act exempted insurers from federal antitrust laws, which left it up to the states to regulate the industry.

There's a similar provision in the House bill, even though Karen Ignagni, President and CEO "America’s Health Insurance Plans" wrote to Rep. John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee to say that the states currently regulate insurance companies in every area, and that courts have found they are forbidden from conducting the anti-competitive activity targeted by both proposals.

Unfortunately for Ms. Ignagni, the AGs of ten states disagree.

Landrieu Doesn't Hate on Jindal

Conservative talking heads and pundits were quite vicious in their attacks on Senator Mary Landrieu because she was undecided prior to the recent insurance reform debate and it appeared, she had been swayed by a $300 million dollar amendment to offset losses in Louisiana's Medicaid program.

"So we know you’re hookin’, but you’re just not cheap," Glenn Beck said on his Fox program and Rush Limbaugh called her the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution.

Initially, Louisiana Governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal defended Senator Landrieu by releasing the following statement;

"The bill is awful, but I won’t criticize our congressional delegation for fighting to correct the flawed Medicaid formula that will unfairly cost our state hundreds of millions of dollars in health-care funding if not quickly corrected."

And because he had lobbied all nine of the state's members of Congress, seven of whom are Republicans, he told CNN that it's "unfair to criticize Sen. Landrieu or the rest of the delegation for fighting to correct this injustice to Louisiana", but then Beck, Limbaugh and other big-name pundits started slamming her and he's been silent ever since.

This has prompted Ms. Landrieu to tell the Baton Rouge Advocate that she wished he had been more robust with his defense and "it would have been very helpful. It didn’t happen, and I’m going to move on."

Quicklink: Sen. Arlen Specter

Pat Ciarrocchi of Philadelphis'a KYW-TV sat down with Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) for a wide-ranging interview on the topics of the day. It's an interesting thirteen minutes of unembeddable video and perhaps a good measure of how far Sen. Specter has grown.

KYW - CBS3 - Philadelphia (Video)

Sen. Schumer's Staff

The Journal-News of New York's Lower Hudson Valley is reporting that Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has three press secretaries on staff -- one for national media, one for "upstate", one for New York City and Long Island on his staff of 71, with a total salary budget of around $3.1 million or an average of around $43,662, per person.

All United States Senators are allowed up the $3.3 million to spend on salary with those representing the most populous states given the option of spending up to a million more, which means Sen. Schumer's salary budget is $1.2 million less than he's entitled.