Over at ThinkProgress, Lee Fang has detailed how corporate and GOP funded right-wing extremists are orchestrating an astro-turf campaign to disrupt Democratic town halls and derail comprehensive health care reform. This past weekend, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) fell victim to the right’s strategy, where protesters followed him and chanted “just say no” to health care.

During an appearance on CNN, Doggett revealed that the Republican party filled the event with “volunteers” who shouted scripted bumper sticker slogans that were “totally as phony as the grassroots nature of this organization.” “There was never any willingness any give and take,” Doggett said, “we could write that bill any way one would want to write it nothing would satisfy them.” Some protesters even advocated overturning Medicare and Social Security:

Well, I know in reference to the Republican Party because its on the website of the local party chair, both urging them to come and thanking them for coming. It’s interesting that they decided to set all this up as a video opportunity. So that what you just showed was film taken by the Republican Party of Texas….They were waving the 10th amendment, the rights reserved to the states, and actually admitted to me, several of them, in the discussion, that they didn’t only want to stop health care reform, they wanted to repeal Medicare and social security.

Watch it:

Indeed, Republicans have a long history of opposing Medicare and demonizing health care reform as a socialistic government-takeover of health care — regardless of the actual proposal. As GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz admitted in an interview with the New York Times magazine, “we don’t know what he is proposing. We want to avoid “a Washington takeover.”

The overwhelming majority of Americans, however, support the tenets of comprehensive health care reform:

As CAP’s Ruy Tiexiera points out, “Health care reform is still quite popular, contrary to what you may have heard. What’s taking a hit is the multiple reform plans being batted around in Congress, which have confused the public and given conservatives a terrific opportunity to road test every antireform argument they can think of. After all, with so many plans floating around, how can the public be sure that these arguments don’t apply to at least one plan or provision of a plan that might possibly become law?”

Transcript: Read more

On Friday, after days of contentious negotiations between “Democratic House leaders and an influential group of fiscal conservatives in the party,” the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a health care bill by a vote of 31-28. The committee’s bill “will now be merged with two separate versions passed by other House panels before being considered by the full chamber in September.”

The vote in Energy and Commerce followed tense negotiations between the committee chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party. The conservative Blue Dog caucus secured concessions that decoupled the public health insurance option from Medicare (rather than piggybacking off of Medicare rates, the program would have to negotiate its own reimbursements with providers) exempt more businesses from providing coverage, and lowered affordability measures. In protest, 57 members of the Progressive Caucus sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) arguing that the “agreement is not a step forward toward a good health care bill, but a large step backwards” since it does not provide “at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates.”

On Friday morning, the two sides reached a deal. According to the amendments passed in committee, the progressives cushioned the Blue Dogs’ affordability cuts by placing a lid on the rise of premiums (premiums cannot increase faster than 150% of medical inflation) and re-investing system savings into affordability measures — thus complimenting the Dogs’ desire to find more savings within the system with the need to improve affordability measures. Moreover, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told House members that since she would be negotiating the rate for the public option, in some regions of the country, she might be able to negotiate provider payments even lower than Medicare plus 5 percent.

On the affordability front, the final legislation still increases the premium caps for Americans making more than 150% above the federal poverty line (FPL), but progressives negotiated an agreement to reinvest expected savings from administrative simplifications, the accountable care organizations (models) in Medicaid, and the Medicare’s new-found ability to negotiate drug prices, into premium assistance.

Below is a table of the new affordability standards (before any savings are re-invested):

For individuals between 133% and 150% of the federal poverty line, nothing would change. However starting at 150 through 200%, Americans would have to spend a higher percentage of income on premiums before receiving subsidy assistance.