Alan Grayson Was Right

This is a couple of days old, but I thought I'd pass it along. As usual, Digby nails it:

Finally, the long awaited Republican alternative is upon us. And essentially it is "don't get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly." Imagine that.

A House Republican health-care bill wouldn't seek to prevent health-insurance companies from denying sick people insurance, Minority Leader John Boehner said Monday.

Republicans haven't released full details of the party's bill, but Mr. Boehner said the legislative proposal would be made public in the next couple of days.

The bill would allow insurance firms to sell policies across state lines, permit small businesses to pool together to bring down costs they face, implement changes to medical malpractices, and give state governments more flexibility to pursue rule changes in their states.

The absence of a requirement to end the practice of insurers being allowed to deny coverage to people who are already ill or have pre-existing conditions would be a significant difference between Democratic and Republican health-care overhaul proposals directly impacting the insurance industry.

Republicans also wouldn't prevent insurers from ending policies once an individual becomes seriously ill.

They would include other proposals included in Democratic legislation, such as removing lifetime and annual bans on the cost of health-care benefits policyholders can receive.

Mr. Boehner also said Monday that the Republican plan wouldn't include tax credits for people who buy insurance individually rather than through their employer. He cited the cost of providing those credits as a reason why they wouldn't be included.

This is what fishing around for "bipartisan" support gets you. To call this proposal "reform" is bending the language beyond its ability to recover, I think, which seems to be the goal. After all, the Repubicans pretty much seem to be living in Wonderland full time now, along with a lot of Democrats. I wish we had a few more Alan Graysons in the government, to call Boehner on shit like this -- but even if they did, the MSM wouldn't report it.

Speaking of which, strangely enough, as Digby points out, that article is no longer on the WSJ website. How do you suppose that happened?