But, can he convince Big-Business Republican Presidential Candidates to Get Behind the Push for Universal Healthcare Coverage to Cash-In on Billions in Insurance Savings?

With immigration officially dead and off the docket (for this Congress at least), healthcare can be expected to draw alongside the war in Iraq as the major issue for the 2008 Presidential election. And, while Democrats have been pushing for a universal healthcare system since Hillary last took her swing-and-a-miss in the early years of the Clinton administration, even stranger bedfellows have been made over the ensuing 15 years as big-business Republicans join the lefty cacophony, but from their point of view, they see it as the quickest way to defray legacy healthcare costs that future, longer-living generations of retirees and low-income employees are imposing on increasingly creaky organized-labor-era business models.

Although their logic may not be as politically correct as the Democrats, adoption of single-payer universal healthcare will decrease long-term costs and boost profits for companies of all kinds but especially those with retiree legacy cost structures to deal with as well as lower-middle-class employees unable to afford health insurance on their own. Two such firms are General Motors and Wal-Mart, who will be potent allies in a business-friendly and potentially more successful bid for universal healthcare in a climate where the court of public opinion could be swayed by a movie like SiCKO!(read more)

After reading Jacob Weisberg's Slate.com piece on Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden's plan to solve the healthcare crisis in the U.S., I've decided we should draft him to run for President... or at least, Vice President. And I'm a Republican. But as a critic of Hillary's last go-round with that issue, he'd make a better running mate for someone like Edwards or Obama (or better yet, teaming with McCain or Romney for a potent [though unlikely] mixed ticket). The excerpt below tells you why:

Wyden is a politically savvy wonk, who in drafting the bill he recently introduced has tried to learn from previous Democratic mistakes. He recently told me he had read The System, David Broder and Haynes Johnson's massive tome on the failure of the Clinton health-care reform plan, no less than five times. (Apparently, Starbucks now offers an intravenous drip.)

Wyden's bill is 166 pages against Hillary's 1364, and he thinks he can pare it further. When he was getting started, Wyden drew a grid of the major interest groups and made sure there were plusses as well as minuses for each in his bill. He has support from CEOs, labor leaders, and even one maverick health-insurance executive.(read more)

Another year, another security lapse, as we study the question of how to deal with damaging leaks of sensitive information, this time in the early stages of the 2008 Republican race for the White House.

Earlier this week nascent contender Rudy Giuliani had his battle plan hijacked and then printed in the New York Daily News - excerpts below. I found this an entertaining aside on how not to run a presidential campaign from somebody so savvy a politico and businessman as Giuliani. It's a small irritation but I can't believe somebody would just leave this lying around after a campaign stop!

Slate.com had a summary that ponders Giuliani's reaction to all this:

The document also considers a list of potential personal hurdles: his messy breakup with his ex-wife, his post-mayoral buck-raking deals, and his nonconservative positions on gun control, gay marriage, and abortion.

One of the problems for Giuliani not listed in the secret memo is that having your campaign documents stolen by rival camps is the kind of childish, annoying crap that happens in a political campaign. Is Rudy ready for a steady diet of annoyance for the next 22 months? Every candidate faces this question, but the wildly popular former mayor will experience the steepest fall from deity to campaign schlub of any of them. Giuliani has lived like a hero for the last several years, based on his actions after the attacks of 9/11.

He's popular and polls well among GOP candidates. The fund raising he did for GOP candidates last cycle was no test of his mettle. It was like a warm sponge bath compared with what he'll have to endure if he gets in the race. Plenty of people found Giuliani thin-skinned and abrasive as mayor.(read more)