Looks like we're going to see a push to open the public option. Get on the phones and let your congress creatures know you're behind it:

Sen. Ron Wyden has doubts about the scope of the public option plan announced Monday.

"I agree with Senator Reid that health reform should give Americans more options. Now, I want to work with him to ensure that all Americans can choose those options," Wyden said. "The bottom line is that the public option can’t really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market, because private insurance companies aren’t going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can’t take their business elsewhere.

"Real reform means empowering Americans to choose insurance that works well for them and their family, while rejecting plans that don’t. Including a public option is a step in the right direction, now let’s remove the firewalls in this bill that prevent Americans from choosing it," Wyden said in a statement.

[...][Jeff] Merkley, for example, said he would be unhappy if more Americans weren't able to select the so-called public option. As a member of one of the committees that wrote a health care bill, Merkley actively supported a government-option as the best way to maintain costs and provide greater choice. Merkley said in an interview Monday that he would press for any public option to be broadly available along the lines of an amendment he successfully offered in July when the bill was in committee.

Merkley's amendment is designed to give small businesses access to newly created health insurance exchanges that, in theory, breed competition by pooling the number of customers in a specific region. Merkley estimated that his amendment would allow nearly 25,000 more businesses – employing 485,000 workers – to enter the exchanges and 32 million people nationwide.
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That amendment would increase the size of small businesses eligible for enter the national exchange that includes a public options. He also supports giving states the right expand the size of eligible businesses even more.

"What sense does it make to keep companies from going into the exchange?" he said.

While the corporate media is praising Obama's announcement yesterday to more stringently monitor mountaintop mining, those involved in fighting the massive pollution that results from the practice say it's nowhere near enough. One group's attorney called it "rearranging the bureaucratic deck chairs." (Remember how Obama kept talking about "clean coal"? This is what it looks like, folks: powerful poison dumped into people's lives.)

Friday morning, this terrible news:

Just how bad has the coal ash situation gotten in the United States? So bad that the Department of Homeland Security has told Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that her committee can't publicly disclose the location of coal ash dumps across the country.

The pollution is so toxic, so dangerous, that an enemy of the United States -- or a storm or some other disrupting event -- could easily cause them to spill out and lay waste to any area nearby.

And yet, for some reason, it's perfectly fine when mining companies do it! Hey, how about that "clean coal"?

There are 44 sites deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency to be high hazard, but Boxer said she isn't allowed to talk about them other than to senators in the states affected. "There is a huge muzzle on me and my staff," she said.

In other words, this is a very urgent problem. Activists say all Obama has to do is enforce the Clean Water Act that already exists.

If the Obama administration wants to protect the people and mountains of Appalachia, it needs to end the destructive practice of mountaintop mining, not settle for promises of stricter scrutiny of the mining permits, advocates say.

[...] The White House announced what it described as an “unprecedented” agreement among the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department to better coordinate and tighten the agencies’ oversight of mountaintop mining and to review the mining existing laws.

In a memorandum of understanding, the agencies promised to:

• Require more stringent environmental reviews for future mountaintop mining permits, including using the Clean Water Act to reduce contamination in streams and watersheds;

• Propose a rule change to stop allowing a type of nationwide permit that doesn’t require site-specific reviews for mining operations to dump the mineral-laden debris of former mountaintops into streams;

• Strengthen oversight of state agencies, both in their permitting and enforcement;

• And, if the U.S. District Court vacates the Bush administration’s 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule as requested, return to the 1983 rules restoring the 100-foot buffer zone around streams for mining waste.

These are all steps in the right direction, but they aren’t enough, says Willa Mays, Executive Director of Appalachian Voices:

"Their priorities do not take into account that mountains are being blown up today, and until mountaintop removal coal mining is ended, residents will continue to suffer from high disease rates, floods, and poisoned water supplies directly attributable to this mining practice."

Advocates across Appalachia echoed her concern.

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