health reform

We obsess over health care in the United States, because we all want to be healthy. In the process, new evidence suggests, we're ignoring the social dynamics that actually determine our health.

More »»

Fareed Zakaria is an interesting writer who says some sensible things, as when he called the intensity of the war in Afghanistan "disproportionate" to the threat. more »

More »»

The CBO now says health reform will cut the Federal deficit by $138 billion That's a win for the bill's backers, and should make it tougher for self-described 'fiscal conservatives' in the Democratic Party to vote against this bill. (No, let's re-frame that as a positive statement: It will make it easier for Conservadems to embrace this bill.) Now what's left is a battle between two clear political philosophies on the left and right: The principled but pragmatic progressivism embodied by Dennis Kucinich, or the nihilistic fury and self-interest that's best represented by Ann Coulter. Since both Coulder and Kucinich had a lot to say about health reform this week, it's worth taking a moment to compare and contrast their philosophies. more »

More »»

There's a lot of buzz in health care circles about an editorial in today's Washington Post entitled "If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly." That could be dangerous: the author's conclusions are contradicted, not supported, by the available facts. more »

More »»

Robert Byrd just came out in favor of using reconciliation in health reform. Since reconciliation's also known as the "Byrd rule," that's a definitive a confirmation of its legitimacy as you can get. more »

More »»

The pheremonic scent of compromise is inducing euphoria in the nation's capitol once again. Not that there's anything wrong with compromise, if it results in policies that work. But we've just pulled ourselves back from the brink of financial meltdown, and tens of millions of households are experiencing their own economic catastrophes. This is no time to value process over outcome. The danger is that the desire to appear bipartisan may prevent us from creating a system that protects us from either collective or individual economic disaster. more »

More »»

The White House has just released "The President's Proposal" on health reform. It must be considered in context, and the context is this: The House and Senate have each passed a bill and they're deadlocked on the differences between them. The President is outlining what he considers a reasonable resolution of the two bills, with the expectation that it will be used to guide the remaining negotiations. more »

More »»

It's been a fascinating anthropological exercise to watch the health excise tax concept (the so-called "Cadillac tax") keep its popularity among Democratic and liberals, even as one study after another discredits the assumptions behind it. It's the Democratic equivalent of trickle-down economics - an idea that doesn't seem to die no matter how much it's contradicted by the facts. more »

More »»

Let’s be realistic about our expectations for the State of the Union. We’re unlikely to see a newly-energized President trailing clouds of progressive glory, ascending the podium while the PA blares anthemic 70’s stadium-rock. That’s not his style. (If I’m wrong about that 70's rock, however, I recommend Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”) Still, he can recapture the health debate and stay true to himself by saying something like this: more »

More »»