News & Comment
Blogs and Opinion
What Is Social Insurance? by James Kwak, baselinescenario.com | January 24, 2013
Unsurprisingly, most Americans are split between various misconceptions of what Social Security and Medicare are. Many, particularly right-wing politicians and their media mouthpieces, see them as pure tax-and-transfer programs: they gather money from one set of people and give it to another set of people. From this point of view, they are bad bad bad bad bad and should be cut. Many others, particularly beneficiaries and people who hope to see beneficiaries, see them as earned benefits. The common conception is that you pay in while you’re working, so you earned the benefits you get in retirement. You didn’t “earn” them in the moral sense that people who work hard should get benefits; you “earned” them in the accounting sense that you’re just getting back “your” money that you set aside during your career. Both of these perspectives are wrong, the latter more obviously so. read more »12 Ways Obama Smacked Down the Tea Party and the Right in Inauguration Speech by Adele M. Stan, alternet.org | January 22, 2013
With its elegant rendering of the liberal agenda before the eyes of the American people, President Barack Obama's second inaugural address was music to the ears of many a progressive. But to the ears of Tea Partiers and the Republican right, this inauguration speech, as well as the ceremony that surrounded it, was war -- not just a war of words, but a war of prayer, a war of poetry and even, perhaps, a war of song. Driving the message home were the hands of the Fates, who conspired to see the second inauguration of the nation’s first African American president fall on Martin Luther King Day, the national holiday whose very creation was opposed by so many who still today comprise the Republican Party’s right wing. Here we recount a dozen ways in which the president brought his fight to the right, in no uncertain terms, at his second inauguration. read more »Remember the Children by Robert B. Reich, robertreich.org | December 18, 2012
It seems as if every major interest has political clout – except children. They can’t vote. They don’t make major campaign donations. They can’t hire fleets of lobbyists. Yet they’re America’s future. Their parents and grandparents care, of course, as do many other private citizens. But we’re no match for the entrenched interests that dominate American politics. Whether it’s fighting for reasonable gun regulation, child health and safety overall, or good schools and family services – we can’t have a fair fight as long as special-interest money continues to poison our politics. read more »Unreason On Health Care by E.J. Dionne, truthdig.com | December 17, 2012
The human capacity to put passion and intense feeling over cool rationality does not surprise us when it comes to love, sex, family, friendship, certain kinds of religious commitment and even devotion to sports teams. But emotional approaches can be quite dangerous in public policy, and on no subject is irrationality as pronounced as it is in health care. Here’s the difficulty: Conservatives who were once genuinely interested in finding market-based alternatives to government-provided health insurance have, since the rise of Obamacare, continued to make choices that are dysfunctional, even from their own point of view. read more »Washington’s Revolving Door Is Hazardous to Our Health by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, commondreams.org | December 14, 2012
We’ve seen how Washington insiders write the rules of politics and the economy to protect powerful special interests, but now as we enter the holiday season, and a month or so after the election, we’re getting a refresher course in just how that inside game is played, gifts and all. In this round, Santa doesn’t come down the chimney — he simply squeezes his jolly old self through the revolving door. It’s an old story, the latest chapter of which came to light a few days ago with a small item in Politico: “Elizabeth Fowler is leaving the White House for a senior-level position leading ‘global health policy’ at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group.” A familiar name. We had talked about Liz Fowler on Bill Moyers Journal in 2009, during the early stages of Obama’s health care reform. She was at the center of the action, sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee at committee hearings. read more »Three Progressive Ways To Reduce Medicare Costs By Billions Without Cutting Anyone’s Benefits by Zaid Jilani, boldprogressives.org | December 14, 2012
Corporate lobbyists and their allies on Capitol Hill have a terrible new idea: hiking the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. This would save the federal government about $5.7 billion a year, but cost seniors $11.4 billion over the same period. There are a better ways to cut Medicare costs, and they wouldn’t cost a single penny of anyone’s benefits. Here’s three possible choices for how we can do that. read more »The “Yes, Minister” Theory of the Medicare Age by Paul Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com | December 13, 2012
Aaron Carroll can’t believe that we’re still talking about raising the age for Medicare eligibility; his disbelief is easy to understand. It is, after all, a truly terrible idea, for reasons he details in the linked post; it would inflict vast hardship on the most vulnerable, while saving the federal government remarkably little money, and would actually raise overall health spending, basically because private insurers have much higher administrative costs and much less bargaining power than Medicare, so shifting seniors out of the program ends up costing a lot of money. Yet the idea just won’t go away. It’s almost surreal. What’s going on here? read more »Obamacare Begins by Bill Boyarsky, truthdig.com | December 13, 2012
Dealing with the complex problems of the poor is one of the most difficult challenges facing Obamacare as the historic health reform law slowly but steadily enters American life. Throughout the country, health professionals, politicians and health care activists are meeting about how to implement the Affordable Care Act now that it has been upheld by the Supreme Court and President Barack Obama’s re-election. I attended one of these sessions recently and saw the potential for Obamacare in the nation’s impoverished communities. Among the topics was autism, a disability in which—as is true of much of American medical care—treatment is rationed on the basis of wealth. read more »The Obama Administration Plays Hardball On Medicaid by Paul Waldman, prospect.org | December 11, 2012
When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, it also gave Republican states a gift by saying they could opt out of what may be the ACA's most important part, the dramatic expansion of Medicaid that will give insurance to millions of people who don't now have it. Republican governors and legislatures don't like the Medicaid expansion, which is why nine states have said they'll refuse to expand Medicaid. But some states asked the Obama administration whether they could expand Medicaid a bit—maybe not cover everyone up to 133 percent like the law says, but add a few people to the rolls. And yesterday, the administration said no. It's all or nothing: either you expand Medicaid up to 133 percent, or you get none of the new money. Was that the right thing to do? Well first, let's talk about that money. read more »The GOP May Have Some Real Leverage Here by Steve Kornacki, salon.com | December 11, 2012
Republicans have essentially no leverage in the current “cliff” negotiations. The policy consequences of doing nothing are a lot worse for them than for Obama and the Democrats. So Obama is in position to demand concessions that the GOP wouldn’t ordinarily give up – like, for instance, an increase in tax rates, something no Republican in Congress has voted for in 22 years. Faced with this imbalance, though, Republicans have lately been making noise about forcing another confrontation over the debt ceiling, which we’re due to hit a little over a month into the new year. This is where things get complicated. What we know is that Obama’s official position is that any attempt by the GOP to replicate the brinkmanship of the summer of 2011 is a non-starter. The problem is that “Democrats have no consensus plan to execute if the debt ceiling isn’t increased before the end of the year.”. read more »
The Latest
Pelosi: No Public Option, No Bill, Politico | September 4, 2009
As the White House signals that it is willing to move forward on a health reform plan without a public option, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a strong message: not so fast. more »
Medical Bills Piling Up For Underinsured , The Miami Herald | September 3, 2009
The underinsured include the working poor whose employers don't provide full coverage, people who lose their jobs and their employer-subsidized insurance, and those who fail to understand the fine print in policy contracts and end up with less coverage than they expected. A 2007 survey by the Commonwealth Fund estimates 25 million Americans are underinsured, up from 16 million in 2003. more »
Obama, Snow Work On Health Reform Compromise, CNN | September 3, 2009
President Obama and top aides have quietly stepped up talks with moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine on a scaled-back health care bill. The compromise plan would lack a government-run public health insurance option favored by Obama, but would leave the door open to adding that provision down the road under an idea proposed by Snowe. more »
US Fares Poorly In Child Welfare Survey, Truthout | September 3, 2009
America has some of the industrial world's worst rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy and child poverty, even though it spends more per child than better-performing countries such as Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands, a new survey indicates. more »
Health Care Lobbyist Boost Key Players In Debate, USA Today | September 2, 2009
As the debate intensifies in Congress, health care sector contributions to lawmakers on the committees overseeing the massive change to the nation's health care system are on the upswing — rising 8% between the first and second quarter of the year, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. more »
U.S. Health Insurers Face New Questions, Financial Times | September 1, 2009
Health insurers face fresh questions from the House energy and commerce committee, which is stepping up its investigation into the industry as the argument over health care reform continues. Henry Waxman, the committee’s chairman, wrote to six health insurers asking about how small businesses are “purged” from coverage when their employees become ill. more »
Health Reform Estimates Need Long View, Says Study, Reuters | September 1, 2009
The Congressional Budget Office may be missing potential savings from various health reform proposals by not looking at efforts to manage or prevent expensive, chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, researchers said in a study. The study, published in the Health Affairs journal, comes as members of the U.S. more »
Lack of Paid Sick Days Compounds Flu Problem, fresnobee.com | September 1, 2009
Health officials are urging businesses to keep sick employees home this fall to control the spread of swine flu. But for many workers, a sick day is a day without wages. So they’re still showing up for work, exposing others to the highly contagious flu strain, researchers say. more »
Job Loss Fears Linked to Health Problems, Time Wellness Blogs | August 31, 2009
Constantly worrying about losing your job may be worse for your health than actually getting laid off or being unemployed, according to a study published in the September issue of the journal Social Science and Medicine. By analyzing two large, long-term data sets for some 1,700 U.S. more »
Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan, The New York Times | August 10, 2009
The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday. more »
