August 24, 2014
Big Government, Ferguson, Health Care, And Unbridled Power Of The State
Okay, I’ll admit that title is a mashup that I never saw coming until I typed it. But stay with me for a moment…
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April 18, 2014
A Question For Obamacare Foes
With Affordable Care Act enrollment now at 8 million, I have a question for Obamacare foes.
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March 14, 2014
The Cost Of American Health Care: A Personal Story Without The Spin
I’m one of the lucky ones: I have the skills, time and resources to analyze the situation and find the best choice for my family. I’m also lucky that I make enough money to afford the ever higher costs to insure my family. But what happens if the luck runs out?
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November 17, 2013
Medicaid Expansion Success Means Liberals Should Go On A National Health Care Offensive
It’s time for liberals to go on the offensive. It’s time for a new strategy. Instead of defending progress from 50 years ago, we need to carve out our goals to achieve progress over the next 50 years. And when it comes to social policy, the best defense is a strong offense. Social Security faced fierce opposition in its day, and so did Medicare several decades later, but outside the right-wing fringe, these programs are popular and are examples of progress carved out by politicians who went on the offense to achieve social and economic justice.
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October 27, 2013
Obamacare Website Glitches Reflect Complex Market-Based System
I’m no fan of the Affordable Care Act. Maybe it was the best we could do in 2010 under the weight of Republican double-dealing and quackery, but the ACA is flawed because it tries to exist within the current health care insurance system. And well, the current system isn’t really a system at all. It’s a collection of disparate for-profit health care insurance companies. What the ACA gets right is the patient protections, but what it gets wrong is the method of insurance.
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October 14, 2013
Medicare Single-Payer vs. Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
The overwrought and repugnant response to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by Looney Tunes Tea Party “activists” and by many so-called mainstream Republicans, is patently absurd in a country that already has a nearly 50-year-old single-payer, government-run, health care insurance program called Medicare. And I purposely include “insurance” in the description of Medicare, because that’s exactly what it is. It is NOT socialized medicine. You still see your private doctor with Medicare. You can still go to a private hospital with Medicare.
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September 25, 2013
Canadians Baffled By U.S. Health Care System, And By Extension, ‘Breaking Bad’
The show Breaking Bad is about Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is diagnosed with lung cancer in the first episode of the series. Because he does not want to be a financial burden to his family, he uses his chemistry skills to produce and sell a super pure methamphetamine, and in the process become “Heisenberg,” his menacing alter ego. During the course of the series, we watch the Walter White character transform from seemingly meek and innocent to astonishingly scheming and rancorous. But it didn’t have to be that way. Had Breaking Bad taken place in say, Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada), it would have looked more like this:
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August 10, 2013
Harry Reid Says Obamacare Puts U.S. On Path To Single-Payer Health Care System
On a local PBS program “Nevada Week in Review,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever.” Reid said ultimately they had to drop the idea of a public option during health care legislative negotiations in 2009. “We had a real good run at the public option,” said Reid. He said Senator Joe Lieberman was the main opposition to a public option, at least among those who would otherwise support health care legislation. Because of course no Republicans supported health care reform. But Reid also acknowledged their was support for a true single-payer system saying, “Don’t think we didn’t have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system.”
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August 10, 2013
Obamacare Won’t Kill Grandma, But Republicans Still Want To Repeal It
Before I talk about Obamacare and irrational Republicans, I have to remind everyone that we need to fight back against the false narrative that says both sides are the same. Right now in Washington, Republicans are not about governing. They aren’t about solutions. They aren’t about helping people, especially minorities of any group. Both sides might cater to their special interests and both sides might feed at the trough of big business, but both sides DO NOT have the same philosophy when it comes to governing and looking out for the disenfranchised.
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August 29, 2012
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy: Election is ‘Mandate’ to Overhaul Medicare
House Republican Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says electing Mitt Romney this fall means Republicans have a ‘mandate’ to overhaul Medicare. As McCarthy put it, “If there’s a mandate going through this election, it’s to save Medicare.” As I put it: When Republicans say “save Medicare” they mean end Medicare as we know it. They would keep a government program called Medicare but it would not be the Medicare that has existed for almost half a century. The Republican plan for Medicare is to turn it into a program designed to shortchange seniors while increasing profits for private insurance companies.
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