Healthcare

After two weeks of hiking with my 21-year-old and plenty of time to be concerned about nothing more than falling off a mountain or whether my body would endure eight hours a day of pounding, I do find a clarity of perspective that I hope will make some sense to even my harshest critics on the other side of the aisle.

As Rove and Snow and many others leave the Bush ship and the presidential campaign moves to the forefront, the question is where we are going, not just with politics but with seemingly forgotten policy issues.  Read more...

The Tucson Citizen, a newspaper in Arizona, has a short, albeit intriguing, article stating that the state’s governor, Janet Napolitano, “is closely watching the results of Nevada’s request that Mexico pay the health care costs of Mexicans living in the state.” Read more...

The passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion bill is only part of the story. Combined with the effort to get the federal government to dictate prices to the pharmaceutical industry and the coming efforts to lower the eligibility age of Medicare participants, it is pretty easy to see what is going on here. Add in the Democrats' wholesale attack on the Medicare Advantage program, and the picture becomes even clearer. They're pushing for a government takeover of our healthcare industry.  Read more...

In this video, John Feehery says the recent spat between Michael Moore and Rudy Giuliani over healthcare will only help the former New York mayor in the presidential race.

I was watching the news the other day, and I saw an advertisement put up by the Democrats thanking the Democrats for all their success in the first seven months of their majority.

Talk about chutzpah.

Talk about smart.

My mom always told me that if you don’t believe good things about yourself, nobody else will. Well, it is time for the Republicans to start believing that their philosophy has led to some real progress for the American people. If we don’t start believing it, nobody else will.  Read more...

This country is about equal opportunity, not equal outcome. How many times have we heard that? It's the American way to give everybody the same fair chance at success. What a wonderful theory.

So let's talk about all the equal opportunity here in the U-S of A, shared by rich and poor alike:  Read more...

The movie "SiCKO" — I went, I saw, and I was conquered!

Yes, I came out of "SiCKO" more convinced than ever that single-payer is the only solution to America’s healthcare problems.

Come on! We’re the wealthiest country on the planet. Why is it that Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba can deliver healthcare — FREE! — to all their citizens, and we can’t?

Go see "SiCKO" and you’ll know the answer. It’s because of the powerful opposition of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and big HMOs.  Read more...

Newsflash
Oct. 30, 2007
Congress Expands Children’s Healthcare

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A bitterly divided Congress came together yesterday to agree to greatly expand a state children’s health insurance program (SCHIP), paying for it with a sharp $4 increase in the tobacco tax. Anti-smoking advocates hailed it as a victory against smoking, predicting that the increased tax would cut smoking by at least 30 percent. Children’s advocates said that an expanded SCHIP program would increase in size by 30 percent. Read more...

Three people made the news in a big way last week. All received mounds of news coverage. It’s too bad, because none of them really has anything worthwhile to say. It just proves yet again that ours is a celebrity culture where outrageous behavior and opinions are enough to make you famous.

PARIS HILTON got out of jail and gave a one-hour interview to CNN. Unfortunately, she had about 10 minutes of things to say and then began again, and again, and, well, you get the idea. I know she’s an easy target, but her whole life is devoted to personal PR, so she can’t really complain when we focus critically on her. Let’s just say we hope she’ll do more with her life than party the nights away, but we’ll see. Count us as skeptics.

ANN COULTER got into another smackdown with the Edwards family, this time with Elizabeth Edwards, who called her during an appearance on "Hardball." In this case, both used the other for their own purposes. Coulter got headlines, yet again, for boorish and quite offensive comments (this time it was something like, “I hope John Edwards gets killed in a terrorist attack.” Ha ha). Read more...

I'd like to borrow from the debates and ask everyone who thinks the immigration problem is about to be solved to raise his/her hand.

Oh come on: NOBODY? Congratulations, everybody.

But what we're witnessing is not about fixing this problem. It's about politicians trying to finesse the issue ...t rying to make as much political capital as they can and then moving on to something else.

And of course, we in the media, who have the collective attention span of a gnat, are all too happy to move on to something else. I mean, Paris Hilton is out of jail for crying out loud.

And besides, how many stories can we do about the "Human Side of the Immigration Debate" ("This is Maria ... she doesn't want her name used because she is here illegally, etc., etc. ...")?  Read more...