Anyone who takes health insurance reform seriously recognizes that universal government-funded health care is the only way to eliminate the abuses of the health insurance industry and control costs to the point that per capita spending on health care in the US falls more or less into line with other developed countries rather than running [...]

Retired general and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who did much worse stuff but is best known as the guy who appointed himself acting president when Ronald Reagan was shot, is dead. Barack Obama hails him as representative of “our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service.” Jonathan Schwarz [...]

Slate editor Jacob Weisberg has a story up in his magazine—and simultaneously in Newsweek, as if what he has to say is so important that it had to be said twice—identifying Barack Obama’s “cool, detached temperament” as a drag on his own popularity and that of his party. Weisberg allows as how Scott Brown’s Massachusetts [...]

Former Democratic Leadership Council chairman Bruce Reed takes a predictable lesson for Democrats away from the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts: Run away, run away! He quotes Missouri Senator Claire McKaskill, who reacted to the election by saying that “people out there believe that we are going too far, too fast,” and he opines that [...]

Via Digby, an excellent writer trying very hard to cherish her remaining illusions, we learn that Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana GOP representative who left the House to take a multi-million dollar salary as the chief lobbyist for the drug industry shortly after shepherding the drug industry welfare legislation known as Medicare Part D through his [...]

John Dickerson was responsible for one of the half-dozen or so all-time busiest days on my blog, back in March of 2006. I basically called him a moron, enjoyed brief but universal acclaim for doing so and then felt compelled to apologize a day or two later after he persuaded me that he was, for [...]

Returning once again to Tim Noah, Slate’s point guy on the insurance reform story. A few days ago he wrote a story about the astonishingly brief life cycle of the Medicare buy-in plan, which I remarked on here.
Subsequently, he wrote another story acknowledging that whatever comes out of the Senate will lack all of the [...]

I’ve been remarking for almost two years now that Barack Obama’s insurance reform plan in its original glory is quite similar to, but slightly weaker than, one proposed by Richard Nixon 45 years ago, but upon review I don’t see that I ever provided any concrete details. Behold …

The plan is organized around seven principles:
First, [...]

Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wrote a story yesterday, published under the auspices of an occasional column called “The Big Idea,” explaining how Republicans were never serious about health insurance reform. Slate readers are supposed to be an upscale, well-educated lot so one might assume they’re aware that Republicans recently controlled the White House for eight [...]

I was watching Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show yesterday when she ran a story about ten senators joining together to devise a health care sop for liberals who at this point are like beggars in the desert asking not for a drink of water but only for someone to waft a canteen under their noses.
Which [...]

Despite running the worst GOP campaign since Bob Dole’s in 1996 — most people don’t remember that Dole even ran — John McCain managed to confound my expectations and crack 46%, by quite a bit, in the popular vote. This should be instructive for anyone who genuinely believes a new day is dawning in America, [...]

A new poll in the New York Times shows that Barack Obama has inexplicably failed to erase the legacies of slavery in the United States, and further, that he has consistently failed to turn concentrated sulphuric acid into a decent cabernet. Analysts are stunned by this new evidence that Obama is at best a demigod [...]

As regular readers know, the proprietor of this site is at present a somewhat displaced person. Among the contributing causes to that condition is a lack of affordable access to a medication that helps prevent me from living my life in perpetual homage to the last moments of the Wicked Witch of the West. My [...]

Continuing on my quest to close enough browser tabs for my computer to regain some self-respect and nimbleness, here’s the second installment of stuff I either meant to write but never quite did, or did write but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to part with the web page I used for material. See here [...]

Many months ago when I was writing something about health care I ran across a blog that had a number of entries on the subject, one of which I used in my piece. That web page and 70-some others are still open in my browser, which in retaliation is now consuming most of my computer’s [...]

Voters under the age of 35 or so may not recall the most memorable cultural artifact of Hillary Clinton’s doomed 1993 health care reform package. Evidently someone in Barack Obama’s campaign does, and thought it would be clever to resurrect Harry and Louise, an earnest couple concocted by the health insurance lobby to do some [...]

John Edwards made a fine speech in New Orleans yesterday announcing the end of his presidential campaign. He said that he would continue working toward his goal of ending poverty in the United States, and that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton personally promised him they would make that goal an integral part of their [...]

Note to regular patrons: you’re not hallucinating. This piece is an updated and greatly expanded version of the previous one.
Nancy Pelosi is at it again. On Friday, she reiterated her opposition to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney, saying that impeachment “would be very divisive in our country” and that despite increasing heat from constituents [...]

The chairman and chief medical officer of Aetna took to the pages of the Washington Post on Tuesday to offer their perspective on health care reform. They were motivated, they said, by the increasing number of Americans going without health insurance, a concern presumably unrelated to SiCKO, Michael Moore’s new and very popular film on [...]

I’ve seen Michael Moore’s Sicko, and liked it. He had a couple of points to make — lots of people in the U.S. suffer from inadequate or no health care, and the impact of our system has a repressive effect on more than just our health — and he made them effectively.
I’ve since read [...]

Americans die younger and spend more years disabled than our counterparts in Canada and Europe. Our infant mortality rate is higher, too. And yet, even though the most common objections to nationalized health care from its opponents in the U.S. are that it’s too expensive, too restrictive and too inefficient, we spend way more money [...]

The first person we meet in Sicko, Michael Moore’s new film about health care in America, is George W. Bush, who tells us that “too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their—their love with women all across this country” (because trial lawyers are hounding them out of business). The second person we meet is Adam, [...]

People in countries with universal health care live longer and healthier lives than people in the United States. Their infant mortality rates are lower. No one goes bankrupt or loses their home because of unpaid medical bills. No one has to make a choice between food and medicine or between rent and health insurance payments. [...]

Archimedes said, “Give me a big enough lever and I will move the world.” Of course a big lever requires a lot of force, and when it comes to fixing America’s insane approach to health care, the only force big enough to move a massive pile of politicians, doctors, insurers and health care industrialists off [...]

Anne Kornblut described heavyweight pollster and PR honcho Mark Penn as Hillary Clinton’s de facto campaign manager in a front-page story in yesterday’s Washington Post. If a presidential candidate is known by the company she keeps, then the relationship between Penn, whose PR firm shills for some of the world’s largest corporations and includes a [...]

This year’s State of the Union speech promised little and delivered less. Bush has no domestic policy clout with which to press the few wan policies he mentioned — and no more intention of pushing for “energy independence” now than the previous five times he’s mentioned it — and his credibility in the arenas where [...]