Friday, September 4, 2009

OH boy, conservative columnist David Brooks today sure gets it right on health care reform.

Here's the link to "How American Health Care Killed My Father", the Atlantic article to which Brooks refers. And go here to read the Brookings report to which he also refers.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

MIKE Lawrence, an old Springfield newsman and former aide to Gov. Jim Edgar has some sound comments on Illinois taxes and taxing bodies and notes that voters themselves created much of "the problem." Call it the "fiefdom syndrome."

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

WELL, looks as if the Chinese are starting to figure it out, even if we aren't.

Sunday, August 30,2009

A quotation from Nick Kristof's Sunday column describing how the current U.S. health care system "takes lives and breaks apart families":

The existing system doesn’t just break up families, it also costs lives. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That’s one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour.

In short, it’s a good bet that our existing dysfunctional health system knocks off far more people than an army of “death panels” could — even if they existed, worked 24/7 and got around in a fleet of black helicopters.

It's Friday ...

AND Paul Krugman is in articulate good form today: It's politics, stupid!

Addendum ...

YEP, health care delivered in livestock pens. As the former Cigna guy can tell you, that's the American way.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

GOOD Lordy me, we sure wouldn't want to do anything to keep anyone from profiteering on the backs of the sick and the elderly, would we? From an analysis by NYT economics writer David Leonhardt:

Real choice is not part of the bills moving through the Democratic-led Congress; even if the much-debated government-run insurance plan was created, it would not be available to most people who already have coverage. Republicans, meanwhile, have shown no interest in making insurance choice part of a compromise they could accept. Both parties are protecting the insurers.