Universal Coverage: A Bus Ticket To Omaha
December 22, 2009Is the health care overhaul staggering through the Senate this week the most important social welfare legislation in a generation, as Democratic leaders claim? Or is it so compromised that the final product is not worth the agony, and the political risk, required to produce it? The bill that cleared its first crucial test vote in the wee hours Monday morning has become a make-or-break gamble for President Obama and …
Update: Moderation Carries The Day
November 4, 2009Yesterday’s elections were good news for folks who, like me, want to see American politics pushed back toward the center. Moderate Republicans took back the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, thanks mainly to political independents who reversed the support they gave Democrats last year. But Democrats picked up a U.S. House of Representatives seat that had been in Republican hands since the Civil War, after intervention by the GOP’s …
When Families Insure Their Insurers
September 17, 2009Nathan Wilkes had to fight for his son’s life. But Wilkes didn’t take a bullet or fend off an attacking animal; he started his own company. At age 4, Thomas Wilkes had already run through the lifetime limit on the insurance plan Nathan had through his Denver-area job designing and building data networks. Although the Wilkeses were insured, their insurance company was only obliged to shell out $1 million for …
A ‘No Change’ Promise We Can’t Believe In
August 31, 2009As a candidate, President Obama promised “change.” But, when it comes to health care, it turns out plenty of people like the status quo. So now the president has a new promise: No change. “I keep on saying this but somehow folks aren’t listening: If you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. Nobody is going to force you to leave your health care plan,” Obama …
Much Debate, Little Dialogue
August 13, 2009For months the White House and congressional Democrats have treated health care reform like a high school debate competition, emphasizing convenient facts and fanciful arguments in favor of a predetermined position. Now the other side is doing the same, and the party in power does not like it a bit. Democratic legislators, home for their August recess, are getting an earful from constituents who are alarmed about what the proposed …
Activist-In-Chief
July 23, 2009President Obama is hitting the airwaves daily in pursuit of a health care reform that he refuses to define but which he insists we must have. He is behaving like the community activist he used to be, while the situation requires him to be a leader. There is a big difference. Last night it was a prime-time news conference. Today it will be a tour of the Cleveland Clinic (closed …
Hurling Day And Health Care Reform
June 15, 200961,000,003 B.C. Thursday Tribe Elder: Today I, your eldest elder, am…(pause) Tribe Member: (whispering) You’re 72. Tribe Elder: …72 years old. I have lived long, and witnessed many wonders. But now, I am old, I am slow, and I get up 16 times in the middle of the night. I can no longer keep up with the herd. I straggle behind, attracting predators, endangering my brethren, and making us late …
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