Readers of this blog may notice that while my positions are pretty reliably (predictably?) liberal or even left-leaning, certain issues put me more in the company of conservatives or at least centrists than with fellow liberals. Trade policy, standardized school testing, and health care populism (i.e. blaming Big Pharma) all strike me as areas in […]
I normally don’t like the television network news magazine shows with a thesis, as they tend to accept an expert’s thesis and structure the whole program around it. Peter Jennings’ report on American obesity and the food industries, which aired on ABC last night, was no exception. Its thesis was clear: that agricultural subsidies […]
Brad DeLong sometimes has a knack for aphorism:
The thing to complain about is not the creeping socialization of the medical sector. After all, market solutions simply do not work well in an area as rife with adverse selection as health insurance. (Unless, of course, one is happy with lots of very sick people not getting […]
More on Health Care: Today’s article by Steve Bailey captures the silliness of the Drugs-from-Canada solutions to rising medicine costs:
Politicians — Democrat and Republican, local and national — have latched on to the idea of buying Made-in-America drugs, via Canada, at half the price. But if this is good politics, it is not a healthcare […]
Calpundit says what’s been on my mind and probably the mind of lots of others:
Still, it’s a fact that healthcare costs do continue to spiral in the United States, and it makes life miserable for businesses that have to deal with it. These guys don’t want to be in the healthcare business, don’t want to […]
Joe Klein has a great piece in Time outlining what’s wrong with the Democrats right now and what they need to do. The latter is particularly appreciated, as everyone seems to offer their criticisms, but little imaginative as a solution. Here’s Klein’s:
They will have to convince the public that they are as committed to national […]
The PBS News Hour had a discussion last night on the recent study of alcohol consumption in men and incidence of heart attack. (It’s available in RealAudio from their website). As usual, the study (in the New England Journal of Medicine) was taken up by health journalists - particularly those on the HealthWatch local TV […]