To hear conservative Republicans tell it, business is the vital, job-creating, wealth-building, and therefore virtuous, backbone of American prosperity and democracy, while government is a meddlesome, bungling and costly drag on freedom and prosperity. Or, as the icon of conservative Republicans put it: Oh really? We’ve done a little scorekeeping just over the past week [...]
Posts under ‘Health Safety’
Rep. Wamp: Sedition is OK;
health care reform’s not OK
Rep. Zach Wamp, a patriotic Tennessee conservative Republican competing in a three-way primary race for governor, is talking secession and threatening to not implement federal health care reform. I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this [...]
Post-disaster chicanery exposes need
for on-scene federal law enforcement
Where does BP America get off, blocking journalists from property the giant oil corporation doesn’t own because the media were out to show the suffering and mass deaths of creatures, and today interfering with an ABC News reporter doing his job on a public beach? For that matter, why did BP stiff, and why is [...]
WellPoint a deadly menace
to customers with breast cancer
No one’s survival should be pitted against the corporate profit imperative or sacrificed to satisfy the personal ambition and greed of business executives.
April showers millions on Wellpoint executives
The calendar indicates Easter, but it’s strictly Christmas in April for Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly and other top executives at the giant health insurer, who are getting increases of their already hefty pay of 51 percent and even 75 percent. Braly’s compensation jumps from $8.7 million a year to $13.1 million. What does a health [...]
Insurer’s empty pledge adds to case
for a universal single-payer system
Aconspicuously missing argument in the debate about health care reform is that health insurers are doing a good job of operating in the public interest, and a well-done Los Angeles Times story provides evidence why no one is making that case. The story concerns Wellpoint, the nation’s No. 2 health insurer, No. 32 in the [...]
Obama’s health reform performance
no favor to him or fellow Democrats
Politically, the problem for Obama going forward is that, as Ezra Klein explains, even if his compromise of all compromises goes through, Obama has forfeited the chance to be a hero and look like a winner.
Act now to get public option in health care bill
This is important. Even if Democrats pass some health care reforms, without the competition for commercial insurers a public option will provide, the measure will be less than half a job.
Our eight-point health care reform plan
President Obama and many congressional Democrats seem to feel their only chance to reform health care lies in passing the lousy Senate bill or a few a la carte measures — lame, face-saving expedients they hope would allow them to move on to other issues without being accused of giving up. We’ve got a better [...]
Dispensing labels is no substitute
for balanced, thorough reporting
A story on health care reform from the supposedly liberal New York Times illustrates how the press is letting the public down while substituting the application of political labels for providing in-depth coverage that would help people understand what’s going on. Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s report is headlined, “Liberal Revolt on Health Care Stings White House.” [...]
