It is quite possible that these are the “end times”, though not necessarily those favored by religious fundamentalists.
They see the end of the world from their own moral viewpoint; one that, in my mind, is self-righteous, self-centered, and hypocritical. They complain about the morals of others while clearly living a life that follows the dictum, […]

This is a copy of a letter that we have sent Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY).
Dear Senator Schumer,
Let us start off by saying that you have lost two votes when you seek reelection to the United States Senate.
We have made this decision because of your recent statements to an Israeli political commentator. It is one thing […]

Barring some miracle preventing the president’s signature, ObamaCare is law. What’s left to say?
For Democrats, the ends justify the means. We already knew that, of course, but they sunk to new levels in this. The bribes, lies, and backroom deals were amazing to watch. You know it’s bad when we feel it was a victory […]

While we fight the Democratic nightmare that would be ObamaCare, we shouldn’t let the GOP off for their part in this monstrosity. If they had seriously addressed health care reform 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess today.
When the Republicans first retook Congress in the 90’s, everyone was sick of health care reform, […]

Liberals have finally had to admit that conservatives do more than say “no” to health care reform. There are actual ideas — even bills — on the table. I’m pleased to say some of them are even interacting with those ideas.
Jonathan Chait of The New Republic says, “Democrats propose to shift resources from the rich […]

Polls consistently show the public doesn’t like the current health care reform proposals — whether they think they’re too conservative, too liberal, or too stupid is beside the point. They don’t like them and don’t want any of them.
Many are asking: So what?
Should every policy be based on polls? Are we not a republic instead […]

There are two things about the Democrat’s attempts at health care reform that stand out. First, their approach to the problem relies on the federal government doing many things it has not previously done. Second, as the public gets louder in its rejection of their approach, the Democratic party prepares to run roughshod over public […]

“You know this is a trap.”
How many action movies use that line? The girl’s been kidnapped, and the bad guy has made sure the hero knows where she is. Someone tells the hero, “It’s a trap.”
And he says, “Of course it is, but I still have to go.”
This is the same thing. Pres. Obama’s health […]

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve surely heard that the GOP won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat putting the Democrats one vote shy of a filibuster-proof super-majority.
The big question is what will happen with the healthcare reform bill(s). So far the options seem to be:
1) The House can pass the Senate bill as-is.
2) The […]

Yesterday’s election of a Republican Senator in Massachusetts to the seat held for many years by the late Ted Kennedy has been referred to as “the shot heard round the country,” and as a “kick-mass” election. Was last night’s upset a massacre in Massachusetts? Hardly… but what happened last night should be an obvious warning […]

I love C-SPAN! I have for years. I am one of those eggheads that love to watch interviews and listen to political round tables.
And now C-SPAN’s chief executive, Brian Lamb has written a letter to the leaders of Congress asking that the deliberations over health care reform be televised. During the presidential campaign, then Senator […]

I am working on a number of projects right now, all of which deal with science, education and science education in some manner, shape or form. First is the “book” project. Entitled “Science and Education in the 21st Century: A Contrarian View”, it is a look at science, science education and topics that we all […]

Sen. Harry Reid has inserted into the Senate health care reform bill language making it against Senate rules to even consider over-ruling the medical board his bill will create.
That doesn’t make the board completely all-powerful, but it means you have to get 66 Senators to agree (to a rule change) before you can even bring […]

Here are my thoughts for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, 6 December 2009. It is as much a political piece as it is an Advent piece.
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For whatever reason, the thoughts that I had about this piece never quite came together like I thought they would. But the words of John the Baptizer, written in Luke, […]

This Congress keeps producing healthcare reform bills that try to pay for themselves via some reduction in Medicare payments. Those cuts will probably not happen, but conservatives decry them anyway, just in case.
What’s the big deal about cutting Medicare? Let me explain using round numbers and oversimplification.
Let’s set up the situation. Besides having to pay […]

Thank you, Robert Reich, for finally telling the truth about what the Democrats want to accomplish:
“…[Y]ou, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more. … And by the way, … if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for […]

Want a foretaste of life with government-run health care?
“A government task force said Monday that most women don’t need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50 — a stunning reversal and a break with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing position. What’s more, the panel said breast self-exams do […]

Why do conservatives and Republicans oppose health care reform?
(A brief summary for sharing with your friends.)
The objection is common: When millions are without health insurance and far too many people are driven to bankruptcy by their medical bills, why do Republicans want to maintain the status quo in health care?
The answer is simple…
And it’s at […]

I was driving down I-35 one afternoon when I saw a billboard that made the key to health care reform crystal clear to me.
As much as we need to deal with health insurance portability, pre-existing conditions, and the millions of uninsured, the biggest problem — the one we absolutely must address — is rising health […]

Two unrelated articles that flickered across my screen today have got me wondering if we’re being had.
Let’s review the recent history of the health care reform debate: After watching Washington spend billions screwing up the bank bailout and the stimulus, large numbers of the public told their Congressmen they didn’t want any kind of publicly […]

When I was young I remember my grandfather (when he was alive) and my grandmother telling me stories of how everyone in the United States sacrificed for the war effort during WW II– enduring regular and scheduled blackouts, saving tin, and making do with what had been rationed. They felt it important to sacrifice for […]

Jimmy Carter says those who oppose the president are racists. Nancy Pelosi says those who oppose the president are assassins.
CNN says they’re bad at math.
CNN Money has an article that initially appears to be about preparing for retirement. But it starts out trying to refute the notion that Social Security will soon be out of […]

This was supposed to be a piece questioning the motives of those who marched in Washington last weekend. At best, they have a selective memory; at worst, they are representative of days past when the police set the dogs on the children in Birmingham, state troopers beat the marchers on the Edmund Pettis bridge outside […]

In the health care reform debate, we keep hearing that we must control costs. And then no one offers a method for actually getting and keeping costs down.
In all the states and foreign nations that have achieved universal coverage, not one has been able to keep health care costs under control, and most systems are […]

In the President’s big speech, I heard nothing that would really address health care costs. Our government has proven unable to contain costs with Medicare or Medicaid. Health systems in Massachusetts, Maine, and Washington, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan have all failed to contain health care costs.
But there is one place where the US […]

Britain and Canada aren’t the only countries with some kind of universal health care program. What else is out there?
The French health care system, lauded by many around the world, is based on a public insurance that is funded by employee and employer. “The working population has twenty percent of their gross salary deducted at […]

In all the years that Congress has been debating some kind of health care reform, some of the states have tried their own hand at the matter. Let’s look at a few of them.
Massachusetts has made a high-profile attempt at universal coverage. It’s approach has been praised by both sides, but their experience has been […]

If you don’t want to see more central government control of our health care system, sign the Free Our Health Care Now petition.
It currently has about 1.2 million signatures. If it reaches 1.5 it will be the largest policy petition every to be delivered to Congress. And Congressmen say it can make a difference.
Please forward […]

On January 20, 1961, John Kennedy stood before the people of America and the world and announced that the torch had been passed to a new generation. I cannot help but think that on August 26, 2009, with the death of Ted Kennedy, the light of that torch may have gone out. We must now […]

I’ve been saying this in comments and in conversation that the current pieces of health care reform legislation are not addressing the root cause – why are health care costs rising?  Much of it has to do with the litigious society we find ourselves in.  We don’t like the way a medical procedure turned […]

A columnist for The Independent, in sharing the trials he has undergone trying to get health care for his disabled daughter in Great Britain, admitted that his experience wasn’t the only version you’ll hear even as it isn’t unique.
“…[F]riends who have suffered heart problems, cycling accidents or had very premature babies will testify to flawless […]

By now you’ve probably seen the news: White House appears ready to drop ‘public option.’ This is great news, right?
But if the “public option” is being replaced by “co-ops,” we need to ask if they’re really different or if this is just “rebranding.”
So far the prescription is $3-4 billion “seed money,” which, ala Fannie Mae, […]

As the title says, what is happening does not make any sense. Unless, of course, you feel that the problems with reforming healthcare and an ever increasing deficit are problems that occurred when Barack Obama was inaugurated as President last January.
Would the arguments against health care be taking place if John McCain had been elected […]

I’m glad there are professional “fact checkers” in the media, even if I don’t always believe they’re as non-partisan as they claim. But sometimes the fact checking is, whether intentionally or not, excessively literal.
For instance, one piece run on Yahoo!:
Phrases like “euthanasia,” “socialized health care” and “rationing” are still being bandied about. (None of […]

I do not like to keep posting on the same subject two days in a row. I like to mix it up, but yesterday Henry Neufeld linked to my post on town hall meetings, protests, and tone-deaf politicians. In expressing his thoughts Henry basically gets to the main point of what I was attempting to […]

Like many others I have been watching the news and reading it on the Internet attempting to get serious information on what has been happening on the health care debate out there in cities and towns across the country. What I have been watching is a reminder to me of why I have been disillusioned […]

On my recent post Is Health Care a Right?, someone commented,
Do you realize that the United States already has nationalized health care for the elderly? We have had it for forty years. It’s called Medicare.
I thought that was important enough to warrant a separate post.
Medicare is indeed a type of socialized medicine, and as such […]

My senators and representative are all Republicans. If you have a Democrat or three, you have opportunities I don’t to influence the shape of the health care reform debate.
*If you are opposed to government control of a massive slice of our economy, a “public option,” or even simply some provision in the Waxman bill, you […]

I first heard that question in the 2008 presidential debates.
I’d never really thought about it in those terms, and I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Since then, we’ve seen that question in many forms and forums, and, though the left usually declares health care a right (with caveats to be discussed below), the conservative […]

“US Gov to Tell the Elderly About Starvation & Dehydration Options” and other healthcare stories at My Three Cents

After the president’s press conference on healthcare reform, David Freddoso observed:
“With his example of the red and blue pills, and another about whether a child’s hypothetical tonsils should be removed, President Obama unwittingly presents the real problem with his plan for reform. Here is a well-meaning government official who so fails to grasp the problem […]

Can we reform the American healthcare system to provide necessary care to everyone without destroying what is good about our system? I think we can.
Let’s spell out my starting premises:
1) We don’t want people to be financially ruined because of an illness.
2) Where possible, Americans will get as much as they can of whatever is […]

When has government involvment ever lowered the cost of anything?
The Hammer

“In the beginning” is a phrase that a lot of people have problems with; perhaps not with the words themselves but with how long ago it was. The physical evidence tells me that this world began several million years ago and the universe began even further back in time. But there are those who will […]

It amazes me that the AARP seems to be on the Obamacare train.
No one argues that any public health system will have to carefully consider where to apply its limited funds. One obvious place to cut back will be care for the elderly. When put into pretty much any equation, those who’ve already had many […]

Now, this isn’t a blog about Governor Sanford and his problems, though we are reminded that when one “preaches” about one set of values and then lives and entirely different set of values, it is very difficult for people to hear the truth.
And while I am saddened by the death of Michael Jackson, it isn’t […]

If you want to lower your auto insurance premiums you drive safer.
If you want to lower your life insurance premiums you live healthier.
If you want to lower your health insurance premiums you … get a new job?
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Crossposted from My Three Cents

This is a portion of what I have posted on my own blog for this Sunday:
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Abraham Lincoln once told us that the government of this country was a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” But it doesn’t appear to me that we have that sort of government anymore.
In the […]

Specter hints Hemp died of GOP agenda
“Sen. Arlen Specter … suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.”
“‘If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be […]

I had intended to write a commentary about the countdown to the end of President Obama’s first 100 days in office but the thoughts are not coming together for such a missive. However, I do want to make a note that it seems like everyone, on the outsides of both aisles, are setting up this […]