So the House version of healthcare “reform” is out, and it’s a 1900-page monster. I think I’ll stick with the Wall Street Journal’s summary, which indicates so many things wrong:
The “doctor fix” to permanently get rid of cuts to doctors’ Medicare payments has been removed, shunted off to another bill. This is crafty accounting; the Democrats have decided that if they don’t want the cost of paying doctors to “count” toward the national deficit, Read more

Mayor Bloomberg just signed a bill that will make it illegal to sell flavored cigars or chewing tobacco in NYC. This is supposed to discourage children from using tobacco.

For the love of all that is good! Like I said, it’s thoroughly wrong to ban a product because it’s possible to misuse that product — or even because that product has no objectively good use. Individuals have rights — the individuals who make tobacco products have the Read more

When I was in eleventh grade, my American history teacher was full of pithy sayings, one of which was, “Statistics don’t lie, but liars can use statistics.”

It’s true: Facts are facts. But based on the lens of the interpreter, facts can seem to support a fallacious argument. I’m paraphrasing, but I think in a Q&A segment Ayn Rand once mentioned that there appeared to be a correlation with the printing of the word “bread” (or some similarly Read more

As healthcare “reform” draws closer to a vote, those who want universal health care are bringing out the small guns — small children, that is, and stories about those of them who can’t get health insurance, as Yahoo! News reports. A four-month-old baby was denied coverage for being too heavy. A 2-year-old girl was denied for not being heavy enough. We are supposed to feel outrage on behalf of these children — our system must be wrong if innocent Read more

As the New York Times reports, Democrats took a blow yesterday when their proposal to make permanent a previously temporary “fix” in Medicare doctor fees that had to be reapproved each year didn’t make it through the Senate. Doctor payments are supposed to be cut by a certain percentage each year, and every year Congress, realizing that doctors will shun Medicare patients if the cuts are instituted, steps in to nullify the fee cut, an action known Read more

Okay, really this post is just an excuse to brag about my husband.

He’s not the one training for the marathon — I am. It’s gone extremely well this year, far better than the two previous years. I ran both of my 20-milers as smoothly as I could have hoped for, and finished them with a smile on my face. (Hubby says last year I looked like a zombie after every run longer than 16 miles.) I haven’t had any injuries except for a bout of ankle Read more

The New York Times reports that the AMA, once an ardent opponent of Medicare, now wants to make sure that Medicare doesn’t get cut in whatever health care “reform” happens to be. They want a law that would make permanent the temporary “fix” that happens every year when Congress staves off cuts to doctors’ Medicare payments that an earlier law demands — but removing the cuts permanently would threaten Democrats’ (already empty) promises that health Read more

I have a LTE in the New York Times! It’s heavily edited — I included a bit about how I would be happy to say “live and let live” to Francis Collins if it weren’t for the fact that I pay his salary, and at the end of the last sentence I also had “particularly not one run on taxpayer dollars.” It was hard enough to squeeze in an allusion to the fact that the government shouldn’t be funding scientific research in 150 words or less — when the Times Read more

Please?

The New York Times writes, “The public option would presumably be cheaper than the private plans, because it would not have to pay private-sector executive salaries or generate profit for shareholders.”

Hello? If the government doesn’t pay high salaries, who is it going to get to run its plan? Not, presumably, the best and most ambitious minds out there. So we’ll all end up paying for those non-executive salaries because Read more

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains an op-ed by Karl Rove that exposes the many tricks of math being used to hornswoggle Americans into believing that the Baucus bill won’t lead to budget deficit increases:
Raising taxes and cutting Medicare spending right away — but not starting the new bill’s benefits until years later, thus using many years of taxes to pay for a few years of benefits.Pretending that employers who choose to drop coverage Read more