All Life Is Problem Solving

For some time now, I’ve been hearing what Kip Sullivan calls the “yes, but” position on health care reform. That position says roughly that yes, Medicare for All, is the best available solution for the problems besetting our health insurance system; but, unfortunately, Medicare for All is not “on the table” right now, so we […]

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The politics of health insurance reform is a great example of reflexivity. Reflexivity is the idea that acceptance and assertion of our beliefs about reality, has an effect on how we act, which, in turn, has an effect on reality, and to some extent creates it; and, equally, reality influences what we think about it […]

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My critique of Soros’s ideas on reflexivity in my two previous blogs on this subject, and my distinction between sequential and simultaneous reflexivity, was in no way a criticism of his application of the notion of reflexivity to various public issues in his Open Society, The Age of Fallibility, and The Crash of 2008. In […]

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In an earlier post on fixing Obama’s message machine, I argued that his primary problem was one of content. The vague public option and insurance exchange idea associated with the plan isn’t something that people easily understand. And progressive cadres that do understand it don’t love it because many of them see “Medicare for All” […]

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Chris Matthews asks: “What happened to the Obama message machine.” And Dee Dee Myers and Tony Blankley dutiful provide various off the mark answers about fear and insecurity. But, also, it’s clear to all three that Obama’s message on health care doesn’t have the same clarity as his message during the campaign, and they attribute […]

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This post is a comment on an exchange with Jason Rosenbaum appearing as replies to ralphbon’s blog post entitled “Seniors Already Have A Public Option. Does It Keep Private Insurers Honest?” Here is the exchange: LetsGetItDone: “ralphbon, Thanks for a very good analysis. Jason, in view of Paul Krugman’s recent analysis of the health insurance […]

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This will be a pretty short one. First, health care reform proposals that offer a “public option” alternative do not provide “socialized medicine.” That is, all medical care in such proposed systems would be provided by private sector Doctors, hospitals, and other other health care institutions. Government in such a plan doesn’t do any medicine. […]

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This one is an Open Letter to my Congressman, James Moran (D-VA). Dear Jim, I feel entitled to address you by your first name because you’ve been my Representative since 1991 and I’ve voted for you in every election since then. I think the issue of health care reform is where most Americans live. Those […]

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Well, maybe not “over” as in “there will be no legislation passed in this session that contains the phrase “public option.” Perhaps there will still be legislation that has a provision with that label. But it will bear no resemblance to Jacob Hacker’s original design for a public option plan, and it won’t provide a […]

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Last night, it occurred to me that the public option idea is a disingenuous approach to health care reform. Here’s the argument. Talking to other progressives, I’ve noticed that they all freely say that single payer will work better than a public option, and that it is the best alternative they know. And then they […]

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