Tortured Democracy, Torturing Democracy

It seems that too many Americans, many of whom should know better, have bought the Bush administration's line that we had to torture some bad guys to prevent further attacks on the United States in the post 9/11 world. So we should be grateful for such efforts like Sherry Jones' Torturing Democracy or Bill Moyers' series on torture, which remind us that just because "we did it" does not make it right and that to maintain otherwise is to surrender the substance of what should make America different from its enemies.

A Different Take On The Healthcare Debate

Regular readers of this blog (do such individuals even exist?) know that where I stand on the health care debate: quite firmly on the single-payer side. However, I submit to your attention this article, written for the New Yorker magazine by Atul Gawande, himself a surgeon, who offers what amounts to an honest and factual analysis of different examples of quantitative-based and qualitative-based health care. It has been quite an eye-opening read for me in that it underscores the fact that the problems with health care quality, access, and delivery go beyond who writes (or refuses to write) the check for services rendered.

Another article speaks about the troubling exclusion of single-payer advocates from the "the debate to revamp the nation's troubled health system".

Free Trade And Health Care

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, points out that free marketers are not really interested in preserving a free trade framework for health care, they just want to maintain the power structure that gives industry all the power over patients.

Insurance Companies Lobby To Exclude Single-Payer Discussion On Healthcare

Unfortunately, President Obama seems to have given up on single-payer, non-profit healthcare. That is wrong, and Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, explains why.