Healthcare
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Data Mining
David Simon, the creator of HBO's "The Wire" says this about the Snowden leaks: The question is not should the resulting data exist. It does. And it forever will, to a greater and greater extent. And therefore, the present-day question can’t seriously be this: Should law enforcement in the legitimate pursuit of criminal activity pretend
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Individual Mandate in Trouble? [Updated]
I think it probably is. I wrote this last spring: The individual mandate is a fundamental element in the flawed architecture of this HCR bill, and the best thing about it is its not going into effect for another four years. I think there's a good chance that by the time 2014 rolls around it
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The Individual Mandate
The individual mandate is a fundamental element in the flawed architecture of this HCR bill, and the best thing about it is its not going into effect for another four years. I think there's a good chance that by the time 2014 rolls around it won't be part of the new HCR system. Already people
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Random Thoughts on HCR (Updates I & II)
It's remarkable how HCR has brought out the feverish dark side of the American psyche. First a couple of anecdotal bits. From TPM: And then from Ezra Klein: Jon Cohn spent part of Saturday wandering through the patches of protesters on Capitol Hill. What surprised him, however, was that the protests seemed less about health-care
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Upside of HCR Failure (Updated)
Marcia Angell on Moyers made the case why it shouldn't pass. She thinks overall it's going to make things worse despite its positives. And if it's going to get worse, better it should do so without government-run healthcare to blame. Maybe she's right. I'd like to hear her in a debate with Ezra Klein. But
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Of Health Summits and Tools
I'm not writing much about the healthcare issue, because I haven't much to say I haven't already, and I'm trying to be more positive, or at least to write about things that point a way forward. It's harder to do, and hence the fewer posts. It's looking, once again, like something is going to get
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Quote of the Day: Drew Westen (Updated)
What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding
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Hacker on the Exchanges
The lack of a public option also makes even more imperative tough requirements on insurers to make them live up to their stated commitment to change their business model and slow the spiraling cost of coverage. The most important way to do this is to move away from the Senate bill’s state exchanges and toward
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Obama, the Scam Artist? (Updated)
Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it).
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Democratic Fault Lines: Corporatism vs. Progressivism
. . . in the health care reform debate, the Obama administration pursued legislation that utilized regulated and subsidized private for-profit health insurers to achieve universal health coverage. This approach was inherently flawed to "single-payer" advocates on the left, who strongly believe that private for-profit health insurers are the main problem in the U.S. health