It’s now clear that health care “reform” is a bonanza for the insurance companies. But these acquisitive businesses want even more. Their efforts to increase their profits are at the center of the clandestine Senate and House negotiations currently shaping the health bill.
In Obama’s nine months as president, he has put U.S. relations with Russia on a more constructive course; has seen Iran agree to open its nuclear facility near Qom to international inspection; and, despite Israeli and Palestinian intransigence, has kept the two sides negotiating with America’s dogged envoy, George Mitchell, who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland.
One way to give people a good deal on their health care is the so-called public option. A better way is the kind of strong regulation that isn’t even being discussed.
President Barack Obama’s health care reform speech to Congress Wednesday night was impassioned, but it also echoed a lot of ideas from insurance company lobbying.
By the time Congress returns from its recess and takes another whack at the health insurance mess, Rep. Henry Waxman will have started revealing the deceit that protects health business profiteers.
The national health care crisis, intensified by the recession, is so bad that nothing can be permitted to stop reform of the system, not even the implosion of the president’s health czar.
Like many other people, I’d like to party all week when Barack Obama is sworn in as president. But this isn’t the year for it, not with unemployment rising and fear spreading through the land.
The president-elect has struggled to stay out of the Gaza fight, but based on everything he said during the campaign, he appears determined to stand up for Israel.
With unemployment soaring, the need grows daily for guaranteed health care. But that may not happen in the coming year because of the desperate need to revive the economy and put people to work.
One of the worst casualties of the Iraq war and the Wall Street failures is the U.S. public school system, which is central to the nation’s economic, intellectual and social health. With financial resources being consumed, education cuts are on the way. Thank you, John McCain and President George W. Bush.
Watching the couples in line for licenses in Beverly Hills on the first day of gay marriage in California, I was struck by how the scene was so commonplace, even boring—just a bunch of men and women waiting their turn at a nondescript government office.
Who earns the title of Worst President Ever: Nixon or Bush? While Bill Boyarsky concedes that the question may be moot in some senses, he still takes the two to task in his rundown of the many offenses they committed during their respective (imperialist) presidencies.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (above, right) is feeling the heat to come up with some answers to dozens of questions he evaded on April 19 as he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain his role in the firings of eight federal attorneys. Bill Boyarsky has an idea what Gonzales doesn’t want the committee—or the nation—to find out.
Shocking behavior from a shock jock is by definition unremarkable. But what bothers Bill Boyarsky about Don Imus, besides his latest racist outburst, is how some mainstream journalists have become his cronies—and his defenders—in order to bask in his spotlight.
In his latest column for Truthdig, Bill Boyarsky turns his experienced eye on the Los Angeles Times’ recent editorial shake-up, the culmination of a series of questionable “housecleaning” moves, conflicts of interest and an unwise overemphasis on novelty over tradition.
McGovern: Get Out of Afghanistan
