The Progressive Change Campaign Committee released a new ad today that calls out New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) and other Senate Democrats on campaign contributions they’ve received from the health and insurance industries. The Campaign is trying to put some pressure on the lawmakers to support a public-option in health-care reform legislation currently in [...]

I saw Jenna Bush on the Today Show last week (it’s good background noise when I’m awake two hours earlier than I need to be) and she seemed a bright and well-reasoned young woman. Jenna was promoting her new book, Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope, and doing a bang up job of it. This [...]

Or, as we here in the U.S. call it, Medicare: Private insurance companies participating in Medicare have been allowed to keep tens of millions of dollars that should have gone to consumers, and the Bush administration did not properly audit the companies or try to recover money paid in error, Congressional investigators say in a [...]

Back in January, I linked to a story about the Bush administration making moves to eliminate experts from the policy-making process. It was a move designed to give partisans Bush more control over the regulatory agencies that are tasked with protecting Americans. Today, we’re seeing the president using federal controls to interfere with states’ efforts [...]

One year ago today, a passing motorist found the body of 25-year-old Dusty Shuck — a Silver City woman who had walked away from a clinic here nine days earlier — near a truck stop on Interstate 70, south of Frederick, Maryland. I’ve mentioned Shuck’s case before, in the context of reforming the way police [...]

Our friend Ezra has a great article in The American Prospect this month detailing the benefits of health care systems around the world. He touches on Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA), showing that each system spends less on care than the U.S. as a whole, all while providing [...]

I mention the Farm Bill briefly in today’s article, so, I guess this is a good opportunity to bring up this NY Times Magazine article: Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no [...]

Do you like wasting money? Or would you rather get the best bang for the buck? If so, maybe you should move to Canada: As the authors conclude, “although Canadian outcomes were more often superior to US outcomes than the reverse, neither the United States nor Canada can claim hegemony in terms of quality of [...]

This is old news (I meant to touch on it) but Gov. Bill Richardson vetoed SB1174 of last week: The New Mexico Medical Society didn’t voice opposition to a bill that would have required all girls entering sixth grade to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer until the measure [...]

Jonathan Singer of MyDD has some liveblogging of yesterday’s SEIU/CAP/UNLV Presidential Healthcare forum. Gov. Bill Richardson was the second candidate to speak during the event: Richardson says that he understands first hand as a governor the issues with healthcare. “All Americans and all businesses… should be able to buy the same coverage as Members of [...]

Special header today, since it’s Daffodil Day in Ireland. The Irish Cancer Society has more: The 20th anniversary of Daffodil Day is on Friday 23rd March 2007. With your support we aim to get everyone in Ireland wearing a daffodil — the international symbol of hope — and have the country ablaze with vibrant yellow [...]

From Forbes: Federal forecasters predict that U.S. health-care spending will double by 2016, to $4.1 trillion per year. That’s one-fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Health spending in 2006 was projected at $2.1 trillion, or 16 percent of the GDP. This is crazy. We need to implement a system that costs less and [...]