Centered Politics: May 2009 Archives

Preposterous Statistics on 'Job Lock' Enter the Health Care Debate

By Jim Jaffe - Health Care Editor on May 30, 2009 1:31 PM

One big issue in the health reform debate is whether it would be wise to remove employers from the central role in buying insurance they've played for better than a half century. A lot of people find that idea attractive for a variety of reasons. Employers have lost confidence that they can tame the system and negotiate good deals for their workers. They're less interested in recruiting career employees who ...
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In "A Poll for Every Side at Health Summit," our good friend Mark Blumenthal has analyzed the way in which

By SheriRiv on May 28, 2009 9:39 AM

Democrats and Republicans have been "cherry-picking" the polls: "But rather than accept the often conflicting hopes, anxieties and preferences those polls measure, compounded by less-than-universal awareness of the policy details, partisans prefer to cherry-pick whatever number purports to show the "American people" on their side." ...
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Health Care Reform - What Really Matters

By Jim Jaffe - Health Care Editor on May 24, 2009 2:58 PM

Those of us who live comfortably in wonkworld are defensively dismissive of simple answers. The idea of framing a policy on a bumper sticker is repugnant to us. But often we err in the opposite direction, risking the health of the forest while we worry about the average number of leaves per tree. This tendency is growing during the healthcare reform debate where an increasing amount of firepower is directed ...
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Could Health Care Reform's Success Bring Failure Again?

By Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin on May 20, 2009 10:45 PM

Without a doubt, it is good news that the major players in America's health delivery system have come together on a strategy to reduce the cost of health care by 2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Millions of American families and businesses have been struggling to keep up with costs for health insurance that have been rising far faster than wages and prices in the rest of ...
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Now Comes the Hard Part

By Jim Jaffe - Health Care Editor on May 19, 2009 10:04 PM

President Obama has won deserved kudos for sidestepping some of the pitfalls of the Clinton health reform effort by getting all parties to acknowledge that there's a real problem and make a commitment to help solve it. Now comes the really hard part that the earlier effort never really addressed - how to get the majority of Americans who are comfortable with the health insurance they have today to ...
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Obama Health Rally Useful, But Abets Delusion

By Jim Jaffe - Health Care Editor on May 12, 2009 5:58 PM

As political theater, the spectacle of health care providers joining President Obama in a pledge to constrain medical costs sure beats a rerun of Harry and Louise. And it may well avert an encore performance, which would be a good thing. The anti-Clintoncare commercials were created by providers as a show of their frustration at being shut out of the process. Including them this time is a lesson learned ...
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Conservation Ethic Could Moderate Medical Costs

By Jim Jaffe - Health Care Editor on May 10, 2009 1:15 AM

We're regularly reminded that America is a rich, but wasteful society. When the topic is energy, we're advised from every side to use less, as the ad below from an oil company argues: But our response to our exploding medical bill, where experts estimate that 20-30% of spending is wasted, is quite different, as the ad below on local bus shelters indicates: The second ad is an effort from ...
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Torturing the Straw Man

By Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin on May 5, 2009 11:35 PM

It's ridiculous, incredible! What the Democrats want to do now (in the narrative of conservatives) is absurd, laughable! Reading Miranda Rights to terrorists? Giving government bailouts to Starbucks? Regulating bovine flatulence? It's a national farce! Actually Democrats are not for any of these things, and that is really the point. The size of the conservative minority is contracting, but more importantly so are their arguments. It is not fair ...
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