One of my complaints about mainstream media is that they recruit reporters from inside the establishment: Ivy League colleges, expensive graduate journalism programs, rival outlets with similar hiring practices. Some staffs develop admirable levels of gender and racial diversity. But they all come from the same elite class. Rich kids believe in the system and... Read More

Gainesville, Florida – The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services “Innovation Center� recently announced that by 2030, they will move all traditional Medicare enrollees into a “care relationship� with a 3rd party private, for profit middleman, labeled a “Direct Contracting Entity (DCE) without seniors’ knowledge or consent, and without Congressional oversight. Every enrollee in traditional... Read More

When you crank out five editorial cartoons and a couple of opinion essays a week, not to mention opining on the radio about this issue and that, it is easy to forget about the basics. The big issues. The stuff that really matters to you. It's just as easy to forget to ask: What are... Read More

The raging argument on the left between progressives who argue for radical change and centrists who advocate for incrementalism is hardly new. Nearly a century ago, progressive titan and Wisconsin Gov. Robert La Follette and then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt were often at loggerheads over the same question. Roosevelt, La Follette complained, was too quick to... Read More

Just as with the quality of US education, most of what you are told about the superiority of the American medical system is just false propaganda and brand marketing. The US spends more than twice as much as any other Western nation on a health care system widely considered to be the most dysfunctional in... Read More

Watching the network news on television or reading about current events in the newspapers seemingly transports one to an alternate universe where nothing seems to make sense. The profit driven news cycle in the United States is admittedly a poor mechanism for actually gaining an understanding of what is going on, but seven days of... Read More

Insurance is not a financing mechanism for regular and predictable expenses. It is not a kind of "Ali-pay" for treating colds and tonsillitis. Insurance and re-insurance are used to cover the costs of unpredictable calamities for which a person or corporation cannot be reasonably assumed to be able to cover on their own. We carry... Read More

Why is the media so preoccupied with Sweden? And why is the media so determined to prove that Sweden's approach to the coronavirus is wrong? Are we supposed to believe that the same MSM that promoted every bloody coup, intervention and war for the last 30 years has suddenly become a selfless advocate for elderly... Read More

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare two fundamental flaws in the American health care system. No. 1: There's a reason that other rich countries treat health care as a taxpayer-financed social program. Employer-based health insurance was stupid pre-COVID-19 because our economy was already steadily transitioning from traditional full-time W-2 jobs to self-employment, freelance and gig... Read More

Big Pharma and its minions such as Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield are determined to use Covid-19 to vaccinate us all at the expense our lives and pocketbooks. They are using the media, grant-dependent professionals, medical journals, and the presstitute media to conduct a campaign of disinformation about an inexpensive and successful treatment in order... Read More

At present, there is no vaccine for the coronavirus. That means that one of the two paths to immunity is blocked. The other path is “herd immunity,� in which a critical mass of infection occurs in lower-risk populations that ultimately thwarts transmission. Herd immunity is the only path that is currently available. Let that sink... Read More

Some of my commentary about politics is presented in the form of "advice" to the ruling classes. Please understand: I don't really expect those in the ruling class to take my advice. My advice is not really directed toward them. It is a theoretical exercise. I am really speaking to you, the people. My goal... Read More

The US airline companies have bankrupted themselves by buying back their stock in an enrichment scheme for CEOs and board members ( ). With the impact of the virus on their revenues, Congress is handing them a $50 billion bailout. Instead of being bailed out they should be nationalized. In the health and economic crisis... Read More

“I have delivered food parcels to four families this morning,� says Paula Spencer, who runs the community centre in Thanington, a deprived district on the outskirts of Canterbury. Two of the families had called for help because they had symptoms of the coronavirus, and two simply needed food to eat. There are no signs of... Read More

Some clear thinking is required to counter incessant, statist propaganda against the use of N-95 filtering facepiece respirators, to protect against the spread of the novel coronavirus. The message has been seconded at every turn by the Center for Disease Control, a cumbersome bureaucracy, which tightly controls both testing capacity and criteria. Such centralization is... Read More

Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to end their treatment. The condition that treatment will not be withdrawn until doing... Read More

Last week, the House of Representatives voted in favor of a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill amendment to repeal the prohibition on the use of federal funds to create a “unique patient identifier.� Unless this prohibition, which I originally sponsored in 1998, is reinstated, the federal government will have the authority... Read More

The US health system is the most high cost and dysfunctional health care system in the world. The reason is that it is privatized. In the rest of Western civilization the system is socialized. The reason health care is socialized in civilized countries is not only to provide health care to citizens who otherwise could... Read More

Introduction Republicans and Democrats are befuddled by President Trump’s attacks on Canada and Prime Minister Trudeau; has repudiation of NAFTA; the bilateral agreement with Mexico; tariffs, trade quotas and threats of trade constraints of billions more to come. Many are the experts, political leaders and media commentators who have offered a variety of explanations. The... Read More

This week the Senate Republican leadership unveiled its Obamacare replacement plan. Like its House counterpart, the misnamed Senate plan retains most of Obamacare’s core features.Both the House and Senate plans allow states to obtain waivers providing relief from some Obamacare mandates, although the waivers in both bills are too restrictive to be of much value.... Read More

This Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote on a Republican bill that supposedly repeals Obamacare. However, the bill retains Obamacare’s most destructive features. That is not to say this legislation is entirely without merit. For example, the bill expands the amount individuals can contribute to a health savings account (HSA). HSAs allow individuals to... Read More