So Dmoney’s going to repeal Obamacare? (one of Romney’s three promises).

I wanted single payer, with the public option as a second choice. But in my family there are three distinct “preexisting conditions” that would mean that we would have a very hard time getting insurance if I lost my job and Obamacare were repealed, and my nieces get to stay on their parents’ insurance. The Obama/Romney plan sure beat doing nothing.

When an independent voter who doesn’t follow politics hears something like “Introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward jobs creators”, she/he assumes that a “job creator” is someone who actually creates jobs, and maybe there will be a tax credit for creating a new position at a company and hiring someone. Hell, I’m well to the left of Obama and I could go along with that. But anyone who follows politics closely knows that Republicans use the term “job creator” as a euphemism for “rich person” and would not impose any requirement that anyone actually create a job in exchange for a tax cut.

If you like foie gras, you might enjoy monkfish liver. Get it at a Japanese restaurant, they’ll do it right, and you can imagine you’re having your foie gras with caviar.

It’s a feature: lame duck sessions are regularly used to enact things that the establishment of both parties agree on but that the voters loathe.

In countries that boot the loser out of office immediately, the opposition party has a “shadow government”, so that voters who do the research already know who the new head of each department is likely to be. They also usually have far fewer political appointees, with more civil servants in high positions.

Yes, we pay too much for drugs, and the Medicare Part D language forcing government to overpay for drugs is part of the problem. But there are other things that could be done as well.

What I would like to see is government funding for drug comparison tests. Drug companies tweak old drugs with expiring patents a bit, then wine and dine doctors to prescribe the new drug, which costs 20 times as much as the old drug since generic versions of the old drug are now available. They have testing showing that the new drug is at least somewhat safe and effective, but they don’t have to present any comparative data: maybe the new drug is no better than the old one. They don’t even have to prove that their brand spanking new drug is any better than aspirin for the disease it’s supposed to treat.

Independent data could either force ineffective drugs off the market, or drive competition between multiple drugs that are equally good.

Great piece, which is why it disturbs me when I see some people on FDL practically cheering on the right-wing justices because they don’t like the health care law.

I do admit a selfish interest: I’m a computer software developer in my 50s with a medical condition that would disqualify me (before “Obamacare”) from obtaining individual health insurance at an affordable rate should I lose my job; my wife also has a “pre-existing condition”. I would rather pay into a public option or pay for Medicare For All with taxes, but if I can’t have those, health care sure beats no health care.

One of the parties who sued over the individual mandate has since gone bankrupt because she couldn’t pay health care expenses, and if she had insurance there would be no such bill. The fine/tax/whatever you call it is effectively a back-door public option: everyone with ability to pay should be chipping in for health insurance (ideally with a public plan, but since we didn’t get that, private insurance), and if they won’t, they can compensate the government for completely predictable expenses.

Congress has often used different words (“user fees” and the like) for things that are effectively taxes, because the T-word is politically toxic.

Problem solved: Supreme Court rejects health insurance mandate, supports alternative proposal to strip-search the uninsured.

Never before has the federal government mandated every American purchase a product under the Commerce Clause.

And it still hasn’t; under the health care reform law, someone who does not purchase health insurance isn’t jailed until he or she complies; rather a fine (which is effectively a tax to cover health care expenses) is assessed. The government has the power to tax.

I would have preferred a Medicare For All solution, or failing that, a public option, but I think that the mandate is constitutionally defensible.

The problem with numbers like this is that on some issues, the old are on the wrong side, the young are on the right side, but the old show up to vote in large numbers and the young do not. Gay marriage is one such issue; marijuana decriminalization is another. You probably need 60% of all voters to be confident of winning, given who is going to turn out.

But the good news is that the fearful-senior crowd is dying off.

“So while a tiny fraction of apparently unenthused voters in Iowa will make this decision, the consequences of it ought to be enough to propel Romney to the nomination.”

Iowa often picks a winner who goes nowhere. Just ask President Mike Huckabee.

My local newspaper was part of my routine when it cost a quarter and was stuffed with world, national, and local news by people who knew what they were doing. Now it costs a dollar and is about a third as thick, and most of the non-local news is the same wire services that everyone else has. I’m asked to spend four times as much for 1/3 the value, and even if you factor in inflation, the price/value ratio is at least a factor of eight worse.

They’ve gone in the wrong direction, and they should figure out how they can afford to give the paper away. Make it ad-supported, and give it to everyone. That way any advertiser who wants to reach everyone in a community knows exactly what to do: buy an ad in the local newspaper, because everyone will see it. No single web site or TV show would have the same reach.

I’m not at all a fan of Obama, and after the targeted killing of an American citizen I won’t be voting for him. However, I think that this posting is wrong when it says “Obama isn’t off the hook either. When he puts on his faux pastor persona in front of black church groups and the Congressional Black Caucus, trying to speechify, it’s equally offensive.” Have you forgotten that Obama spent many years in Jeremiah Wright’s church? He learned that style by participating in it every week for a decade or more.

Unfortunately what matters is who shows up on election day. Seniors show up without fail, while younger folks don’t. Given how this question skews with age, 51% isn’t nearly enough.

All the seats adjacent to Kucinich’s district are Democratic, and the area has lost population. There are going to be fewer seats in that area than before, so it will be a game of musical chairs. If the Republicans get to draw the lines, they’ll try to do it in a way that maximizes their gains, and it’s not clear what that might mean for Kucinich. Maybe it would work better for them to let his district grow but chop away at the suburban Democrats’ seats.