Health care Germanophilia

I’ll admit. I had to look that word up. It is not a disease. From the reading I’ve done about other country’s health care systems so far, I’m sure about this – it’s incredibly difficult to understand exactly what they’re like without having lived there. Acknowledging that right up front, I’ll say this: Canada’s health […]

Health care ironies

Nobody – not even medical personnel – are immune to our screwball health care system. First of all, we have the story from the Peoria Journal Star about how OSF Healthcare is cutting compensation for its employees because of the swelling ranks of unemployed – and therefore uninsured – patients using its emergency room. And […]

Financial crisis narratives

Stories matter. We tell ourselves and one another stories all the time. They are the lenses through which we see the world. So, along that line, I found this post from libertarian Arnold Kling interesting. He lays out a breakdown of the big stories – narratives – that are being told about the economic crisis. […]

More on economic liberty

Building on my post yesterday, I want to stress that my vision of economic liberty is aimed at individuals and families. I think if we had this framework for thinking about economic matters, the financial bailouts of the last year or so might have looked completely different. We’ve spent a great deal of money and […]

You are “the government”

Here’s a great post on OpenLeft making a point I’ve thought of many times. Whenever you hear a conservative going on about how “the government” is going to do this or that, it’s important to remember that, in America, we are the government! “The government” is all of us, working together, to achieve common purposes […]

Two more links on health care

A lot of us on the left focus on the public health insurance option as an essential part of health care reform. But it’s equally, if not more, important to focus on the development of insurance exchanges. Also, it’s always nice to see an article putting the U.S. health care system in the same league […]

What’s in it for Peoria in health care reform?

So, President Obama spent his press conference the other night trying to convince America that health care reform is essential and important for everyone. The New York Times reports that he had mixed results. I don’t think that’s too unexpected. It just illustrates how critical health care is to people’s lives and sense of security […]

It’s high time for true economic liberty

I want to suggest a new way for liberals and progressives to think about their arguments for government-delivered social programs – economic liberty. It strikes me that most often we see arguments supporting everything from Social Security to health care reform framed in three ways: security, equality of opportunity, and a question of rights. These […]

A statement

I believe that We the People should use the tool of government, made legitimate through open, fair, and uncorrupted democratic elections, to work together to promote of our own self-interest rightly understood and fulfill the promised goals of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for the greatest feasible number by creating true economic liberty, […]