Enough Population Hysteria‏

Here's Bill Clinton, telling CNN what he sees as the differences between the environment for health care reform then and now ... "At the time, we had about 14 or 15 percent uninsured. Today it's more than 16 percent. We had a lot of people underinsured, but there are probably more than 30 million underinsured today -- a huge underinsured problem. "We were spending 14 percent or our income on health care. And nobody else -- none of our major competitors were more than 10. Now we're at 16.5 and none of our competitors are over 11, except for Switzerland, which has an unusually old population. They're at 12. So all of the problems are worse. "So when I did it, we had very -- we had budgetary constrictions. We couldn't raise taxes. We just raised taxes and cut spending to balance the budget. And therefore our only option was to have an employer mandate. That put the small business lobby in with the health insurance companies. And together that, plus the unified Republican opposition in the Senate, was enough to beat it. "Now, you've got the small business community wanting something new. The physicians were divided last time. They're united in believing we need reform. And a number of the health insurance companies have said they are willing to move toward universal coverage. So I think that the consensus is overwhelming." Why Reforming Our Health Care System Will Require a Tax Hike By Maggie Mahar, AlterNet Those who believe we don't need to invest in modernizing the system are fooling themselves. Read more » Competition in Health Care: Republicans Were For It, Before They Were Against It By David Sirota, Creators Syndicate For the GOP to acknowledge the contradiction in their position would undermine the insurance industry that's filling their campaign coffers. Read more » Rebuttal to Chris Hedges: Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria By Betsy Hartmann, AlterNet Raising alarms about overpopulation distracts us from the real environmental tasks at hand and legitimizes top-down punitive policies that hurt women. Read more » A Big Pharma Merger Made in Hell By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet This week's merger of Merck and Schering-Plough seems another example of throwing bad money after bad. Read more » Report: U.S. Healthcare a Rip-Off, Hurts Business By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet The report factored in both the costs and health benefits of different countries' systems, and found the U.S. way behind. Read more » Should the Government Protect People's Health or Insurance Companies' Profits? By Dean Baker, AlterNet It's time for the government to prioritize the wellbeing of people over the wellbeing of insurance companies. Read more » Washington Talks About Health Care, But Doesn't Offer a Cure By John Nichols, The Nation Obama's Forum on Health Reform was so narrowly focused and uninspiring that it almost made Hillary Clinton's bumbling efforts of the 1990s look good. Read more » PEEK and Video: The hottest buzz and videos on the web Cancer Patients Die While 'New Dems' Help Bankers Get Billions By Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake I'm having a hard time with this. Read more » Why the Stem Cell Reversal Is Not a Total Victory By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium The full implications of the reversal are more complicated than you might suppose. Read more » Protesting Health Insurance Heavyweights By Arthur Delaney, Huffington Post Congressman Eric Massa leads the charge for single-payer health insurance. Read more »