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Reducing The Cost Of Health Care – For Real

Reducing The Cost Of Health Care – For Real

That title is not out of a fiction novel. It could happen right here in our time. A few weeks ago, both the Obama Administration and the US House made major moves to begin limiting the outlandish awards being handed out by some juries in medical malpractice cases. This area has long been a trial lawyers’ playground and each of us is paying the price. We may be making the right kind of progress now. The President included $250 million in his budget so that the Department of Justice could work with states to rewrite their medical malpractice laws and see real, effective change on this issue. The proposal provides some specific areas of relief by using judges with expertise in this area to decide cases instead of allowing juries to dole out unreasonable awards. Additional proposals might include creating reliable standards for doctors to operate under that would allow them to prove they were not negligent [...]
Reducing The Cost Of Health Care – For Real

Republicans Lead In Polls, ObamaCare Progresses, And Other Dangerous Things

Running with scissors, bungy-jumping, lion-training don't hold a candle to these two items...

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Republicans appear to be doing well, very well, scary well. So what's to be done about it? Republicans need to work harder, get more engaged, get more yard signs up, knock on more doors! Why, you may ask, would I think that? Because early poll successes:
  1. Are deceiving. In Politics, scientific polling lacks integrity because there are so many factors and inconsistencies, including the fact that they reflect a point in time, which is not election day
  2. Are open to interpretation. The complexities and meaning behind poll answers can be interpreted multiple ways... sometimes the answers mean something different than what we think.
  3. Can lead to complacency. Accepting that your candidate is going to win hands down can lead to voter apathy and before you know it, everyone that said they were going to vote decides to stay home election day or just forgets to vote.
It's great to feel good about [...]
Reducing The Cost Of Health Care – For Real

Democrats Took A Gamble – Republicans Need To Take Care

healthcare-reformQuestion #1 during much of the Health Care Debate was: "Why the rush?". I should have seen it at the time, but now, it is clear to me just how important it was for Democrats to pass Health Care Reform, in any condition. Even torn to shreds. Getting it done early in 2010 was absolutely essential. Because that was the one chance that Democrats had of holding seats in November. It's a gambit that tries our souls and puts folks on both the left and right on edge. By completing the effort early in the year, Democrats have essentially taken ownership of the election, or at least taken a position that gives them a stronger political advantage. That is, stronger than they would have had if they had tried and failed to complete the work, or completed it in late summer or early fall. The manner in which Republicans play this out over the next several months will have a greater impact than anything. Even though a majority of Americans opposed the Democrats plan, ultimately the tide will shift on the perceived benefit of those in the middle. Already, some Republicans are seeing the challenge of continuing to fight this head on. Now, instead of fighting against a bad idea, instead of promoting a smarter model for Americans to address the real Health Care issues at hand, Republicans who go all in with [...]
Reducing The Cost Of Health Care – For Real

Is It About Health Care or Partisan Gridlock?

Brian NygaardToday we introduce our newest writer at The Conservative Reader, Brian Nygaard. Brian and his wife Mary live in San Rafael, California. - Ed. As the Healthcare debate in Congress was drawing to a close, Americans were asking themselves “Why can’t we seem to make any progress on the healthcare issue?” We watch in disbelieving awe as we observe nothing getting done over seemingly very long periods of time. We covet answers, but our perception is that what we are receiving from Washington is just gridlock and petty partisan politics. We cannot even agree on such a simple notion as the need for the portability of individual insurance coverage. Amazing, isn’t it? It looks like a mess, and it is. But it is a mess for reasons completely separated from the issue of healthcare. The problem with the healthcare issue is that the issue has never been about healthcare, or insurance companies, or patient’s rights, or universal coverage. Over the course of our American history, a small number of windows of opportunity have presented themselves to the radical leftists amongst us. Andrew Jackson, FDR, Lyndon [...]
Reducing The Cost Of Health Care – For Real

Medicinal Marijuana

Medical MarijuanaIn my years as a youngster I never thought that we would be seriously discussing whether Marijuana should be considered either for medicinal or recreational usage. And as a conservative, I would have never thought that we would need to spend the time debating the pros and cons without a lot of easy standard lines: "It's a Gateway Drug", "Kills Brain Cells", "Highly Addictive". But here we are, and frankly, I'm not prepared to just discard the discussion as unimportant or too obvious to spend time on. That would be both a disservice and inconsistent with my belief that positions on policy should be reviewed and when challenged, they should be openly and honestly discussed. I'm not a doctor, nor have I had the time to study this at such a level of depth as to call myself an "expert" on the topic. But I have discussed this with doctors I know, and I've looked at some of the information currently available (here, here, here and here). I've also been around friends that were regular users of Marijuana, and I even took one deep breath of the stuff (from a pipe) when I was younger. Yes, I inhaled. Didn't like it. And I was a tobacco smoker at the time. Most of us here in the Midwest tend to just laugh at California for legalizing Marijuana for medicinal use. We could have more or less predicted that dispensaries would become dealers for all who wanted, not just those that actually needed it. And as the debate is building here in Iowa [...]
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