My source on HR 3962, Timothy Jost of Health Affairs Blog, says this about Saturday night’s big change in the House health care reform bill, the Stupak amendment:

The Stupak amendment ... prohibits the use of any funds authorized or appropriated under the Act “to cover any part...

Scottsdale-based EmpowHer.com, is not waiting around for reform in the health care system, it is providing the information women need to manage their own conditions, practice prevention and wellness, and help each other heal. Like many other Health 2.0 communities, it supports patient empowerment, specifically for women. Women, although...

I began trying to refinance my home in Half Moon Bay on the day Obama announced the supposed homeowner retention program. At first I wanted to do it because I was having trouble making payments during the fall and winter financial crisis. I'm still...

We are a nation addicted to prescription drugs of one sort or another. But we seldom take them exactly as they were prescribed, and we endure a lot of adverse effects. Online information about prescription medications has been, as you would expect, both a blessing and a curse.

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So I have given this post a somewhat hyperbolic title. But not as much as you would think. The Senate Finance Committee voted down the public plan today, and because I was driving around Maricopa County Arizona (all 9200 square miles of it) for a good part of the...

The United Nations meeting yesterday stunned me. I grew up thinking the UN was one of the pinnacles of global achievement. And I thought disrespectful debate was the province of the USA until I heard Gadhafi and  Ahmadinejad. Now I wonder if the UN is worth stopping NYC...

Now that Obama has given his speech about health care, people are actively talking about their horrible experiences with Medicare and wondering if the "public option" will produce care for everybody that's as bad as what they've seen their own aging relatives  receive. These examples, however, show me there's a...

How can you argue about a reform plan when you don't even know what will be in it? And yet, town halls go on and on through the hot and lazy last days of summer.

So, as my father used to say, if you want something to cry about, I'll...

"How are we going to pay for health care reform in this terrible economic environment," followed by the warning that our children and grandchildren will be taxed to the gills because of the Boomers, is a legitimate question being asked by those opposed to health care reform.

Well, I have...

Elizabeth Warren made an appearance on Morning Joe this morning and woke me up at 5 AM PDT with the force of a revelation: those toxic assets are still on the books of the banks. The banks, which have taken so much of our children's futures in the form of...

The discussion about rationing health care is not new. In fact, in my memory alone it is almost 30 years old

I learned about how costs in health care are shifted and rhetoric is used to mask the issues when my marketing company worked on the messaging for one of...

I just flew East to visit a Vedic scholar from Vrindavan, India who is teaching a summer session at Rutgers. He's a friend, and I asked him how he found the United States on this visit compared to his previous visits.

"Stressed," he said. "The whole country is stressed. My...

The health care industry is spending about $1.5 million a day on lobbying efforts in Congress. Most of those dollars are spent fighting against the threat of "rationing." That doesn't count the money that's spent on TV ads in which disgruntled people from Canada tell why they come to the...

I've been listening avidly to all the different points of view about health care reform, and the only conclusion I've come to is that almost anything is better than what we have.

On Bloomberg the other day, I heard a call for a systemic approach to the practice of medicine...

The new Pew Study on the impact of the Internet on American life came out last week, and as usual, someone, @mrinaldesai, to be exact, Tweeted it and I found it. Yes, this is what Twitter is for: Discovery.

In 2000, 46% of Americans had access to the...

Credit cards have developed into very complicated financial products. As a result, even if they printed the disclosure in 18 point type, you wouldn't know what was going to hit you from behind. I have been trying to get out of debt recently, so I've been studying the issue. I...

I am at...

Living in two states gives me a unique perspective. I've now decamped from the heat to the cold (I sleep in pajamas and a bathrobe in Half Moon Bay), and I am wondering whether all the put-downs of Arizona and its legislature are much more than just a limited view...

The FCC is holding a comment period for input as to what the nation's broadband policy should be. Before you let yourself skip this post, give me a minute.

It's important to weigh in because the wrong policy can make the Internet inaccessible or unaffordable for large numbers of people...