A Conservative Confidence Game
The Nation
September 9, 2008
"Leave it to Fannie and Freddie to do for American politics what reasoned argument failed to do--strip the clothes off the Emperor of Markets. The fuss over whether government should rescue naughty shareholders was merely a distraction. What this latest financial crisis revealed is that "the government" and "the market" are not two distinct and separate parts of the country. They work together and need each other."
Two Ways to Think About Gas Prices
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
August 11, 2008
"Late in the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan advised voters how to think about their choice for president: 'Ask yourself these questions: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to buy things in the store than it was four years ago?'
If that was the price-of-hamburger theory of campaigning, we might call 2008 the price-of-gas election. But I hope the candidates will ask voters to think a little differently this time around – to think not only of ourselves, but of our neighbors."
Shopping for Long-Term Care [PDF]
Health Affairs, 23, no. 4 (2004): 191-196
"In a rational world, all of us would make decisions about the kind of long-term care we want in our later years while we are of sound body and mind. In reality, most people find it difficult to contemplate old age, let alone to predict our future health needs or select from a confusing array of options once the time approaches. The result is a nation of elders who in their last, most vulnerable years are likely to experience resignation and entrapment rather than choice. Deborah Stone, a political scientist and health policy expert, debunks what she calls the "myth" of "consumer-driven care" choices for ill elderly people like her mother, who in her prime might have been a savvy shopper but is no longer in a position to make appropriate "market-based" decisions about her long-term care. In our second story, physician Danielle Ofri also derails a myth: the assumption gleaned from her academic medical training that routine blood tests should not be conducted on healthy patients, lacking hard evidence that the benefits outweigh the costs. She relates a lesson she learned years ago while working in a New Mexico clinic about the need for flexibility in testing and treating patients."
Rationing Compassion
The American Prospect
November 30, 2002
"Back in the twentieth century, the United States of America enjoyed the most extraordinary economic growth, the most incredible scientific advances, and the most successful global empire. Nothing could threaten the mighty nation--nothing, that is, except an enemy within. The nation's health care system grew and grew, until finally the nation's leaders realized that it meant to devour the entire national economy."
Hungry for Air
Boston Review
February/March 2005
"By some unholy coincidence, the terms “water boarding” and “air hunger” entered my vocabulary in the same week. They came by such different routes, though, that I didn’t know how they were related until some time later."