The Republican Party is fond of telling voters that their goal is to expand the economic pie, and as the size of the pie grows, there will be more for everyone, no redistribution required. But when you get down to their actual policies, there are two standards for how this pie is shared: one for the rich, and a very different standard for everyone else.

The government of Vermont continues to chug along with their multi-year plan to establish a universal health care system modeled on single payer. The most recent step is that the two chambers of the legislature have approved a new bill creating the health care exchange required by the Affordable Care Act and to require everyone to purchase insurance through the Exchange.

While obesity is a serious problem that adds to our health care bill, the far greater problem is that we simply pay way more than anyone else for the exact same medications, tests, devices and services. For example, getting an MRI in the United State can cost ten times what it costs in Japan. The data from the International Federation of Health Plans clearly shows that for almost every procedure and medication, Americans on average pay more than anyone else.

I’m reminded of that old liberal bumper sticker about how “it will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” In Miami County, Kansas, they had to hold the equivalent of a bake sale to make sure that low-income women received access to reproductive health services under Title X, after the all-malle county commission axed the funding.

I’m taking a break from the WWW to travel east to tend to my mom’s independence in her own home, meeting with nursing aide agencies who visit her now, trying to get a sense firsthand of her capabilities since her recent (short) hospitalization, and having (more) serious conversations about how much longer she plans to stay in her home of forty-plus years.

Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. Among the new restrictions appearing in anti-abortion bills nationwide, it is the medical malpractice liability shields that have the potential to alter, perhaps permanently, women’s relationship with the civil justice system. Both Kansas and Arizona are advancing measures that exempt doctors from medical malpractice suits should [...]

If the Supreme Court throws out only the individual mandate but leaves the rest of the Affordable Care Act intact, it would be a real boon for at least one group of individuals, health care policy researchers.

Nine medical specialty boards are recommending that doctors perform fewer of the 45 most common tests and procedures as part of the Choosing Wisely campaign created by the ABIM Foundation. Procedures that should be cut back include CT scans for people who have only fainted, stress test imaging for people with no history of cardiac symptoms and antibiotics for sinusitis. This is helpful, but it doesn’t get to the core reason US health care is so expensive.

The Village, your place for self-important delusion since Pierre Charles L’Enfant got fired. First, let us congratulate Pat Buchanan for so quickly and deftly replacing the hole in his heart-like organ John Demjanjuk left, naturally with George Zimmerman. And it is about an irreconcilable conflict of visions about what the real America is in the [...]

If Conservatives get their way and the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate to buy health insurance, it would be a real victory for them; but in the end, the last laugh may be with actual progressives. While in this case an individual mandate was used to expand health coverage, similar individual mandates are the cornerstone for corporatist plans to unravel the public social insurance systems created by the New Deal/Great Society.