Commentary
Commentary
Teachers Unions using our kids as props to take home more pay
Last week teacher union activists descended upon the Capitol, but education reform was not on their agenda. The priority was lobbying legislators to vote in favor of Gov. Jerry Browns tax extensions and avoid a vote of the people on the tax increases. The activists also targeted two education reform ...
California
Schwarzenegger a power-loving phony
SACRAMENTO Last weekend I watched one of my favorite movies, “Total Recall,” a 1990 sci-fi flick based on a Philip K. Dick novel and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is Schwarzenegger’s character an intergalactic double agent who saves the mutants on Mars from the evil plans of a nasty profiteer or is ...
Commentary
Candid Romney Would Own Up To Mass. Fiasco
Massachusetts health reform is in the news driven by reports of long waits for care and its architect’s presidential ambitions. Former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney delivered a widely panned speech the week before last on health care. The three-part speech attempted the impossible: It defended ...
Commentary
Comparative-Effectiveness Research: How Many Lives Will It Cost?
Yes, I certainly appreciated the last “dig” and I shake my head at the irony of PhRMA funding research designed to push back key elements of a law for which PhRMA lobbied and invested. I doubt that Obamacare would have passed without PhRMA’s support. If PhRMA had resisted Obamacare, the ...
Commentary
Bay State On Road to Single-Payer
Your editorial’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s 2006 Massachusetts health law is correct in that taxes, costs and political interference in medical decisions have all gone up while access to medical care has deteriorated (“Obama’s Running Mate,” May 12). The Massachusetts law also jeopardizes the very solvency of private health plans ...
Commentary
Who Is the Republican Health Care Candidate?
As Romney and Gingrich bind their wounds, I’m sure that they are more surprised than anybody at the hostile response their recent comments have drawn. After all, it is true that trace elements of the “individual mandate” can be found in conservative policy proposals from the days of yore. Our ...
Business & Economics
Open Government Requires More Sunshine
The city of Bell pay scandal highlighted serious flaws in California’s open-government laws. Now a proposed constitutional change wants the people to guarantee more sunshine to the Golden State. That’s how government openness was achieved in the past, through action by citizens and news organizations. After World War II, it ...
Commentary
Unions say, ‘Shut up and pay us’
Yet another report confirms the enormous liabilities that California taxpayers must endure to pay for pensions for public employees. The study, released May 5 at a Pension Boot Camp for elected officials held near Sacramento by the reform group Californians for Fiscal Responsibility, echoed the points made by the watchdog ...
Commentary
Little Pain, Real Gains
The Republican budget plan proposed on Thursday in the California Assembly wouldn’t fix the fundamental problems with the state’s budget or make long-term reforms to right this long-mismanaged state. But the plan, which Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway called “a no-tax budget blueprint,” does give the lie to Democrats’ insistence ...
Commentary
Mission Impossible: Medicare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board
Key Points The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a new bureaucracy established by Obamacare that will limit Medicare beneficiaries access to certain medical goods and servicesespecially new prescription drugs. IPAB puts Medicare beneficiaries access to prescription drugs and certain other medical goods and services under control of ...
Teachers Unions using our kids as props to take home more pay
Last week teacher union activists descended upon the Capitol, but education reform was not on their agenda. The priority was lobbying legislators to vote in favor of Gov. Jerry Browns tax extensions and avoid a vote of the people on the tax increases. The activists also targeted two education reform ...
Schwarzenegger a power-loving phony
SACRAMENTO Last weekend I watched one of my favorite movies, “Total Recall,” a 1990 sci-fi flick based on a Philip K. Dick novel and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is Schwarzenegger’s character an intergalactic double agent who saves the mutants on Mars from the evil plans of a nasty profiteer or is ...
Candid Romney Would Own Up To Mass. Fiasco
Massachusetts health reform is in the news driven by reports of long waits for care and its architect’s presidential ambitions. Former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney delivered a widely panned speech the week before last on health care. The three-part speech attempted the impossible: It defended ...
Comparative-Effectiveness Research: How Many Lives Will It Cost?
Yes, I certainly appreciated the last “dig” and I shake my head at the irony of PhRMA funding research designed to push back key elements of a law for which PhRMA lobbied and invested. I doubt that Obamacare would have passed without PhRMA’s support. If PhRMA had resisted Obamacare, the ...
Bay State On Road to Single-Payer
Your editorial’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s 2006 Massachusetts health law is correct in that taxes, costs and political interference in medical decisions have all gone up while access to medical care has deteriorated (“Obama’s Running Mate,” May 12). The Massachusetts law also jeopardizes the very solvency of private health plans ...
Who Is the Republican Health Care Candidate?
As Romney and Gingrich bind their wounds, I’m sure that they are more surprised than anybody at the hostile response their recent comments have drawn. After all, it is true that trace elements of the “individual mandate” can be found in conservative policy proposals from the days of yore. Our ...
Open Government Requires More Sunshine
The city of Bell pay scandal highlighted serious flaws in California’s open-government laws. Now a proposed constitutional change wants the people to guarantee more sunshine to the Golden State. That’s how government openness was achieved in the past, through action by citizens and news organizations. After World War II, it ...
Unions say, ‘Shut up and pay us’
Yet another report confirms the enormous liabilities that California taxpayers must endure to pay for pensions for public employees. The study, released May 5 at a Pension Boot Camp for elected officials held near Sacramento by the reform group Californians for Fiscal Responsibility, echoed the points made by the watchdog ...
Little Pain, Real Gains
The Republican budget plan proposed on Thursday in the California Assembly wouldn’t fix the fundamental problems with the state’s budget or make long-term reforms to right this long-mismanaged state. But the plan, which Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway called “a no-tax budget blueprint,” does give the lie to Democrats’ insistence ...
Mission Impossible: Medicare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board
Key Points The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a new bureaucracy established by Obamacare that will limit Medicare beneficiaries access to certain medical goods and servicesespecially new prescription drugs. IPAB puts Medicare beneficiaries access to prescription drugs and certain other medical goods and services under control of ...
