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This Week in Health

By Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium. Posted November 21, 2008.


A roundup of this week's best independent, progressive reporting on health.

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In Special Coverage

Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
What Happened to That Prosperity Tax-Cutters Promised Us?
Sam Pizzigati

DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower

Environment:
The Real Scandal Over Climate Change Isn't About Hacked Emails But the Media's Coverage
Alex Steffen

Food:
10 Tips for a Sustainable Thanksgiving
Sarah Newman

Health and Wellness:
Is the House's Health Bill Really Worse than Nothing?
Joshua Holland

Immigration:
Hate Group, FAIR, Is Looking for "Ethnically Ambiguous" Actors to Amplify Its Racism
Adam Luna

Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames

Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler

Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond

Rights and Liberties:
Obama Quietly Backs Renewing Patriot Act Surveillance Provisions
Willam Fisher

Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick

World:
Obama Will Announce 34,000-Troop Escalation in Afghanistan 'Within Days'

More stories by Lindsay Beyerstein

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Because if it bleeds, it leads... Sarah van Schagen rates the environmental impact of feminine hygiene products for Grist.

In all seriousness, this has been a very exciting week in healthcare news. The Bush administration is racing to take away as many reproductive rights as it can before leaving office. The Democrats in Congress are taking the lead on healthcare reform by writing up their own proposal before president Obama takes the Oath of Office.

Last week, Sen. Max Baucus unveiled a detailed proposal to provide health insurance for all Americans. Brian Cook has a roundup of reactions.

Note that the Baucus plan is by no means a call for radical change. The blueprint proposes to fix the healthcare system with the same piecemeal strategies that get trotted out every time Americans talk about healthcare reform. The stated goal is to enable more people to buy "affordable" private health insurance while expanding Medicare and Medicaid for the poor and the elderly.

Why such timidity? As Josh Marshall argues at TPM, Obama's election is a mandate for fundamental structural change in the healthcare system.

The fact is, majority of Americans support single-payer health insurance, even if they'd have to pay higher taxes. Daina Saib reports in YES! that even Republicans are getting on board. Saib introduces us to an unlikely champion of single-payer, Dr. Rocky White, conservative Christian and former Republican who started advocating for single payer when the system made his own practice unmanageable.

As we talk about the dire state of the Big Three automakers, remember that the Canadian auto industry stays competitive because the government takes care of health care, unlike in the 'States where automakers and unions are struggling to pay for it.

Ezra Klein gives us a crash course two strategic approaches to healthcare reform. He explains that there are two basic schools of thought: delivery system reform and financing reform. Delivery reformers hope to make the system work better by bringing down costs and delivering better value for money. Financing reformers focus on how we're going to pay for it all. The Baucus blueprint is financing reform. Repealing Medicare Plan D would be delivery reform.

These two approaches are complimentary. Ezra writes: "[T]he two agendas fit neatly in a comprehensive reform package. Coverage expansion isn't sustainable unless cost growth is slowed. Cost growth can't be slowed without delivery system reform." He notes that The Center for American Progress has a new, free, book on healthcare reform, available for download, here.

The Bush administration is weighing an eleventh hour rules change that could prevent women on Medicaid from receiving birth and deny rape victims emergency contraception and push the country one step closer to theocracy.


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See more stories tagged with: health, health care

Lindsay Beyerstein is a New York writer blogging at majikthise.typepad.com

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