Two US surgeons have offered some commentary on Why US Healthcare Costs Are Out of Control. It is a highly revealing read. They cite six reasons: The Building of Shrines for Hospital Administrators – buildings constructed out of desire to make a mark rather than out of necessity. Unnecessary Duplication of Services – Often added under [...]

You  may be wondering why Republicans seem so adamantly against Obama’s healthcare bill when it seems, superficially at any rate, to offer millions more people a chance of decent health care. The Democrats love to portray the Republicans as selfish people obstructing the provision of healthcare to millions of their fellow Americans. This may explain [...]

Having failed to convince the Republicans of the merits of Obamacare, the Democrats have now decided to use brute force and bully the legislation through with a simple majority. This is a spectacularly bad idea. Forcing the bill through under “budget reconciliation” essentially undermines the entire set of safeguards the Americans have in place to [...]

Apparently, Mr Obama would now like to talk to to Republicans about health care. The man is really a laugh riot. After trying to ram a highly divisive, partisan health bill through the senate and failing, Mr. Obama would like a televised bipartisan summit for half a day to break the impasse. I suspect you [...]

Obama announces. President Barack Obama sent Congress his new budget overnight, a plan that forecasts the government spending a record US$1.66 trillion ($2.37 trillion) more than it takes in through taxes. 1.66 TRILLION deficit in a single year… If you laid every dollar bill end to end you could walk on them through the centre [...]

The House of Representatives has just approved Obama’s healthcare bill 220 -215. The bill will now go to the Senate where the Democrats may have the numbers to pass the bill – assuming all Democrats and the two independents vote for it. Obama needs to get everything passed before the mid-term elections. It is highly [...]

I see the Democrats have reintroduced the “public option” (i.e. State Health Insurance) back into their health reform bill a mere couple of weeks after being unable to get such a bill through the Senate Finance Committee. They never give up, do they? It is highly unlikely that they will keep all the Democrats on [...]

Small businesses in the US are facing sharp rises in their health insurance premiums next year. On average premiums appear to be rising 15% in 2010. The NYT quotes “experts” as suggesting that the insurance industry is “raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits”. Unfortunately for this theory, [...]

Obama has declared the Swine Flu epidemic in the US a national emergency. Swine Flu has been a public health emergency since April of this year, but making it a national emergency provides people like Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius quite sweeping powers to bypass most federal rules. I am a little curious as [...]

Apparently Barack Obama has just won the nobel peace prize…. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population,” the committee said. The committee also said it gave “special [...]