Nation-Building

After making an exhaustive case for the argument that the problem with American healthcare is not a lack of money, but a system whereby doctors are incentivised to overtreat patients rather than manage their long term health care, Philip Longman of the Washington Monthly reveals a solution that lies right under our noses. A solution that no one on the Democratic Presidential stump seems to be talking about. The cure to America’s health care crisis is a system that’s already up and running right here in the United States, with facilities in every state, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. It is, in fact, the largest integrated health care system in the United States, and it points the way to the future. Most of its doctors have faculty appointments with academic hospitals—over the years, two have won the Nobel Prize for medicine. The system’s innovations have included the development of the first artificial kidney, the cardiac pacemaker, the first successful liver transplant...

Below the fold, I am reprinting a post I made at Dean's World which basically is a rehash of Orac's critique/endorsement of Peter Duesberg's ideas about aneuploidy in cancer.   Cancer surgeon and researcher Orac reviews Duesberg's SciAm piece about cancer aneuploidy over at Scienceblogs, and has a lot of insightful comments. Overall, he credits Duesberg with promoting an interesting hypothesis, though he rightly shoots down the ridiculous notion that Duesberg work on AIDS is in any way relevant - positively or negatively - to his cancer theory: [Duesberg's supporters] think nothing conflating the scientific validity of Duesberg's ideas concerning cancer, which might indeed be partially or mostly correct, with his discredited hypothesis that HIV does not cause AIDS, implying that because he might be correct about cancer implies that he is correct about AIDS. It doesn't. Sorry, but the two issues are at best peripherally and weakly related and at most not r...

Matt Yglesias is leaving The American Prospect, and will be working for The Atlantic Monthly. I think that of the triumvirate of liberal policy magazines (TAP, The Washington Monthly, and The Atlantic), this is the best fit for Matt who is a pragmatic liberal interventionist on the foreign policy front and an unabashed liberal on the domestic. In other words, very purple. I had the pleasure and honor of blogging alongside Matt for a while myself and he's a formidable wonk in his own right. I think that his blogging at TAM will do a lot to broaden the appeal of purple politics amongst the left-wing of american political discourse - a perspective that is almost wholly absent (or at least, drowned out) by the leading progressive policy portals like Daily Kos. The ultimate goal of any policy writer is to influence policy, and in that regard Matt's ascension is great news for everyone. It's also worth remembering that the last merit promotion of this sort was when Blake Hounshel...

NYCO at DailyKos bemoans the lack of a unifying Manifesto under which to unite the progressive movement. The problem with a manifesto however is that a manifesto is usually a statement of principles, followed by a statement of intended action or desired goals guided by those principles. The principles that tie together the progressive movement are very general, universal ones. If I were to reduce it to a single sentence, I might say, "all people have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But what are the roadblocks to these things? a conservative will argue that government is the oppressor and that the market is the liberator. A liberal actually extends that, saying that govt and the market can both be oppressors, and both can be liberators. In essence, liberals allow for double-edged swords - which means now we have to take care which way we swing. And in the decision to swing our swords of govt or markets, we will disagree. Consider the Eusto...