In search of virus sanity

Sam Smith – In my search for virus era sanity I have tried to recall anything that had approached the dysfunction this experience has brought to my normal life. Two thoughts arose. I remembered three decades ago driving by a fast food eatery in my Washington neighborhood and reflecting on my recently discovered cancer. “My …

A few things to help get through these times

Sam Smith Build communities - As America has become more urbanized, we have become increasingly culturally isolated from others near us. Having moved a decade ago from a near lifetime in Washington DC to a Maine town of 7,900 population, I'm conscious of some of the differences, such as when neighbors offer to pick up …

Worse than a war

Sam Smith - Lots of people, including the president, are making analogies between what is happening now and a big war. But when you think about it a little deeper it becomes clear that this is bigger than a war. Consider that we already have lost more than half as many people as we did …

Why isn’t public health more important to us?

Sam Smith - In recent days I've been reflecting on how poorly I was prepared for the current crisis by my presumed academic, economic,  political and spiritual leaders. For example, I can't remember the possibility of a public health disaster being mentioned by any of my professors at Harvard and when I searched our own …

Obamacare: good to poor to who knows what

Sam Smith - Obamacare became such a contentious issue, and the bill itself was so inordinately complicated, that to this day it is hard to get a fair accounting of the measure. As we pointed out as it was being debated, one could find in the legislation the fine, the bad and the unpredictable. Five …

Obamacare: the good, the bad, the unpredictable & the dangerously unknown

Sam Smith, 2012 - If you're having a hard time figuring out what the real status of Obamacare is, don't feel badly What you are seeing in the current news coverage and debate is another reflection of of the dysfunctional state of our leadership class, a dysfunction driven in no small part by the fact …

Healthcare ruling: the party’s over

Sam Smith The thing that prognosticators got wrong about Justice Roberts was that he actually wanted to help the insurance industry more than he wanted to diss Obama. The Supreme Court’s healthcare decision is much easier to understand when you remember that the idea of the individual mandate came from the right wing Heritage Foundation …

Mandate musings: How Obama got into this mess

Sam Smith I’ve finally figured out that Barack Obama is a liberal after all. It’s the liberals who have moved to the right and Obama just went along with them. The gap between progressives (and liberals of an earlier time) and today’s version is growing all the time. Progressives these days tend to be either …

Morning Line: The Obamacare bomb

The best thing that Democrats could do now is to admit that they screwed up with Obamacare, separate out the good parts and then promise to revisit the bad ones, including the unconstitutional individual mandate and the sections that have 26 states upset enough to go to court. All ideology aside, the bill was one …

Morning Line: Mock trial arguments in a real world

Sam Smith Now that another judge has upheld the individual mandate clause of Obamacare - making it three in favor and two against - it would be hard for the Supreme Court to ignore the matter. You will read a lot about this in the coming months, but there are a several things that probably …

Morning Line: The arrogance of hope

Sam SmithBefore liberals rant anymore about Judge Vinson's decision on the healthcare bill, they should read this footnote: “I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was …

The healthcare mess

Sam Smith The underlying problem with the healthcare bill is that there are few precedents for such a purportedly well intentioned measure that is so incredibly complex in its language (and hence in its true meaning), so uncertain in many of its effects, so contradictory in others, and so remarkably tardy in coming fully into …

The sleeper in Obamacare

Sam Smith I've been wondering why there is so much public opposition to Obamacare. Admittedly, it's one of the most mangled pieces of legislation I've ever run across, not because of its intentions, but because of the political and bureaucratic chaos involved in its composition. When you have a bill that even the Congressional Research …

What’s your comparative effectiveness?

Sam Smith - I've told my doctor that if I get to the point where I can't argue with him anymore, he can pull the plug. I told one of my sons about this and he promptly responded, "What do you mean, Dad? Don't you want me and my brother arguing about you on national …

FINDING FUN FLU FACTS

Sam Smith Ten days ago your editor came down with the first serious case of the flu or a cold or an allergy or god knows what since the Internet hit the big times. I did what I always do now when I'm trying to find something out: I hit the Big G. But unlike …