A funny thing happened on the way to the demise of Medicare Advantage. The program under which 16 million seniors purchase federally subsidized coverage through private health insurers, the carriers and Republicans warned, would be jeopardized by the $150 billion in cuts to providers over 10 years used to help fund the Affordable Care Act. […]

The New York Times reported Monday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is has proposed cutting the U.S. Army from its wartime peak of 570,000 troops to as few as 440,000. Under pressure from the 2011 sequester and the recently inked Murray-Ryan budget plan, Hagel's blueprint would shrink the active duty Army to its lowest strength […]

The state of Georgia this week began offering a new version of its vehicle license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag. Sponsored by the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (to whom a portion of the purchase price and annual registration fees will go), the revised design has many people inside the state […]

John McCain is experiencing another bout of premature emancipation. Just hours before Ukrainian President Yanukovych and opposition leaders reached an agreement that could help end the chaos and carnage in Kiev, the Arizona Republican lashed out at Barack Obama Thursday, calling him "the most naive president in history." McCain's latest bout of apoplexy is more […]

Five years ago today, CNBC regular Rick Santelli launched into the infamous rant that many credit with birthing the Tea Party movement. That the Tea Party's toxic mix of blind rage, shocking detachment from the facts and periodic descent into racist rhetoric pre-dated Santelli's frothing at the mouth performance has largely been overlooked. Nevertheless, five […]

By now, millions of Americans--most of them in red states-- are growing familiar with the "coverage gap." Thanks to their rejection of the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid in states they control, GOP leaders are leaving at least five million people in an insurance "dead zone," earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but […]

As their recent disinformation campaign over mythical Obamacare job losses shows, Republicans love the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Except when they hate the CBO, which is most of the time. After all, GOP leaders are using the fifth anniversary of the $787 billion Obama economic stimulus program to mark it is a failure despite the […]

"The doctor-patient relationship." For over 20 years, conservative propagandists and their Republican allies have used that four-word bludgeon to beat back universal health care reform. In 1994, GOP strategist Bill Kristol warned that "the Clinton Plan is damaging to the quality of American medicine and to the relationship between the patient and the doctor." Kristol's […]

For the first time since its passage of draconian curbs on the state's abortion clinics, Texas stripped the medical license of a physician for failing to obtain admitting hospital admitting privileges. With a third of the state's clinics already shuttered due to the TRAP law which went into effect on November 1, 2013, access to […]

While income inequality in the United States has hit record highs, so too has the decibel level from the tragically rich protesting their victimhood in the new class warfare. After walking back his "Kristallnacht" Holocaust analogy, legendary venture capitalist Tom Perkins nevertheless fretted that the 1 percent faces "economic extinction." Sam Zell, the billionaire chairman […]