The first Republican Abraham Lincoln famously proclaimed, "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side." And as Matthew 4:23-24 tells us, Jesus never refused treatment to those with preexisting conditions, instead "healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." […]

Last week, Politico ran yet another fawning profile of John McCain, declaring him "critic-in-chief." But whether the ersatz Maverick's motivation runs the gamut from "unresolved anger to concern for his right flank as he seeks re-election to genuine dismay about Obama's agenda," McCain has been at or near the center of almost every domestic political […]

When Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords balked at supporting President Bush's wildly irresponsible tax cuts in 2001, the retribution from the White House and its GOP allies in Congress was swift and severe. Ostracized and humiliated, Jeffords became an independent, briefly shifting control of the Senate to Democrats. Assessing that sea change, Connecticut's Joe Lieberman […]

On Tuesday, frothing at the mouth Tea Party faithful will protest health care reform legislation by descending on the Senate to holding a "die-in." But while the Tea Baggers will feign dropping dead to dramatize their opposition to health care reform they wrongly believe will leading to rationing, they seem blissfully unconcerned about the thousands […]

For the Republican Party, the only thing worse than lower income Americans not having access to health insurance is having it. That's the conclusion of Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn, who on Sunday deemed the popular Medicaid program that serves 60 million Americans a "health care gulag." That fear-mongering came just days after his Tennessee […]

A funny thing has happened on America's way to health care reform. As Republicans promise a "holy war" to block supposed "government-run" health care that would "break the bank", Democrats in the House and the Senate offered reform plans that would cover all almost Americans, plans which pay for themselves. As it turns out, that's […]

Throughout their all-out campaign to stop health care reform, Republican leaders have relied on questionable forecasts from the Lewin Group, a subsidiary of insurer UnitedHealth Group. Now, another study funded by UnitedHealth has some unwelcome news for the GOP braintrust: the red states they represent are the unhealthiest in the nation. Following on the heels […]

Politics, especially Republican politics, makes for strange bedfellows. With the AARP by their side, President Bush and his GOP allies in 2003 pushed for their unfunded and deeply flawed Medicare prescription drug plan. Now in their scorched earth campaign to block health care reform backed by the seniors' organization, the right-wing has declared war on […]

With its talking babies and warnings of government takeovers and terrified seniors, the grandstanding by House Republicans during Saturday's narrow 220-215 passage of the Democratic Affordable Health Care for America Act was entirely predictable. And if that vote count sounds familiar, it should. Six years ago with the AARP by its side, it was the […]

Everything, they say, is bigger in the Texas. So it is with the failure of the health care system. Leading the nation with a jaw-dropping 25% of its residents uninsured, Texas ranked 46th in the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 scorecard of state health care performance. All of which makes today's op-ed by Newt Gingrich and Governor […]