“Over the last nine years, I have certainly made mistakes of degree, emphasis, and judgment."Steven Pearlstein on H.R. 2’s inaptly (ineptly?) named title, Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act:
"What's particularly noteworthy about this fixation with 'job killing' is that it stands in such contrast to the complete lack of concern about policies that kill people rather than jobs."More next Friday.
Creative thoughts - Mr. Laszewski has an interesting take on the individual mandate spotlighted at Kaiser Health News.
For me, the individual mandate is really a non-negotiable; however, Mr. Laszewski's is the first true "practical" compromise I've seen that tactfully addresses a viable substitution to the mandate:
"A compromise could make guarantee issue health insurance entirely voluntary. If it is purchased when the consumer is first eligible -- such as when the exchanges are first available or at the time of a new job -- the consumer would not be subjected to underwriting or preexisting condition rules... But if they didn't purchase coverage when they were first eligible, any preexisting condition would be subject to a two-year waiting period."
Cool tool - Freeware Genius is featuring a free optical character recognition program that converts images to text in multiple languages. Having spent several years as a technical writer, this piqued my interest as a noteworthy find.
Data visualization - Beautifully compiled maps of American dialects such as this pristine example always tend to bring out the nostalgic linguist in me.
