buckdata – news and views for an unquiet age

Proposed legislation adding a public option to the health care legislation enacted earlier this year was introduced in Congress July 21, sponsored by Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). HR 5808, introduced with 128 co-sponsors, would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to begin offering affordable health benefits as a public option as part of [...]

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I have decided that 65 is the new 30. Age 30 was a watershed.  Age 65 or thereabouts will be one too. Many of us who after 30 “got serious,” raised our children, bought a house, and worked at jobs we may not always have loved to try to hang onto it, get another chance. [...]

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It’s Christmas time. The cookies are in play. These have a different frosting, tweaked spices, lots of sugar and butter. What do I think? I think of my aunt’s diabetes, of elevated glucose levels. I think of my hard-won battle with cholesterol. I think of the movie, Supersize Me, that I recently got from the [...]

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Why can’t health care be more like firefighting? Firefighters, you did great. California’s Lockheed Fire, which extended over more than 12 square miles,  is 100% contained.  It took the labor of thousands of you to battle back the blaze before it spread to homes, injured people, and destroyed farms. Although outbuildings and some seasonal cabins [...]

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Friends, family, and acquaintances are raising questions about whether President Obama  can accomplish  what we helped elect him to do. Will the wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will clean energy really be funded? Will Bush-era wiretap and other privacy violations be sufficiently curtailed?  Will single payer health care get endorsed or merely sidelined? Will [...]

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