In the summer of 2009, Bill Kristol urged Republicans not to try to improve Obamacare but to "kill it." That advice is equally trenchant today.

The recently released draft proposal from the federal debt commission offers some useful ideas for reducing runaway federal spending on health care. Even a committee comprising two-thirds Democrats is suggesting tort reform to curb wasteful malpractice lawsuits (Obamacare would do nothing about these), which the CBO says would save $64 billion in federal spending by the end of 2020 – in addition to what it would save Americans as a whole in lowered health costs, as doctors wouldn't feel so compelled to practice wasteful defensive medicine. And the committee's suggestion to increase nominal Medicaid co-pays would save an estimated $15 billion – and probably more so, as beneficiaries would then have at least some additional skin in the game.

The November Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that President Obama's health care overhaul has now hit a lower level of popularity than at any previous time in his presidency. Kaiser writes, "Just a quarter of the public (25 percent) now says they expect their own families to be better off under the health reform law, which is the lowest share since KFF [Kaiser Family Foundation] began tracking this question." Kaiser notes that it began tracking the question in February of 2009, just weeks after President Obama's inauguration. 

Does anyone think that homes, cars, groceries, clothing, etc., would be more affordable if the government instituted a “single-payer” system and exercised it’s monopsony power, hiding the actual prices from consumers?

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has voted to ban toys and similar marketing inducements for kids' menus.