Commentary
Business & Economics
Adopt a flax tax to avoid chronic budget crises
Tax time has come and gone, and California finds itself in yet another fiscal crisis. Gov. Schwarzenegger proposed 10 percent across-the-board spending cuts to help close the state’s now-$15 billion projected budget deficit through June 2009. These budget crunches hit the Golden State because of its highly graduated tax code. ...
Commentary
A Primer for Follow-On Biologics
Generic drugs are chemically identical to their brand-name counterparts. And they cost about 70 percent less. That’s why, with healthcare costs escalating, policymakers want to expand the use of generics. As part of that effort, the Senate is considering a measure that would allow the generic drug industry to produce ...
California
Cultural Revolution in San Francisco’s Health Access Plan!
Being Friday, I thought I’d lay off the heavy analysis and have some fun with my old bugaboo, San Francisco’s pointless and expensive Health Access Plan. As discussed before, I am at a loss to understand what this program achieves, other than levying a “pay or play” tax on employers ...
Commentary
Waiting Lists? Hospital Closures? Too Few Doctors? …Canada? No: Los Angeles
An appalling job of reporting in today’s New York Times, about the consequences to Los Angeles’ poorest residents of closing the county-run Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor Hospital almost a year ago. As I’ve written before, the county had plenty of opportunity over the last few months to let private operators ...
Commentary
Plastic or paper? The jury’s still out
The Eureka Reporter, June 5, 2008 It began as a breeze, but soon took on the power of a gale. We’re referring to the campaign intended to replace plastic bags used by many stores with paper ones. The argument was and is that plastic bags will take hundreds of years ...
Charter Schools
Incentive Programs Improve Student Achievement in Charter Schools
Sacramento Union, June 5, 2008 SACRAMENTO – Rewards and incentives, widely used in charter schools, play a key role in reading achievement, according to Paying for A’s, a new report from the Center for Education Research Outcomes at Stanford University. “Incentive programs may not be a silver bullet, but they ...
Commentary
Writing skills lacking across the spectrum
RECENT results from a national student writing test confirm the lament that writing is becoming a lost art, especially in California. Contrary to the sound bites of educators, the inability to write coherent sentences is not just a problem of kids who are learning English. The National Assessment of Educational ...
Commentary
Proposition 13 Turns 30: Why it’s still necessary, and why the pillage people still hate it
SACRAMENTO – Thirty years ago Friday, on June 6, 1978, Californians passed Proposition 13, the “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation” that helped California homeowners but is now blamed for many state woes. Owning a home has always been part of the American dream. During the latter part of the ...
Commentary
Don’t Get Ill in Illinois: State Medical Society Wants to Reduce Patients’ Choices
At the request of an Illinois state representative, the Federal Trade Commission has cast its eye over HB 5372, an appalling bill that threatens to reduce Illinois residents’ choice of where, when, and how they seek out health services. Well aware of the benefits of convenient clinics, the FTC pulls ...
California
California Health Care Deforminator ABX1 1 Rises from the Dead – In Bits & Pieces
In many horror movies, the hero kills the zombie only to find that the baddie’s hand he chopped off keeps crawling towards him, relentless in its quest to strangle the living. Some of the health care bills moving through the California Legislature remind me of that sort of scene. The ...
Adopt a flax tax to avoid chronic budget crises
Tax time has come and gone, and California finds itself in yet another fiscal crisis. Gov. Schwarzenegger proposed 10 percent across-the-board spending cuts to help close the state’s now-$15 billion projected budget deficit through June 2009. These budget crunches hit the Golden State because of its highly graduated tax code. ...
A Primer for Follow-On Biologics
Generic drugs are chemically identical to their brand-name counterparts. And they cost about 70 percent less. That’s why, with healthcare costs escalating, policymakers want to expand the use of generics. As part of that effort, the Senate is considering a measure that would allow the generic drug industry to produce ...
Cultural Revolution in San Francisco’s Health Access Plan!
Being Friday, I thought I’d lay off the heavy analysis and have some fun with my old bugaboo, San Francisco’s pointless and expensive Health Access Plan. As discussed before, I am at a loss to understand what this program achieves, other than levying a “pay or play” tax on employers ...
Waiting Lists? Hospital Closures? Too Few Doctors? …Canada? No: Los Angeles
An appalling job of reporting in today’s New York Times, about the consequences to Los Angeles’ poorest residents of closing the county-run Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor Hospital almost a year ago. As I’ve written before, the county had plenty of opportunity over the last few months to let private operators ...
Plastic or paper? The jury’s still out
The Eureka Reporter, June 5, 2008 It began as a breeze, but soon took on the power of a gale. We’re referring to the campaign intended to replace plastic bags used by many stores with paper ones. The argument was and is that plastic bags will take hundreds of years ...
Incentive Programs Improve Student Achievement in Charter Schools
Sacramento Union, June 5, 2008 SACRAMENTO – Rewards and incentives, widely used in charter schools, play a key role in reading achievement, according to Paying for A’s, a new report from the Center for Education Research Outcomes at Stanford University. “Incentive programs may not be a silver bullet, but they ...
Writing skills lacking across the spectrum
RECENT results from a national student writing test confirm the lament that writing is becoming a lost art, especially in California. Contrary to the sound bites of educators, the inability to write coherent sentences is not just a problem of kids who are learning English. The National Assessment of Educational ...
Proposition 13 Turns 30: Why it’s still necessary, and why the pillage people still hate it
SACRAMENTO – Thirty years ago Friday, on June 6, 1978, Californians passed Proposition 13, the “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation” that helped California homeowners but is now blamed for many state woes. Owning a home has always been part of the American dream. During the latter part of the ...
Don’t Get Ill in Illinois: State Medical Society Wants to Reduce Patients’ Choices
At the request of an Illinois state representative, the Federal Trade Commission has cast its eye over HB 5372, an appalling bill that threatens to reduce Illinois residents’ choice of where, when, and how they seek out health services. Well aware of the benefits of convenient clinics, the FTC pulls ...
California Health Care Deforminator ABX1 1 Rises from the Dead – In Bits & Pieces
In many horror movies, the hero kills the zombie only to find that the baddie’s hand he chopped off keeps crawling towards him, relentless in its quest to strangle the living. Some of the health care bills moving through the California Legislature remind me of that sort of scene. The ...
