I’m getting really good at recognizing instantly the latest vapid or ridiculous soundbite that Clinton has settled on and will be repeating again and again.  So I detected her latest one the moment she introduced it at last Thursday’s debate: It’s easy to diagnose the problem. You’ve got to be able to solve the problem. […]

Okay, so the title of a Washington Post op-ed piece today by research fellow and director of polling at the Cato Institute Emily Ekins is “Millennials like socialism — until they get jobs.”  She knows that this is do because a recent Reason-Rupe poll—that’s libertarian magazine Reason, and some polling organization they hired—found that: When […]

In the Comments thread today to my post yesterday titled “Clinton Announces When She Will Disclose Her Healthcare Insurance Improvement Plan: She’ll announce it just as soon as the Republican presidential candidates tell us theirs,” reader Urban Legend wrote, as part of a several-paragraph comment: While a single payer plan is superior in theory — […]

Paul Krugman has been incessantly complaining about some Sanders supporters who accuse him and other high-profile Sanders critics, especially academics, of conflict of interest. The Sanders supporters allege all manner of self-interested reasons for the Sanders animus, much of it (including Krugman’s) expressed with vitriol. I’m not among the Sanders supporters who subscribe to the […]

Sarah Kliff has a very helpful account of Vermont’s attempt to create a state-level single-payer health care system, and why it failed. It’s a bit like the old joke about the farmer, asked for directions, who says “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.” The point is not that single-payer is a bad idea. It is that given […]

[T]there are serious questions about how we’re going to pay for what we want to see our country do. And, I’m the only candidate standing here tonight who has said I will not raise taxes on the middle class. I want to raise incomes, not taxes, and I’m going to do everything I can to […]

FOLLOW-UP TO: The critical point that Paul Waldman highlights, perhaps unwittingly, about the healthcare debate between Clinton and Sanders I exchanged the following comments with reader Lyle in the Comments thread to my post titled “The critical point that Paul Waldman highlights, perhaps unwittingly, about the healthcare debate between Clinton and Sanders”: Lyle /January 18, […]

Back when I was in college, a professor in one of the science courses I took in order to fulfill the Liberal Arts Science requirement made the point—maybe specifically in refutation of Creationists, although I don’t remember—that it is scientists, not those who contest and try to interfere with scientific discoveries, who will ultimately prove […]

Second, single-payer would require a lot of additional tax revenue — and we would be talking about taxes on the middle class, not just the wealthy. It’s true that higher taxes would be offset by a sharp reduction or even elimination of private insurance premiums, but it would be difficult to make that case to […]

UPDATE: To see the winning Clinton claim, read my my comment to Robert Waldmann’s post above.  —- Last week when Chelsea Clinton made he now-infamous statements about Sanders’ single-payer healthcare insurance plan—specifically, the one he proposed as a bill in 2013, but presumably a blueprint for the one he plans to propose—I wondered how Sanders […]