The public plan has a very particular political lineage: The lesson liberals took from the 1994 health reform fight was that you couldn’t threaten the insurance coverage individuals already had. For many policy wonks, the central problem in health care was the existence of private insurance coverage. For most Americans, however, the central problem was that they could lose their private insurance coverage, and be left with something they didn’t like, or nothing at all. This effectively ruled out something like single-payer, or even Bill Clinton’s managed-care-within-managed-competition model. It ruled out anything that began by changing the health care coverage of those who wanted to keep their current policies. But that political insight didn’t cancel out the policy insight: The private insurance market is a mess. It’s supposed to cover the sick and instead competes to insure the well. It employs platoons of adjusters whose sole job is to get out of paying for needed health care services that members thought were covered. —“Health Care Reform for Beginners: The Many Flavors of the Public Plan,” Ezra Klein, The Washington Post
Concerns over tennis player’s shrieking (with audio) (via); TVOTR remix of GGD; baby lemurs; a tour of silent-film era London
Despite being touted as a success story of corporate India’s capabilities, the Nano’s cheapness is only possible due to the largesse bestowed upon the Tata’s by that bete noire of the free-market, the lumbering Indian state. It is an open secret that the Nano is deeply discounted because of very large Government subsidies that have neither been scrutinised nor justified. While the Chief Minister of West Bengal had claimed the TINA factor in rolling out the red carpet for this car project at Singur, his Gujarat counterpart feels even less compelled to explain his executive decisions that made the move to Sanand attractive. —“The Nano and its Discontents,” Venu Madhav Govindu and Deepak Malghan, Tehelka
To hear the media tell the tale, the central problem facing working women today is the question of whether they should leave their professional careers to raise children. For much of the past decade, the “opt out” debate has been a staple of style sections and op-ed pages… The recession is an opportune moment to refocus the narrative about women and work on the majority of women who work–those who don’t have multiple degrees or high-power careers. The women who are housecleaners, caregivers, night-shift workers. The women who are stuck in occupations that are primarily female– without union representation or competitive pay. The women who never had a 401(k) in the first place. Instead, the dominant story line about gender and the recession has (surprise!) again been about upper-class women– and men. The Times considered “Why the Sting of Layoffs Can Be Sharper for Men.” New York magazine has created an entire beat devoted to covering the emasculating effects of investment bankers losing their jobs and how their wives are coping. When hourly wage-earning workers enter these stories, it is usually as “perks” that wealthier families have had to give up– the nanny, the gardener, the nail technician– not as people struggling just to make it through the financial crunch. —“When Opting Out Isn’t an Option: It’s time to shift the conversation about women and work,” Ann Friedman, The American Prospect