The Washington Monthly

Back in July, while trying to justify his opposition to expanding government health care coverage for children, President Bush made a telling comment. The uninsured, he said, "have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

That remark stuck many as blithe and callous, and in many ways it was. The uninsured don’t receive in ERs anything like the full array of health care they need. Indeed, one of the abiding arguments for universal… more

Sara Mead and Michael Dannenberg are quoted in a Washington Monthly article by Ben Adler, the editor of CampusProgress.org, at the Center for American Progress. Adler examines the actions of higher ed lobby organizations and how they impact policy reform.

To read this article, please visit Washington Monthly's web site.

Americans of all political stripes tend to see what they want to see in the European Union. For progressives, its example is supposed to show how a robust welfare state, including universal health care, is consistent with prosperity. It’s also supposed to show how separation of church and state, multilateralism, multiculturalism, opposition to the death penalty, embrace of gay marriage, state-sponsored preschool, gun control, the Kyoto Treaty, and other progressive causes are all consistent with a just and sustainable civilization… more

In his new book, Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis -- and the People Who Pay the Price, Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic, offers a series of chilling anecdotes about ordinary Americans who lack affordable medical care. There’s the mother of three who, after her husband loses his high-tech job and family health benefits, puts off seeing a doctor and winds up dying of breast cancer. There’s the security guard in Los Angeles… more

When Anne Dodge was twenty years old, food suddenly stopped agreeing with her. She would get hungry, she would eat, then a feeling like something gripping her stomach would come over her, and she would retreat to the bathroom to vomit. Suspecting a mental disorder, her primary-care physician referred her to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed anorexia nervosa with bulimia. But despite weekly therapy sessions, Anne continued to lose weight.

As her health deteriorated, she consulted more and more specialists: hematologists because… more

There are, we are told, two kinds of congressional elections. In most even-numbered years, the issues are local and only a few incumbents are vulnerable, usually for reasons unique to them or their districts. Occasionally, as in 1994, an election is decided on national issues and a strong partisan or ideological wave loosens the bonds between even the hardest-working members of Congress and their constituents, and new members are swept in on essentially identical messages.

Last year’s election was something a… more

In 1994, the New Republic asked me to write an article about the Clinton administration’s “reinventing government” (REGO) initiative. REGO, you may recall, was the campaign spearheaded by Vice President Al Gore to improve the performance of federal agencies by encouraging innovation within the bureaucracy...The department I decided to look at was Veterans Affairs...That same year, Clinton appointed Dr. Kenneth Kizer, a physician, public health expert, and registered Republican, to run the entire VA hospital system.… more

A couple of months ago, citing a lead article in the Washington Post, we wrote about a group that seems to consider itself the new proletariat—the $100,000-to-$500,000 income group—and la causa they champion: relief from the alternative minimum tax. Now comes a lead article on the same subject in the Wall Street Journal, with the headline: “Democrats Focus on Tax Relief for the Middle Class.” The article identifies households with incomes with as much as $250,000, and those between $250,000… more

“No tengo futuro,” Jeb Bush told Spanish-language reporters last December. Word that Florida’s popular two-term governor sees himself as having no political future is hardly surprising. Jeb may be the smart one, the one who’s deeply curious and involved with the mechanics of government, the one whose poll ratings as he leaves office show that 57 percent of Floridians believe he was a good, even a great, governor. But he’s also a Bush, and whatever advantages that patrimony may have… more

The greatest challenge in politics is to understand when a political era is closing and the door to a new one is ready to be opened. Thirty years ago, a small band of conservatives understood that what they called the era of “tax and spend” -- in which government grew inexorably on a tide of invisible tax increases through Republican and Democratic administrations -- was ready to be challenged.

In 1977, Rep. Jack Kemp and Sen. Bill Roth introduced a bill… more