Democratic Divide on Health Care

The Obama Administration is hinting that it is willing to drop the public insurance plan in order to pass a bill. The Senate is considering health care cooperatives. U.S. News and World Report Reporter Kent Garber tells us how they would work.

Murder Allegations Against Blackwater Founder

Two former Blackwater employees have filed statements in federal court claiming that Blackwater founder and owner Erik Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of people who were cooperating with federal officials who were investigating the company. Jeremy Scahill also reports in The Nation that Blackwater, recently renamed as Xe Services, still has an armed presence in Iraq.

Another View of Afghanistan

An Afghan man dances, left, as another plays a drum during an election campaign rally for presidential candidate and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 17, 2009. (AP)

Ahead of this week’s elections in Afghanistan, most of the news has been connected to the violence. But the BBC’s Lyse Doucet found a respite in the storm. She met a sushi chef in the central highlands town of Bamiyan, home of two statues of Buddha that were toppled by the Taliban in 2001.

Presidents and Health Care

While the debate over health care reform continues, we’re reminded that the issue has a long history. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt made national health insurance an issue in his last, losing campaign for the White House in 1912. Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, joins us to put the current debate over health care reform into historical context.

Will the healthcare debate reverberate in 2010?

Writer Nick Burd

We speak with Nick Burd about his debut young-adult novel. “The Vast Fields of Ordinary” is the story of Dade, a young man growing up gay in Iowa and his eventful summer between high school and college.

Music from the show

Air, “Mike Mills”
Herbie Hancock, “Watermelon Man”
Tito Puente, “Royal T”
The Lickets, “Serial East”
Freddie Hubbard, “Little Sunflower”
Peter Dixon, “Nagog Woods”
The Wee Trio, “About a Girl”
George Michael “Faith”

Karen

Aargh! How are we supposed to create a 500,000-member “viable” co-op for Western states where there are less than 1 million people in the entire state? — and such a co-op would have to span an area of 750 x 500+ miles area: this co-op idea is not possible to achieve in a low-population, giant-geographic area.

Many different entities (many are out-of-state organizations, or counties) already own all the hospitals. The rare regional hospitals already have a hard time getting “club”-like members to sign-up for their outpatient education health programs.

Health care co-ops do not make sense in all states. This bad idea is dreamed-up by large-population state reps who have no idea about small-pop. / huge-geog. Western states — and to many Westerners it sounds like YET MORE prejudice against rural citizens. Politicians do not spend enough time in rural Western states to GET A CLUE. They need to get out of D.C.!

They do not realize that the state of MT, for instance, if superimposed on the Eastern seaboard, would stretch from Chicago to the coast. If there were only 900,000 people living from Chicago to the East Coast, they would be raising hell against this idea, due to obvious viability obstacles.

CO-OPS CANNOT WORK THRU-OUT THE U.S.!!!