The Great Debate UK

from The Great Debate:

Refuting healthcare myths

-- David Magnus, Phd, is the director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. The views expressed are his own. --

The public discussion of healthcare reform has been full of so many lies and myths that it is less a policy debate than bad theater.

Critics of reform (conservatives hoping to score political points and oppose Obama on anything; free market ideologues; those with threatened financial interests) have stooped to absurdity in their public pronouncements. One publication declared that severely disabled physicist Stephen Hawking would never get life saving medicine in a national health system, ignoring that Hawking is British—virtually all of his life saving treatments were done through their National Health Service.

As debate over reforming health care continues, these are some of the key myths that get in the way of truly meaningful discussion.

from The Great Debate:

For Palin, rules have never applied

Matthew E. Berger covered Palin’s vice presidential campaign as an embedded reporter for NBC News and National Journal. He is the author of a book on Palin’s campaign and political future, scheduled for release in the fall by Wiley.  The article originally appeared on Politico.com. The views expressed are his own.

Standard Washington political rules state that any presidential aspirants must finish out their term, write a book, travel to Iowa and New Hampshire, and start talking policy. Any deviation from the norm suggests political suicide, and many analysts have spent the past few days writing Sarah Palin’s political obituary.

from The Great Debate:

G20 should be pragmatic about protectionism

-- Paul Blustein is a journalist-in-residence at the Brookings Institution. He is writing a book on the World Trade Organization, which will be published in September. The views expressed are his own. --

Telling young people to abstain from sex is “not realistic at all" -- new mother Bristol Palin, 18.