Our society and our laws have an outrageous biological bias. The author’s own odyssey suggests why adoption is a much-scorned but often superior alternative to reproductive heroics.
Health & Social Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
Ending Welfare Reform as We Know It
Liberals who embrace welfare reform have conceded too much of the argument to the right. The main problem is not lazy, shiftless welfare mothers; it’s the collapse of the lower middle-class economy.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Imprisoners’ Dilemma
Low-level drug dealers will keep appearing, no matter how many jails we build.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The House That Crack Built: The Inmates of Clark County Jail
T here’s a lot of talk about Crack these days but not much about the house that Crack lives in. So we the inmates of the Clark County Jail will take you on a tour of the Crack House himself. So come on up here on the porch of this old house, it sure ain’t […]
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
The Other Drug War
Universal health care reform demands that we finally control skyrocketing drug prices.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Detoxifying the Debate
A s an art form, caricature is fun. The caricature of ideas, however, does not have the same appeal. And when the caricaturists seek to arouse fears and anxieties by distorting unfamiliar ideas into misshapen and threatening images of insidious evil and betrayal, they do public debate and even their own case a great disservice. […]
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
When Patients Go To Market: The Workings of Managed Competition
A fter a generation of deadlock, there is finally a broad consensus that the health system is broken, and a rare political opportunity to fix it. The present system manages to be simultaneously inflationalry, arbitrary, cumbersome for providers, and unreliable for consumers. But despite the opportunity for reform, we are on the verge of a […]
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Mangled Competition
Despite a once-in-a-generation opportunity, the Clintons are poised to slam the door on single payer national health insurance and embrace a corporate welfare approach with the oxymoronic name: “Managed Competition.” Managed Competition would: Use tax penalties to push all but the wealthy into stripped down, basic group health plans. Deprive most patients of the right […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
What Works: Applying What We Already Know About Successful Social Policy
Three decades of anti-poverty policy have shed much light on the best strategies for helping families.