A selection of today's opinions and editorials

A Leap Forward To Better Care The Washington Post
These bills will provide a bedrock sense of security and stability for Americans who have health insurance, and quality, affordable options for Americans without it (Peter R. Orszag, 11/20).

Health Care And Illegal Immigrants In America: Why Mexico Is The Key Christian Science Monitor
There's something that might help solve part of the problem, satisfying both Democrats and Republicans: a campaign by Mexican officials to improve the state of healthcare in their own country (11/19).

Sebelius's Cave-In On Mammograms Is A Setback For Health-Care Reform The Washington Post
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did a marvelous job this week of undermining the move toward evidence-based medicine with her hasty and cowardly disavowal of a recommendation from her department's own task force that women under 50 are probably better off not getting routine annual mammograms (Steven Pearlstein, 11/20).

Paying For Healthcare Reform With A "Botax" Los Angeles Times
If this were a Republican proposal, I'd suspect it was a form of payback to Hollywood liberals (Jon Healey, 11/19).

The Cost Equation - Especially Of Doing Nothing The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer
You can expand insurance coverage without controlling costs, but you cannot control costs without expanding insurance coverage (Donald H. Taylor Jr., 11/20).

Problems Facing Hennepin Medical Center Demonstrate Need For Reform (The Minneapolis-St. Paul) Star Tribune
What is wrong with this picture? In the richest country in the world and in a state that's traditionally committed to providing help to those in need, Minnesota's biggest safety net hospital is going to stop serving the uninsured in non-emergency situations, close two clinics and lay off up to 200 people. That's what Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), the first and last resort for thousands of Minnesotans, announced on Wednesday (Doug Stone, 11/19).

The Controversy Over Mammograms The New York Times
An expert panel's recommendation that mammography screening to detect breast cancer be scaled back has caused consternation among women and doctors and prompted some attempts to connect the results to the debate over health care (11/19).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.