Today's Opinions and Editorials

More Than Onerous The New York Times
After a year of national debate, a handful of House Democrats who oppose abortion may be the ones to decide whether health care reform goes forward or not. ... We are puzzled and dismayed that these legislators are willing to waste that opportunity because they say the onerous anti-abortion provisions in the Senate's bill are still not onerous enough (3/14).

The House Health Care Vote And The Constitution The Wall Street Journal
To be sure, each House of Congress has power to 'determine the Rules of its Proceedings.' Each house can thus determine how much debate to permit, whether to allow amendments from the floor, and even to require supermajority votes for some types of proceeding. But House and Senate rules cannot dispense with the bare-bones requirements of the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 7, passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another (Michael McConnell, 3/15).

Rep. Paul Ryan On What Real Health Reform Should Look Like The Washington Post
The tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage subsidizes insurance instead of health care, hides the true cost of coverage and disproportionately favors the wealthy at the expense of the self-employed, the unemployed and small businesses (Rep. Paul Ryan, 3/15).

Universal Health Care Tends To Cut The Abortion Rate The Washington Post
To oppose expanded coverage in the name of restricting abortion gets things exactly backward. It's like saying you won't fix the broken furnace in a schoolhouse because you're against pneumonia (T.R. Reid, 3/14).

Why Republican Should Support Health Care Reform Chicago Tribune
If I were still a member of Congress, I would proudly vote for the bill that President Barack Obama is championing and I would urge my colleagues to do the same, not because I don't believe in fiscal discipline, but because I do (Ray LaHood, 3/14).

Can Incremental Health Reform Provide A Path Forward? Kaiser Health News
Incremental proposals make reform more complicated — many of the pieces of the current reform bills are interrelated — but they can provide significant and sustainable changes in the right direction (Gail Wilensky, 3/15).

Why Medicare Pays To Train New Doctors St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It takes more than just four years of medical school to become a practicing physician; more, even, than successful completion of a residency and fellowship. It takes Medicare — your tax dollars (3/15).

The Medicalization of Life Los Angeles Times
Medicalization is the process of turning more people into patients. It encourages more of us to be anxious about our health and undermines our confidence in our own bodies (H. Gilbert Welch, 3/15).

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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.