Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Saturday, August 22, 2009

Health Care Reform

Commentary By Ron Beasley

It has become fairly obvious that we are not going to get any "real" health care reform this year or even next.  There is a certain segment of the population who will oppose it because it is being pushed by a black Democratic president.  The major reason is there a very few lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually want it.  Oh they want something they can call reform but they don't actually want to reform anything.  Before there can be any real reform the system will have to become even more dysfunctional so that a majority of the population is impacted.  Over at TMV Polimon asks a very good question:

So I�d like to ask a different question (and perhaps go somewhere new):
Why are we stuck on the �insurance� model for health care delivery?

Now as I said this is a very good question although I suspect that Poliman and I probably would have different answers.  Her point is that in every other case but health care insurance  is used to protect us from unexpected catastrophic loss.  Yearly physical exams and routine office visits are not unexpected or catastrophic so why not decouple them from insurance?  She correctly points out that some people will be able to absorb the costs of routine and preventative care and some won't.  How to cover that will be the fodder for another partisan and philosophical battle.  Go check out the post and the comments.



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