Harold Pollack

According to the Wall Street Journal: GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he wants to reduce the deficit by bringing commercials to PBS. During an appearance in Clinton, Iowa, Romney said “My test is — is a program so critical that it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?” He went on to […]

This posting from last year remains significant to me, especially this holiday season, when many Americans may need an extra helping hand or a cup of coffee in a tough year. More so than myself, my wife Veronica and her brother Vincent are attached to cherished holiday rituals. Since my in-laws have both passed away, […]

Mark Kleiman and I go Bloggingheads on drugs and HIV in the Russian Federation, poppy eradication in Afghanistan, Mexican drug violence, dealing with drug users and drug sellers in United States. [Cross-posted at The Reality-Based Community]

Christopher Hitchens’ death has occasioned an outpouring of deep affection and sadness among his many friends, and an outpouring of equally deeply-felt criticism of both his misjudgments and his excessive drinking and smoking. Some of the deepest praise and the deepest criticisms have come from the same people. Then there was Hitchens’ unapologetic and polemical […]

With everything else going on, some very bad news has slipped by without a lot of public attention. As most RBC readers know, every major public health expert body from the Institute of Medicine to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, to the White House Office of […]

Dr. Donald Berwick, administrator, until last Thursday, of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has been out doing some great television and radio interviews this week. He’s come out swinging about death panels, rationing, the need for universal access to care, quality improvement, and other delivery reforms. But here’s my question: Why now, after […]

I could never present myself as a fitting representative of the Jewish religion or the Jewish people. I very rarely blog about Israel because I don’t have a lot to add that more knowledgeable people can’t express with greater authority. I do take great pride in the Jewish community and my heritage, and I feel […]

The first Monday of every month, I help to host Doctors for America’s one-hour phone conference “Learn from the experts.” We have a nice, substantive discussion with policy experts. We’ve had some people you’ve heard of: Henry Aaron, Jon Gruber, Jeffrey Toobin, Timothy Jost, Mark Peterson, Barbara Starfield, Thomas Bodenheimer, Zeke Emanuel, and others. Last […]

I put up a piece yesterday under the perhaps-surprising title of George W. Bush brings his awesomeness on AIDS Day. I’m, um, not a huge George W. Bush fan. But PEPFAR was a genuinely great thing. Of course there’s a Nixon-to-China aspect of a Republican president taking leadership in the fight against AIDS. Many others […]

I just passed by some OWS protesters. Many progressives—me, for instance—worry that OWS will promote destructive alienation from the hard and sustained work of conventional politics. If a sizeable chunk of progressive youth are passive in 2012, that is the functional equivalent of a Nader candidacy. The best way to prevent this is to find […]