Linkomania.

The healthcare-reform battleground shifts to caregivers and communities. (Atul Gawande, New Yorker)

The most interesting, under-discussed, and potentially revolutionary aspect of the [new] law is that it doesn’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, through a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, it offers to free communities and local health systems from existing payment rules, and let them experiment with ways to deliver better care at lower costs. In large part, it entrusts the task of devising cost-saving health-care innovation to communities like Boise and Boston and Buffalo, rather than to the drug and device companies and the public and private insurers that have failed to do so. This is the way costs will come down—or not.

That’s the one truly scary thing about health reform: far from being a government takeover, it counts on local communities and clinicians for success. We are the ones to determine whether costs are controlled and health care improves—which is to say, whether reform survives and resistance is defeated.

Emerging mega-cities, rather than nations, now driving global growth. (Guardian)

Toronto ranks worst in commuter times in world survey. (Toronto Star)

Rising auto sales could trigger Michigan comeback. (Christian Science Monitor)

Is Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful woman in U.S. history? (Guardian)

U.S. House Speaker Pelosi with healthcare reform bill, which gained passage due to her resolve and parliamentary ingenuity. (Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images.) 

What did Amex's CEO do to justify $80.1 million in pay? Surprisingly little. (New Yorker)

Few execs have fled bailed-out firms where exec pay has been drastically cut, contrary to long-held conventional wisdom among corporate directors and pay consultants about the need for outrageous compensation to prevent defections. (The Big Picture)

If HCR's individual mandate is unconstitutional, so was George Washington's 1792 Militia Act forcing everyone to buy guns. (Joe Conason, Salon)

German non-rescue of Greece reveals eurozone as a hapless monetary union. (Daily Telegraph)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at Greece "rescue" summit. Both leaders are loath to accept responsibility for fellow eurozone members' debt.  

Funny how public opinion matters so much to Republicans who were dismissive of it while in power. (Glenn Greenwald, Salon)

How China keeps sabotaging its world reputation. (Fortune)

Shocker: Wall Street despised by Main Street. (Bloomberg)

Global oil reserves exaggerated by one-third. (Daily Telegraph)

Shocker II: Researchers says fatty foods may be addictive. Also, gravity may cause untethered heavy objects to crash to the ground. (CNN Health)

College grads to be cryogenically frozen until job market improves. (Onion)

WASHINGTON—In a bold new measure intended to address unemployment among young professionals, the Frozen For Their Future Act, lawmakers from across the political spectrum agreed on legislation Tuesday to subsidize the cryogenic freezing of recent college graduates until the job market recovers...

'Were we to freeze these graduates at the height of vigor and ambition, there's a chance we could revive them during a more prosperous time', Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said. 'When the economy finally bounces back—10, 20, even 30 years from now—we'll have an entire generation thawed out and ready to contribute.'

 
Grads to chill out.  

 

 

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

David - a great selection as usual.
It's amazing - that article on the over estimation of the oil reserves keeps popping up - but no politicians are even blinking about it - let alone planning for it...

[David Olive]

Neither the U.S. nor Canada have an energy policy worth the name. Obama at least as several pieces - accelerating green-tech R&D, subsidies to automakers (Nissan, not just Detroit) for fuel-efficient vehicle development, "clean coal" R&D (a non sequitur, there is no such thing) - but he hasn't pulled them together as a package you could put a rallying cry to. And up here we have home-insulation tax credits, while Athabasca is a global eco-disgrace.