Free Republic

While overall health care spending slowed in 2009, it is the underlying trend that is more troubling: the continuing decline in private coverage and the steady increase in government health care. These trends will only accelerate under Obamacare. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), total health care spending grew by 4 percent in 2009 to reach $2.5 trillion. This represents a slower rate of growth from 2008, but the slower increase still outpaced spending as an overall percentage of GDP. The 3.2 percent decline in private coverage and the slowing of out-of-pocket spending by consumers are...

And the hits from the heartland just keep coming. In 2006, Democrats swept statewide races in Ohio and declared that they had turned the once solidly Republican state into a Democratic stronghold, led by the duo at the top of the ticket, Governor Ted Strickland and Lt. Governor Lee Fisher. Four years later, the two have gone into free-fall, according to two Quinnipiac polls. First, yesterday’s poll shows the incumbent Governor trailing his Republican challenger, John Kasich, by 17 points:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Daily circulation figures for US newspapers released on Monday provided more bad news for the embattled industry. Average daily circulation fell more than 10 percent in the April-September period compared with the same period last year, accelerating a slide that has led to bankruptcies, closures and cutbacks in newsrooms across the country. Average circulation for 562 Sunday newspapers was down 7.49 percent. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) figures also confirmed a claim made earlier this month by The Wall Street Journal that it had become the largest US newspaper by weekday circulation, leapfrogging USA Today. Of...