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...Is still a public option. With health care reform now flailing the President is weighing his options. There are those that say that he may give up the public option for an alternative. We'll all wait and see, but, make no mistake, any government involvement is still a public option, and all public options will lead to single payer health care.

Before leaving for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Barack Obama said the next big item on his legislative agenda -- well, after health care and cap-and-trade and maybe labor's bill to effectively abolish secret ballots in union elections -- was immigration reform. What he has in mind, apparently, is something like the comprehensive immigration bills that foundered in the House in 2006 and in the Senate in 2007. These featured guest-worker and enforcement provisions, as well as a path to legalization.

A new study on the supposed cost savings of preventative care has put a mack truck hole in the idea that giving everyone access to preventative care will save health care costs. Using data from long-standing clinical trials, researchers projected the cost of caring for people with Type 2 diabetes as they progress from diagnosis to various complications and death. Enrolling federally-insured patients in a simple but aggressive program to control the disease would cost the government $1,024 per person per year -- money that largely would be recovered after 25 years through lower spending on dialysis, kidney transplants, amputations...

There is now a plethora of analysis about where Obama's health care plans went wrong, where his agenda went wrong, and why his popularity is dropping like a lead balloon. The best analysis came from Scott Rasmussen. Rasmussen said that support for health care reform was tanking because it is the culmination of a multitude of domestic policies the public doesn't like: the stimulus, cash for clunkers, the bailouts, etc. The public had finally gotten fed up and their pent up anger had reached its limits.

At first it seemed plausible that President Obama had a communications problem on health care -- to which the solution was always more and more Obama. But exposure did not translate into persuasion. Then it seemed useful to diagnose a partisan problem, blaming a small minority of congressional obstructionists and town hall crazies for frustrating the will of the majority -- until polls showed a majority opposing Democratic approaches to health reform. More Americans (according to a recent Washington Post poll) now think that health quality, costs and their own insurance coverage will get worse under Obamacare than believe these...

Barack Obama picked up considerable political support for his overhaul of the American health-care system by promising a limit on price concessions to the pharmaceutical manufacturers. They signed onto ObamaCare after getting assurances that their givebacks would amount to no more than $80 billion over 10 years and that the federal government would not try to bargain for lower pricing using its advantage through Medicare. Henry Waxman plans to renege on just about every aspect of that agreement:

As I was reading Paul Krugman’s column this morning, it struck me that I hadn’t commented on the “public option”. One brief aside on the column itself. Dr. Krugman laments

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I will need to give a thousand words because my phone camera is not working and all my photos won't download.

It's been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama's health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it.

Today, at noon Central Time, Daley Plaza was the home of one of 435 tea party demonstrations against Obama Care. This particular protest was directed specifically at Senator Dick Durbin. Senator Durbin declined to attend and the crowd let Durbin know just how they felt about his lack of attention to his constituency. This demonstration was promoted by John and Cisco of 560 WIND. The Thomas More Law Center was also a sponsor and they did the leg work in getting the permit.

President Obama continued his public relations whirlwind health care tour with this op ed. He purported to "debunk" a series of health care myths that he claims were created by opponents of health care. These include that illegals will get health care, abortions will be funded with tax payer money, death panels, and that this is a government take over of health care.

Here's what a Reid aide recently said about the Democrats' plan to pass health care reform. we will not make a decision to pursue reconciliation until we have exhausted efforts to produce a bipartisan bill.” “However,” he cautioned, “patience is not unlimited and we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary.” “By any means necessary”

FOR generations, we doctors have promised our patients that medical advances will allow us all to live longer, more comfortable lives. Now that these results are finally arriving, "health-care reform" -- or "insurance reform," as they're now pitching it -- could snatch the rug out from under us.

With the specter of government rationing provided in the health care bill, many liberals have taken to pointing out that we already have rationing today. They are absolutely correct. In fact, economics, by nature, is all about rationing. Economics figures out how the production of goods and services are distributed with the limited resources of the world. In fact, life is all about rationing. If it weren't, I would be writing this piece from some tropical island in Hawaii off my 50000 square foot cruiser. I am not because I can't afford that. So, of course liberals are right. The...

The people behind the long table do not know what they've become. The drug of power has been sugared over in their mouths with a flavoring of righteousness. Someone has to make these decisions, they tell their friends at dinner parties. It's all very difficult for us. But you can see it in their eyes: It isn't really difficult at all. It feels good to them to be the ones who decide.

There is now full confusion over whether or not the White House has or has not backed away from the public option. On Sunday, HHS Secretary Sebelius suggested that the President could sign a bill that won't have a public option. Then, Senator Kent Conrad said that a public option doesn't have the votes in the Senate to pass. Now, this morning, the White House is back pedaling and claiming that Secretary Sebelius misspoke.

The Federal Reserve's unprecedented intervention into the U.S. economy has inflamed more Americans than almost any other issue in recent memory. More than 75 percent of Americans now support an audit of the Federal Reserve system, and it's no wonder

One of the most remarkable things about the implosion of the Obama agenda is that on principle it's no different from anything that he campaigned on. A couple years ago I spoke with Republican activist who told me that the Republicans were losing the health care debate. I couldn't believe that the public at large was being swayed by socialized medicine but in fact for the last two years of the Bush administration that's exactly what was happening.

The measure of the impact of health-care protests can now be seen on another major item on the Barack Obama agenda. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has called on the Senate to jettison the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill for this year, calling it “too big” after the political turmoil of the eruption of anger on ObamaCare. Three other Democrats have publicly supported the idea of focusing only on promotion of renewable energy:

Like most economists, many Americans think the worst of the nation's economic troubles are in the past. The latest FOX News poll finds that 44 percent say the worst is over -- up significantly from 27 percent who thought so in April. Still, nearly half of the public (49 percent) says the worst is yet to come, down significantly from 66 percent from five months ago.