We simply cannot afford to balance our budget on the backs of people with mental illness

Connecticut is in a budgetary free-fall, but we need to apply the knife verrry carefully. We pay now, or we pay later, particularly when we cut programs for people with mental health issues. Connecticut is a leader in preventing and ending homelessness. Will this budget crisis set us back? Depends on how we make our cuts. I …

How to provide Medicare for all

Leftover sends this, a Marcia Angell column from the Boston Globe, that explains how we can get precisely what the majority of us want, a federally-funded health care system. Single payer now. Single payer forever. amen.

What if we treat guns as we treat abortions?

Supreme Court decides not to decide on birth control

On Monday, the Supreme Court sent back to the lower courts seven cases that that august body had consolidated into one big ol’ hairy birth control case. This says the court punted on the case, brought by various religious groups who fear the birth control portion of the American Care Act (Obamacare) violates their religious freedom. …

O.K., Connecticut. You know what to do:

Today is Connecticut’s presidential primary, and though we are a small state, we like to tell ourselves that we are critical to the American political process. So get out there and vote early and vote often.

Can we keep politics out of health care?

Yeah. I didn’t think so. But I wrote this for CT Health Investigative Team, anyway.

Why Medicaid for Flint, and Medicare for Montana?

Leftover sends this, an exploration as to why the folks of Flint, Mich., were given Medicaid for their toxic water, and the folks of Libby, Mont., were given Medicare for life. Writes Donna Smith at Common Dreams: Governor Snyder pressed the Feds to expand Medicaid coverage to children and youth under 21 years old and to …

If you’ve nothing better to do…

…here’s a recording of yesterday’s WNPR’s “Where We Live” about zoning and housing. I was on that show, but I wasn’t the smartest person there. And here’s a recent copy of Hartford’s draft zoning regulations, all 260 pages of them.

Check out this interactive map about women’s health

How’d your state doe in the Kaiser Family Foundation’s data in State Profiles for Women’s Health? As Leftover (who sent the link in the first place) says: Check out the number of births financed with Medicaid in 2013. 45 percent. Considering our tragically high maternal mortality rate, might there be a correlation? Check out the disproportionate …

Because war and hunger and homelessness are really only trifling affairs:

The House of Representatives has introduced a resolution defending Christmas — which is really kind of stunning, considering Christmas has been just fine for eons without their support. My God. Can this session end quickly enough? The resolution’s 35 co-sponsors of this benighted waste of time have managed a two-fer: They’ve made Santa sad, and they’ve …