Dr. Tom

The visit to Idyllwild by seven Rotarians from South Africa and Botswana last week was a great experience for all. Imagine hearing lions in...

Two interesting things happened last week — besides the other really interesting thing that I’m not going to talk about (much) — both of...

I’ve got a really strange idea and here is how it happened. I read a news report about Ben Carson, our secretary of Housing...

A weird week, wasn’t it? Here is some food for thought. Off the wall, maybe out of touch. But, in the immortal words of...

Imagine that you run a U.S. small business. You have long-term employees to whom you are loyal and vice versa. You have an anniversary...

Medical care in the U.S. is so much more expensive than every other country. How can we fix that? A dollar in U.S. medical...

While everyone would agree that the passage of Medicare in 1965 was a landmark event in not only American healthcare but also American politics,...

I am deviating from my plan to write more about the history of healthcare and the U.S. government because of Saturday’s Campaign for Guaranteed...

You will probably be surprised to learn that the first U.S. president to propose any form of government-sponsored healthcare was a Republican. OK, technically a former Republican. Teddy Roosevelt served as our 26th president from 1901 to 1909, after which his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, was elected. Returning from a safari and European tour, Roosevelt found himself unimpressed with Taft’s performance and sought the Republican nomination in 1912. Rebuffed, he founded the Progressive Party, which included in its platform the provision of limited health insurance to low-wage earners. (Sorry, I know this is upsetting to modern Republicans, but it is true; look it up. You can take some solace in the Progressive Party’s alias: The Bull Moose Party).

By Thomas R. Kluzak, M.D. Whipping up fear, to which we respond in a visceral often irrational way, is a favorite tactic of politicians, and...