Regarding the third article, brain science has a very significant (if not the most significant) role to play in medical science overall in the decades ahead.
I am curious as to what percentage of healthcare spending is spent on addicts
Heritage did what Heritage did. Revisionist history, no matter how compelling, is not persuasive. In an apparent effort to show maximum impact, they (also apparently) overreached a bit and got burned. It happened. Deal with it and move on. I can understand their motives; this is sure to come up again and again during the presidential debates.
Butler’s argument is pretty weak, and it’s pretty hard to see how the current legislation is unconstitutional if there were no constitutional issues with the Heritage-proposed mandate. He basically admitted that Heritage’s advocacy for the mandate was a purely partisan action, and it is pretty clear that their opposition to the current law is also for partisan reasons. It is unfortunate that politics too often get in the way looking for real solutions to the big policy issues of the day.
I’m not sure I find Stuart Butler very persuasive.
I really enjoyed reading all of these! Great list of links.
Regarding the third article, brain science has a very significant (if not the most significant) role to play in medical science overall in the decades ahead.
I am curious as to what percentage of healthcare spending is spent on addicts
Heritage did what Heritage did. Revisionist history, no matter how compelling, is not persuasive. In an apparent effort to show maximum impact, they (also apparently) overreached a bit and got burned. It happened. Deal with it and move on. I can understand their motives; this is sure to come up again and again during the presidential debates.
RE the addicts brain — this is consistant with the modern medical view that addiction is a disease, not a moral failing.
Uwe is right.
Butler’s argument is pretty weak, and it’s pretty hard to see how the current legislation is unconstitutional if there were no constitutional issues with the Heritage-proposed mandate. He basically admitted that Heritage’s advocacy for the mandate was a purely partisan action, and it is pretty clear that their opposition to the current law is also for partisan reasons. It is unfortunate that politics too often get in the way looking for real solutions to the big policy issues of the day.
Also John, the Ferrara link goes to the Butler article (I assume it’s supposed to go to this instead: http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/21/heritage-and-the-individual-ma).