GoozNews

Just a short note this morning to highlight the outpouring of opposition to the Trump regime’s attempt to impose its political priorities on federally-funded scientific research, which I called modern-day Lysenkoism in this GoozNews article in early June when the rule was first proposed. Who was Trofim Lysenko?

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry while reading the White House report entitled Saving America’s Story, wherein which the current leadership of the Smithsonian Institution stands accused of ignoring the glories of the founding fathers and “abandoning historical scholarship for political activism.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

The GOP-fostered uninsurance crisis is growing faster than a newborn volcano, one that will do grave harm to those directly affected and later this year will begin spewing its molten crap on everyone. The Associated Press reported Friday that nearly 3 million people dropped Obamacare health insurance plans during the first two months of 2026. That’s a 13% fall from the 22.1 million people who purchased individual or family plans on the exchanges in 2025.

I count just five times over the past 250 years when pervasive inequality and unfairness in American life gave rise to political movements that succeeded in forcing far-reaching and long-lasting social change. The first was the abolitionist movement that ended slavery and provided African-Americans with equal rights under the law. It took a civil war — still the bloodiest conflict in our history — and the rewriting of the U.S. constitution to accomplish those goals, albeit for men only.

In 1937, a small Tennessee firm called Massengill & Co. suspended an antibiotic in the sweet-tasting chemical used to make antifreeze, thinking children would like it better that way. Within weeks, over 100 people died, most of them children. A year later, and exactly 88 years ago this month, an outraged Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the first law requiring pharmaceutical companies test drugs for safety.

Anyone whose employer provides health coverage knows the drill. Each fall, they are offered a menu of potential health care plan choices for the following year. It usually includes three options. First, there is a preferred provider plan, which pays most of the bills, has few limits on provider choice, and has the highest paycheck deduction.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has an excellent column on his Substack today explaining why the projected shortfall in the Social Security trust fund, which if left unaddressed by Congress could lead to a 20% cut in benefits in late 2032, is entirely due to rising income inequality in the U.S. As he points out, you can’t blame the Baby Boom (the first post-WWII generation) for the shortfall.

Today’s inflation report is a wake-up call for wannabe-be health care reformers. It provides the perfect opening for injecting how to control hospital prices into this year’s political debate. The overall inflation rate ratcheted up 4.2% last month, driven largely by fast-rising gasoline and diesel prices that are entirely due to Trump’s ill-conceived, undeclared and unwinnable war against Iran. If you take out food and energy, inflation was up “only” 2.9%.

A little over a year ago, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia sent threatening letters to editors of several leading medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, CHEST and the American Journal of Public Health. Edward R. Martin, the conservative activist-attorney who now manages pardons for the president, questioned their editors’ alleged bias against “competing viewpoints” when deciding what to publish.

Would-be reformers must address the need to transform the health care delivery system into one that delivers better health, not just more sick care. As we head toward the mid-term elections, affordability has seized center stage in the health care debate, and for good reason. Americans of every class and health status are upset about the amount of money they must shell out to buy insurance and pay the extra bills that arrive after they get sick. The ruling Republican regime is making things worse.