This fluffy consumer-oriented piece about the benefits of subscription-based services misses some key issues that it could have covered, like the seller's incentive to seek renewals, and like the challenging revenue recognition issues. One might expect more from a publication like this.

This opinion piece clearly explains a serious problem in US policy that's leading to the loss of knowledge work to other countries.

A fascinating first-person account of a man whose father died from an infection he got in a hospital. Goldhill considers the costs of insurance, and makes a strong case against the moral hazard of third-party payer health care.

Fascinating! A well-wriitten and engaging account of medical students who take the role of residents of skilled nursing facilities, and get first-hand experience of what it's like to live there.

This story is typical of the journalistic laziness that has allowed the public debate about health-care reform to be swamped by rumors and misinformation. The truth of the matter is that the EHR initiative is based on open-source offerings already in use by the VA that have shown remarkable success in controlling costs while improving veterans' care.

Terrific piece showing the details of end-of-life care, and the hard work of compassion everybody goes through -- health professionals, families, patients. It's worth reading this three times -- once as if you're a family member, again as if you're the doctor, and again as if you're the patient. Only one critique: the piece has nothing to say about the spiritual dimension of end-of-life care. Every accredited hospital and every hospice offers a chaplaincy service; these folks are ... More »

This brief story attempts, without much success, to put the accusations of mandatory euthanasia into context. Every day in any hospitals there are questions about whether a dying patient should be put on a respirator, or not. This story might have done better if it dealt with those situations, not just crude Nazi-era eugenics.

This brief account of a religious convention doesn't go into sufficient depth on the prosperity gospel movement, or its history of fleecing people.

Brodner has turned transcripts of the interviews gathered by NY Attorney General Cuomo into a fascinating narrative of the cell-phone and board-room wheeling and dealing that led to Bank of America closing the deal with the failing Merrill Lynch at the first of the year 2009.

This balanced article tells two stories -- one of patients who get stuck with large medical bills, and another of physicians and other providers who try to make up their managed-care losses by charging a lot to out-of-network patients.

The lede of this mostly good story about patient confidentiality is missing a key point: the effective date of the privacy part of the Health Insurance Privacy and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) didn't go into effect until 2003, well after the privacy breach the article describes.

Interesting reflective surgeon's account of treating a patient who waited too long. The author explores how the healthcare system copes with such patients, and how they try to understand what went wrong. It touches on the issue of community distrust of medicine, but doesn't dig into that deeply.

In this opinion piece, Pearlstein loses his cool over the baloney being thrown around by opponents of health care reform. But in the midst of that he clearly explains the insurance exchange and some of the financing numbers.

Interesting interview with a skillful politician about the financial challenges facing local governments.

Terrible, narrow-minded story. It doesn't explain the Islamic concept of Zakat, in which the faithful are expected to give 1/40th of their net worth to charity each year. It doesn't explain what a problem that huge fountain of money is to distribute, and how the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development is one of many organizations trying to put that money to charitable use.

What a bunch of lurid foolishness! This from a newspaper that won't run comic strips ... "Megachurch congregants like having sex!" wow! who knew? Give me a break.

This story about conflict between a religious institution and the civil authorities over green energy gives a hint at how frustrating it can be to do things new ways. It talks about the kind of zeal it takes to overcome bureaucratic inertia. One wishes it had more of the city's side of the story -- but maybe the city's opposition is faceless, rather than intelligent.

This long article about the hunt for bin Laden is a grimly fascinating read, full of complex historical data. With good sources it confirms rumors about Jimmy Carter-style micromanagement of special field operations among Bush's people. I'm starting to wonder, though, if it's even possible to write about Bush administration war efforts in an even-handed way. The article starts off sounding like so much clear hindsight. Only at the end do we learn that Newsweek had reporters in ... More »

This is an extraordinary breaking-news story as it contains lots of background about its topic.

This article partially debunks the spin that "Romney got [universal health insurance] done by reaching across the political aisle." It doesn't quite tell the story, even though it quotes the right sources, like McDonough. The truth of the matter is that the people reached across the State House steps, grabbed both Romney and the legislature by the lapels, and forced them kicking and screaming to do something about inadequate health care for the poor.

This long excerpt from a forthcoming book lays out the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of separation of religion and politics. It explains how recent and tenuous that separation really is. By looking at 16th-century Reformation history (not a model for nonviolent change!), the author offers suggestions to 21st-century Muslim reformers. The comprehensiveness of this work is very helpful to understanding the world.

This is a decent job by the ombudsman reviewing a disputed story answering reader accusations that the reporter is repeating propaganda without checking it. He makes the point that people forget the history of coverage, and that reporters shouldn't assume readers can remember all the articles they've written. But, considering the NYT's history, he should have mentioned the Judith Miller episode, where she repeated propaganda.

WaPo opens up their files and writes the big picture story now that Rove is going.

This story does a good job of bringing out the local ramifications of evil deeds many decades ago. It represents the New England Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) position with care, but it does leave me wondering whether there's more to the national ADL position.

This brief article describes a highly irregular naming of a huge list of Muslim charities as "unidicted co-conspirators." The article would be substantially improved if it had a discussion of the Muslim approach to charitable giving. This approach, called Zakah, requires faithful Muslims to give 1/40th of their net worth to charity each year. In the United States this generates a lot of money which has to be faithfully handled, and that's what many of these charities try to do.