New America in the News: 2007

With a proposed Mideast peace conference in Annapolis only weeks away, the lofty goals outlined by President Bush seem to be fading beyond reach, with the meeting likely to be scaled back to a single day, according to senior U.S. officials and outside analysts.

The conference, originally expected to be set for late November, might not be held until mid-December, a State Department official hinted yesterday. Bush's spokeswoman called preparations for the conference "tenuous right now." ...

Hillary Clinton and her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are promising new domestic programs, tax cuts for the middle class and a return to balanced budgets. One problem: Their numbers don't add up.

The top candidates, Clinton, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, all propose more than $150 billion a year in tax breaks for middle- income earners and new federal spending on health care, energy and education. They also pledge "fiscal responsibility,'' a phrase Clinton used seven times during an Oct. 30 debate.

Health care spending will consume about half of the U.S. economy in 75 years if nothing is done to curb growing costs, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released on Tuesday....

CBO Director Peter Orszag on Tuesday said that policymakers are focusing on the wrong issue by weighing the effects of the aging baby boom generation on health care costs rather than looking into treatment effectiveness and quality.

The numbers on Wall Street and on the lips of the Treasury Department stir a note of panic on the ear of the average consumer: the U.S. Dollar has lost nearly 23 percent of its value against the global money market since February 2002. In every sector of the market, prices are rising, from oil (nearly $100/barrel) to foreign fruit. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen, and much of the domestic money industry, cringe at the thought of the looming inflation as the dollar fills in the gap between previous saturation and the gap created by a weaker standing.

Shannon Brownlee is among experts writing about health care costs in America. On 'The Diane Rehm Show' Wednesday Brownlee discussed her popular new book, 'Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Americans Sicker and Poorer' (Bloomsbury Press). ...

Gregory Rodriguez's brilliant book on Mexican and Mexican American identity, "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America," threatens my secret dream that I am a direct descendant of some feather-clad Aztec warrior princess who ruled over a Mexica queendom circa 1500.

Merck and Harvard enter a collaboration that reflects the closer ties being forged between industry and academia, but it's a trend that is alarming to some. ...

At a time when federal research dollars have grown scarcer, universities are embracing industry partners interested in getting a first crack at their cutting-edge technologies.

The percentage of people with health insurance through their employers — traditionally the way most people get coverage — is continuing to shrink, raising anxiety among workers and invigorating a debate about whether insurance should be tied to jobs. ...

Premiums continue to go up, although the rate of increase has slowed in the past couple of years. This year, the average increase faced by employers was 6.1%, according to the Kaiser survey, well below the recent peak increase of 13.9% in 2003.

Such premium increases weigh heaviest on lower-income workers.

...About 56 percent of all wage and salary employees ages 21 to 64 had an employer or union-sponsored pension or retirement plan last year, according to a report released this month by the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C. Overall, about 53 percent of full-time, full-year workers participate in such plans, but the Institute's analysis of 2007 U.S. Census data found non-native Hispanics were less likely to participate than whites, blacks or non-immigrant Hispanics.