Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

An optimist stays up to see the New Year in. A pessimist waits to make sure the old one leaves.

But here you have people in Part D signing up beginning on Nov. 15th for a program that starts Jan. 1 -- with some people even signing up Dec. 31st. And you expect them to get a prescription by January 2nd? It just won't work.

So, we've been here before. This will get better and the system will shake out.

It took about five or six weeks before the process settled down.

This is another wake-up call to get a handle on runaway medical inflation. We're approaching $1,000 for the average stay in a hospital. This is hurting people and really overloading our economy.

Buried (in the method by which hospitals set fees) is this array of cross-subsidies that lets our health-care system train young doctors, conduct research and care for the uninsured.

Tax deductions do little or nothing for those people who are uninsured and devastated by high health care costs. Most uninsured are in the zero or 10 percent tax bracket, so tax deductions do little or nothing for them.

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

Consumers are smart enough to know that they don't 'drive' health care when it comes to treating a premature baby, cancer in a spouse or a child's broken bones.

Muscles come and go; flab lasts.