Fishs Eddy, NY – Driving from Philadelphia to our summer home in the Catskill Mountains region of upstate New York, my wife and I normally leave Interstate I-81 at the old coal-mining and railway center of Scranton, and head off on a meandering route on secondary roads through...
By Brent Korson At a time when this administration’s lies have been honed and weaponized to the point of functioning as the single most potent source of their ammunition, it’s been long overdue for the kind of reckoning that gets captured behind closed doors and on tape. Three...
We have written extensively over the past few weeks regarding the unprecedented importance of the upcoming election. At Tarbell, our commitment to advocating for the right to affordable and adequate health care and the democratic process; and against any threat to these two pillars of our mission,...
By Brent Korson There may be a better, clearer way to make sense of what we’re experiencing. Though the news and information ecosystem plies daily assaults on our senses, threatening to exceed our collective bandwidth, we have the means to process what’s happening with greater...
Both American political parties recently concluded their national conventions on the eve of an election that may be one of the most critical in history, not just for the United States, but for the world. In normal times – meaning the good ole days when only a...
Could President Donald Trump singlehandedly destroy Social Security, the New Deal retirement program that for 85 years has provided critical support to old or disabled Americans — currently numbering 65 million? At first blush, the idea that a president could singlehandedly destroy a program...
In these pandemic days most of us are used to the daily visits from trucks belonging to Amazon, Fed-X and UPS, as well as Uber and Lyft drivers delivering everything from food to clothing and parts for DIY plumbing and electric repairs. With all...
When Wendell Potter founded Tarbell, there was one overriding theme guiding the organization – better, cheaper and more accessible healthcare for all Americans. That mandate has not changed, nor will it change. Another mandate for our journalism was a commitment to be apolitical. Tarbell...
Watch out! Uncle Donald is coming for your and all your relatives’ Social Security and Medicare! The all-out attack on Social Security and Medicare, the two remaining standing edifices of the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, has begun...
For an example of just how heartless and profit-obsessed health insurers are, take a look at what is playing out in Connecticut, where my former employer, Cigna, is based. Low income people with diabetes in Connecticut and other states are having a hard time...
OP-ed disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Tarbell does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in this post. Presumptive Democratic Nominee for President Joe Biden has advocated for what...
When most Americans think of the rights and principles that our country was founded on, we refer to the ideals of freedom, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness written in the Declaration of Independence. However, have our political institutions evolved from this 18th century premise? When we...
By Brent Korson The flurry of seismic events and historic firsts in the weeks following George Floyd's murder, amidst COVID-19, have flown by so quickly it can feel like the magnitude hasn't registered. The enormity probably hasn't sunk in because we're still in the throes of both the...
A campaign cobbled together on a tight deadline required by Oklahoma’s strict referendum law, battled and won a narrow victory last Tuesday to amend the state’s constitution and mandate the expansion of Medicaid, overcoming the opposition of a Republican governor and legislature and major out-of-state funding for...
In the ongoing debate about how to reform the U.S. health care system, critics of proposals which would make our system more like those in other developed countries claim that physicians would become so dissatisfied they would leave the practice of medicine in droves.
When Andrew Yang began his presidential campaign in 2017, he was relatively unknown in the mainstream political scene. A young Democrat from Schenectady, New York, he made waves when he proposed some seriously progressive ideas during his short but impactful run in the presidential primaries of 2020—one...
When I first met Wendell Potter, Tarbell’s founder and Chairman, I was immediately struck by his intelligence, humility, and his insatiable determination to call out corruption stemming from the ability of corporate money and the ultra-wealthy to drive their special interests into the fabric of our society. ...
By Brent Korson With the arrival of the novel coronavirus, we’re watching each country experience its own Rorschach test. We’re seeing how each nation responds based on its site specific differences: culture, population, citizen proximity, infection rate, seasonality, geography, topography. Then there’s the human element of how each...
As the COVID-19 pandemic exposes another area of vulnerability — the U.S. food supply, Americans find innovative ways to keep themselves and their communities fed. With 40 million Americans unemployed and poverty on the rise, Feeding America expressed concerns on their website in April that the...
By Kimberly J. Soenen Abilify, Advair, Cialis, Depakote, Enbrel, Diovan, Humira, Lantus, Lexapro, Lipitor, Nexium, Plavix, Seroquel, Singulair, Viagra, Vioxx, Xanax, Zyprexa, and other drugs have all became household names over the last three decades. Like Tampax, Frisbee, Jell-O, Xerox, Q-Tip, Saran Wrap and Kleenex, during the commercial...