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Steve Herzfeld managed an admirably inventive end-run around high healthcare costs for his Parkinson's- and Alzheimer's-afflicted parents. After in-home care was no longer possible, he priced American nursing homes, but found that the cheapest acceptable option was still $6,000. So he sent them to India. Quality elderly care in Puducherry cost less than his father's fixed income. According to the Guardian:

[In India, Herzfeld] could give his parents a much higher standard of care than would have been possible in the US for his father's income of $2,000 (£1,200) a month. In India that paid for their rent, a team of carers—a cook, a valet for his father, nurses to be with his mother 12 hours a day, six days a week, a physiotherapist and a masseuse—and drugs (costing a fifth of US prices), and also allowed them to put some money away...."In India, they really like older people," says Herzfeld, describing how the staff seemed to regard his parents as their own family.

Of course, the care was inexpensive because a couple thousand bucks goes further in Puducherry than it might in, say, Fort Lauderdale. Herzfeld, though, apparently believes that it was cheap because elderly care in America is greedily overpriced by providers. He vents about about healthcare and the profit motive: 

[Herzfeld] believes that India could teach the US and UK a lot about care of the elderly. "In America, healthcare is done for profit, so that skews the whole thing and makes it very inhuman in its values," he says.

I try not to begrudge a man his fantasies, but the idea that the nurses, valets, and masseuses of Puducherry were doing it all out of the goodness of their hearts—rather than the goodness of their paychecks—is condescending. It was simple outsourcing, not subcontinental altruism, that saved Steve Herzfeld so much money.

In Reason's May 2009 print edition, Ronald Bailey wrote about the outsourcing of hip replacement.

by Mark Silva

Brian Williams already has gotten a lot of public mileage out of his private time with President Barack Obama, in preparation for a day-in-the-life of the president series that NBC News will air this week, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

The anchorman got the president to walk his Supreme Court nominee back from the remark she made about the relative wisdom of Latino women, as compared with white men. He got the president to say that he's not interested in the government owning GM. -- just a 60 percent stake, for now.

"Our viewers will see a view of the White House never televised before,'' Williims says of his program, Inside the Obama White House. "Senior staff, the president himself, the first lady and yes... Bo will make an appearance with us on television.''

Williams tells of a president who is not confined to the Oval Office, who walks from study to study dropping in on sessions, popping m&m's for snacks along the way.

"We had something like 20 camera crews....we have something like 150 hours of video tape,'' he says, and that's after a day in the White House last week, which Williams will follow up with another interview of Obama on Tuesday. "e're going through all of this to distill it down to two hours.

Williams also got a cheeseburger out of the deal - joining the president in his outing for a take-out pickup of burgers at a Five Guys in Washington.

Williams also asked Obama about the early part of his day that he hadn't seen: "I got my workout in,'' Obama said, "saw the girls off to school... always eat a hearty breakfast.''

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If you’ve been following the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the term “reverse-racist” has undoubtedly appeared in a story you’ve read. Rush Limbaugh branded Sotomayor a ‘reverse-racist’ on his radio show, while Newt Gingrich labeled her a racist when he posted a statement on his Twitter account.

Some right wing groups claim that Sotomayor is a judicial activist who will bend the law based on her own personal views.

Wendy Long of The Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative-leaning organization involved with judicial nominations, sent a letter to Senators yesterday outlining these concerns:

“Judge Sotomayor challenges the belief that the law needs to be knowable and predictable . . .” 

Long accused Sotomayor of embracing judicial activism, and claims that “when judges drive such change, based not on the written Constitution and laws enacted by the people, judges use their own sense of personal "justice," based on their own experiences, personal views, feelings, and backgrounds.”

Sadly, the facts get in the way of Long’s argument. Take, for instance, Sotomayor’s ruling in the case of Pappas v. Giuliani. In short, the case involved Thomas Pappas, an employee of the New York City Police Department, who was fired for mailing racially offensive, anonymous letters to organizations that had solicited him for donations.

A reverse-racist, judicial activist, such as Sotomayor, must have ruled in favor of the city, claiming that Thomas violated the rights of others through his offensive remarks, right?

Wrong. It turns out that Judge Sotomayor did exactly what Wendy Long would have wanted?"she made her ruling based “on the written Constitution and laws enacted by the people.” Citing the NYCLU’s briefing on the case, Sotomayor and her Second Circuit panel concluded that: 

“The reduced free-speech protections accorded to public-employee speech related to the workplace also extended to private and anonymous speech by employees that took place away from the workplace and that was unrelated to the workplace” 

 Rather than let her personal beliefs get in the way of her ruling, Sotomayor upheld one of America's oldest laws by defending a bigot’s right to be a bigot.