Recent Discovery of Double-Edged Hand Axes in Europe Could be up to 900,000 Years Old

 

Oldest Old World Tools

A collection of prehistoric stone hand axes appears above. When first discovered, most researchers thought that the hand axes were made between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. However, a new study contends that they are in fact much older -- possibly the oldest hand axes in Europe.Michael Walker

Sophisticated hand made tools have finally been found in Europe that demonstrate similarly refined skill sets demonstrated by Acheulian tool making methods found in Africa that have been dated to approximately 1.5 million years ago. Previously, such tools that had been discovered in Europe were shown  to have originated from the hands of European tool makers only some 300,000 million years ago. For years, researchers who had been baffled by the gap between the African and European tools now have a better understanding of the varied techniques of tool making that had actually existed.

The hand axes that have resolved the tool gap were found in a part of Granada, Spain; specifically in the Quipar Valley, in cave sediment and were "made using the so-called Levallois technique of shaping stone, known to have existed in Europe only about 300,000 years ago."

Two researchers, geologist Gary Scott and paleontologist Luis Gibert, from the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California used palaeomagnetic analysis, "which uses known changes in the orientation of Earth's magnetic field over time."Palaeomagnetic analysis is based on Magnetostratigraphy, which deciphers the periodic reversal of Earth's magnetic field.

"The transition from primitive chopper-like tools to more finely crafted double-faced axes marked a milestone in the history of technology," The Straits Times, A Singapore Press Holdings Website conjectured, "and gave those whose wielded them an edge in the struggle to survive."

Physorg.com, a website involved with science news and analysis agrees with The Straits Times assessment by adding: "The transition from primitive chopper-like tools to more finely crafted double-faced axes marked a milestone in the history of technology, and gave those whose wielded them an edge in the struggle to survive." 

Acting like tiny compasses, fine-grained magnetic minerals in the tools contain a record of the polarity at the time they were used. Once buried in sediment, the polarity is preserved.

'The age (of the axes) must be Early Pleistocene, the most recent period dominated by reverse polarity, 1.78-to-0.78 million years ago,' the researchers concluded.

The new dating suggests that early man was present in south-western Europe for much of this period, and that the barrier between Africa and Europe was more permeable than once thought, they said.

"Dr. Gibert said the finding, The New York Times explains, "adds to mounting evidence that early humans migrated to Europe from Africa earlier than previously thought."

"The question is, which route did they follow?" Gilbert said. "Rather than coming through the Middle East and then westward, Dr. Gibert said he is convinced they came across at Gibraltar. "We think the Gibraltar straits were a permeable barrier," he said. "It's a provocative interpretation but I think there is enough information to support it."

"Up to now, no one imagined this level of tool-making was going on in Europe about a million years ago," says Michael Walker, an archaeologist at the University of Murcia who has studied the region near Granada where the axes were found."

The journal Nature explains: "Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis are all species known to be associated with Acheulian axes, which have two-sided cutting faces that were made of many types of stone for still-unconfirmed uses"

 

Michael Walker explains that the The Quípar Valley cave hand-axe is the oldest dated in Europe.

The two small hand axes have been estimated to be "at least 760,000 and 900,000 years old, respectively," in analysis conducted by Scott and Gilbert."If confirmed, the new dates support the idea that the manufacture and use of teardrop-shaped stone implements, known as hand axes, spread rapidly from Africa into Europe and Asia beginning roughly 1 million years ago, said Scott and Gibert.

An early assessment of the hand axe findings by: "Thomas Wynn, a cognitive evolutionary biologist from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, says: "This [find] tells us some things about these early humans' brains, like the development of spatial conception. But not much, as cognitive ability changes very, very slowly."

References

   1. Scott, G. R. & Gibert, L. Nature 461, 82-85 (2009). | Article | PubMed
.

Does Depression Have Evolutionary Roots?

Scientific 
American

Mind Matters -  August 25, 2009
Depression's Evolutionary Roots
Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages

By Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr.

"Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox. Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare — why isn't depression?

"This paradox could be resolved if depression were a problem of growing old. The functioning of all body systems and organs, including the brain, tends to deteriorate with age. This is not a satisfactory explanation for depression, however, as people are most likely to experience their first bout in adolescence and young adulthood.

"Or, perhaps, depression might be like obesity — a problem that arises because modern conditions are so different from those in which we evolved. Homo sapiens did not evolve with cookies and soda at the fingertips. Yet this is not a satisfactory explanation either. The symptoms of depression have been found in every culture which has been carefully examined, including small-scale societies, such as the Ache of Paraguay and the !Kung of southern Africa — societies where people are thought to live in environments similar to those that prevailed in our evolutionary past.

"There is another possibility: that, in most instances, depression should not be thought of as a disorder at all. In an article recently published in Psychological Review, we argue that depression is in fact an adaptation, a state of mind which brings real costs, but also brings real benefits.

"One reason to suspect that depression is an adaptation, not a malfunction, comes from research into a molecule in the brain known as the 5HT1A receptor. The 5HT1A receptor binds to serotonin, another brain molecule that is highly implicated in depression and is the target of most current antidepressant medications. Rodents lacking this receptor show fewer depressive symptoms in response to stress, which suggests that it is somehow involved in promoting depression. (Pharmaceutical companies, in fact, are designing the next generation of antidepressant medications to target this receptor.) When scientists have compared the composition of the functional part rat 5HT1A receptor to that of humans, it is 99 percent similar, which suggests that it is so important that natural selection has preserved it. The ability to "turn on" depression would seem to be important, then, not an accident.

"This is not to say that depression is not a problem. Depressed people often have trouble performing everyday activities, they can't concentrate on their work, they tend to socially isolate themselves, they are lethargic, and they often lose the ability to take pleasure from such activities such as eating and sex. Some can plunge into severe, lengthy, and even life-threatening bouts of depression.

"So what could be so useful about depression? Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.

"This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.

"Analysis requires a lot of uninterrupted thought, and depression coordinates many changes in the body to help people analyze their problems without getting distracted. In a region of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), neurons must fire continuously for people to avoid being distracted. But this is very energetically demanding for VLPFC neurons, just as a car's engine eats up fuel when going up a mountain road. Moreover, continuous firing can cause neurons to break down, just as the car's engine is more likely to break down when stressed. Studies of depression in rats show that the 5HT1A receptor is involved in supplying neurons with the fuel they need to fire, as well as preventing them from breaking down. These important processes allow depressive rumination to continue uninterrupted with minimal neuronal damage, which may explain why the 5HT1A receptor is so evolutionarily important.

"Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted. The desire for social isolation, for instance, helps the depressed person avoid situations that would require thinking about other things. Similarly, the inability to derive pleasure from sex or other activities prevents the depressed person from engaging in activities that could distract him or her from the problem. Even the loss of appetite often seen in depression could be viewed as promoting analysis because chewing and other oral activity interferes with the brain's ability to process information.

"But is there any evidence that depression is useful in analyzing complex problems? For one thing, if depressive rumination were harmful, as most clinicians and researchers assume, then bouts of depression should be slower to resolve when people are given interventions that encourage rumination, such as having them write about their strongest thoughts and feelings. However, the opposite appears to be true. Several studies have found that expressive writing promotes quicker resolution of depression, and they suggest that this is because depressed people gain insight into their problems.

"There is another suggestive line of evidence. Various studies have found that people in depressed mood states are better at solving social dilemmas. Yet these would seem to have been precisely the kind of problems difficult enough to require analysis and important enough to drive the evolution of such a costly emotion. Consider a woman with young children who discovers her husband is having an affair. Is the wife's best strategy to ignore it, or force him to choose between her and the other woman, and risk abandonment? Laboratory experiments indicate that depressed people are better at solving social dilemmas by better analysis of the costs and benefits of the different options that they might take.

"Sometimes people are reluctant to disclose the reason for their depression because it is embarrassing or sensitive, they find it painful, they believe they must soldier on and ignore them, or they have difficulty putting their complex internal struggles into words.

"But depression is nature's way of telling you that you've got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression. (There are several effective therapies that focus on just this.) It is also essential, in instances where there is resistance to discussing ruminations, that the therapist try to identify and dismantle those barriers.

"When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye—an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.

The preceding text appeared in the August 25, 2009 issue of Scientific American

Did Meteorites Provide the Components of Life for a Young Earth?

Brandon Keim writes: "The chemical seeds of Earthly life were planted by meteorites, says Columbia University chemist Ronald Breslow — and if it happened here, it could happen elsewhere.

"Flash back three or four billion years Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place. All is still. Without warning, a meteor slams into the desert plains at over ten thousand miles per hour. With it, this violent collision may have planted the chemical seeds of life on Earth, it was explained.

"Researchers presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life, it was explained.:"The dominance of left-handed amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.

"Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University, and former ACS President, described how our amino acid signature came from outer space.

"Chains of amino acids make up the protein found in people, plants, and all other forms of life on Earth. There are two orientations of amino acids, left and right, which mirror each other in the same way your hands do. This is known as chirality. In order for life to arise, proteins must contain only one chiral form of amino acids, left or right, Breslow noted.

"If you mix up chirality, a proteins properties change enormously. Life couldn't operate with just random mixtures of stuff, he said.

"With the exception of a few right-handed amino acid-based bacteria, left-handed L-amino acids dominate on earth. The Columbia University chemistry professor said that amino acids delivered to Earth by meteorite bombardments left us with those left-handed protein units.

"These meteorites were bringing in what I call the seeds of chirality, stated Breslow. If you have a universe that was just the mirror image of the one we know about, then in fact, presumably it would have right-handed amino acids. Thats why I'm only half kidding when I say there is a guy on the other side of the universe with his heart on the right hand side.

"These amino acids seeds formed in interstellar space," he said, "possibly on asteroids as they careened through space. At the outset, they have equal amounts of left and right-handed amino acids. But as these rocks soar past neutron stars, their light rays trigger the selective destruction of one form of amino acid. The stars emit circularly polarized lighting one direction, its rays are polarized to the right.180 degrees in the other direction, the star emits left-polarized light.

"All earthbound meteors catch an excess of one of the two polarized rays. Breslow said that prior experiments confirmed that circularly polarized light selectively destroys one chiral form of amino acids over the other. The end result is a five to ten percent excess of one form, in this case, L-amino acids. Evidence of this left-handed excess was found on the surfaces of these meteorites, which have crashed into Earth even within the last hundred years, landing in Australia and Tennessee.

"Breslow explained that he simulated what occurred after the dust settled following a meteor bombardment, when the amino acids on the meteor mixed with the primordial soup. Under credible prebiotic conditions desert-like temperatures and a little bit of water he exposed amino acid chemical precursors to those amino acids found on meteorites.

"Breslow and Columbia chemistry grad student Mindy Levine observed that these cosmic amino acids could directly transfer their chirality to simple amino acids found in living things. Thus far, Breslow's team is the first to demonstrate that this kind of handedness transfer is possible under these conditions.

"On the prebiotic Earth, this transfer left a slight excess of left-handed amino acids, Breslow said. His next experiment replicated the chemistry that led to the amplification and eventual dominance of left-handed amino acids. He started with a five percent excess of one form of amino acid in water and dissolved it.

"Breslow observed that the left and right-handed amino acids would bind together as they crystallized from water. The left-right bound amino acids left the solution as water evaporated, leaving behind increasing amounts of the left-amino acid in solution. Eventually, the amino acid in excess became ubiquitous as it was used selectively by living organisms.

"Other theories have been put forth to explain the dominance of L-amino acids. One, for instance, suggests polarized light from neutron stars traveled all the way to earth to zap right-handed amino acids directly. But the evidence that these materials are being formed out there and brought to us on meteorites is overwhelming, said Breslow.

"The steps afterward that led towards the genesis of life are shrouded in mystery. Breslow hopes to shine more light on prebiotic Earth as he turns his attention to nucleic acids, the chemical units of DNA and its more primitive cousin RNA.

"This work is correlation to the probability that there is life somewhere else, said Breslow. Everything that is going on on Earth occurred because the meteorites happened to land here. But they are obviously landing in other places. If there is another planet that has the water and all of the things that are needed for life, you should be able to get the same process rolling.

"In a report delivered to the American Chemical Society's annual meeting, Breslow simulated the behavior of "left-handed" amino acids in an Earth-like environment. The acids' appendage appellation derives from their molecular orientation, also known as chirality; except for a few oddball bacteria, all living creatures are composed of proteins made from left-handed amino acids. This phenomena has long perplexed scientists. Why left instead of right-handed? Why not both?

"One possible explanation: because the first amino acids came from space, riding to Earth on meteorites. When the meteorites passed neutron stars, they were blasted with circular polarized light, in which photons corkscrew to either the left or right. Breslow's earlier experiments showed that CPL damages amino acids of corresponding handedness: if, on a fateful journey some four billion years ago, an Earthbound meteorite passed a star emitting right-spiraling CPL, it would have been stripped of right-handed acids, leaving the present orientation of life's building blocks as a biochemical echo of our extraterrestrial origin.

"In his ACS report, Breslow added left-handed amino acids to the amino acid precursors found on pre-biotic Earth. The resulting acids were also left-handed and eventually dominated Breslow's mixture, suggesting that a similar process could have happened four billion years ago after a rock from space hit our hot and lifeless world.

"Will we ever know for sure? Of course not. But it's plausible, and excesses of left-handed amino acids have indeed been found on meteorites landing in Australia and Tennessee during the last century.Breslow next plans to study the origin of nucleic acids — the chemical units of DNA.

"This work is related to the probability that there is life somewhere else," said Breslow in a press release. "Everything that is going on on.

"Earth occurred because the meteorites happened to land here, Breslow explained. But they are obviously landing in other places. If there is another planet that has the water and all of the things that are needed for life, you should be able to get the same process rolling."

Meteorites delivered the 'seeds' of Earth's left-hand life [press release]

The Bizarre Things Cons Will Say to Celebrate the Protection of the Status Quo

 

Sherman, aka David Brooks, under Dr. Peabody's directions, attempts to engage the lever that controls the Way Back Machine

It is truly touching and really adds to the feeling of 'we're all in this mess that we Republicans created and now we are ready to move on by blaming our misdeeds on the Democrats and President Obama' speak out for the best interests of the American nation when such noted voices as the ever-resourceful David Brooks make their opinions known.

It is truly heartwarming to read the right wing lackey, David Brooks offer his assessment of President Obama's challenge to keep independent voters in line.But wait a minute; is there an election looming, do the Republicans have any less than daffy solutions to the nation's health care crisis ready to present to the nation and become legislation that creates a groundswell of public support and bi-partisan backing that it would need to become law?

No.

Brooks is such a mastermind of cogent political analysis. He has easily figured out the reason for Obama's "failure of leadership.' It is simply the dead weight that Obama must carry around his skinny neck that goes by the distinction of being the "liberal leadership in Congress." However inappropriate and untrustworthy the liberals might seem, Brooks points out that they are even worse. You see, it is according to Brooks extensive use of referencing his opinions with examples of a Congress out of control and in the throes of existing only for the benefits of staying in power and filling their legislative bills with layers of pork barrel spending; all the while, the president has been consumed by his own demons; his blind devotion to increasing spending and consolidating power in the hands of the chief executive.

But just wait a plutocratic and evangelical moment here!. Mr. Brooks has done too good of a job in his research. In fact he has acted in such a blatantly heavy-handed manner that he has pushed too had on the lever that controls the Way Back Machine and has actually landed several years earlier, right in the midst of the post-1992 presidential era of George Bush!

I am shocked and dismayed that Mr. Brooks has made such a careless mstake without even realizing it!

It seems Brooks is oblivious, either intentionally or by some cosmic misdirection of time when he disregards his error and gleefully proceeds by diminishing President Obama's popular appeal, getting it confused with the public support of  the half-wit who got us into the pickle jar that Obama and the Democrats are now trying to extricate themselves from without destroying the nation.because of the mind-boggling series of blunders perpetrated by Mr. Obama's predecessor - some sort of a Marlboro Man reject who never quite grasped the significance that he was the president of the United States for eight years.

Nevertheless, in Brooks impeccable approach to providing political commentary he stabs deeply into the flesh of Obama like some modern day Brutus thrusting his sharp and pointy knife of contempt for Obama's brave attempt to right the ship of state that had been left to drift along on the uncertain currents of the last eight years.

Proud of his "reasoned" analysis, Brooks unleashes the equivalent of his Shiva, destroyer of political interventions: "Anxiety is now pervasive. Trust in government rose when Obama took office. It has fallen back to historic lows. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction."

Brooks continues his outright assault by gleefully adding: "The public's view of Congress, which ticked upward for a time, has plummeted. Charlie Cook, who knows as much about Congressional elections as anyone in the country, wrote recently that Democratic fortunes have "slipped completely out of control." He and the experts he surveyed believe there is just as much chance that the Democrats could lose more than 20 House seats in the next elections as less than 20.

"There are also warning signs in the Senate," opines Brooks. "A recent poll shows Harry Reid, the majority leader, trailing the Republican Danny Tarkanian, a possible 2010 opponent, by 49 percent to 38 percent." Brooks is only too happy to add his glum assessment: "When your majority leader is down to a 38 percent base in his home state, that's not good."

Brooks pounds away, stressing that: "The public has soured on Obama's policy proposals. Voters often have only a fuzzy sense of what each individual proposal actually does, but more and more have a growing conviction that if the president is proposing it, it must involve big spending, big government and a fundamental departure from the traditional American approach."

Brooks is gushing with a litany of vindictive, 'I told you so's! In his most absent- minded Maoist proclamation, he chortles of  a triumphant moment for Republican ideals; that given enough rope, Obama and the Democrats have hung themselves from the rafters of big government they have created and now flail about kicking into the empty air about them as their 'socialist'  populism draws down on them and tightens the noose about their neck and takes the breath out of all that phony Obama optimism.of just a few short months ago.

Overtaken by his overblown assessment of Obama's inevitable demise Brooks turns to some highly questionable analysis: "Driven by this general anxiety, and by specific concerns, public opposition to health care reform is now steady and stable. Independents once solidly supported reform. Now they have swung against it. As the veteran ( and highly partisan Republican operative who poses as a legitimate student of public opinion, the so-called) pollster Bill McInturff (who) has pointed out, public attitudes toward Obamacare exactly match public attitudes toward Clintoncare when that reform effort collapsed in 1994."

Hooray, let us all rejoice in the triumph of traditionalist, Republican protected maintenance of the status quo!

Certainly things can only get better if we don't allow them to change!

But if anything one might argue that Brooks represents, he knows how to count votes and he is clearly afaraid that the Democrats might use their significant numbers and simply push through health care without (gasp) consulting with Republican obstructionists. The very idea that the Democrats might yet achieve health care reform based on the rule of their majority smacks of an un-Americanism that every minority Republican fears most.

Brooks warns the Democrats that such a legislative move would be suicidal for the majority party. Just because they have more members on their side of the aisle in the House and Senate does not give Democrats the right to act as a ruling party!

In his own very perverse way; Brooks portrays himself as attempting to save the Democrats from themselves and from their duty as the majority party to engage in legislative efforts to effect political change that benefits all Americans. Brooks answer is for the Democrats to simply do nothing and work to maintain the status quo; something the Republicans have worked tirelessly for decades to succeed at.

Just to lighten the mood of his absorbing and cogent political analysis, Brooks interjects a bit of levity by seemingly warning the Democrats that it would be wrong to increase the public debt. However, Brooks inexplicably fails to mention the Republicans expert ability to turn Clinton's surplus of 1992 into a deficit for no apparent reason other than to accomplish the feat. Now if Brooks had mentioned that sleigh of hand trickery by the Republicans, he might have better succeeded in pulling a real belly whopper but he failed to do so and in turn condemned himself to the realm of political punditry.

Into which he quickly steps to provide this bit of advice: "This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn't proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him.

"The president's challenge now is to halt the slide. That doesn't mean giving up his goals. It means he has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.

"Events have pushed Barack Obama off to the left. Time to rebalance."

One has to admire brooks persistence which he maintains to the very end of his commentary; and that is; ignore the squawkers on the left and maintain the status quo as practice by the Republicans when they held the majority and Obama will be able to stay in office for another four years beyond the end of his current term.

And for good measure, Brooks fails to add, Obama should work harder to keep the public from acquiring a complete grasp of reality by terrorizing the population and creating evil doers and a world filled with America haters; oops, there goes that over aggressive hand on the lever that controls the Way Back Machine!

The Need For a Democratic Solution for Health Care

With the passage of the last several months, it has become crystal clear that Congressional Republicans will stand together in their sole capacity as a status quo supporting party, and will vote together as a block against health care reform. For the Republicans, their only agenda item will be to frame President Obama's primary domestic issue as a threat to the nation. An example of this party-wide intent has been sounded by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina:: "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

With such hyperbole in Washington having been established as a part of the capital's political landscape, "Senate Democrats are preparing to push through health care reforms using parliamentary procedures that will allow a simple majority to prevail in their chamber, as it does in the House, instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster that Senate Republicans are sure to mount," according to a New York Times Editorial. In other words: "If the Democrats want to enact health care reform this year, they appear to have little choice but to adopt a high-risk, go-it-alone, majority-rules strategy."

Now is clearly the time for the Democrats to use their Congressional majorities and ignore the Republican whining and push ahead by taking advantage of their superior numbers and passing the legislation themselves.

The New York Times Editorial succinctly argues: "Delay would be foolish politically. The Democrats have substantial majorities in the House and the Senate this year. Next year, as the midterm elections approach, it will be even harder for legislators to take controversial stands. After the elections, if history is any guide, the Democratic majorities could be smaller."

President Obama's attempts to make health care reform  a task shared through realistic solutions provided by both parties were level minded and fair. But without the Republicans willing to give an inch toward compromise; bipartisanism was doomed to failure from the very beginning and it is time for President Obama and Congressional Democrats to move on and legislate.

The Times Editorial suggests: "The Democrats are thus well advised to start preparing to use an arcane parliamentary tactic known as "budget reconciliation" that would let them sidestep a Republican filibuster and approve reform proposals by a simple majority.

The Democrats decision to take the reconciliation approach is full of risk. The Times explains: "Reconciliation bills are primarily intended to deal with budget items that affect the deficit, not with substantive legislation like health care reform. Senators could challenge as "extraneous" any provisions that do not change spending or revenues over the next five years, or would have a budget impact that is "merely incidental" to some broader policy purpose, or would increase the deficit in Year 6 and beyond." The most significant question to be answered is "how much of the proposed health care reforms could plausibly fit into a reconciliation bill? The answer," the Times explains; "seems to be: quite a lot, though nobody knows for sure".

The Times cites: "Knowledgeable analysts from both parties (who) believe that these important elements of reform will probably pass muster because of their budgetary impact: expansion of Medicaid for the poor; subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance; new taxes to pay for the trillion-dollar program; Medicare cuts to help finance the program; mandates on individuals to buy insurance and on employers to offer coverage; and tax credits to help small businesses provide insurance."

The Times proposes: "Even the public plan so reviled by Republicans could probably qualify, especially if it is given greater power than currently planned to dictate the prices it will pay to hospitals, doctors, drug companies and other providers, thus saving the government lots of money in subsidies."

The Times correctly points out that: "Greater uncertainty surrounds two other critical elements: new rules requiring insurance companies to accept all applicants and charge them the same premiums without regard to medical condition, and the creation of new exchanges in which people forced to buy their own insurance could find cheaper policies than are currently available."

The Times elaborates: "Republicans claim that they want to make medical insurance and care cheaper and give ordinary Americans more choices. But given their drive to kill health reform at any cost, they might well argue that these are programmatic changes whose budgetary impact is “merely incidental.” Democrats would very likely counter that they are so intertwined with other reforms that they are “a necessary term or condition” for other provisions that do affect spending or revenues, which could allow them to be kept in the bill."

The Times continues: "Nobody knows how the Senate parliamentarian, an obscure official who advises the presiding officer, would rule on any of these complicated issues. But if he were to take a narrow view and eliminate important features, it could leave the reform package riddled with holes — perhaps providing subsidies to buy insurance on exchanges that do not exist, for example. Thus there are plans afoot to use a second bill to pass whatever reforms will not fit under the rubric of reconciliation, but those would be subject to filibuster and would have to depend on their general popularity (insurance reforms are enormously popular) to win 60 votes for passage."

The Times argues that: "Another hurdle is that the reconciliation legislation covers only the next five years, while the Democratic plans are devised to be deficit-neutral over 10 years. The practical effect is that the Democrats will almost surely need to find added revenues or budget cuts within the first five years."

The Times points out: "Another Senate rule, which applies whether reconciliation is used or not, requires that the reforms enacted now not cause an increase in the deficit for decades to come, a difficult but probably not impossible hurdle to surmount."

The Times concludes: "Clearly the reconciliation approach is a risky and less desirable way to enact comprehensive health care reforms. The only worse approach would be to retreat to modest gestures in an effort to win Republican acquiescence. It is barely possible that the Senate Finance Committee might pull off a miracle and devise a comprehensive solution that could win broad support, or get one or more Republicans to vote to break a filibuster. If not, the Democrats need to push for as much reform as possible through majority vote."