VIDEO: 20TH Anniversary
of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

1. CONGRESS

The House of Representatives narrowly passes
Democratic-sponsored health care legislation.

CEI Expert Available
to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory
Conko on free market options for health
care reform:

“Most Americans agree that our health care system is broken
and must be fixed. But it is increasingly clear that what ails health care is not
too little, but too much government intervention. Federal and state tax
preferences for employer-sponsored health insurance distort the market in a way
that limits choices for individuals, reduces competition among insurers, and
artificially inflates costs for health care services. For most working
Americans, switching jobs often entails switching health plans and doctors or
losing coverage altogether, while many others find non-employer-sponsored
insurance unaffordable or difficult to obtain.”

2. CONSUMER

Bob McDonnell wins election
to be the 71st Governor of Virginia.

CEI Expert Available
to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan
Osorio on one of the Governor-elect’s first
initiatives:

“In a time when the federal government’s involvement in the
economy appears to only grow, it’s encouraging to see at least one industry
where the trend may soon move in the opposite direction, even if at the state
level. Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell has proposed privatizing the
state’s liquor stores — known as ABC stores, for Alcoholic Beverage Control. As
Garrett Peck, author of The Prohibition
Hangover, notes, this is long overdue. The ABC
system, which several states adopted after the end of Prohibition in 1934, is
today an anachronism that doesn’t even work very well.”

3. HEALTH

Locations around the world report
cases of the H1N1 strain of flu.

CEI Expert Available
to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Michael Fumento
on the latest
flu statistics:

“Well, what swine flu isn’t doing this week is apparently
less than what it wasn’t doing last week. In other words, it appears to have
peaked. How do we know? Here we see it’s going down the right side of the bell
curve both in terms of deaths and hospitalizations. And there’s both a massive decline in samples submitted to
CDC surveillance labs and a small decline in those testing positive.”

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