Scott Atlas, not a happy man.

Dr. Scott Atlas is not a happy man these days. He is not just the head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, he was also Rudy Giuliani’s health care adviser during the former New York mayor’s abortive (oops, touchy word!) 2008 presidential run.

So when I heard him speak a few weeks ago at Stanford, to the rather undersized Stanford Conservative Society, he had serious, um, reservations about Obamacare.

He made several excellent points, mainly concerning the incredible quality of the research and innovation in American health care. Bully for us, we have a purring Ferrari of a health care system, and the very best surgeons and specialists from Cleveland to Clovis.

There was lots in his anti-Obamacare stance that I objected to, as a father and a freelancer.

Broadly speaking: The system, friends, is broken. A friend of mine (and of DadWagoner Christopher) had a baby a couple of months ago,  a handful of weeks early. She is home now with baby, and both are fine, thank God. The bill for her care and her baby’s care? $300,000. She, fortunately, had insurance. But millions of Americans do not. They have driver’s insurance, yes, but not health insurance. The time for celebrating incrementalism is over. Reform—even bolder than what the House passed—is the tonic. Deal with it. The insurers and the doctors have had their day (more like their century) of running health care, and they have only themselves to blame for their losses. It’s time to let someone else run the show.

Here’s a quick DadWagon rundown of what the health care bill means for dads and their kids:

• • If you’re a rich dad, then your taxes will go up. We certainly don’t like poor people reading our fancy blog, so I hope all our readers are rich. In which case, you should be a little miffed. Sorry, dudes. But really, even the really rich don’t like paying $300,000 for childbirth.
• • If you have a kid with an illness (and you aren’t filthy rich), this is a great reform. Insurers will no longer be able, in their blood-stained way, to deny you insurance because you had the temerity to bring a kid with a pre-existing condition into our awesome capitalist system.
• • If you are a sick dad, insurers will have to stop fucking with you in a similar manner, but not until 2014.
• • Immunizations. Yes, I know Jenny McCarthy blames them for autism and probably dwarfism and solipsism, but they are important. Health insurance plans will have to cover them. Herd immunity, baby, here we come.
• • Your children can stay on your plan until the age of 26, not 18 as they do now. This is important. Again, uninsured young adults cost the rest of us money when they break their necks doing kegstands.
• • CHIP, which was a pint-sized precursor to mandatory insurance (for low-income children) will be protected until 2019. At which time our Tea Party president will call it a faggot and disband it in a public ceremony, probably involving a pitchfork and some fire.

In a charming essay here,  a Londoner named Sathnam Sanghera cops to being a 33-year-old man whose biological clock is ticking. A Bridget Jones with testosterone, a Charlotte York before her Harry comes into the picture. It’s a nice personal essay, if a little too long, and Sanghera zeroes in on the thing that’s most striking about admitting to a longing for a baby: that it somehow seems unmasculine. It shouldn’t be, particularly because we so deeply romanticize the idea of, for example, fathers playing catch with sons. Besides, wanting a baby, at least in the circles I inhabit, is far more likely to get you hooked up than not. But it’s true that it does sound like something women want far more often than men, and that’s worth pointing out.

Mostly, however, what I find fascinating is his title: “I Am a Broody Man.” Broody? Broody? I never (till today) knew that the Brits use this term to refer to women who are longing to procreate. It sounds like something out of a Nick Park movie—most likely Chicken Run, given that hens, at least, brood over their eggs. I hate to break it to you, Mr. Sanghera, but it’s not the desire for a kid that’s making you look unmanly—it’s your word choice.

Well, yes, a bit of time was spent this past weekend (and last week at work) watching some basketball. And yes, as someone involved with the Harper’s Index, I’ve expended a good deal of energy trying to determine what impact the Tournament has on the nation’s economic picture (have yet to find a reliable study; stay tuned).

In that light, then, I want to share this video of Mark Walker, a preschool basketball phenom who was put under contract by Reebok in 2003 when he was 3 years old. Check him out. Good touch. Form could use a bit of work, but maybe his Pull-Ups were full on that pull-up (jumper–the shot, not the garment). Nice headband.

Anyone know what happened to this kid? I couldn’t find anything.