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Don't use that post-surgery fog as an excuse to ignore medical bills, even if you're still contesting them with your doctor or health insurer. Otherwise, your credit score will need to heal, too.

Medical debt is the most common type of collection account, representing nearly half of all reported collections. Almost 1 in 6 credit reports contain a medical debt collection, according to the Federal Reserve. And about 2 in 5 Americans reported a lower credit rating last year due to unpaid medical bills.

Joseph Stiglitz makes the important point that economic inequality is the result of political decisions, not inescapable global conditions.

A growing number of experts are arguing that the era of fast economic growth is over, at least for wealthy countries like the United States. If that's true, what does it mean for progressive politics?

I'll get to that question in a minute. But first consider the recent obituary for prosperity that Stephen King published in the New York Times, excerpting his new book, When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence.

Dunkin Donuts is getting a sweet deal. The company enjoyed $108.3 million in profits last year and compensated its CEO, Nigel Travis, to the tune of $1.9 million. Meanwhile, the public paid an estimated $274 million to feed, provide medical care, and subsidize the wages of their workforce.

Assuming some short-term deal emerges in Washington to avert a default, pending later budget talks, we all know what comes next: Another dead-end debate over taxes.

Why? Because if there's one issue that conservatives in Congress are even more implacable about than Obamacare it's taxes -- as in, no new taxes, ever. 

At a small gathering in Los Angeles recently, Miles Rapoport, president of the 13-year-old progressive think tank Demos, expressed optimism about the future for progressive values and policies.

Miles's talk was inspiring, but I asked him to elaborate by answering questions from a skeptic's point of view. Following is Part 2 of our dialogue. (Here is Part 1.)

I discussed the U.S. Supreme Court’s McCutcheon  case Saturday on Karen Finney’s MSNBC show Disrupt, and also last week in this HuffPo commentary.

If you think that only banks and other traditional lenders get to gouge consumers with high interest rate loans, you're obviously behind on the evolution of American finance. 

These days, just about any service provider can offer loans with what used to be criminally high interest rates. And that includes doctors and dentists, as the New York Times reports today. 

The political crisis in Washington is becoming an international embarrassment for the United States, with the head of the IMF now reprimanding us for threatening global chaos. But the crisis is also becoming a big opportunity for China, America's main rival for primacy in the 21st century.