deadissue.com

I had hoped to see a public option, in fact the best solution from my perspective would have been to open medicare up to everyone; the network of providers is already there and most people seem to love the service they get. Plus, most doctors seem happy with the reimbursements they get from the program and I have a feeling that the lower reimbursements may cut down on over-treatment.
I think the two things in the health-care bill that will have the greatest effect is the requirement that insurance companies pay eighty-five percent of their revenue out as claims and the expansion of medicaid.
The expansion of medicaid if it helps, will create a situation where low-income indaviduals have better health outcomes than middle-class and upper-class indaviduals who have access to more expensive health-care; making the argument for single-payer hard to refute. It will probably take another twenty or thirty years but hopefully we are at the beginning of the end of for profit medicine.

The health care as it stands now does some pretty good stuff. My guess is the requirement that eighty-five percent of revenues need to be spent on benefits will really help as insurance companies have just lost the incentive to rip people off. It will be interesting to see how they try to redefine what is considered a benefit to the customer, I am sure some companies will try to claim that paying the CEO millions of Dollars is a benefit to the clients.

All and all it is not a bad start for health care reform, and I mean START.

This is from TPM:

I am unemployed and have a pre-existing condition that requires daily medicines, quarterly doctors visits and an annual test. I am on COBRA, which runs out mid-2010, when I will have to find new health insurance. I will need to purchase some kind of health insurance, assuming I can find provider who will insure me

I don’t pretend to understand all the intricacies of the health care reform bill, but I do read a lot. From what I can glean, if the bill passed, I would be able to find health insurance because I could not to be turned down due to my pre-exisiting condition. And based on my income at the moment, my premuims would be subsidized.
Am I disappointed in the reform effort? Yes. I believe in single payer. I was terribly disappointed the Medicare buy-in for 55 and older was dropped, not because I give a rat’s ass about Lieberman or the political wrangling involved, but because I am two years shy of 55 and I would have loved to be able to tough it out on the private market for a little while longer knowing Medicare coverage was just around the corner. Believe me, it’s scary being 52 and unemployed with a medical condition. Any form of security is vital.

As frustrating as it is that Lieberman and Nelson want to hold these people hostage, at this point any health bill that prevents even one person from dieing due to lack of coverage, or keeps one person from having to file medical bancruptcy is worth passing.

The site is back. Just in time for the big fight on health care reform. I really don’t know what to make of the new proposal, but I think it is safe to say Joe Lieberman cares much more about the profits of insurance companies than the health of the people he claims to represent.

I am starting to think that the lesson from both 1994 and 2009 is that you can’t have both good health-care and for profit health-care.

From the broken clock category of course she forgets to mention birth control will also work:

Camerota asked a guest — perhaps playing devil’s advocate — if there was benefit to a Democratic senator’s healthcare amendment which blocked federal funding for abortions.

“If there is no federal money used to subsidize abortions for low-income women, doesn’t that mean there will be more low-income babies, and do any of these amendments talk about the health care for them?” Camerota asked.

She says what most people know, which is one of the best ways to stay poor is to have children. Of course their are condoms and birth control pills that can prevent a pregnancy as well, but the right-wing seems to have forgotten about these devices.
One of the best anti-poverty programs the government could embark on would be comprehensive sex-education for everyone, will it happen? probably not? As sex-education seems to send wingers to the fainting couch.

Maybe we should pray for Rick Warren not to be so stupid:

Not believing in a Supreme Being takes more faith than believing in one, according to Pastor Rick Warren. “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” Warren told Fox News anchors Steve Doocy and Martha MacCallum Monday.

“You know, Steve, if I’m walking down a mountain and I see rock out of place and I go ‘that’s an accident.’ If I’m walking down a mountain — on the trail — and I find a Rolex that’s evidence of design,” he explained. “It actually takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in God.”

Here is the thing with that argument, if I find a watch I can also find who made it, if I had the resources I could go to the Rolex factory and probably talk to the person who put it together. I can’t talk to the being who created the rock, most likely because that being doesn’t exist. The religous nuts really need to come-up with some evidence for their supernatural beliefs or at least stop pretending they make sense.
He also offers this tidbit:

In April of 2007, Warren told Newsweek that he “never met an atheist who wasn’t angry” and that “far more people have been killed through atheists than through all the religious wars put together.”

“Thousands died in the Inquisition; millions died under Mao, and under Stalin and Pol Pot,” Warren said in 2007. “There is a home for atheists in the world today—it’s called North Korea. I don’t know any atheists who want to go there. I’d much rather live under Tony Blair, or even George Bush.”

Maybe atheists are angry when they meet Rick Warren because the stupid burns.

I got this from TPM:

I finally had to block emails from a couple of my cousins, because they were sending me thinly veiled racist diatribes about the death of America, Muslims, Democrats being the party of the big-city ghettos and the responsibility of poor people for the world economic crisis.
These emails were prompted by the Major Hasan case. It was just too disturbing for me to receive any more of this rubbish.

What is the character profile of a racist? I cannot answer that question in general, but these particular relatives were always controlling, negative people from the time they were little boys. I never did like them.

This is all very sad. I have always supported Obama, I still do, and, for the most part, I trust his instincts. What makes this especially sad is that — alhough I think Obama should have broken up the big banks — I am shocked by the way the Left has abandoned him. I disagree with Joan Walsh, for example, that Obama is a Centrist. That is only a label. I think that Obama is a left-leaning pragmatist, and he figures out a solution to every problem on its merits.

It would be very sad if the left makes the perfect the enemy of the good. At least at this point a grown-up is in charge and the country is moving in the right direction, not as fast as some might like but still in the right direction.

Ross Douthat trys to explain the pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church and while trying to minimize the problem he drops this nugget:

Philip Lawler claims that while less than five percent of priests were involved in actual abuse, over two-thirds of bishops were involved in covering it up.) I suspect it isn’t a coincidence that the worst of the priest-abuse scandals have been concentrated in Ireland and America — and indeed, in Boston, the most Irish of American cities

If five-percent of a group is molesting children it seems that group might have a problem. The question that has never been asked about the pedophile scandal is whether pedophiles are attracted to careers in the catholic church, or do careers in the church turn people into pedophiles.

New Orleans looks really good and Vince Young looks like the comeback player of the year. The Colts seem to be cutting it a little close every week, but may be the best in the AFC.

And, Jay Cutler has done everything he can to make the Broncos look really smart.

A guy like this is always going to have an agenda, the FBI was stupid to use him as an informant:

Ultra right-wing radio talk show host Hal Turner provided intelligence to the FBI that agents considered “irreplaceable,” according to emails reviewed for a lengthy investigative report published Sunday.

Writing for NorthJersey.com, reporters Mike Kelly and Peter J. Sampson reveal that the bureau once even used Turner as an undercover intelligence operative in Brazil, where he informed on white supremacist group American National Alliance and met with a representative of the Brazilian Arab Society who sought to provide support to Iraqi fighters.

I guess god told him this guy wouldn’t hurt anyone:

You may have heard that four police officers were murdered in what under different circumstances would look like a mob assassination in Washington state coffeehouse this morning.

The man local police are seeking for questioning is Maurice Clemmons, 37, a man with a lifetime history of violence, burglary, aggravated robbery, theft and rape. Clemmons was serving what was essentially a life sentence in Arkansas before having his sentence commuted by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee.

This wasn’t the first time Huckabee went out of his way to get a dangerous person out of prison.

New sources, including an advisor to Gov. Mike Huckabee, have told the Arkansas Times that Huckabee and a senior member of his staff exerted behind-the-scenes influence to bring about the parole of rapist Wayne Dumond, who Missouri authorities say raped and killed a woman there shortly after his parole.

I wonder if he has let any more christian terrorists out of prison.

I sure hope the Broncos win today and I am cooking a Tofurkey, I will try to let you know how that goes.

And the New Republic insults Paris Hilton. Comparing Palin to Hilton is very unfair, Paris is funny and harmless. Sarah is not intentionally funny and she has done irepairable harm to Alaska and given a chance would do the same thing to the U.S.

Update: Looks like other people are starting to agree that Prejean and Palin are the future of the GOP

Looks like Lou Dobbs is going around trying to tell people how much he loves immigrants I guess he was just playing the role of xenophobic moron while ar CNN.

From Ezra klein:

I’m starting to think that Lieberman knows perfectly well that his ever-shifting rationales don’t make sense, and that he’s inventing them to taunt liberals, not to explain his position. It’s one thing to oppose the public option, after all. It’s another to continually dangle misinformed rationales, implying that if liberals could just explain their argument clearly and logically enough, he’ll change his mind. It’s a deviously brilliant exploitation of liberal psychology. So devious, in fact, that it could only have come from a former liberal.

And then their is this on Sarah Palin:

Palin’s inability to leave a grievance un-aired is quickly becoming the stuff of legend. But the feud with Johnston is one of the more egregious, and ongoing, self-inflicted political injuries I can ever recall seeing. (The irony of her applauding her daughter’s decision to “take the high road” in the same sentence in which she throws her “porn” dig is almost too much.)

The obvious, immensely easy play here would be for her to make up publicly with the boy. But even if that’s too much–as it obviously is–you’d think she could manage some high-road blather when asked about Johnston (“We’ve had our disagreements, as you all know, but he’s good kid and I hope it all works out for him in the end”) and could avoid bringing him up altogether when she’s asked about something else, as in this case. But, no, she somehow seems to believe–and no one close to her can evidently dissuade her–that if she can win a war of words with a semi-employed, 19-year-old high-school dropout, it will amount to an actual victory for her.

Personally, I think that in both cases they are people who will do anything to make the discourse about them, which explains the lack of consistancy in terms of policy. They don’t care about policy they care about being the center of attention and if you examine their statements in that light they are completely consistant.

As some of you know deadissue is hoping to become the headquarters for Prejean/Palin in 2012 but some people are already trying to derail the ticket. Apparentely Sarah(can I call you Sarah?) is not pro-life enough.

“Sarah Palin has presidential ambition, but she’ll have to get serious about protecting the innocent,” said Birkey, “because this time around, there’s a personhood movement that will expose the pro-abortion record of pretend pro-life candidates.”

I am sure it is just an oversight on the part of Sarah and Carrie and soon they will issue a statement supporting the rights of our spermatazoan citizens.

We need Palin in 2012. From Palin’s book Going Rogue:

But your dad’s a science teacher,” Schmidt objected. “Yes.” “Then you know that science proves evolution,” added Schmidt. “Parts of evolution,” I said. “But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt.” Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his hear. I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground

Almost a heart beat away from the presidency. Prejean/Palin 2012

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Yesterday I asked why putting terrorists on trial was such a big deal, looks like other people have been wondering as well.

In political terms, the right likes the war idea because it involves taking terrorism more “seriously.” But in doing so, you partake of way too much of the terrorists’ narrative about themselves. It’s their conceit, after all, that blowing up a bomb in a train station and killing a few hundred random commuters is an act of war. And war is a socially sanctioned form of activity, generally held to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people. What we want to say, however, is that this sporadic commuter-killing isn’t a kind of war, it’s an act of murder. To be sure, not an ordinary murder—a mass murder—but nonetheless murder. It’s true that if al-Qaeda were something like the “blowing up train stations” arm of a major country with which we were otherwise at war, it might make the most sense to think of al-Qaeda as fitting in with spies and saboteurs; criminal adjuncts to a warrior enterprise.

After all, do we really want to send the message to the world that a self-starting spree killer like Nidal Malik Hasan is actually engaged in some kind of act of holy war? It seems to me that we don’t. A lot of people in the world are interested in glory, and willing to take serious risks with their lives for its sake. Insofar as possible, we want to drain anti-American violence of the aura of glory. And that means by-and-large treating its perpetrators like criminals.

Also, in terms of catching suspected terrorists it would probably be much easier to get the rest of the world to help, if you are trying to catch people who have actually done something, rather than invading countries because many of the people in the country look like the suspected terrorists.

Finally some of the 9/11 plotters are going to face a criminal trial, and some of the right-wing is trowing a hissy fit. WHY?
Most of us can agree these people are accused of a criminal act and therefore should face a trial for it. It is almost like conservatives feel attacks on the U.S are justified, maybe more of them agree with Jerry Falwells comments after 9/11 when he said that the U.S was being punished by god, that we know.

Looks like there may be a few errors in Palin’s book. I think that Palin’s world view is so inaccurate it would be almost impossible for her not to lie about stuff, after all she grew up in a time when Reagan claimed tax cuts paid for themselves and up was down. Welcome back to reality Sarah.

Looks like Carrie Prejean walked off the set when asked about her out of court settlement by Larry King. This during a week wen Tom Tancredo walked off the set of the Ed show when somebody mentioned his deferrement for depression which kept him out of Viet Nam. Is their any conservative out there who can make it through an entire interview?

This sums up the countries fiscal problems really well:

“The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services,”

People want government services but don’t want to pay for them, a good deal for awhile, but at some point the country will go bancrupt. My guess is that most people would not handle a cut in services well so it may be time to talk tax increase.

Carrie Prejean talks about her “solo sex tape” In fairness she was seventeen(I wonder if that makes it childporn?) but she has aligned herself with the family values crowd, the same people who go ape-shit when seventeen-year-old’s exibit any kind of sexualit, so it is hard to feel too sorry for her.

Palin/Prejean 2012 cuz we all need a laugh.

Just in case anyone has any doubts the Stupac amendment is all about stopping people from having sex, unless of course the the product of that sex will be a low-wage worker and a high-school dropout.

Yesterdays election was a mixed bag. Two governorships, Virginia and New Jersey went to Republicans but two congressional seats went to Democrats. What does this mean?
In my state Colorado the same dynamic seems to be working our current Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, has spent most of his term cutting state services in an effort to balance the budget and vetoed some progressive legislation in an attempt to appear moderate. He will probably lose in the 2010 election, although his opponent Scott Mcginnis is a self dealing moron.
Ritter should have immediately raised taxes and restored state services. He might have been unpopular at first, but over four years people would have seen the benefits of having a fully functioning government and he might have had a chance at re-election, now he is about to hand the state back to the party that created the mess in the first place.
Moral of the story, if you run as a Democrat act like one when you get into office.
My guess is that 2010 will not be a good year for Democratic governors but maybe the next time they are in power they will recognize that governing is about more than getting elected.

I am starting to think it is time to get rid of NASA., after killing numerous astronauts on their unsafe space shuttles they have decided to endanger other animals.

“The beauty of this is that we can assess at different time points after exposure, so not only do we get a sense of rather immediate effects, but then we can look again at longer time points.

“That kind of information just hasn’t been available.”

After the radiation exposure, the monkeys can look forward to a lifetime of being looked after by staff and veterinarians at McLean Hospital.

Nasa said in a statement: “McLean Hospital is responsible for the lifetime care of the primates. No further research is planned for them at this time.”

This information should be available by examining the the long-term effects of people on the space shuttle and space station, they don’t need to do this to animals, they are just wasting money. Plus, monkeys are not prone to the same diseases as humans and they don’t live as long so it will be very difficult to see what the long-term effects really are on an animal that might live for thirty years, when the average age of an astronaut is probably mid thirties. This experiment is needless.

In addition the comment that their is “no further research planned at this time” is pretty carefully worded to allow for terminal experiments later. Which also takes care of the promise totake care of the monkeys for their “lifetime”.
NASA has been a national embarrasment long enough, lets shut it down.

Bill Donhue of the Catholic league is not pleased

I wonder if conservatives are starting to understand how unpopular opting out will make them at the local level and in addition I have a feeling that the states that are going to opt out are also the states that have the most unhealthy people, like Texas and Mississippi, so by opting out they are going to lower the rates for the rest of us. This is a win win situation. Unless of course you live in a state that wants to keep letting private insurers steal from their citizens.

I am not sure I get the outrage on this one:

Checking the “female” box when buying health insurance is likely to cost extra — perhaps up to 50 percent more than a man would pay for the same coverage.

Gender-rating — or what some term as flat-out sexual discrimination — is linked to the simple fact that women, particularly those under age 50 or so, go to the doctor more often than men.

It seems like too many visits to the doctor can adversely effect your health and with each visit a person runs the risk of being treated for a condition that they may not have, so I can see why people who visit the doctor more should probably pay more for health insurance.
In some ways this shows the folly of for profit medical companies, a doctor has an incentive to have people come in for lots of tests and insurance comppanies have an incentive to keep those people off the their rolls. the end result is a lot of people get overtreated while many other people get no treatment at all.

Finally got to watch some football yesterday, it seems Chicago is just good enough to narrowly miss the playoffs, just like the Denver Broncos of a year ago.

And, it should be illegal to experiment on babies.

Looks like their may be a public option for health insurance with a clause that allows states to opt out if they don’t want to let their residents have the choice of public insurance. Other than the fact that this will probably make the south, the only area of the country that may “opt out”, even more third world, it seems like a good idea.
My guess is that within a few years the biggest issue for the voters in the states that opt out will be how do elect politicians that are willing to opt back in.