deadissue.com

As the healthcare debate heats up opponents of reform argue the U.S has the best health care in the world. Maybe not so much:

“McAllen is legal hell,” the cardiologist agreed. Doctors order unnecessary tests just to protect themselves, he said. Everyone thought the lawyers here were worse than elsewhere.

That explanation puzzled me. Several years ago, Texas passed a tough malpractice law that capped pain-and-suffering awards at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Didn’t lawsuits go down?

“Practically to zero,” the cardiologist admitted.

“Come on,” the general surgeon finally said. “We all know these arguments are bullshit. There is overutilization here, pure and simple.” Doctors, he said, were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures.

The surgeon came to McAllen in the mid-nineties, and since then, he said, “the way to practice medicine has changed completely. Before, it was about how to do a good job. Now it is about ‘How much will you benefit?’ ”

Not only is overtreatment expensive it also is unhealthy. The American system needs reform.

One of the strangest things to come out of the health care debate was the the Price Waterhouse report. At one time Price Waterhouse had a good reputation but after the report on the Baucus bill where at the direction of the insurance they produced a report thin on facts and fat on scare tactics, Price Waterhouse is little more than an appendage of the industries they claim to audit.
This incident sheds some light on many of the financial dissasters of the last few years as clearly firms like Price Waterhouse did not really audit firms they simply passed on whatever gibberish the “client” told them too. Hopefully the next area of reform will be to replace “independant” auditors with a government agency that really does audit the books of comppanies.

Update: This explains the insurance industry pretty well

It’s true, as the report says, that buying better insurance will cost somewhat more than buying insurance that doesn’t cover anything. The vast majority of the people affected by this will be using subsidies, of course, but put that aside for a moment. This is part of the point of health-care reform: Insurers will no longer have the freedom to offer products that let an individual think his family his protected when the policy will do nothing of the sort. That may raise prices, in much the way that antibiotics cost more than herbal supplements, but it raises prices because it reduces the insurance industry’s ability to sell a deceptive and insufficient product.

Although I would add that buying better insurance is only going to be more expensive if no other cost saving measures are added and insurance company profits stay in the twent-percent range.

From Newsweek

What we do need to be cautious of is leaping on the nascent science of positive psychology before we are certain that we are asking the right questions. The most recent findings, for example, are that wealth makes you happy but children do not.

So … more money and fewer kids. Can this really be the weight of our accumulated wisdom? Do we all want daisies-in-the-meadow happiness, or a less chirpy, quieter contentment?

The entire article is pretty interesting to read, but I think they confuse denial with happiness. You can choose to deal with your situation in a positive manner and only worry about what you can control, or you can ignore the letters from your mortgage company and other creditors or the warning from your doctor that you really should get that brain tumor removed, but that prabably wont lead to long term happiness; however, if you stay positive during any of these situations chances are you will handle them better.
The one thing I get out of the article is that kids almost always insure that you will have less money and probably more stress.

Over the weekend I saw this article on population and climate change by Matthew Yglesias and he asks why people don’t talk about the benefits of small families. on the enviroment.

Efficiency—just not using energy—is the cleanest source of energy at all. And nobody uses less energy than a person who doesn’t even exist. That’s not to say we should be engaging in coercive limits on people’s ability to have children, that would be a cure that’s far worse than the disease. But the evidence is pretty clear that in societies where women are empowered and have access to contraception, that on average they want modest-sized families. And what this study is talking about is specifically what could be accomplished by closing the gap between the level of contraception that people want to have and the level of contraception they’re actually able to maintain. There are dozens of good reasons to think closing that gap would be beneficial, the impact on the environment is one of them, and there’s no reason people should refuse to say that.

I have even been in college classes where talking about the benefits of smaller families is strongly dicouraged. Kids have sort of become a consumer good that everyone is entitled to have, and anyone who suggests otherwise is some sort of elitist jerk. And yes I am bitter about being called an elitist jerk.

This is truly stunning and a bit creepy More than anything I think it shows that angry paranoid people are always angry and paranoid even to their friends, and the FOX reporter does everything but tell the guy I am one of you, and yet he still trys to shut him down.

Sometimes Rush Limbaugh makes a mistake and says what he is really thinking:

In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.

I hope reporters will start asking Republican politicians whether they agree with Limbaugh. It should make for some great TV and the apologies to Limbaugh later should be fun to watch.

The debate about the public option really isn’t policy debate at all. It is a no-brainer to implement a medicare like system that allows for reimbursement at the same scale as medicare, for everyone in America. The real debate is about whether or not conservative can get Democrats to break a promise to the American people when they said they would give the country a public option.
In other words it is about Republicans trying to get a political advantage and whether or not Democrats will be stupid enough to give it to them. Republican politicians will be able to claim Democrats were lying when they promised a public option. Even though it was mostly Republicans who made sure it didn’t pass that is not what most people are going to remember. They will remember that Democrats had a solid majority and could not pass a public option and probably for another forty years any time anyone trys to do something about the health-care in America it will be very easy to say they are lying or that they are unrealistic. After all at one time Democrats had a majority in both houses and their was a democratic president.
Even if the minority party could get a bill passed through both congress and the Senate I am sure President Palin would veto it. Democrats really need to come together and pass a health-care bill with a robust public option. The last time they failed at health-care we wound up with eight years of Bush.

During last nights speech Joe Wilson made a name for himself by heckling the president and in the process made Republicans look even smaller and more unreasonable. As the Washingtonmonthly explains

There are a few important angles to this. The first is substantive. When Wilson accused the president of lying, Wilson was, in fact, lying. Even in Congress, facts should matter, and the right-wing Republican wasn’t just obnoxious with his idiotic interruption, he was also wrong.

The second is personal. Joe Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress, said, “Whoever shouted out that the president was lying is a dumbass.” John McCain denounced Wilson’s outburst as “totally disrespectful.” While right-wing blogs were thrilled, Republican lawmakers have been entirely unwilling to defend Wilson’s behavior.

The third is contextual. President Obama couldn’t have been more magnanimous last night, highlighting a plan that “incorporates ideas from many people in this room tonight, Democrats and Republicans.” He made frequent references to Republican lawmakers and even George W. Bush. Obama even talked up medical malpractice reform. It was in this context that Wilson decided to lash out? As Gail Collins noted this morning, “Let me go out on a limb and say that it is not a good plan to heckle the president of the United States when he’s making a speech about replacing acrimony with civility.”

The fourth is practical. While Dems have been divided of late on policy specifics, they were unified last night — they loved Obama and they hated Joe Wilson. Indeed, I’ve seen reports that Wilson’s Democratic opponent next year, Rob Miller, suddenly saw a wave of new campaign contributions in the wake of Wilson’s conduct.

It’s striking that Wilson, unable to find any support from his allies, quickly apologized. He said his emotions got the best of him, and issued a statement that said, “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.” He spoke directly to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel last night to express his regret.

The guy seemed like any other teabagger and looked just as angry and unreasonable as the crowds that were bussed into townhall meetings in August. Maybe now the Joe Wilson’s of the world will let the grown-ups do their job while they pass kool-aid through their noses at the kids table

Thought I would re-post this as it seems especially relavant a few years later:

With mid-terms coming up soon, I wanted to share this list I came across at my local library:

1933 Unemployment Relief
1935 Social Security
1938 Minimum Wage
1944 GI Bill
1945 United Nations
1947 Marshal Plan
1949 NATO
1964 Civil Rights Act
1965 Medicare
1965 Voting Rights for all
1965 Head Start
1965 Federal Aid to Education
1967 Freedom of Information Act
1993 Family Leave Act
1990’s Federal Aid to Education
1990’s BUDGET SURPLUS
By my count, there are quite a few things on this list that the Republican Party is either against or is currently cutting while in power: Balanced Budgets (let alone creating a surplus), Social Security (GOP has hated this from the jump), Minimum Wage, United Nations (sending Bolton pretty much says it all), NATO (GOP bashed Clinton for participating in NATO missions), Head Start & Federal Aid to Education (funding reduced under Bush)…

This list represents what I’m proud of in terms of being an American, and in a lot of ways, it’s why I vote Democrat in most elections.

Hopefully in the near future healthcare reform, with a genuine public option,will be added to the list.

I have not been able to get my mind around the republican hissy fit about Obama’s speech to school children until I read this post:, especially this part:

We laugh at the wingnuts pulling their kids out of school, and we point out that Obama’s speech is perhaps the most bland, inoffensive, apolitical thing he’s ever written. But that’s exactly what the wingnuts are afraid of. They can just imagine their kids sitting in a classroom, watching this man speak—a Democrat, a liberal, a “socialist” (so they’ve been taught), a black “racist” (so they’ve been taught)—and two things might occur to them. 1) Their classmates do not share their fear and hatred and 2) Obama is saying the same sort of things that anyone would say. In fact, the sheer normalcy of the situation is hard to deny, and kids who are eager to fit in with their peers are extremely unlikely to start insisting that up is down and this normal situation is scary and fucked up. And that might be the first step towards becoming a more open-minded, decent human being. No wonder their parents are scared.

Wingnuts, particularly the Christian right, have always seen the appealing normality of the “secular” culture as its main threat.

The best weapon the conservative movement has is the fear of the “other” and a promise to protect people from the “other”. Onece people start to see that the scary brown people or scary gay people are really just like everyone else with the same hopes and dreams, the need for protection from the other goes away as does the conservative reason for being.

One thing that does not seem to get enough attention is how much easy access to credit fuels price inflation. At least if you have wage inflation to go with the price inflation people are not stuck with bills they cannot pay at a later date. This article seems to touch on the way debt has effected many of the countries businesses and orginizations in a negative way. This part seems especially relavant:

In recent years, Americans have grown accustomed to living amid the wreckage of various once-proud industries — automakers bankrupt, brand-name Wall Street banks in ruins, newspapers dying by the dozen. It’s tempting in such circumstances to take comfort in the seeming permanency of our colleges and universities, in the notion that our world-beating higher education system will reliably produce research and knowledge workers for decades to come.

Tempting — but wrong. Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market, and are selling information at a time when technology is pushing its value into the basement. In combination, these two trends threaten to shake the centuries-old foundation of the modern university.

Maybe higher education should accept its role as a farm system for the NFL and get out of the information business all together, Oh Wait, I think some universities have already done that.

One thing everyone seems to agree on in the health care debate is that Medicare is a great program. In fact several teabaggers have used their Medicare to pay for fixing them up after they start and then lose a fight at a townhall event. At this point it seems like a no brainer to open up Medicare to anyone that would like to join. This would probably help Medicare to stay solvent as younger healthier people would probably join and they would cost the system far less than seniors, perhaps helping to subsidize the care of older Americans while at the same time helping most Americans to get health insurance. This seems like a win/win that should not be contraversial as everyoone loves Medicare.

I am not sure what this story shows but it is pretty sad:

Four American soldiers have been charged with cruelty and maltreatment of an 19-year-old soldier who committed suicide after being in Iraq for 10 days, the U.S. military told NBC News Friday.

The four Multi-National Division-South soldiers are accused of hazing Private Keiffer P. Wilhelm of Ohio. They abused Wilhelm with excessive physical fitness, said Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, a military spokesman.

One defense official told NBC News that Wilhelm eventually stopped going to public areas to avoid being harassed repeatedly for being overweight

I guess one question might be, how did the commanders let this happen?

.

As someone who has been drifting around the workplace a little bit lately I can see why this is happening. It is really easy to get trapped into a job, because both their are not a whole lot of opportunities and if you want to keep your health insurance you are pretty much stuck with your employer. A real public option in insurance might cut down suicides, at least it would give people a chance to leave bad employers.

Does Micheal Vick deserve a second chance? Mr Bettor from the comments makes a great point, when he says convicted felons should be allowed to work. In fact recidivism would probably decrease if companies were not allowed to discriminate against convicted felons, but at the same time if the persons previous job contributed to them committing a crime they probably should not be allowed to return to that job. For example you wouldn’t let a school teacher caught molesting children return to the classroom, both for the sake of other children and why tempt the molester with easy prey.
As Vick’s dad points out the money in the NFL enabled vick to fight dogs:

Eventually, psychoanalyzing Vick became commonplace in Atlanta. Vick’s own estranged father told the Journal-Constitution about his dogfighting operation: “I wish people would stop sugarcoating it. This is Mike’s thing. He likes it, and he has the capital to have a setup like that.”

And now he is right back to where he has the capital to do it again, plus now he has Andy Reid and Tony Dungy to cover-up for him as they seem to desperately want to show what happened with their own children was not their fault; at some point it seems very likely that they will cover-up for Vick rather than admit they screwed-up again.

This all seems very familiar, hopefully their will be a different result, but doing the same thing usually leads to the same result.

Update: Here is an e-mail from the Humane society regarding dogfighting and Micheal Vick:

On a chilly evening last fall, a raid on a dogfight in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood on the south side turned up more than 50 people, including a pregnant woman and a few juveniles, in a basement watching dogs fight a bloody battle.

This summer, young men and their pit bulls gather on hot evenings in that same neighborhood to compete much more constructively (watch the video). The owners learn positive training methods and new ways of thinking about their dogs. The pit bulls, some of whom start the classes wildly aggressive, learn to run an agility course and show off their new obedience skills. Participants shower their dogs with praise and treats and start to see their canine companions as friends instead of fighters.

The HSUS’ End Dogfighting program makes the difference in Englewood and other troubled neighborhoods where dogfighting is all too common. People from the community spread the word about our “Pit Bull Training Team” and invite dogs and their owners to attend free classes.

The healthy competition in our classes has turned around many dangerous situations. Greg and his 95-pound bruiser Bolo struggled at first when Bolo tried to attack other dogs. Greg took Bolo out of the room sometimes because of his barking and lunging. Working with Bolo alongside more advanced dogs got him to settle down and make progress. Eventually, Bolo could sit calmly while other dogs wrestled in front of him — unthinkable at the start of the session.

One famous face symbolized the dangers of dogfighting last week: quarterback Michael Vick. To a rapt young audience in Chicago, he described his downfall by dogfighting and urged them to care for animals, not fight them.

Vick also gave his first interview since prison on last night’s edition of 60 Minutes. He says he has a new attitude toward animals and that he’s committed to helping boys and young men in inner cities break away from the horrors of dogfighting. On the show, I explained that we need to tackle this larger problem, and that Vick might even be able to help with it

You can read more from the Humane society here

In case you haven’t heard the Eagles signed Michael Vick. I just heard Andy Reid in an interview explaing that he felt the Eagles locker room was strong enough to help Micheal Vick become a batter person, Blay, Blah.
First, he is supposed to be running a football team not a half-way house for felons.
Second, one of the problems the Eagles have faced for the last five years is a lack of discipline. I have watched almost every Eagles game since the year they lost the superbowl, and usually twice a year stupid mistakes will cost them a game and last year they lost to an Arizona team that seemed to have inferior talent. The Eagles do not have a “strong” locker room and they just made it worse.
It is also interesting that Donavan McNabb says he is a very close friend of Micheal Vicks’. If that is true it seems pretty likely that he was present at some of the dog fights, or at least knew about them. Maybe the NFL needs to investigate how many other players were involved in Vick’s dog fighting and gambling ring.
This is a really bad day for the NFL.

I think Hillary could have handled this better. And apparentely so do other people.

Hillary’s KO in the Congo on Monday made the covers of both New York tabloids. Using tough hand gestures not seen since “The Sopranos” went off HBO, Hillary snapped back at an African college student who asked about the growing influence of China on Africa and then, according to the translator, wanted to know: “What does Mr. Clinton think?”

It turned out that the student was trying to ask how President Obama felt about it. But before he was able to clarify, the secretary of state flared: “Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state. I am.”

This raw, competitive response showed that the experiment in using the Clintons as a tandem team on diplomacy may not be going as smoothly as we had hoped; once more, as with health care, the conjugal psychodrama drags down the positive contribution the couple can make on policy.

Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have shown they can accomplish quite a bit together, for example the release of the reporter in North Korea, and working together they accomplished quite a bit in the nineties, for whatever reason Hillary Clinton seems to really resent the idea that Bill Clinton had anything to do with the couples success. I am sure their are some psychological insights to be gained from the Clintons but it might be better if they just concentrated on U.S foreign policy.

I take back some of the stuff I said about Hilary Clinton

A anti-healthcare protestor looking for donations for his medical bills. If the guy really was assaulted I feel bad for him, but the irony is pretty thick.

Micheal Steele trys to walk back from the brink of madness that is a republican at a healthcare townhall meeting. In a related note I am going to try to make it to a Townhall meeting in Boulder Colorado, it will be interesting to see if the GOP stormtroopers show up there.

Right-wing activists seem to have a rallying cry: “Keep the government out of medicare”. This seems to show the problem with a rational health care debate, only one side is rational, and the other side is pretty clearly uninformed and perhaps crazy.
The anti-health care zealots do seem to be showing a need for mental health counseling among a large portion of the U.S population, hopefully they will provide for that in the final health care bill.

I have been traveling quite a bit lately which means I get to eat a lot of bad food and read long books, the bad food, not so great, the long book has been nixonland. According to the book Nixon was able to exploit racial tensions to convince whites it was OK for them to be racist and if they didn’t vote for him their pleasant suburbs would be over-run with dark people. Later Reagan used the same strategy when he argued that welfare moms were living the high life at the expense of hard working whites. Most recentely we keep hearing that undocumented workers are going to take all the jobs and sell drugs and murder all us good white folk; and if you believe Lou Dobbs the undocumented workers will give us Leprosy as well.
Certain yackers are still trying to exploit the racial divide the problem is their are not enough scared white people to make it work, and perhaps their are less scary brown people. The most recent attempt to get people scared of mexican immigrants probably fell somewhat flat because it is hard to be scared of the people who mow your lawn or work at the local McDonalds.

When you consider that not only is it cruel but very expensive to send the uninsured to the emergency room universal health care is going to be a bargain at almost any price.

A BARGAIN AT ANY PRICE — ESPECIALLY THIS ONE…. The “t” word — “trillion” — not only sounds intimidating, it seems outlandish. A thousand billions. It’s hard to even fathom.

And with House Democrats unveiling a health care reform package yesterday with a $1 trillion price tag — Senate Dems are aiming for the same figure — it’s likely opponents of reform hope the “t” word alone is enough to make the effort sound scary.

It’s worth noting, then, that we’re talking about $1 trillion over 10 years to cover just about every legal resident in the country — without adding a dime to the national debt and without raising taxes on the middle class — finally reforming a broken system after decades of talking about it. Paul Krugman is right to call this a “bargain.“

Of course because it makes sense I am sure it will be apposed by most Republicans and Evan Bayh

Sarah Palin to resign. What kind of scandal is about to unfold?

Paul Krugman has a great column in the New york times today, regarding health care.
This part especially goes a long way towards explaining why the “centrist” members of the senate are far from the center:

Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

Hopefully Democrats will do what they were elected to do which is help the American people not protect the interests of a few insurance companies, if they don’t Democrats may be looking at another 1994 scenario where republicans are swept into office largely because no one sees any difference between the parties.

Got this from Washingtonmonthly.com:

One executive said rescission is about “stopping fraud and material misrepresentations that contribute to spiraling healthcare costs.” So, for example, when a woman in Texas was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, her insurer dropped her coverage because the company found an instance in which she visited a dermatologist for acne, and didn’t tell the insurance company about it. This, the insurer said, was an example of “fraud and material misrepresentation.”

This executive seems to have confused the companies self-interest with what they are contracted to do as an insurance company like pay for thetreatment of people who get sick. This is sort of like the auto executives flying their private jets to Washington so that they could beg for money.

Can someone explain how does Megan Mcardle keep her job

I am not a big Beatles fan, and Yoko’s duet with John Lennon makes me cringe, but this seems like a good idea

You would think that conservatives would love General Motors, the company has been a consistent denier of climate change and they gave us the Hummer, the SUV for men who need to compensate, but no:

“In the effort to reverse this lurch beyond the farthest left fringe of previous Democratic statist urges, individual Americans have a role to play. They have to say no to GM products and services until such time as the denationalization occurs,” says Hugh Hewitt. He acknowledges that this is a serious step that could hurt people currently working for GM: “But there isn’t any alternative, every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise. Every car or truck purchased from Government Motors is one not purchased from a private car company that competes fairly against all other car companies.”

I am not a big fan of GM but trying to make them go out of business seems a bit mean spirited.

Maybe we should start calling Dick Cheney former President Cheney as he is leaving no doubt who was in charge during the “bush” administration.

Update: It also seems that Mr Cheney is trying to make-up for his role in the September 11 attacks, my only question is does he know he screwed-up and is intentionally trying to hide it, or does he really beieve he knew what he was doing. My guess is that he really thinks he did a good job as president, even though the country suffered three thousand casualties n his watch and lost thousands more service-men all thanks to Dick’s negligence. That would be hard for most of us to deal with.