I Stand Corrected! September 30, 2009March 16, 2017 But first . . . IS MEDICARE THREATENED? The Right’s Shameless Gambit by Matt Miller The Daily Beast Once the party of fiscal sanity, the Republicans are now wailing that the Democrats’ health-care plan cheats seniors out of money. Matt Miller on how they scare grandma. Connoisseurs of hypocrisy will always find plenty to savor in political debate. But even by the debased standards of modern Washington, the Republican charge this week that Democrats will “hurt seniors” by trimming future Medicare costs is demonstrably false – and exposes as a sham any GOP claim to care about fiscal sanity. “It’s disingenuous to say Congress can cut this much spending from Medicare without having an adverse affect on seniors’ access to care,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), as the Senate Finance Committee took up Chairman Max Baucus’ pivotal bill on Wednesday. But it’s Mr. Kyl who is being disingenuous. Consider some facts: Medicare will spend about $500 billion this year. Under the proposals that Republicans say will bring “rationing,” Medicare will spend about $860 billion in 2019, or 73 percent more than today. Instead of spending $7.1 trillion on Medicare over the next decade, as is currently forecast, Democrats propose spending roughly $6.7 trillion, or about 94 percent of that sum. This means Democrats propose to slow the annual growth rate of Medicare spending from a projected 6.6 percent to about 5.9 percent. As context for this piddling restraint, recall that the U.S. spends 17 percent of GDP on health care today versus 10 to 11 percent among other advanced nations. American does this without achieving better health outcomes than do others, and while leaving nearly 50 million people uninsured. Meanwhile, there are huge regional variations in the utilization of procedures and services that researchers agree bear no relation to quality or results. Some credible analysts say that as much as 30 percent of U.S. health spending is ineffective. At a moment when health economists in both political parties have concluded from such facts that American health spending is radically inefficient, the notion that the Democrats’ tiny brake on runaway costs will “hurt” anyone – except members of the Medical Industrial Complex accustomed to being paid for ineffective care – is absurd. Privately, of course, Republican leaders know this – they’re just reaching for what they hope will be a potent political club to deny President Obama a big health-care win. And, to be sure, Democrats are past masters at “Mediscare” campaigns themselves, having unleashed one against Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s to devastating effect. As a matter of policy, Democratic attacks back then were misguided (as I argued at the time); in any event, two demagogic “wrongs” don’t make a “right.” What makes the GOP’s phony charges particularly damning today is the way they reveal the party’s avowed concern for “fiscal responsibility” to be hollow. As anyone who’s looked at the question soon realizes, it’s impossible to be serious about budget deficits and America’s fiscal future without tackling the outsize growth of health costs. Measured against the scale of the problem, the current Democratic plans are, if anything, overly timid. That the GOP has chosen to puff them up into this month’s version of their “death panel” boogeyman shows Republicans simply aren’t serious about fiscal policy anymore. Or, to put it more precisely, the party’s desire to foil the president politically trumps whatever interest it once may have had in sound public finance. This depressing instinct has become a pattern. Republicans pitilessly caricature Democratic calls for “comparative effectiveness” research as the road to rationing – as if it weren’t obviously a good idea to better understand the relative value of various treatments in the most costly and inefficient health-care system on earth. Republicans didn’t even think about offsetting the costs of the massive 2001 Bush tax cut for the well-to-do, or the $1 trillion America has spent in Iraq, or the hundreds of billions of dollars President Bush spent (sensibly) adding prescription-drug coverage to Medicare. The old-fashioned conservative habit of actually paying for major policy initiatives never seems to occur to Republicans anymore. Far better, contemporary GOP logic holds, to borrow the cash from China and ask the kids to pay it back. Whatever political sleights-of-hand President Obama deploys himself, one thing is clear: By putting his party’s head on the chopping block with candid calls to trim Medicare and raise taxes to pay for ambitious health reform, Obama and the Democrats have shown a commitment to fiscal prudence that Republicans can’t even be bothered to feign anymore. Matt Miller is a management consultant, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and the host of public radio’s popular political week-in-review, Left, Right & Center. His new book is The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. THREE CHEERS FOR GUIDO ‘Guido Westerwelle, the German liberal leader who is poised to become the country’s new foreign minister, has led his Free Democratic party to its best result in 60 years,’ reports the Telegraph. How cool will it be to have one of the G8 foreign ministers be – incidentally – an openly gay man. With the mayors of Paris and Berlin – and Portland and Providence (and soon Houston?) among others – all openly gay . . . not to mention the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, the sheriff of Dallas County, and now the new German Vice Chancellor . . . we draw ever closer to the day when this can elicit no more than a big ‘so what?’ And now . . . ‘WHO AMONG US’ Ken Doran: ‘[Contrary to your NASCAR comment yesterday], Kerry never said this. I congratulate you on having many conservative readers, but let them make their own arguments; don’t buy into their phony memes. One of the core problems of our time is that the mainstream media has had its collective CPU corrupted by its lust for left-right equivalence – not justified in this day and age – and by two generations of ‘liberal-bias’ onslaughts. The consequence is reflexive groveling to the right. Don’t take even a step down that road.’ ☞ Oops! You’re right! Maureen Dowd made it up. (Listen to the real quote here.) And then it spread and spread so that even people like me – who are constantly explaining that Gore never said he invented the Internet and did nothing wrong at the Buddhist temple, and of course Obama is a U.S. citizen, and so on – think they heard him say it on TV. I stand red-faced and corrected. And it gets worse: Mike Watts: ‘In yesterday’s column ‘… believed Iraq played a roll in attacking us …’ you meant ‘role’ not ‘roll’ (unless they were playing with croissants).’
I Didn’t Mean YOU Are Misinformed September 29, 2009March 16, 2017 But first . . . ETHERPAD Marc Fest: Etherpad.com enables really real-time collaborative editing. I have to edit documents together outside parties all the time, so this rocks. And speaking of collaboration: TEAMVIEWER I’ve used this several more times since first touting it and just want to be sure you saw it. If you’re a typical computer user with modest skills . . . and so occasionally get stymied . . . but have a computer guru friend from work or daughter off at college, each of you should download this free software. Then start a session where you both see the same screen and can work on it together. Use skype – also free – to talk as you do. Or maybe you and a friend are charged with designing the Kiwanis Club holiday party evite. Rather than have to drive over to his place, just work on the file together from your respective dining room tables. This is great if you want to help your grandmother fix something on her computer or show her how to do something. And now . . . NO OFFENSE Rob: Imagine my surprise at learning this morning that I am gullible, ignorant and misguided as well as lacking in the areas of logical, critical thinking. If my IQ were not so low, I probably could have figured out just how stupid I am all for myself, huh?? It’s a wonder I can even brush my teeth without causing myself injury, let alone put three kids through college and run my own successful business. Kindly accept the fact that those who disagree with you – yet stop by to read most days – deserve a bit more than invective and insults. Reprinting ‘Ralph’s’ thoughts – such as they are – contributes to the problem and makes you look as foolish as he. For as long as we simply insult and degrade those whose opinions to not align with ours, no progress is possible. I’ll go back to drooling on myself now. How could I be so stupid?’ ☞ Thanks, Rob, and for stopping by this page most days – I appreciate that very much. I think you’re responding to something I didn’t say – and certainly something I did not intend to say. Ralph was referring to people specifically like those in Friday’s DC TEA PARTY video. There are tons of people like you who disagree in a thoughtful and constructive way. I surely have no monopoly on the best ideas, and – judging from the much touted ‘161 Republican amendments’ incorporated into one or another of the health care bills – Democratic legislators don’t believe they do either. What Ralph was bemoaning, and I admit to bemoaning, too, are those (however many they number), whose discourse is not thoughtful or fact-based. I think if you watch that video, you might agree that their approach to fixing the health care mess is not constructive or well-informed. Donald Szostak: ‘I was so outraged by the tenor of Ralph’s thesis and your apparent agreement that I felt I had to write. If those opponents, tens of millions of them, are gullible, ignorant and misguided then why haven’t they been easy prey for the left? Ralph’s and your lack of respect for the opposition is what will do you in. Have you ever considered the possibility that you might not be so 100% right? Maybe, just maybe, if you who consider yourselves elite took the time to understand what is driving those well meaning idiots and morons you might stand a chance of leading them, i.e., un-misguiding them, instead of just standing by lambasting. I think Obama called it finding common ground. Instead, all I read from you is how obviously right your solutions are and how wrong and dumb are those who disagree with you. How sad. Just a thought. As always, have a nice day.’ ☞ As above, I’d ask that you watch the video, if you haven’t already, because that was what Ralph was responding to. And, again with respect, I’d suggest that much of the health care stuff I’ve posted or linked to goes well beyond insult or naked assertion – as for example this lengthy column several weeks ago. Or the David Goldhill piece highlighted here. You and Rob (above) and others who wrote in are absolutely right – elitism is obnoxious. An aw shucks C-student regular guy approach is a lot more effective, and bested both Kerry and Gore. (John Kerry learned to drop all his gerundial g’s – tryin’ and thinkin’ and goin’ – but the day he answered a reporter’s query by asking ‘who among us is not a NASCAR enthusiast?’ I knew we had an uphill fight.) What was so effective about candidate and then President Clinton was his ability to have a stunningly A+ mind without rubbing voters’ noses in it. I think our current President has much the same talent. So I agree many of us need to do better at getting off our high horses. Still, the fact remains that 70% of the folks who voted to reelect President Bush believed Iraq played a role in attacking us on 9/11. Iraq did not. A great many people who voted for him the first time believed that ‘the vast majority’ of the benefits of his proposed tax cuts would indeed ‘go to people at the bottom of the economic ladder.’ The opposite was true. Many believe the Earth was formed just a few thousand years ago. It was not. The list goes on and on. So in that sense, tens of millions of decent, well-meaning people can be mislead – and routinely are. Like Ralph, I do believe it is something to bemoan. I miss the days when much of the nation watched one of three responsible nightly newscasts, along the lines Bryan Norcross described here a few days ago. Those newscasts were not perfect, but they aspired to a high journalistic standard – and were provided very significant resources to meet it. FIRST CLASS HEALTH CARE Lisa S.: ‘Financially, we agree about much. Politically, not so much. I think you are probably a person of good will, as the overwhelming majority of people are. I think your positions are probably heartfelt. As are mine. So I often just cannot understand your positions. You’ve consistently made similar comments before, and at least you aren’t hiding your position, but yesterday in writing about a single-payer plan you posted: ‘This being America, it needs a ‘first-class’ option for those wishing to pay a large premium to board the plane (or in this case, the non-emergency MRI) a little sooner, and in a nicer seat.’ I read this as, the wealthy will be able to skip to the front of the line, making the line even longer for the rest of us. As it is now, I wait my turn and I get my turn. Given that most of us are not wealthy, why would most of us want to set up a system where the privileged get to cut in line? I realize that you specified non-emergency. So this position would only delay treatment for those people who are merely suffering, not dying, but still. You are lobbying for a health care system that would be imposed upon me, but not upon you. I’d like to keep the one I’ve got thank you.’ ☞ But, gosh, Lisa – you don’t think the current system treats the rich better than it treats you? It totally does, whether it be with plush paneled private rooms and private nurses or with the availability of ‘premium care’ with guaranteed same day or next day appointments. Give $50,000 to your local hospital and you’re likely to have access to an office that tries to make sure you have a good experience whenever you need their help. And while this may be somewhat distasteful, it lowers the cost for everyone else. Anyway, all this is moot because a single-payer system was taken off the table even before the negotiations started. But as for keeping the coverage you’ve got – you currently can’t if it has a lifetime cap and you exceed it, or if the insurer decides not to renew your policy, or if you switch jobs and have a preexisting condition. Obama proposes to remove those worries, making your coverage more secure. Not the worst thing. Lisa continues: ‘Here’s my bottom line argument against government controlled health care system. Social Security is a wreck. It’s been mismanaged for decades. I do NOT want the same people who will NOT be bringing me my social security money also NOT delivering my health care. Until the U.S. government can get Social Security right, they have no business moving into my health care.’ ☞ Actually, Social Security is anything but a wreck. It’s been paying benefits efficiently and reliably for more than 70 years, taking up just 2% off the top for expenses and administration. True, it will run out of money if we don’t make some modest adjustments – people are living longer. But those adjustments really will be modest, especially if we start phasing them in soon. (Here‘s one way to do it.)
Pick Up The Pace September 28, 2009March 16, 2017 AN INFORMED CITIZENRY . . . Ralph: “That 9.12 DC TEA PARTY video Friday was great. It showed exactly what we’re up against: tens of millions of gullible, ignorant, misguided people. It’s important to remember that these people mean well, but they are lacking the the areas of logical, critical thinking – which makes them easy prey for right-wing manipulators like Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, and Fox.” ☞ Basically, Limbaugh and Beck make them feel smart and superior; we elitists who believe in evolution and know that Iraq did not attack us (and that you can’t be both a socialist and a fascist – they are pretty much polar opposites) are seen to be talking down to them. So if you were a ditto-head, whom would you likely side with? One does fear for democracy, when the things that “everyone knows” should be done – like single-payer health care today* or the phasing in of an annual gas tax hike 35 years ago** – can’t be done. *This being America, it needs a “first-class” option for those wishing to pay a large premium to board the plane (or in this case, the non-emergency MRI) a little sooner, and in a nicer seat. **I had a chance to interview the Secretary of the Treasury in 1974, after OPEC had quadrupled the price of oil (to twelve bucks a barrel). I asked: Shouldn’t we raise the puny gas tax by a dime a year for a couple of decades – using the revenue to lower the tax on things we wanted to encourage, like work and investment? He said: Yes, of course, he said, dismissively (how naïve could I be?); but it’s politically impossible. Yet if we had done that obvious thing, look where we’d be today: We would lead the world in fuel efficiency technology – Toyota would be licensing hybrid technology from us – largely independent of foreign oil, and trillions of dollars less deeply in debt. WE’RE IN HOT WATER Global warming is speeding up: “Earth’s temperature is likely to jump nearly 6 degrees between now and the end of the century even if every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update,” reports the Associated Press. This doesn’t just mean it’ll be warmer in the winter and hotter in the summer, which might be kinda nice in some parts of the world. It means war, famine, disease, and perhaps the end of human civilization. We need to get on the stick. Pick up the pace. Focus. Which leads me to: BILL MAHER’S LATEST Here: New Rule: If America can’t get its act together, it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the YouTube video of the puppy that can’t get up. As long as we’re pathetic, we might as well act like it’s cute. I don’t care about the president’s birth certificate, I do want to know what happened to “Yes we can.” Can we get out of Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Fix health care? No. Close Gitmo? No. Cap-and-trade carbon emissions? No. The Obamas have been in Washington for ten months and it seems like the only thing they’ve gotten is a dog. Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can’t make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs – oh, and there’s still 60,000 troops in Germany – and can’t make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress’s climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions… by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where’s the fire? Oh yeah, it’s where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States! We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn’t start until 2016. In that year, our cars of the future will glide along at a breathtaking 35 miles-per-gallon. My goodness, is that even humanly possible? Cars that get 35 miles-per-gallon in just six years? Get your head out of the clouds, you socialist dreamer! “What do we want!? A small improvement! When do we want it!? 2016!” When it’s something for us personally, like a laxative, it has to start working now. My TV remote has a button on it now called “On Demand.” You get your ass on my TV screen right now, Jon Cryer, and make me laugh. Now! But when it’s something for the survival of the species as a whole, we phase that in slowly. Folks, we don’t need more efficient cars. We need something to replace cars. That’s what’s wrong with these piddly, too-little-too-late half-measures that pass for “reform” these days. They’re not reform, they’re just putting off actually solving anything to a later day, when we might by some miracle have, a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, “If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense.” So let’s start from scratch. Even if they pass the [bleep] Max Baucus health care bill, it doesn’t kick in for 4 years, during which time 175,000 people will die because they’re not covered, and about three million will go bankrupt from hospital bills. We have a pretty good idea of the Republican plan for the next three years: Don’t let Obama do anything. What kills me is that that’s the Democrats’ plan, too. We weren’t always like this. Inert. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and 11 months later seniors were receiving benefits. During World War II, virtually overnight FDR had auto companies making tanks and planes only. In one eight year period, America went from JFK’s ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon, to actually landing a man on the moon. . . . Bill Maher is host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” ☞ Obviously, it’s easier for Bill Maher to say these things than for even the most talented, well-motivated Administration to achieve them. But it’s good he’s saying them anyway. The challenge: to persuade sitting Democrats in tough districts to risk their careers for the greater good; and to risk losing control of Congress as in 1994. (It’s got to be Democrats, because the Republican game plan thus far is simply to say no to everything.) There is a strong case to be made if that if we actually do take bold action we will be rewarded, not punished (the inverse of 1994). Getting enough legislators to take that leap is not easy, but I think we’ll get there, with meaningful, albeit not perfect, results.
An Informed Citizenry September 25, 2009March 16, 2017 HALF A MILLION DOCTORS SUPPORT HEALTH CARE REFORM They’re not just in it for the money. Here. AN INFORMED CITIZENRY . . . . . . being essential to a successful democracy, click here to assess our chances. I think the Dow may have gotten a little ahead of itself.
Bob Dole Again September 24, 2009March 16, 2017 158 MPG IN 2013 So maybe you’d have your bigger, family car; but also this one when you didn’t need a third seat or trunk space. There aren’t enough airbags in the world for me to want to drive it in serious tractor-trailer traffic . . . my Foosball table weighs almost as much as this Volkswagen . . . but courage was never my middle name. One feature: a rearview camera, to replace those wind-drag side view mirrors. (Think how hard the wind pushes your hand when you put it out the window at cruising speed, and the energy required to overcome that drag.) MONEY MARKET FUNDS NO LONGER GUARANTEED From the Aristides August investor letter: . . . [P]erhaps the most serious moment of the current economic crisis was when hundreds of billions of dollars were withdrawn from money market funds in a matter of hours. The ‘money market,’ over $3 trillion in short maturity, high quality debt, represents a key short-term source of liquidity for most of corporate America; it is, in essence, a large virtual bank. The government halted the run on the bank by guaranteeing money market funds against loss. This is far from an optimal situation, as it harms the flow of deposits to actual banks, and on September 19, 2009, the government will allow the guarantee program to end. As the yield on the typical money market fund is something like 0.20%, this should logically precipitate flows out of money market funds; who in their right mind wants to earn 0.20%, with no guarantee from the federal government, when they could achieve a similar government guaranteed yield with T-bills or a CDARS CD product from a bank? Hopefully, this will all happen slowly and smoothly, but be aware that, after Saturday, nothing but faith in the financial system is preventing the largest bank run in the history of mankind. Of course, government will intervene again if needed, but if it has to, after recapitalizing the banks, taking over a large bank, implicitly guaranteeing the debt of the 20 largest banks and explicitly guaranteeing certain bank debt, taking over the world’s largest insurer, taking over the world’s largest mortgage company, subsidizing the securitization market, taking over the world’s largest auto manufacturer, and promising to help with the impending commercial real estate mess, it will not say anything good about the stability of the financial system. BOB DOLE – AGAIN I’m ‘reprinting’ this, because the more I think about it, the more I’d like to see everyone in America be familiar with it (so spread the word). Former Senate Minority leader and 1996 Presidential candidate Bob Dole helped kill the Clinton health care bill. As New York Times reported Saturday: When former Senator Bob Dole was the Republican minority leader, he helped deep-six President Bill Clinton’s health care plan. This year, Mr. Dole, 86, who left the Senate in 1996 to run for president, is working behind the scenes to help resurrect one. His motivation comes partly from experience. After his body was shattered during World War II, he underwent seven operations in veterans hospitals and three years of rehabilitation. ‘I had good treatment and it’s probably why I’m still around,’ he said in an interview. He has been working on the issue since the 1970s, and admits now that ‘we probably should have passed the Clinton bill, but it got so politicized.’ It seems he got a memo from Bill Kristol: allowing reform to pass would kill his chances to be President. It was just more important to defeat Clinton than to provide coverage to the millions of uninsured. For the sake of one man’s presidential aspirations, millions of uninsured or inadequately insured Americans have suffered or died or gone bankrupt. And now the Republicans hope to do it again.
Bulbs Assembled In China By Acrobikers (And Don't Miss Will Ferrell's Sarcasm) September 23, 2009March 16, 2017 WILL FERRELL, JON HAMM, ET AL Sarcasm doesn’t always play well, but in this case I think it may. And they are right, of course: we should have a public option. ARIZONA ALREADY DOES From NPR: As the public debates what might happen if the government enacts a public health care option, Arizona’s experience may serve as a touchstone. A public option for small businesses has been in place there for decades. Under the Healthcare Group of Arizona — the state’s publicly sponsored option for small businesses — employees have a $2,000 yearly deductible and have co-pays for doctor and hospital visits. But their premiums are less than half of what private insurance would cost. The insurance is portable; premiums are determined not by health conditions but by age, gender and business location. “The public option has been working for me in comparison to what I can get,” says Susan Gamble, who owns a small business. Gamble pays about $3,000 per employee versus the $7,000 she would pay with a commercial insurer. And Gamble has a pre-existing condition, which might make private options more expensive— and more difficult to get. BRIGHT, DIMMABLE, 6-WATT LED So I’m sitting next to a guy named “Philips” whose great-grandfather started Philips Electronics, one of the world’s 200 largest companies, and he shows me a dazzling $35 third-generation 5-watt LED lightbulb that his own little start-up company began selling last month. Google bought 25,000 of them. How can something that draws just 5 watts emit such bright light? It’s way better than the LEDs I had previously purchased. He gave me one of the even more expensive 6-watt dimmable variety, which shines even as I type. The economics are compelling over the estimated 35,000-hour life of the bulbs (which come with a three-year warranty). Should you wait until they’re discounted at Wal-Mart one day? Probably. But for the early adopters in the crowd, what could be more exciting? I clicked the link above and bought several more. CHINESE ACROBIKERS Even as the rest of the world economy is in various states of gloom, China is booming. This is a good thing, and could help revive the rest of the world. But the subject of this clip is girls on bikes. It just builds and builds.
Planetary Good September 22, 2009March 16, 2017 TWITTELEH This being the season of the Jewish holidays, and most of us – Jewish or not – having mothers, this quick video could prove helpful. CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE When you make a list of terrific ex-presidents and vice presidents of recent memory, President Carter, through the Carter Center, Vice President Gore, most recently through the Repower America initiative, and President Clinton, through the Clinton Global Initiative that kicks off today at 4PM, have to top the list for a continued lifetime of amazing planetary good. That last link will save you the $20,000 contribution people make to attend: as in past years, you can watch it all for free. And speaking of our 42nd president . . . The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President hits stores at the end of the month, the product of 79 interviews Taylor Branch conducted over the course of those eight years when time allowed, usually late at night, for use long after his presidency was over. History/political buffs will find this fascinating – you get to know what the President was thinking right then and there, not later, with the benefit of hindsight, and not sanitized to avoid affecting current events. 5 WAYS OBAMA CHANGED HER LIFE What presidents do matters. An example of this, for those who didn’t find time to watch it yesterday, is this 6-minute video. As I said yesterday, it just makes your day. Have a good one.
If You Can’t Trust Philip Morris With Your Health, Whom Can You Trust? September 21, 2009March 16, 2017 THE INFORMANT One of the best things for me about this terrific movie is that I had no idea what it was about when I went to see it. So I’m not going to tell you, either. Just know that “The Informant,” with Matt Damon, based on a true story, is huge fun. 5 WAYS OBAMA CHANGED HER LIFE There is so much positive energy in this 6-minute video, it will totally make your day. Yes, I wish she and her husband had stopped at two kids instead of three (although I’ll bet they’re great kids). And, yes, there are some cons to go along with the pros (mainly, the cost). But on balance, and in the context of 2009’s primary task – keeping the economy from going over a cliff – this has to make you smile. If you agree, spread it around. Note the new “share this” button in the box at left.* *It lets you email the link to others, or Twitter it, etc. It doesn’t yet work on the archives, and is not yet “date specific” – still working on that – so for now, if you do ever want to share something here, probably a good idea to let ’em know the column date. As in “see the 5 WAYS OBAMA CHANGED HER LIFE from Sept 21.” 45,000 NEEDLESS AMERICAN DEATHS When I was a senior in high school, traffic fatalities were taking roughly 45,000 lives a year. (The number would peak at just over 50,000 a few years later. With seat belts and air bags and Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a tough economy, which reduces accidents, they were “just” 37,000 last year.) Now comes a Harvard estimate that 45,000 lives are lost each year to lack of health insurance – that people without health insurance are 40% more likely to die of a given medical problem than people with it (after taking age, income, education, obesity, smoking, and drinking, into account). The uninsured are more likely to go without needed care; and to get inferior care when they do go for it. So we lose to our current health insurance system each year nearly as many lives as we lost during the entire Vietnam War, and about 10 times as many as we’ve lost over 8 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which, if it were necessary or unavoidable, would not be of much interest. Yet in Canada (oh, and in every other industrialized country on Earth), everyone does have health insurance. CANADIAN HEALTH CARE – REALLY IS BETTER AND CHEAPER? Well, according to this from Bloomberg news Friday – yes. In small part: By Pat Wechsler Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — Opponents of overhauling U.S. health care argue that Canada shows what happens when government gets involved in medicine, saying the country is plagued by inferior treatment, rationing and months-long queues. The allegations are wrong by almost every measure, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other independent studies published during the past five years. While delays do occur for non-emergency procedures, data indicate that Canada’s system of universal health coverage provides care as good as in the U.S., at a cost 47 percent less for each person. “There is an image of Canadians flooding across the border to get care,” said Donald Berwick, a Harvard University health-policy specialist and pediatrician who heads the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “That’s just not the case. The public in Canada is far more satisfied with the system than they are in the U.S. and health care is at least as good, with much more contained costs.” Canadians live two to three years longer than Americans and are as likely to survive heart attacks, childhood leukemia, and breast and cervical cancer, according to the OECD, the Paris- based coalition of 30 industrialized nations. Deaths considered preventable through health care are less frequent in Canada than in the U.S., according to a January 2008 report in the journal Health Affairs. In the study by British researchers, Canada placed sixth among 19 countries surveyed, with 77 deaths for every 100,000 people. That compared with the last-place finish of the U.S., with 110 deaths. . . . Yet the Canadian “bogeyman,” as U.S. President Barack Obama called it at an Aug. 11 gathering in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, may have “all but defeated” the idea of a public option in the U.S., said Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. . . . Private insurers, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession fear the “market power” of a public plan, Reinhardt said. They “deployed certain think tanks to find horror stories around the world that can be used to persuade Americans a public health plan in the U.S. would bring rationing.” . . . ☞ Seriously? Private companies deploying think tanks to mislead the public? Sounds almost like the tobacco industry! IF YOU CAN’T TRUST PHILIP MORRIS WITH YOUR HEALTH, WHOM CAN YOU TRUST? Turns out Philip Morris played a key role in scuttling health care reform in 1993 – reform that Bob Dole now admits we probably should have passed, but his advisors told him that allowing it to pass would hurt his chances to become President so he killed it – and that the same key player the tobacco maker used then, former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, is leading the charge to defeat it again this time. (Among other things, she invented “death panels.”) See and read it here, and in the October 1 issue of Rolling Stone. You know, I was taking with a cab driver a few weeks ago and he summarized it very honestly: “You hear such conflicting things – you don’t know who to trust.” And I found myself saying, “Trust Obama.” Not that every judgment he makes, every action he takes, will be perfect. But can anyone think Philip Morris has the people’s interest at heart more than Barack and Michelle Obama? That the rightwing industry that would have scuttled Social Security and Medicare if they could, that would never have passed a minimum wage bill, that supported Bush so effectively for 8 years, that advised Bob Dole not to let health care reform pass the Senate – can anyone think that they have the people’s interest more genuinely at heart than Obama?
Pistol Packin’ Progress, Praise the Lord September 18, 2009March 16, 2017 But first . . . PHONE FOR HEALTH Here‘s a concrete way to help pass health insurance reform. Look! We’re turning you into a radical! And now . . . PROGRESS The new Tampa police chief is a woman. She wouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or marry (she’s gay), but she was the pick to manage Tampa’s homeland security program and to be named ‘law enforcement executive of the year’ by the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives . . . and now this. (Oh, and let us not forget the sheriff of Dallas County, Texas, who would also be banned from the military, but was handily reelected last year.) IF THE GOP HAD BEEN RUNNING AGAINST A TRUE BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL Hermano: ‘This ad should be recycled every election year. Just change the name of the Republican candidate.’ ☞ Wow. Well, it’s irreverent (skip it if you’re offended by irreverence!), but spot on. Which leads us to . . . THE VIDEO CLIP OF A TRUE BELIEVER Here, at WouldJesusDiscriminate.org. And thus to . . . CHURCH BILLBOARDS IN TEXAS Now here‘s something different. I realize I am preaching to the converted, for the most part. But a Happy New Year to one and all.
Drink Up – A Walkie Talkie Just Got Sucked Into the Engine September 17, 2009March 16, 2017 Summer is almost over, but it’s not too late to tell you about a recipe that my friend David came up with: HONEST TEA-QUILA! Start with a bottle of Honest Peach White Tea – remove half the tea, add crushed ice, a shot of tequila, a half shot of triple sec, a splash of Rose’s lime juice, and a squeeze lemon. Now replace the screw cap, shake it up, and drink. ABSOLUT HONEST TEA! We were in the midst of figuring out the best varie-tea to mix with Absolut – and, for that matter, which Absolut – but we did not feel we could do our best work after consuming so much Honest Tea-Quila. Please take some time to experiment and submit a recipe or two of your own. If you don’t drink, or drink as little as I do, that’s okay – forget the vodka, just drink the tea. The purpose here, as long-time readers will know, is to sell more Honest Tea. Foosball tables do not come cheap. (After an Honest Tea-Quila, who can resist little plastic feet?) BOREALIS – FOD I know. Still, I thought this, from the FAA, was interesting. FOD is short for “Foreign Object Debris/Damage” – as in, say, a stray luggage container getting sucked into a jet engine, which can’t be good for the engine. The operative paragraph is on page 9: The presence of FOD on airport runways, taxiways, aprons and ramps poses a significant threat to the safety of air travel. FOD has the potential to damage aircraft during critical phases of flight, which can lead to catastrophic loss of life and the airframe, or increased maintenance and operating costs. Costs to the industry are now estimated to be in excess of $1-2 billion per year for direct costs and as much as $12 billion when indirect costs are considered. FOD hazards can be reduced, however, by the establishment of an effective FOD management program. So . . . what if the jet engines weren’t started at the gate? What if the plane could taxi out like a golf cart and only start up shortly before take-off? This is of course what the WheelTug system, being developed by a subsidiary of Borealis, is designed to make possible. One more reason to remain guardedly hopeful Borealis may one day fly.