healthcare
lborkowski | December 21, 2009This post was originally published on our Wordpress site
In a historic achievement, 60 Senators have agreed to a healthcare bill that will dramatically expand health insurance coverage and curb some of the insurance industry’s worst practices. Getting agreement between the Senate and the House, which has passed its own healthcare bill, will still be an arduous process, but the chambers agree on most essential elements, and this is the farthest Congress has come in decades towards fixing our healthcare system’s serious problems. (If you want to compare the House and Senate bills, the Kaiser…
mikethemadbiologist | December 18, 2009Over the last few elections cycles, we've heard about the importance of various demographic groups: Bubbas, soccer moms, NASCAR dads, hockey moms, and so on. But Nan Mooney's (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class describes one demographic sector that has largely been ignored. Maybe it's because they* aren't 'real Americans', or perhaps they don't have a catchy nickname.
Mooney's book describes the economic problems facing college-educated professionals, including teachers, social workers, and, yes, scientists (contrary to popular belief, most…
sastyk | December 18, 2009A while back I argued that there's a rule - when the US spends a whole lot more and uses a whole lot more than everyone else, what we usually get back isn't just less than everyone else gets for the same buck, it is dramatically worse. I called it my rule of 10 times the price = 10 times crappier. It applies to an astonishing range of American actions - from our military budget and its results to the oil we invest in agriculture.
Back then, one of my examples was healthcare, which I pointed out was at least 4 times crappier (and at least 10xs or more for those who can't get it at all, an…
mikethemadbiologist | December 16, 2009Recently, I argued that the Democrats need to start really going after the Blue Dogs by cutting funding to their states, including Nebraska's USSTRATCOM. According to the Weekly Standard (take it for what it's worth), this is finally happening:
According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn't fall into line.
Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a "naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson's…
mikethemadbiologist | December 16, 2009Matthew Yglesias fires off a screed against Democrats who have told pollsters that they are unlikely to vote for Democratic congressional candidates in 2010 (I think Amanda's response sums up my thoughts rather well: people have to like this stuff, or surprisingly, they might not take the time to vote--or want to make the emotional investment in supporting you). Yglesias and others primarily pin the blame on the Blue Douchebags in the Senate. Yes, the Senate is dysfunctional. But to pin this all on Nelson, Bayh, Lieberman and the rest of the Asshole Caucus is overstating the case.
Ezra…
mikethemadbiologist | December 6, 2009David Sirota was debating (although given that said 'debate' occurred on cable TV, that's probably far too genteel a word) David Frum about healthcare, when Sirota brought up the finding that 45,000 people in the U.S. die every year from a lack of health insurance. Frum's response is incredibly arrogant (go to the 4:00 mark):
Sirota is absolutely right that Frum's discounting of the study with "I went to Harvard, believe me" is incredibly arrogant. But what's worse is what came first:
"That number is not a reliable number, that number is an estimate."*
And evolution is just a theory. Oops…
mikethemadbiologist | December 3, 2009It's between fifteen to twenty one cents of every dollar spent by hospitals. A recent study examined the costs of antibiotic resistant infections in hospitals. The main finding (italics mine):
The total attributable hospital and societal cost ranges for ARI in the expanded sample were as follows: hospital, $3.4-$5.4 million; mortality, $7.0-$9.2 million; lost productivity, $162,624-$322,707; and total, $10.7-$15.0 million. The total medical cost, if distributed to all sample patients, added $2512-$3929 (16.8%-26.3%) to the mean unadjusted hospital cost for all sample patients.
(An aside:…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2009Steve Benen tells us about the long list of compromises by progressives and liberals to get us to where we are on healthcare:
Keep in mind, when progressive Dems argue that they've already compromised, they have a very compelling case to make. They started with a desire for Medicare for all. That was negotiated down to a national public option. That, in turn, was negotiated down to a national public option with limited eligibility. That was negotiated down again to a national public option with limited eligibility tied to negotiated reimbursement rates, instead of Medicare rates. In time,…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2009I've been looking at the House and Senate Bills, and, on antibiotic resistance, they're not bad. Both bills would evaluate hospitals on hospital-acquired infection rates (although there's no mention of nursing homes, which are a significant focus of infection). This is good.
The House bill focuses primarily on reporting of hospital-acquired infections. It's actually very specific, and there's an entire section dedicated to it (starting at p. 913). Hospitals would be penalized if they fail to report. Infections (and pertinent information, which includes resistance) would be publicly…
mikethemadbiologist | November 18, 2009Friday, the NY Times described the relatively paltry efforts in cancer prevention, compared to those for heart disease. Not that researchers haven't been busy figuring out how to prevent various cancers:
Then, in 1999, he had a chance to do another breast cancer prevention trial, this time of an osteoporosis drug, raloxifene, or Evista, which did not have the cancer drug taint. It was to be compared with tamoxifen.
The $110 million study, involving 19,000 women, ended in 2006. The two drugs were found to be equally effective in preventing breast cancer, but with raloxifene there was no…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2009I have no doubt that the Catholic ecclesiarchy supports the Stupak-Mills amendment out of a genuine desire to regulate vaginaspreserve the fetus, which they believe is a person. But the financial incentives for Catholic Church-owned hospital systems are enormous:
...consider that there are 60 some Catholic-affiliated hospital systems in all 50 states -- representing 13 percent of the nation's entire in-patient health care system. That's easily tens of billions of dollars flowing through the business arm of the Catholic church that continues to grow through mergers with private and other…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2009If you haven't heard by now, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds got clobbered by the Republican candidate. One of the things that hurt him was the poor turnout by independents and Democrats compared to the 2008 presidential election. And why did they stay home?
Consider the answers to these three questions posed to VA Democrats who voted for Obama, but not for Deeds:
And:
And:
If the Democrats don't stop acting like Republican-lite, like Herbert Hoover (although that's an unfair comparison to Hoover, who, while ideologically hidebound, had saved millions of lives from famine…
gregladen | November 11, 2009Of particular interest is a move within the AMA to rescind that organization's support of reform with a public option... What's up with that?
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mikethemadbiologist | November 4, 2009Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah doesn't want Democrats to pass a successful healthcare bill because then people might think Democrats do helpful stuff. Then people would vote for Democrats. Then...TEH SOCIALISMZ!!:
The healthcare reform proposals before Congress threaten the existence of the two-party system, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) alleged Monday morning.
Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a "step-by-step approach to socialized medicine," will lead to Americans' dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues.
"And if they get there, of…
gregladen | November 3, 2009The current health care reform bill(s) do not address actual health care ... like what procedures to use and stuff ... as much as they address insurance. This is a health insurance reform bill, not a health care system reform bill. (Though there is necessarily overlap.) Nonetheless Republican Wingnuts want a provision regarding prayer as a methods of treatment. Insurance companies would be required to cover prayer treatments:
a little-noticed provision in the health care overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The…
mikethemadbiologist | October 30, 2009Congressman Bart Stupak has helped tank the Medicare +5% reimbursement plan and single payer (italics mine):
The problem with an amendment strategy [for Medicare +5% and single-payer] is that the House leadership will likely not allow many, if any, amendments to be offered on the House floor. The reason is because of Bart Stupak, who is trying to defeat the entire bill by rounding up 40 House Democrats to demand that none of the insurance plans receiving subsidies in the exchange are allowed to cover abortions. If such an amendment passes--and the leadership believes that it would if offered…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2009
Actually, this snake is nicer and cuter than Joe Lieberman
(from here)
What's remarkable in the coverage of healthcare reform is how certain bits of information simply go missing. For example, how often did you read that other developed countries with comparable standards of living can offer better healthcare at half the cost? (Maybe that piece of information got laid off, what with the recession and everything.) If news stories pointed out the obvious every now and then, maybe this whole debate would have worked out a little differently. Which brings us to the subject of political…
mikethemadbiologist | October 27, 2009I like this ad, because it makes a point I've made before: rank-and-file Democrats did what we had to do in 2008, now it's the elected Democrats turn to do so. And yes, rank and file Democrats: the public option is so popular among Democrats, corporate propaganda notwithstanding, this is not coming from the 'liberal base' (not that there's anything wrong with the liberal base).
Anyway, from the Great State of Maine:
gregladen | October 26, 2009You must watch this. You. Simply. Must. Watch. This.
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gregladen | October 22, 2009... is doomed.
This is what happens when you (and by "you" I mean the insurance industry") go one step to far in bullying Congress. Even the Republicans turn on you. A little.
Details from Rachel:
... and more ...
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