Norah Jones
Huge hit from a couple of years back. She has a very unique voice that I hope will be around for a long time.
Artist: Norah Jones
Tune: Don’t know why?
Entries Tagged as ''
Republicans introduce healthcare bill. Think of it as corporate welfare.
I need to read all of the particulars on this plan, but at first glance it is laughable.
From DK:
Yesterday, with little fanfare, Republicans finally introduced legislation putting down on paper exactly what they think health care reform should look like.
The GOP’s “Empower Patients First Act,” sponsored by Republican House Study Committee Chairman Tom Price, is a $700 billion giveaway to the health insurance industry and its introduction creates a huge opening for the White House and congressional Democrats in the health reform debate. It has three main elements:
- Health insurance deregulation. The bill would deregulate the insurance market, dismantling state-level consumer protections and allowing insurance giants to sell their plans nationwide without fear of oversight. (Edit, 9:41AM: The problem here is that the GOP plan creates an unregulated national market, unlike the Democratic proposal for a national insurance exchange, which would create a national market, but with consumer protections.)
- Subsidizing private health insurance. The bill would give private health insurance subsidies to lower-income individuals and families. This sounds good at first, but subsidies in the absence of other reforms will simply increase the cost of health insurance for everybody else, leading to another inflationary spiral in health care.
- No comprehensive plan to pay for plan. In order to fund subsidies, the bill calls for a 1% annual cut in Federal discretionary spending each year for the next decade, yielding about $120 billion. Although this would result in major across-the-board cuts in federal spending, it still leaves nearly $600 billion unfunded. Republicans say they can find “efficiencies” in the health care system to cover that $600 billion shortfall, including malpractice reform, but fail to offer specifics, suggesting the legislation would dramatically increase the deficit.
In sum, the Republican health bill would be a disaster for ordinary Americans, but it’s the health insurance industry’s dream. It slashes consumer-protection regulations, it increases health care costs by subsidizing private insurance while simultaneously deregulating it, and it would create another explosion of federal debt. (more… )
FRC serves up a big whopper on healthcare reform
Republicans and conservatives have been trying to scare the beeswax out of Americans. They have lied about the Healthcare plan from day one. A couple of days ago, the lie was that Democrats were going to kill off the elderly. President Obama had to debunk that in a townhall meeting. Now we have a new Harry and Louise -type commercial, which is designed to scare the elderly. A government paid for healthcare plan would deny seniors the surgery that they need while providing abortions to the young. This piece of goodness is served up by the Family Research Council (if you are not familiar with FRC here are a couple of posts as background – here, here and here):
Family Research Council serves up the biggest lie yet on Healthcare [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadSecretary Kathleen Sebelius speaks out on health care reform
Former Kansas Governor and now Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote an op-ed that appears in Yahoo! News. The sentiment of the article is correct, that the current system is not sustainable. She then mentions a degree of consensus around “cost controls, guaranteed coverage and providing more choices.” (I’m not sure what “providing more choices” really means because I believe that all Americans just want excellent healthcare. One choice.) She then goes ahead and points out the problem of the 46 million Americans not being covered and millions more being underinsured. She correctly points out that Republicans are obstructing the process. Right here is where the good article ends and the murky article begins.
She talks about more affordable choices. She does not stand up strongly for a public option. She does not mention that the most affordable option with low overhead and a guarantee that insurance companies can’t weasel out of it is a single-payer (government payer) system. I cannot think of anything that is more affordable than saving $700 billion by creating a single-payer system. There’s no other proposal on Capitol Hill that will save this kind of money.
She is correct in saying, “we have to align incentives for doctors and hospitals.” I have stated this differently. I have said that we need to pay primary care physicians and hospitals differently. They need to be paid to take care of a population of patients. Therefore, you remove the incentive of ordering a bunch of tests or seeing patients over and over again if they don’t need to be seen that often.
By creating a single-payer system, we are all invested in each other’s health. We want physicians to be proactive and not just treat us we were sick. Therefore, I have proposed that primary care physicians who keep a population of patients healthy (keeping diabetes under control, controlling hypertension and the like) should be paid bonuses. You can call these bonuses — wellness bonuses. Physicians and hospitals are awarded for instituting programs which keep people healthy.
I understand in this political environment that many Democrats are afraid of the single-payer system. They need not be afraid. Instead, they need to embrace the single-payer system and explain it so that people understand that they keep their doctor, they keep their same hospital. Those choices do not change. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has written a good article but she needs to go the next step. We need leadership from her, from President Obama, from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
450,000 docs can’t be wrong
Watch the video:
The good news is that Dems (real progressives) are starting to fight back. Now we’re talking.
TPM has more:
In a letter to be delivered to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House health care leaders, Congressional progressives will reject a compromise Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) forged with Blue Dog Democrats to advance legislation. “We regard the agreement reached by Chairman Waxman and several Blue Dog members of the [Energy and Commerce] Committee as fundamentally unacceptable,” it reads.
This agreement is not a step forward toward a good health care bill, but a large step backwards. Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates – not negotiated rates – is unacceptable.
You can read the letter, the text of which was obtained by TPMDC, below the fold. It was being circulated for signatures until early this afternoon*, and could be released officially later today. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are hoping 50 or more members will sign on, to prove they have enough votes to kill the final bill. Earlier today, over 30 had added their names to it, according to one source, but that number could have grown. We’ll get you more details as they’re made available. (more…)
What is your definition of a racist?
I don’t know if yelling the “n-word” makes you a racist. Maybe it does. Then we have this police officer in Boston. No, not the one who arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, the other one.
Merriam-Webster – Racist – 1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race 2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
From CNN.com:
A Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail — in which he referred to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” — has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.
Officer Justin Barrett told a local television station on Wednesday night that he was sorry for the e-mail.
“I regret that I used such words,” Barrett told CNN affiliate WCVB. “I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist.”
He was placed on administrative leave after the e-mail surfaced, and he might lost his job as a result.
Barrett, 36, who is also an active member of the National Guard, sent off a fiery e-mail to some fellow Guard members — as well as the Boston Globe — in which he vented about a July 22 Globe column about Gates’ controversial arrest.
Just in case you are thinking that Barrett didn’t really mean what he typed the article goes on to state:
Barrett used the “jungle monkey” phrase four times, three times referring to Gates and once referring to Abraham’s writing as “jungle monkey gibberish.”
He also declared that he was “not a racist but I am prejudice [sic] towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they say is freedom but it is merely attention because you do not get enough of it in your little fear-dwelling circle of on-the-bandwagon followers.”
Barrett’s comments were taken out of context, said his lawyer, Peter Marano.
“Officer Barrett did not call professor Gates a jungle monkey or malign him racially,” Marano said. “He said his behavior was like that of one. It was a characterization of the actions of that man.”
In the heat of the moment, stuff (there are several other words that can easily substitute for stuff, you can fill in whatever word you would like) can fly out of your mouth. But to sit down and type something out and then hit send, you have had time to think and reflect. If you decided not to think, I don’t think that’s my fault. This police officer has painted himself as a racist and a moron. When you send this letter to the Boston Globe you are asking the world to look at what you wrote and judge it and judge you.
Officer Barrett has been suspended from the police force.
Maybe I’m wrong – what are your thoughts?
To err is human; not to correct is criminal, isn’t it?
I’m starting to read the LA Times more and more as the NY Times and Washington Post let me down on an almost daily basis. So, the Washington Post made an error. It was a stupid error that anyone who follows politics would know was an error. It is okay to make an error as long as you correct it as soon as it was found. They have done nothing but sit on their hands and stick their tongues out at us.
From Political Animal:
In a Washington Post op-ed yesterday, Martin Feldstein argued, “Obama has said that he would favor a British-style ‘single payer’ system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry.”
That is plainly false. As Jon Chait explained yesterday:
Obama has never said that he favors a British-style health care system. Britain does not have a single-payer system. It has a socialized system, where the government directly employs all health care providers. Indeed, if you follow the link in Feldstein’s own column, it says, “A single-payer system would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health-care bills with tax dollars.” Does Medicare own hospitals and pay doctors government salaries? No. Professor Feldstein, please stop writing about topics you know nothing about.
I naively expected the Post to run a correction. It was a mistake for the paper to publish the bogus claim in the first place, but it’s an error that’s easy enough to correct. Especially in the middle of a heated debate over health care policy, it only makes sense that D.C.’s newspaper would want readers to know that Feldstein’s claim is demonstrably untrue.
After all, as Paul Krugman explained, “Single-payer, as anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to the health care debate knows, means a system like Medicare, in which the government pays the bills. It absolutely does not mean a British-style system — and Obama definitely didn’t advocate anything of the sort…. [I]f I misstated the facts like this in the Times, I’d be required to publish a correction.”
As of this afternoon, there’s been no correction or clarification.
It was a glaring and obvious falsehood based on Feldstein’s incorrect definition of the phrase ‘single-payer.’ The kind of thing that is so obviously false, it shouldn’t have taken the Post more than 30 seconds to write up a correction once the mistake was pointed out…. But the Washington Post has not yet run a correction, online or in print…. Correcting this obvious falsehood as soon as possible is the only responsible thing to do.
This seems to have come up quite a bit lately, most notably with a couple of George Will columns on environmental policy. It’s unclear why factual errors keep appearing in WaPo opinion pieces, what kind of fact-checking process they’re subjected to, and why the paper seems so reluctant to set the record straight.
Sarah Palin’s speech is really poetry
The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien has figured out Sarah Palin. I think they deserve an Emmy for this, because I have been read her speeches and I just get a headache. (The headache may or may not come with nausea.) O’Brien believes that Palin is poetry. This explains a lot. I didn’t understand half of the poetry that I read in college. I think that he may be on to something.
William Shatner reads Palin:
Grab bag — Wednesday afternoon
- In spite of the uptick in new home starts for June, I still think the housing market is significantly depressed and it will be so for some time. Resale values have yet to show anything like a rebound. Dean Baker, the codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, agrees with me (and it may be more appropriate to say that I agree with him).
- New York has started to confront their homeless problem by sending people home. New York has paid for one-way tickets for over 500 families. I guess the question is, do these people want to go home? Are they going into an atmosphere that will help them get back on their feet? Or is New York simply dumping the problems on other cities?
- Recently, many Americans have come to believe that our government is completely inept and only private business can get things done efficiently and cost-effectively. I have argued vehemently against this notion. Yahoo! is another example of a business that had no vision and poor leadership. Within the last 18 months Yahoo! told Microsoft to go take a hike. Now, with Yahoo! in a considerably weaker position, a deal has been reached with Microsoft over a search partnership. This is another example of how business can make huge mistakes just like everyone else. They aren’t magically smarter than the rest of us.
- House Democrats have announced a deal that would trim $100 billion from their health care bill. According to press reports, healthcare providers would not be paid based on Medicare reimbursement rates. I’m not sure exactly what this means.
- On Monday, the Washington Post editorial page advocated for prosecutions of those officers who’ve gone beyond what was outlined in John Yoo’s memo. Again, this goes against the American tradition of holding those who were responsible for the deviant policies responsible. We need to stop looking at the bottom. We need to investigate and prosecute from the top down. Glenn has more.
- There appears to be some discussion on Capitol Hill that may end SCHIP. This may be good or it may be disastrous. The program has clearly helped millions of children. This program needs to be rolled into a single payer system. We don’t need to be cutting back benefits.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid: We need leadership on healthcare.
Crooks and Liars readers. Thanks for coming by! Thanks to BlueGal for the link. I appreciate it. Please take a look around. I think that you will like my blog!
Several years ago, when the Democrats took over the House, they elected Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker. I thought that was an interesting choice. (Interesting, in this context, is not really a compliment.) When Harry Reid was chosen to lead the Democrats in the Senate, I thought it was odd. Now, as we look back over the last three years, what is the tough legislation that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have guided through Congress? Nothing. We have not been able to end the war in Iraq. As a matter of fact, we’re still there. We have not held hearings on torture, or former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, or the outing of Valerie Plame, or domestic spying, or even our election system, for that matter. All of these issues take political will and leadership. Now, we need leadership on healthcare and these guys are, again, AWOL.
Aaron Carroll on the Colbert Report:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Aaron Carroll | ||||
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There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that healthcare is difficult. In order to do healthcare right, several special interests must be directly confronted. Neither Harry Reid nor Nancy Pelosi have stuck their necks out to say that we are giving way too much money to health insurance companies. No one is saying that health insurance companies do not add any value to our healthcare dollar. This is what needs to be said. Instead of leadership on this issue, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are nearly invisible.
We, as Americans, should not take half-measures. If we are going to truly reform healthcare, then let’s reform healthcare. By moving to a single-payer system, Americans save over $700 billion. This money then can be used to cover the 46 million Americans who are currently not covered by any insurance plan. This would provide basic medical insurance for all Americans. This does not require any special tax on the wealthy. It does not require any additional funds from the middle class. Even while not spending an extra dime, we can cover all Americans. Why isn’t Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi saying this on the Sunday talk shows every week?
When is somebody going to stand up and say that immigration reform is part of healthcare reform? Hello, Harry and Nancy, I’m talking to you!! Out of the 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, somewhere around 12 to 15 million are economic refugees (illegal immigrants); therefore, these two topics are linked. When is a politician going to stand up and tell us this? That would be leadership. Informing the American people and leading Congress through potential pitfalls is what we’re paying the majority leader and the Speaker of the House to do and they ain’t doin’ it.
Finally, if we are able to negotiate some basic tort reform, physicians will begin to order less tests. Americans instantly save billions of dollars. The quality of healthcare doesn’t change. As a matter fact, you can argue, that the quality of health care may improve.
Today we learned that the Blue Dogs and Republicans have worked out some sort of agreement that there will be no vote on healthcare reform before the August recess. Fine. We (progressives) need to organize. We need to push for a single-payer system. We need to write and fax Congress. We don’t need to spend any more of our hard-earned money on garbage. This latest bill that came out of the Senate is 1000 pages of garbage. We need to tell our representatives that they need to start with a clean piece of paper. Then, they need to write down the goals of healthcare reform — portable, efficient and cost-effective. These should be the goals. Co-ops do not meet these goals. Some sort of public-private hybrid is not efficient or cost-effective. No American should have to pay anymore money than we’re paying now for healthcare. $2.2 trillion is enough. 16% for gross domestic product is enough. A single-payer system is the only way to meet the goals of a portable, efficient and cost-effective healthcare system.
It is time for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to listen to what Americans want – single-payer. They need to lead Congress and make this happen.
Seven arrested in terrorist plot in NC
If you can find terrorists here in North Carolina, then you can find them anywhere.
From AP:
A father, his two sons and four other North Carolina men are accused of military-style training at home and plotting “violent jihad” through a series of terror attacks abroad, federal authorities said Monday.
Officials said the men were led by Daniel Patrick Boyd, a married 39-year-old who lived in a lakeside home in a rural area south of Raleigh, where he and his family walked their dog and operated a drywall business.
But two decades ago, Boyd, who is a U.S. citizen, trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan and fought against the Soviets for three years before returning to the United States, authorities allege.
An indictment released Monday does not detail any specific terrorist plans or targets overseas, although it claims some of the defendants traveled to Israel in 2007 with the intent of waging “violent jihad” and returned home without success.
“These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some far away land but can grow and fester right here at home,” U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said. (more… )
The Errington Thompson Show 7-18-09
In preparing for the show, every now and then there are curveballs that are thrown your way like the great broadcaster Walter Cronkite dying on Friday night. That completely changes your Saturday morning show. Therefore, I started to show off with a trip in the “way back machine” and I tried to explain the importance of Walter Cronkite. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were only three major networks. There was no satellite and no cable TV. Most major metropolitan areas had a couple of independent stations and public broadcasting. At 5:30 or six o’clock, the national news was served up on one of the three major networks. Walter Cronkite was by far the most popular with over 25 million viewers at the peak of his popularity. Americans trusted Walter Cronkite. If he said we landed on the moon — we landed on the moon. If he said we lost Vietnam — we lost Vietnam. He had a type of integrity that is not seen in today’s world. I play several clips that made Walter Cronkite very famous.
Special thanks for Miccheckradio who has been great help with my prep!
MAYBE EVERYONE SHOULDN’T HAVE A SAY ...
Conservatives advising the state of Texas on curriculm standards say that civil rights leaders César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall are given too much attention in Texas social studies classes. That’s right— unlike most criticisms finding that minorities get too little coverage in history textbooks, these conservatives think that civil rights leaders get too much attention. To quote one adviser, “”To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin is ludicrous.”
NERD ALERT!
Scientists have given a name to the new element added to the Periodic Table. It’s time to recognize…copernicum! The element, named after astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, will hereby be known by the symbol Cp. It was actually discovered in 1996 through fusion experiments led by Prof. Sigurd Hofmann of the Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. Office.
Dare to be Stupid
Meghan McCain continues her mission to shake up the GOP with this new line in an interview with Out.com: ““Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass. He should stick to plumbing.”
My special guest this week is constitutional scholar, friend of the show Linda Monk. We spent a good deal of time discussing the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings. Senator Al Franken had an outstanding moment when he asked Judge Sotomayor about the only case on Perry Mason that Berger won, since both for fans of Perry Mason when they were growing up. We have a wide ranging discussion which includes the fraud on Wall Street which seems to have caused a significant portion of our economic downturn. One of her major points is that prosecutions should start from the top down and not from the bottom up. This is a great discussion. Enjoy!
Senator Max Baucus doesn’t get it.
Is it that they don’t understand public opinion or that they just don’t care?
From TPM:
If accurate, this Associated Press report is a big deal:
Officials say that a bipartisan group in the Senate is edging closer to a health care compromise that omits a government insurance option that President Barack Obama favors. Nor is it expected to require businesses to offer coverage to their employees.
I’ve heard this possibility floated once or twice as a sort of unlikely contingency–in the event that bipartisan negotiations drag on and on past deadlines, the Senate Finance Committee could vote on an extremely slimmed-down bill, completely silent on controversial provisions, in order to get it through the panel with bipartisan support. Then, as it’s merged with the HELP bill, and then later with House legislation in conference committee, those provisions would be imported, meaning the final votes would be much more partisan. (more…)
Grab bag – Monday evening
Really busy at work. Trauma is one industry in the US that really is recession proof, sadly. My schedule is crazy. Flipping from days to nights.
Anyway, from Political Animal:
- At the start of a two-day summit between the United States and China, President Obama emphasized the fact that the relationship between the two countries will shape the 21st century. The U.S. delegation for the talks will be led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
- New home sales in the U.S. far exceeded expectations last month, showing the largest increase in more than eight years.
- Images from intelligence satellites of Arctic ice bolstered the evidence of global warming. The Bush administration kept the images hidden; the Obama administration has released them.
- Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have announced their opposition to the Sotomayor nomination. No big surprise.
- The $644-million Community Stabilization Program in Iraq has been suspended due to alleged widespread corruption.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in what I believe is a first, seems to be hitting the campaign trail, hoping for a second term.
- How can policymakers pay for health care? John Kerry’s idea about imposing an excise tax on “gold-plated Cadillac” insurance plans seems to be generating quite a bit of support.
- In the wake of the controversy surrounding Skip Gates’ arrest, racial slurs at The Root have become a real problem.
- Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is real sorry he suggested last week that the U.S. needed to prepare for a possible military confrontation with India.
- It was a pleasant surprise to see Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) acknowledge that United States has detention facilities that could safely hold Gitmo inmates. Alas, he’s still wrong about the policy. [Read more →]
Shuttle Endeavour in space
The Shuttle Endeavour has been in space for over 12 days and the final spacewalk has been completed.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
From AP:
Astronauts completed the last spacewalk of their shared shuttle and station mission Monday, breezing through some rewiring, camera setups and other outdoor chores.
Christopher Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn got so far ahead on the flight’s fifth spacewalk that they even took on extra work, a welcome change from earlier excursions that were bogged down by balky equipment and other obstacles.
“We’re out of tasks,” Mission Control finally called up. (more… )
Sarah Palin serves up more nonsense as she leaves office
I’m not sure how “stepping down” helps anything. One thing is for sure. Palin loves being in front of the camera. She loves the spotlight.
Alan Colmes has more:
In her bizarre farewell speech as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin fed red meat to the right-wing, invoking patriotism and the military in her first sentence. It was unclear to whom she was referring when she talked about those who are “tearing down our nation”, “American apologetics” and unmentioned forces “suggesting that our best days were yesterdays.” How can that be, she pleaded, when there are volunteers willing to fight for our freedoms.
Next it was on to criticizing the press, lecturing them that soldiers “are willing to die for you,” so “quit making things up!” And the new governor, Sean Parnell, has a nice family too, “so leave his kids alone!”
After what sounded like a campaign speech for re-election, it was time to defend gun rights, and warn that “You’re going to see anti-hunting, anti-Second Amendment circuses from Hollywood.” This will be done by using “delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets” who will “use Alaska as a fund raising tool for their anti-Second Amendment causes.” Luckily, “patriots will protect our individual guaranteed right to bear arms.” And “Hollywood needs to know we eat, therefore we hunt.”
Weather Report – “Birdland”
I’m waiting for Elton to write this one up. He is more into jazz than I will ever be. All I can tell you is that this is a great song performed by a great jazz fusion group at their peak. Jaco Pastorius was still with them. He gave the band its bass, its heavier than heavy, funkier than funky sound.
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Intelligent thoughts from my good friend Elton:
Sorry for the delay, just got off a few nights on call. You picked one of the few “jazz fusion” groups I’ve studied and tried to play. Here’s a few comments off the top of my head:
- Jaco Pastorius got such a distinctive sound from his bass because it didn’t have any frets so he could slide his hand up and down the neck without the bumps. He bought it used and liked the sound.
- Jaco was an alcoholic, manic-depressive who was killed by a bouncer in a bar fight. Amazing how many jazz greats (and musicians in general) were big time substance abusers.
- DownBeat is the most well-respected jazz magazine out there, and Weather Report is the only artist to win album of the year four years in a row. Birdland is on the album Heavy Weather which was the fourth in that string.
- Nice clip – it looks like it’s from that old “Rock Concert” show that came on Friday nights when I was a teenager. Weather Report was one of the few jazz groups to appear on that show.
- Wayne Shorter made his name in one of Miles Davis’ bands and was one of the founding members of Weather Report along with a keyboard guy whose name I’d have to look up. Shorter is still going strong today – check out his albums alegria and footprints live from a few years ago.
- One of the jazz games I play is “Six Degrees to Louis,” I think this is the trail through Weather Report: Wayne Shorter→Miles Davis→Charlie Parker→Lester Young→Louis Armstrong. Remember, everything in jazz started with Louis, actually everything in all music since 1920 started with Louis, but that’s another blog altogether!
Dear Mr. President, Healthcare should be between my doctor, my insurance company and me.
This funny letter was sent to me. It comes from the Daily Kos. This letter cleverly points out all of the folks that stand between you and your doctor. Although the letter is tongue-in-cheek, the underlying message is clear. Insurance companies aren’t here to make sure that you get all of the care that you need. They are here to make money!
Dear Mr. President: I am writing you today because I am outraged at the notion of involving government in healthcare decisions like they do in other countries. I believe healthcare decisions should be between myself and my doctor.
Well, that is not strictly true. I believe healthcare decisions should be between myself, my doctor, and my insurance company, which provides me a list of which doctors I can see, which specialists I can see, and has a strict policy outlining when I can and can’t see those specialists, for what symptoms, and what tests my doctors can or cannot perform for a given set of symptoms. That seems fair, because the insurance company needs to make a profit; they’re not in the business of just keeping people alive for free.
Oh, and also my employer. My employer decides what health insurance company and plans will be available to me in the first place. If I quit that job and find another, my heath insurance will be different, and I may or may not be able to see the same doctor as I had been seeing before, or receive the same treatments, or obtain the same medicines. So I believe my healthcare decisions should be between myself, the company I work for, my insurance company, and my doctor. Assuming I’m employed, which is a tough go in the current economy.
Hmm, but that’s still a little simplistic. I suppose we should clarify.
I also believe my healthcare should depend on the form I fill out when I apply for that health insurance, which stipulates that any medical problems I ever had previously in my life won’t be covered by that insurance, and so I am not allowed to seek further care for them, at least not at my insurance company’s expense. That seems fair; otherwise my insurance company might be cheated by me knowing I needed healthcare for something in advance.
And if I didn’t know about an existing condition I had, but I could have known about it, had someone discovered it, I suppose it doesn’t make much sense for my insurance to cover that either.
But let us assume that all hurdles have been cleared and I am allowed to see my doctor, chosen from a list of available doctors, about a health problem, except health problems I have previously been treated for. After that, I believe my healthcare decisions should be between myself, my insurance company, my insurance plan, my employer, and my doctor.
Oh — and the doctors at the insurance company, of course.
They will never actually meet me, or even speak to me on the phone, and in fact I couldn’t tell you the name of a single one of them, or what state they were in, or whether or not they’ve just all been outsourced to a computer program somewhere in Asia at this point — but they’re in charge of determining which treatments might be “effective” for me, and which will be a waste of money, er, time. They do this by looking not at my case, which is individualistic and piffling and minor, but at the statistical panoply of treatments on the insurance company spreadsheet and their statistical cost vs. effectiveness. My doctor may think one treatment or another might be effective for me in a particular instance — but he may be a little too closely involved with my personal case, and unable to make these decisions nearly as well as my less involved, more dispassionate insurance company can.
And then there’s the claims office. When my doctor sends a bill to my insurance company, it must travel through a phalanx of people and departments and procedures in order to determine whether or not it is, in fact, a valid medical complaint to be treated for, done the right way, at the right time, by a doctor on the right list. If the paperwork is not done on time, or not done completely, or not done to the satisfaction of the right people, or if I did not receive the proper prior approval for the medical treatment administered, or if that approval expired, or if the insurance company rescinded the approval months after the fact, my medical care will not be covered. While my doctor has had to sometimes forgo payments because the 30-day window for receiving “all requested documentation” somehow slipped by, I myself have received notes from the insurance company denying coverage for treatments from twelve full months beforehand. It can’t be helped: sometimes it takes twelve months for their computers to process the paperwork and determine that I owe them more money. They like to be thorough. [Read more →]
Raul Midon – “Sunshine”
I heard this guy on NPR a year or so ago and he just blew my mind. He has the perfect voice; not too sweet, not too rough. He can sing just about anything. Put it this way… Stevie Wonder thought highly enough of him to play on his debut album on this tune – “Sunshine.” Raul Midon. Check him out.
Cool Video (re-posted)
I wrote this a couple of years ago. Funny how some things haven’t changed. Enjoy the video!
Being on call at night (Saturday) is a trip. One would be amazed at the stuff that I see. Like the song says, “The freaks come out at night.”
I found this totally cool video. I love the animation. The techo-music is kinda cool, also.
I will be back to discussing illegal wiretaps, on-going violence in Iraq and Israel, Vice President Cheney’s boastful and unsupported claims, the Miami Seven, the lack of an effective policy to confront North Korea or Iran and the stalemate on immigration – soon.
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
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- My first book
My first book
