All posts by happywaffle

Health care: My response to Carter’s response

…In response to the previous email, I just sent my Congressman the following email. It built on the research I’ve conducted so far (and required a couple hours’ additional reading) but I’m relatively proud of it.

Congressman Carter,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my email, in which I expressed my support for health-care reform proposals currently being discussed. I hope you don’t mind if I offer a point-by-point response.
Continue reading Health care: My response to Carter’s response

Health care: Carter’s response to my response

As I mentioned in my very first health-care-related blog post, my Congressman—John Carter—sent an email poll asking what his constituents thought of Congress’s health-care proposals. Rather than clicking a button, I sent a quick response indicating my general (and uninformed) support for Democratic proposals.

Congressman Carter, or one of his employees, responded not long after with a lengthy and impressively thorough description of exactly why he thought the Dem plans were a bad idea. I’m reprinting his letter here, then I’ll post what I just sent him.

From: Congressman John Carter
Subject: Responding to your message
Date: July 31, 2009 4:38:49 PM CDT
To: house@happywaffle.com
Dear Kevin:

Thank you for contacting me to express your support for President Obama’s health care plan. Access to quality health care is a critical issue facing our country, and I appreciate your input.

America has the highest quality health care in the world. A recent medical study on cancer survivability rates showed that Americans are in a lot better shape than Great Britain, Norway, and the European Union nations, all of which have government run health care. For example, the survival rate for those diagnosed with prostate cancer in European Union countries is only 77%; it is 99% in the U.S. Additionally, all female cases of cancer have a survivability rate of 62.9% in the United States, but only 52.7% in England.
Continue reading Health care: Carter’s response to my response

YouTube Top 100: #1, “Evolution of Dance”

It’s hit me recently that it’s no big deal any more to get a million views on YouTube. (Probably while I was watching a really bad video that had a million views.) This gave me the curiosity to look up YouTube’s most popular videos of all time:

http://www.youtube.com/browse?s=mp&t=a

Check out our top-vote getter, “Evolution of Dance,” starring “inspirational comedian” (?) Judson Laipply. No, I mean just look at it – you’ve already watched it. So have 125,950,053* other people.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1&]
It’s definitely not the best video on YouTube. It’s not even particularly good. And yet there it sits, millions of views ahead of others perhaps far more deserving. What gives?
Continue reading YouTube Top 100: #1, “Evolution of Dance”

Health care pt. 5: ye olde NHS

medoctor001

Let me lead off the discussion of Her Majesty’s National Health Service with an interesting op-ed by Mr. Stephen Glover:

I deeply resent the Americans sneering at our health service – but perhaps that’s because the truth hurts

In it, Glover does an appreciable job knocking down some of the sillier rumors about health care in the UK whilst (whilst!) affirming that it’s not all lollipops and zero-quid bills on the other side of the pond. (Captain Obvious alert: dentistry is a particular problem.) Continue reading Health care pt. 5: ye olde NHS

Health care: A bit about malpractice reform

I commented earlier about how tort reform for doctors seems like a good idea. This NYT editorial is informative on the topic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/opinion/17wed2.html

With regards to overall health-care spending, it looks like frivolous lawsuits (obnoxious as they are) don’t contribute much to the big problem we’re facing. “[The CBO] estimates that caps on damages would ultimately reduce malpractice premiums for medical providers but would have a ‘relatively small’ impact on total health spending, reducing it by less than half a percent.” So, Republicans who gripe about frivolous lawsuits with regards to the big honkin’ health-care money problem aren’t really swinging at the right piñata.

I Googled for "doctor piñata."
I Googled for doctor piñata.

But there IS a piñata worth swinging at here. Continue reading Health care: A bit about malpractice reform

Health care: fact-checking Obama’s speech

I wasn’t going to post about it, since the info is readily available elsewhere, but I might as well link to what factcheck.org says about Obama’s speech…

http://factcheck.org/2009/09/obamas-health-care-speech/

— Joe Wilson’s wrong and Obama’s right about whether the bill covers illegal immigrants. It doesn’t. But it’s not quite as simple as that; the GOP argues that the bill lacks a proper enforcement mechanism to make sure people taking advantage of the public option are US citizens, or even legal immigrants. Good point, except any illegal immigrant who applies for a public insurance plan is committing insurance fraud and taking on a rather huge risk of being caught. Would some still do it? Sure, there’s always weasels. But certainly not enough to constitute a significant drain on public resources. Seriously, I think Republicans have a secret crush on illegal immigrants or something.
Continue reading Health care: fact-checking Obama’s speech

Health care: Wait, I HAVE to be insured?

Shortly after last night’s speech, I received the following amusingly over-the-top text from an unknown number.
IMG_0202

Whoa, nelly. Turns out it was from a former coworker… I have no idea how he had my number in the first place, but he apparently thought strongly enough that Obama was the anti-Christ to share it with his entire address book.

(Whichever phones allow you to text everyone in your address book simultaneously should be burned in a fiery pit. Just saying.)

Admittedly, though, that was the one part of Obama’s speech last night where I could see pitchforks being raised and torches being lit in some quarters – “Hell, no, the guv’mint ain’t gonna require me to be insured!”

Show me your insurance card, punk.
Show me your insurance card, punk.

But yeah, what’s the deal? Will I be arrested and beaten for not carrying insurance?
Continue reading Health care: Wait, I HAVE to be insured?

Health care: What Obama said

obama-small

I liked Obama’s speech last night for a couple of reasons:

— He specifically named the lies being told about health-care reform, and called out the public officials who were spreading them. (Five points off for not naming names, though…)

— He correctly pointed out just how much common ground there is with regards to health-care reform. The public option is one controversial piece among a whole lot of not-so-controversial improvements to our system; I noticed how many times the Republicans stood to clap, and rightfully so.

I also liked his talk of tort reform for medical malpractice lawsuits, which seems as much of a no-brainer as any other piece, though apparently it’s a Republican cause célèbre. I sat on a jury in a medmal lawsuit a few years back; because a doctor made one screwup while in a stressful situation, we awarded $3 million to the plaintiffs. And felt dirty while doing it. Even simple caps on awards would be a win, in my book. (But I haven’t really looked into it.)

How bout that Republican jackass, eh? Not only yelling out “You lie!” in the middle of his speech, but yelling out “You lie!” regarding something about which Obama was very clearly not lying. We may have all witnessed the swinging of the pendulum; that seemed to be the exact moment where the jackassery of the truthiness-loving teabaggers was laid bare. One of the two people involved looked like a petulant child at that moment, and it wasn’t the president.

The whole thing made me more hopeful that some good reform will actually come out of this whole mess, public option or not.
political-pictures-barack-obama-chill-out-got-this

Health care interlude: what I’m watching

I’ve occupied my time between blog posts reading, watching, and listening to some of the literally dozens of links I’ve collected since I decided to have my little health-care day.

One is Al Franken giving a stellar political performance as he explains the health-care proposals to a skeptical group, including many of the proposed improvements on which we all should certainly agree:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNs7Zpqo98&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Yeah, sorry about all the background noise. (There’s a 2nd and 3rd part under the “video responses.”)

The second is Bill Moyers talking insurance with a former Cigna executive, Wendell Potter:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

I’ll be the first to admit that both Bill and Al wear their liberalness on their sleeves, but I think both videos are reasonable, adult discussions. IF you have an hour to watch them both, that is.

Health care pt. 4: One TRILLION dollars

dr_evil_laser

Let’s talk about that money thing. Money can be tricky. Everybody went justifiably nuts when the Treasury department suddenly decided to lend $700 billion to banks that had more or less dug their own hole. Now it’s a year later, and lo and behold, we’re actually turning a profit on the whole endeavor. Nutty.

Health care is much more confusing. When we talk about its spiraling costs, we’re usually talking all sorts of transactions: patient out-of-pocket costs, government spending, costs for medicine, doctor salaries and insurance, etc. etc. Plus, some “expenses” are actually “missed revenue” (like the tax subsidies the government provides to cover private insurance). Confoosing.

So when people toss out the “trillion-dollar” number, where’s that money coming from and going to?
Continue reading Health care pt. 4: One TRILLION dollars