Category Archives: Healthcare

Weekend Linkorama

  • The Fed buyout of foreclosed properties is chasing away buyers who do not have powerful political connections. Again, we see the Dave Barry Principle at work. ‘People are suffering and predator lenders/speculators are making lots of money. The feds want in on that!’
  • Paul Krugman: rapidly becoming a punch line.
  • For once, National Review has a point. Linking insurance to employment is an accident of WW2 wage controls, not a sensible policy. True healthcare reform would at least loosen that connection.
  • I always knew those Canadians were strange.
  • So why do men do most of the driving?
  • Thursday Linkorama

  • Orac has the goods on a revolting story of legal abuse in West Texas.
  • Ha! While this post was sitting in my queue, the trial above finished with the nurse acquitted.
  • Jesus H. Christ, what is wrong with some people?
  • The Tea Party is going after one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress because he’s anti-war. Ugh.
  • Soft power. Obama’s good at it.
  • Health insurance isn’t necessarily as closely connected with health as we’d like to think.
  • Some interesting stuff from the political side of Snowmageddon. I especially like the investment advice.
  • New Year’s Linkorama

    It’s been nothing but Linkoramas lately. But I’ve been posting some article at the other blog. Hopefully, now that the holidays are over, I can get back to being my usual cantankerous self.

  • Climate Crock of the Week takes on the medieval warming period. On the flip side, Ronald Bailey takes the air out of the rising oceans hysteria.
  • Bad taxes — both cuts and hikes. Will there ever come a day where our politicians see the tax system as a way to raise money not to create social engineering?
  • If you wonder why US health costs are soaring, here’s a big reason.
  • Cracked, being better than the MSM, reviews overlooked celebrity deaths of 2009.
  • I have to agree with Neal Boortz. Every year, one random homeowner’s association should be taken out and shot.
  • Interesting analysis hints that speculation, not subprimes, caused the collapse.
  • You can run but you can’t hide.
  • Christmas Linkorama

  • Peter Suderman runs down the failed healthcare experiments that comprise our national plan. Those who do not learn from current events are destined to be Democrats.
  • If you’re going to embrace alternative energy, you can’t start playing NIMBY game. There simply isn’t enough spoiled land to provide all our power that way.
  • The worst ideas of the decade.
  • Yet more debunking of the idea that global cooling was the consensus in the 70’s.
  • I’ve probably posted this video before, but I can’t find it in my links. It’s about change blindness and it’s amazing.
  • Coolnessin science.
  • A collection of hilarity from HuffPo.
  • A report says that ACORN broke now laws. Of course, this just proved how deep the conspiracy goes.
  • Well, at least lobbyists are doing well in this economy. And at least bureaucrats are getting tax breaks.
  • Wednesday Linkorama

  • I must say that I am sympathetic to the view that med-mal should not be part of healthcare reform. It’s a state issue.
  • More from America’s worst sheriff.
  • Yet more evidence that various government contributed to the housing bubble. And keep doing so.
  • I agree with cracked. Dorkade it is.
  • The FAA was given $3.5 billion to make airports safer. A few weeks ago, we had a massive failure in the Air Traffic Control System. But at least luxury terminals are being built around the country. They even defend the practice.
  • A great if long post from Jim Manzi about how to build our economy for this century. It breaks my heart because no one in Washingotn will read it or give a rat’s ass.
  • Why have I left the Right? Because of shit like this. It is absolutely revolting to hear a TV personality accuse the President of treason. I don’t care what fucking party he’s from or how liberal he is. That I have assumed good faith in the actions of my political opponents is enough for me to be a heretic. So be it. I’m a heretic.
  • Thursday Linkorama

  • Bruce Bartlett speaks. I agree with everything he says, especially about the Republican Party being brain dead. It’s horrific to watch, especially in the conservative friends and family I know that are following them into the abyss.
  • Nice. Pseudo-scientific woo like “therapeutic touch” is sneaking into the healthcare bill. This will not only drive up expenses, but move money to fund bullshit. Penn and Teller’s show had a great segment on Emily Rosa, the 11-year-old girl who proved TT was garbage.
  • There is no excuse for this.
  • How PETA sees abuse. I have to agree (with the graph; not with PETA).
  • It’s possible Massachusetts could replace Ted Kennedy with someone even worse.
  • Another “global warming is a myth” myth debunked. IN this case, it’s the “arctic ice is recovering” misrepresentation.
  • More stadium dumbassery.
  • Thursday Linkorama

  • Barbara Ehrenreich became famous for her book Nickeled and Dimed, a story of year she spent as a poor person. It had some huge flaws, mainly her insistence on changing jobs and refusal to avail herself of private assistance. Nevertheless, the book was very popular in academic circles for reinforcing liberal beliefs about poverty. Seems like she’s still at it, ignorantly attacking recent research indicating women’s happiness is beginning to fall off.
  • The New Paternalism: Old Paternalism with a little more condescension.
  • Two more horror stories from the UK NHS.
  • If the GOP can’t even run a website, how they can run the country. Oh, yeah.
  • What does Eliot Spitzers warrant a column on Slate? Ignore the man’s private behavior; he’s a puritanical totalitarian twerp.
  • Fascinating stuff on the Soviet doomsday machine.
  • Another interesting article on Obama’s love of language, both in speeches and writing.
  • Um. What?.
  • If we cut oil consumption, the Saudis want compensation. I knew there was a good side to this global warming stuff: it pisses off the oil sheiks something fierce.
  • Looks like the school that wanted to suspend a 6-year-old over his utensils has come to their senses. Now we can make zero tolerance policies work — so long as every wronged child gets an internet uproar.
  • Tuesday Linkorama

  • Eventually, Democrats are going to run out of excuses. Now, they can’t even pass budget on time. Of course, the Republicans weren’t much better.
  • Memo to the GOP. Socialism actually has a dictionary definition. That definition is not anything I don’t like.
  • Somehow, I don’t think the housing crunch is over. We’re continuing to prop up this bubble. Until it kills us.
  • Ah, the War on Drugs. What stupidity have you unleashed today?
  • More paranoia about kids (with some hefty lucre thrown in).
  • Defensive medicine explained. Note that those who dispute the notion of defensive medicine don’t consider tests of questionable value to be “defensive”.
  • Uh-oh. The FDIC is running low of funds. I keep hoping the economy will turn around. But there’s a lot of ominous rumbling out there.
  • Wednesday Linkorama

  • Prediction: when the Right realized that Pat Tillman opposed the Iraq War, they will drop him like a rock.
  • I have a feeling that Bruce Bartlett is right. We’re going to have to raise taxes to erase the deficit. There’s simply not enough spending that can be cut once you exclude Medicare, Medicaid and defense. To me, this is a very conservative point of view. The point is fiscal sanity, not mindless anti-tax rhetoric.
  • A great illustration of just how stupid trade protectionism is. Ford is building vans, then ripping them up to avoid trade barriers.
  • Greg Mankiw notes that healthcare will never be equal. I keep intending to pen a long post on why healthcare should not be considered a “right” (helping people in need, which I support in principle, is an act of compassion, but a matter of people’s rights). Mankiw makes a key argument here: if medical care is a right and a medical procedure is too expensive for all of us to have, how can any of us have it?
  • Conservative crowing about the revision of arctic ice melt illustrates perfectly what’s wrong with their thinking. One bad fact does not overturn thousands of others. This would be the equivalent of denying general relatively because a nuclear bomb didn’t work.
  • Sickbeds Again

    Sullivan’s “view from your sickbed” is back. And once again, it confused tragedy with analysis. The story is about a young woman who needed a liver transplant but the hospital incorrectly thought her insurance didn’t cover it. The reader claims a universal healthcare system might have saved her.

    What happened was tragic, but the insurance system did not cause that young woman’s death. No system would have been able to transplant her within hours of admission and it’s highly unlikely a universal system would have transplanted her within two days. In the UK, the median wait time for a transplant is about three months. In the US, it’s almost a year. (The difference is likely due to difference in organ donation frequency).

    Moreover, a bureaucracy is going to get between patient and doctor in all transplant cases. Because of the limited number of organs available, someone has to decide where they go. Healthy livers do not just grow on trees.

    Had she lived more than three hours, it is likely that the insurance errors would have been discovered and she would have been put back on the list. However, it’s very likely she would have died even if she’d put on the list immediately.

    This is why I hate debating healthcare with sob stories. Because sob stories don’t tell the entire truth.

    Rescission

    I’ve said many times that our healthcare system is far from perfect. This is a perfect example of the sort of stuff that needs to stop — insurance companies canceling a policy based on “pre-existing condition” that isn’t.

    My preferred solution is to turn insurance regulation over to the Feds. It has become abundantly clear that the state insurance regulators are utterly toothless. Insurance companies do this because few people have the motivation or resources to sue. The Feds, however, have effectively infinite resources.

    There is an additional problem in that many state insurance markets are effective monopolies — allowing interstate competition would solve that problem.

    What we do not need is coverage mandates and rescission laws that make it easier for people to wait until they’re sick to buy insurance. That will only make the problem worse.

    Dalmia Goes Non-Linear

    I usually like Shikha Dalmia. But this article, castigating the AMA — which you will remember I am not a friend of — is stunningly ignorant.

    (Note: part of this is based on e-mail exchanges with my dad, who is a surgeon).

    First off, the AMA represents less than 1/6 of doctors, including academics. They are hardly a cartel although I will let on that they have too much influence.

    Second, she claims:

    According to a 2007 study by McKinsey&Company, physician compensation bumps up health care spending in America by $58 billion annually,on average, because U.S. doctors make twice as much as their OECD peers. And even the poorest in specializations like radiology and surgery routinely rake in around $400,000 annually.

    This is not even supported by the article she cites:

    Surveys by medical-practice management groups show that American doctors make an average of $200,000 to $300,000 a year. Primary care doctors and pediatricians make less, between $125,000 and $200,000, but in specialties like radiology, physicians can take home $400,000 or more.

    In other words, the 400 grand she cites as what the poorest doctors make is, in fact, the high end of the range. Now that’s misquoting.

    That article notes that our doctors make a lot more than doctors in other countries, which is a questionable point in and of itself. Even without any corrections for different economic systems, however, $100-300 grand does not seem to me an unreasonable salary for someone who saves lives, works seven days a week and is constantly on call for the hospital.

    Someone also noted in the comments that she conveniently takes the cost of physician compensation from one source, then cherry-picks a figure for defensive medicine from another. That’s Michael Moore territory.

    Dalmia’s article is poorly researched bashing of a political organization she doesn’t like that, not coincidentally, manages to slag all doctors in the process. This is something I expect from Daily Kos, not Reason and not Forbes.