Archive for category Health Care
Medicare Cost-Shift Theory Debunked
Posted by Richard Warnick in Health Care, National Politics, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Vouchers on May 8, 2013
Via Jon Walker on FDL (emphasis added):
A new study in Health Affairs appears to disprove the commonly cited myth that public insurance programs “cost-shift” onto private insurance.
…In reality, the study found lower Medicare payment rates actually reduce what private insurance companies pay.
…This study reinforces that the real issue at play is market power, not cost shifting. Compared to other countries with single-payer or all-payer systems, providers in the United States have more power to demand higher prices.
Something to think about before attempting to voucher-ize Medicare.
More info:
How Much do Hospitals Cost Shift? A Review of the Evidence (PDF)
A Review of the Evidence on Hospital Cost-Shifting (PDF)
Running Towards the Smoke and Fire
Posted by Shane Smith in American People, Climate Change, Conservatives, Disaster, Gun Control, Health Care, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Philosophy, Society on April 18, 2013
I am about out of energy for this week. But I do have the smoking remains of an irony meter sitting in the corner crying to be heard. And a tiny little mangled… something. Something Confucius might have called Ren. Something I almost forgot about. Read the rest of this entry »
The Real World Effects of “Negative Liberty”
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Environment, Global Warming, Health Care, Iraq, ObamaCare, Tax Policy, Tea Bag Party, Tea Party, This Blog on February 20, 2013
Delving further into Tom Allen’s Dangerous Convictions, Winning Progressive points out four specific examples of how conservatives principles have led to disastrous real world policy consequences:
- Budget
- The Iraq War
- Health care
- Climate Change
Consider the area of tax policy – conservative principles say “tax cuts pay for themselves” despite significant real world evidence that’s not the case. Read the rest of this entry »
“My Conundrum:” A Crack of Light In The Collision of a Conservative Mind and Life: Could TeaPartyCommunity.com Be a Good Thing?
Posted by Cliff Lyon in Conservative, Conservatives, Evangelism, Health Care, ObamaCare, Religion, Socialism, Tea Bag Party, Tea Party, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, Unemployment on February 5, 2013
Update 2.6.2012: It appears teapartycommunity.com blocked my IP, which is exposed by design in our comments. This is remarkable given the amount of effort that must have been invested to not only find this post, but to inspect the comments in order to discover my IP address. My next post on the subject will be about the astounding hypocrisy of the underlying justification for starting TeaPartyCommunity.com
Perusing the new TeaPartyCommunity.com Facebook-like platform, I was riveted by “Cade’s comment” as an excellent illustration of the tension between high self-conviction and low emotional intelligence in the conservative religious mind.
…which compelled me to read the top post “My Conundrum” which struck me as so perfectly juxtaposed to Cade’s comment as an example of the opposite tension, lower self-conviction, higher emotional intelligence. “My Conundrum” is posted also in its entirety below Cade’s comment immediately below.
“Christopher Noyes – Well Cade, you are what we call around here, complicated. Truth is we all are complicated, how we resolve inner conflict plays a big part in determining our character.
First, you did not abuse the safety net, and I do not believe the safety net ought to be removed. The problem with the safety net is the abuse of it that is cultivated and facilitated for either criminal or political reasons. It is there for people who, like you, had an untimely life threatening event, an emergency of life or death. Reforms may not be able to correct the safety net, and I would rather see it in the hands of the church like it was at one time, but the truth is the only way the government got a foot hold into social welfare is the church abdicated its responsibility a long time ago.
Second, God has never left you, he does not despise you, he has brought all of these things in your life for your edification because you are his adopted son and he loves you. Read the rest of this entry »
Rodney Boyer’s Opinion on ObamaCare
Posted by Cliff Lyon in American People, Health Care, ObamaCare, Some people should not own guns, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority on January 29, 2013
Sometimes, I see a comment that makes me afraid for our country.
Michael Grunwald: GOP’s Up-is-Downism Puts News Reporters in an Awkward Position
Posted by Richard Warnick in 4th Estate (Media), Health Care, Mitt Romney, National Politics, Paul Ryan, Republicans on December 1, 2012
Great post by Time’s Michael Grunwald (the whole thing is worth reading):
It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama’s opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It’s even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn’t cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.
This isn’t just cognitive dissonance. It’s irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old.
…The next fight is likely to involve the $200 billion worth of stimulus that Obama included in his recycled fiscal cliff plan that somehow didn’t exist before Election Day. I’ve taken a rather keen interest in the topic of stimulus, so I’ll be interested to see how this is covered. Keynesian stimulus used to be uncontroversial in Washington; every 2008 presidential candidate had a stimulus plan, and Mitt Romney’s was the largest. But in early 2009, when Obama began pushing his $787 billion stimulus plan, the GOP began describing stimulus as an assault on free enterprise—even though House Republicans (including Paul Ryan) voted for a $715 billion stimulus alternative that was virtually indistinguishable from Obama’s socialist version. The current Republican position seems to be that the fiscal cliff’s instant austerity would destroy the economy, which is odd after four years of Republican clamoring for austerity, and that the cliff’s military spending cuts in particular would kill jobs, which is even odder after four years of Republican insistence that government spending can’t create jobs.
…Whatever. I realize that the GOP’s up-is-downism puts news reporters in an awkward position. It would seem tendentious to point out Republican hypocrisy on deficits and Medicare and stimulus every time it comes up, because these days it comes up almost every time a Republican leader opens his mouth. But we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.
Rep. Todd Akin: Orthodox Republican
Posted by Richard Warnick in 2012 Elections, Health Care, Mitt Romney, National Politics, Republicans on August 22, 2012
Source: Think Progress
Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), a candidate for U.S. Senate, has become the poster boy for the Republican Party’s position on abortion. Pregnant women who say they were raped are lying, according to Akin. The Romney-Ryan presidential campaign is frantically trying to distance themselves from Akin, but it’s too late.
Akin’s views are typical of the GOP, which just adopted a platform calling for a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution that would criminalize abortions, without any exceptions for rape or incest. The amendment has been a tenet of the Republican Party for 32 years. The party platform also supports state laws that require women to undergo medically unnecessary transvaginal probe ultrasounds.
The Republican Party is also against contraception, which would be made illegal under so-called “personhood” laws.
I honestly don’t know why any woman would vote for any Republican candidate. By the way, men ought to think about the potential consequences of outlawing contraception for women.
More info:
GOP Approves ‘Most Conservative Platform In Modern History’
Todd Akin – Doctrinaire not Daffy
Posted by Glenden Brown in Conservative, Health Care, Liars (politics), Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, Republicans, This Blog on August 21, 2012
In a “What the actual fuck?!” moment yesterday (possibly the leading WTF? moment of the year), Rep. Todd Akin (conservative Republican, of course) said:
“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” said Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.”
First off, “a legitimate rape”? As opposed to an illegitimate one? And what the hell kind of distinction is that?
Second, the notion that a woman’s body has some magical way of preventing a rapists sperm from swimming to her ovum is completely nuts.
Third, Akin was simply spouting the anti-choice, women controlling slut shaming party line.
Amanda Marcotte:
The myth that “real” rapes don’t result in pregnancy is widespread among anti-choicers—and not just the fringe (Akin, for instance, used to be on the board of Missouri Right to Life). You can see a variation of this myth at the anti-choice website Abortion Facts:
To get pregnant and stay pregnant, a woman’s body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain which is easily influenced by emotions. There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.
As Marcotte explains:
Akin’s comment should serve as a reminder that despite its sentimentality surrounding the fetus, the anti-choice movement is motivated by misogyny and ignorance about human sexuality. In this case, what underlies the rape-doesn’t-get-you-pregnant myth is the notion that sex is shameful and that slutty women will do anything—even send an innocent man to jail to kill a baby—in order to avoid facing the consequences of their actions.
Kaili Joy Gray at DKos:
Yes, Rep. Todd Akin is the latest Republican to explain how rape just ain’t no thang, but he’s not the first. In fact, he joins a long and proud tradition of the Republican Party explaining why women who are raped are probably lying, are making much ado about nothing, and should learn to enjoy and appreciate the plus side of being raped.
Gray then offers a series of quotes from Republicans such Rick Santorum:
As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. [...] I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.
Akin’s statement is completely nuts, shows no knowledge of biology, and attributes magical powers to ladyparts . Santorum’s statement is equally an expression of the party line. “Oh it’s so awful but there’s a special magical gift – you get to have your rapist’s innocent baby to comfort you.” I find it offensive and dress it up in religious cant all you want, it’s still offensive. It’s about colonizing women’s bodies in the name of an abstract deity who commands suffering and it has nothing to do with the Christianity of the Gospels.
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