MetaFilter posts tagged with healthcare and politics

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gerryblog — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:22:24 -0800

You’re going to hire people to guard your sh*t, but you’re not going to give them health care. Vice has a long spoiler- and profanity-laden interview with The Wire creator David Simon, running the gamut from backstage Wire details to the media's obsession with "the Dickensian aspect" to his next series (set in New Orleans) to Joe Lieberman to this fight he almost got in at a concert one time. Via /Film.

Senate Sends Health Care Bill to Floor

shivohum — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:36:27 -0800

The Senate votes to bring health care bill (text in an amendment) to floor, 60-39. Major concessions extracted by holdout senators. Other analysis here and here. Differences between this and the House bill.

How Tyler Cowen Would Fix the Current Healthcare Bill

reenum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:39 -0800

What should we do instead of the Obama health reform bill?

Health care plan clears major hurdle

reenum — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:34:23 -0800

The Senate Finance Committee has approved the plan proposed by Max Baucus.

I could probably afford better insurance if I wasn't paying for theirs.

sio42 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:53:52 -0800

What kind of health insurance would you have as a federal government employee? The Office of Personnel Management would like to help you decide among the gazillion plan choices you have. Perhaps you are a Congress member? Then head on down to the Attending Physician of the United States, "It's one of the, quote, benefits of being in Congress," Kagen said. "They have physicians and nurses that will see you on the spot, on the beck and call." (link to single page print version). from the article quoting Kagen...

"But while [Rep Steve] Kagen touted in campaign advertisements and news interviews that he had no insurance coverage, he openly admitted he used OAP services. In January, for example, he paid more than $4,000 out of pocket for outpatient arthroscopic knee surgery. After the procedure, he said, he used the attending physician's office and staff to assist him with physical therapy."

Wikipedia on the Office of Attending Physician A NYT editorial on why we can't all have the same health care as Congress - and how we could possibly all have better care.

Congress’s health plan pays for routine expenses like office visits and vaccinations, for example, which is like auto insurance covering oil changes or new windshield wipers. As a result, the premiums are steep — upwards of $13,000 a year for a family (69 percent of which is paid by the government). To provide the 50 million Americans who are now uninsured with such a plan would require scary tax increases.

You know who else had "death panels"?

crossoverman — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:03:42 -0800

Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table - I have no interest in doing it! Congressman Barney Frank confronts a woman at a town hall meeting who compared Obama to Hitler.

A very good article on health care economics

kliuless — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:40:28 -0800

How American Health Care Killed My Father After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem. (via mr) BONUS -Health Care Spending and PCE -Consumer Driven Health Care Plans -4 Points on Health Care -A Public Option Isn't a Curse, or a Cure [also btw Thaler vs. Posner] -'A Plan to Swissify America' (P.Krugman) -Why We Need Health Care Reform (B.Obama) -Health 2.0 could shock the system (E.Dyson) -Mont. Clinic Aims to Deliver Top-quality Care for Less -Cleveland Clinic Chief: Lower Care Costs Must Be Focus in Reform Efforts -Healthcare lessons -The world's worst healthcare reforms

A rational conservative solution for health care reform

reenum — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:29:33 -0800

E.D. Kain with a moderate conservative solution to the health care crisis

Where do you get your health insurance from?

sid abotu — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:25:54 -0800

A simple question shows how complex the issue is. Chris at "Cynical C" asks his fellow citizens where they get thier health care (insurance) from and the incredible diversity of the current options and situations is immediately apparent. Quite spontaneously (but surely not unexpectedly), the question of "How much does it cost you?" becomes an essential part of the answers. Outsiders opine and tell stories and commiserate. For further information regarding the issue and the forces at work this Canadian has leaned on Bill Moyers and The Daily Howler.

Crowdsourcing Transparency

Miko — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:28:40 -0800

Can You Spot a Lobbyist? Who made up the bulk of the audience when Congress began work on health care reform legislation? Lobbyists, according to this photo ID-crowdsourcing project, part of Dollar Politics, a new NPR investigative series. Bill Moyers shines some sunlight too, with Some Choice Words for 'The Select Few.'

“I want you to know I care deeply about your views”

univac — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:01:19 -0800

Single-payer health care advocates arrested at Senate hearing. On May 5, 2009 advocates of a U.S. national health care program disrupted a Senate Finance Committee event to call for single-payer healthcare to be part of the discussion. The eight protesters were subsequently arrested. The protesters included representatives of Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors the The United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676. Committee Chair Max Baucus (D - Montana), who has received more money in contributions from health insurance companies than any other member of Congress, favors requiring Americans to purchase private health insurance from those companies. Baucus, who has previously said that single-payer is "off the table," responded to the doctors and their fellow activists with, “I want you to know I care deeply about your views," and then, "we need more police [to eject protesters]."

What's wrong with primary care in the US?

Slarty Bartfast — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:01:41 -0800

What's wrong with primary care in the US? With a new survey suggesting that nearly half of all primary care physicians would leave medicine if they had a viable alternative, and with American medical schools not generating nearly enough new doctors going into primary care, in this, their first issue to hit doctors' desks since the election, the New England Journal of Medicine has devoted their entire editorial section to exploring yet another challenge that threatens the stability of the US health care system. Video of the roundtable discussion. Individual essays, at times touching, at times hopeful, from various primary care perspectives in the US and Britain. Comments under the video link are particularly interesting. With its eye on the election, the otherwise fairly dry New England Journal has been increasingly political as of late. I know, I already GMOFB, but I think the NEJM is doing a fantastic job of hosting a nuanced discussion of complex issues and this seems post worthy to me.

The Stakes

homunculus — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:34:17 -0800

The Stakes, 2008. Eight of the Washington Monthly's contributing editors "consider the looming challenges that America is likely to face—in the economy, education, the courts, and other areas—during an Obama or McCain presidency, and how, based on what we know about the two men, they are likely to handle them." Also in the Washington Monthly: The Grand Bargain: Five presidents have treated Iran as a threat. The next needs to think of it as an opportunity.

The Winning Numbers are 14, 46, 23, 49, and 22.

Weebot — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:14:23 -0800

The state of Oregon is holding a health insurance lottery where 91,000 hopeful enrollees will be competing for a couple thousand spots under the Oregon Health Plan, the state's Medicaid program. OHP was created to cover those who made too much to enroll in traditional Medicaid but too little to afford market healthcare, and this development comes as a result of budget cuts and a subsequent enrollment closure in July of 2004. It's a far cry from the universal health care coverage that the plan was suppose to lead to, and marks a dramatic turn for the state's once-ambitious health care reforms.

(Previously in dystopic health care developments)

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care

homunculus — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:11:03 -0800

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part I. Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers. [Via Orcinus.]

Economic Consequences

homunculus — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:35:28 -0800

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush. "The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup." [Via Firedoglake.]

Health Care and Innovation

homunculus — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:05:37 -0800

Creative Destruction: The Best Case Against Universal Health Care. [Via The Mahablog.]

Elect Susie!

Mur — Thu, 17 May 2007 12:07:15 -0800

Millions of uninsured children in this country. Even with public assistance, they teeter on the brink of a catastrophic illness. What's the answer? Elect Susie!

Mr. Universe's muscular agenda

kliuless — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:09:51 -0800

California's Governor Seeks Universal Care: Under a plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California would become the largest state to attempt to provide near universal health coverage.

How Democrats can make themselves useful.

homunculus — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:51:51 -0800

The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It. Is it time to socialize medicine in the US?

Mysterious Fax Adds to Intrigue Over the Medicare Bill's Cost

jpoulos — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 07:17:36 -0800

Mysterious Fax Adds to Intrigue Over the Medicare Bill's Cost
"Late one Friday afternoon in January, after the House of Representatives had adjourned for the week, Cybele Bjorklund, a House Democratic health policy aide, heard the buzz of the fax machine at her desk. Coming over the transom, with no hint of the sender, was a document she had been seeking for months: an estimate by Medicare's chief actuary showing the cost of prescription drug benefits for the elderly....

"Ms. Bjorklund had been pressing Mr. Foster for his numbers since June. When he refused, telling her he could be fired, she said, she confronted his boss, Thomas A. Scully, then the Medicare administrator. 'If Rick Foster gives that to you," Ms. Bjorklund remembered Mr. Scully telling her, "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin.'"

(NYTimes.com, reg req)

Is it real or infoganda?

rich — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 11:30:13 -0800

Fake news. How is it legal to present a commercial as real news, without any indication that it is a commercial? And when did it become legal to use government money (i.e. *my taxes*) to push partisan issues, as well as try to influence election politics?

Political Fratricide

hairyeyeball — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 23:38:59 -0800

Political Fratricide: The GOP is reportedly [+] proposing $15 billion of cuts — or is it $25? — in veterans' benefits between now and 2007, and groups like the Veterans Against the Iraq War are hopping mad. Hell, I imagine the pro-war wing is pretty peeved, too. It's part of a plan with delusions of grandeur to deliver massive tax cuts AND kill the deficit ... you know, the one that did not exist before W was elected, as I understand it ... in six years. The original tip is from Stand Down. The actual status of the cuts is nebulous at this point, however, with the SF Chron reporting that they will likely fail in the Senate as the tax cut is halved and others reporting that the die is not yet cast. The House budget resolution, for metafilter accountants who like these things, is here.

Tubes — Mon, 18 Feb 2002 11:31:50 -0800

Roger Ebert savages "John Q." for general dumbness yet agrees with the message: we should have socialized health care. Steve MacLaughlin, however, details how the film greatly misrepresents medical and health care reality just to make its point -- and he fears that Joe Popcorn is going to absorb it as political education. Given that the film is set in the present day, rather than some fictional dystopian future, is this artistic license or irresponsible oversight? Perhaps libelous propaganda?

jellybuzz — Thu, 31 Jan 2002 12:01:06 -0800

We interrupt your war on terror to attack abortion rights...
The Bush administration has declared that a fetus is an unborn child. And why not? Everyone believes in prenatal care. And of course, if the government wanted to extend medical coverage to poor pregnant women under the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIPS), it could have done so directly. But then, what fun is that?