The Boy Behind the Juice Box: "I make bad purchases all the time"

Ezra Klein interviews Rep. Paul Ryan, in what works out to be a pretty good exchange between the two on health care. You should read it.

I'll only excerpt one exchange between the two that produces a great line where Ezra Klein admits he's too stupid to make his own consumer decisions. And he thinks we are too..I guess:

Ezra -- You’re arguing that the benefits of competition accrue, and so even if you don’t choose at the moment of emergency, there’s still an effect from a higher-functioning market.

Ryan -- Absolutely. I don’t know anything about cars. I look at Consumer Reports and their ratings. What matters is that someone who knows about cars went and figured this out. The car company is competing for the really tough customer who goes under the hood. I’m not saying every American has to be that consumer. But enough people have to so the rest of us can benefit.

Ezra -- But take cars. Lots of people buy crappy cars, or bad televisions. I make bad purchases all the time. Liberals and conservatives are together on the publishing of quality metrics. But this stuff is more complicated and diffuse than cars. That’s not to say the consumer shouldn't’t have a role. I’m a big Wyden-Bennett guy, frankly.

I wouldn't be bragging that I'm too lazy to do consumer research on expensive products I buy. I also disagree with the notion that lots of people buy crappy cars. Most cars that are built today are not shitty cars. They may be cheap, but they aren't crappy. Or that people who do buy the crappy cars that are out there, are unaware that they are buying crappy cars.

I would hazard a guess that most people who buy crappy cars are doing so because 1) They can not afford a "good" car. 2) They choose to spend their available capital on something other than a good car. Also, it's not my responsibility to subsidize second chances for stupid consumers. I'll emphasis it for Klein. He seems to miss this point regularly.

At what point do we stop taking the guy who's been outfoxed by netflix so seriously?

How About We Just Call It "Shit The Government Forces You To Pay For" Instead?

Barack Obama got into a telling exchange with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Sunday when they spared over whether his health care plan's mandate that people buy insurance coverage or get fined amounted to a tax.

From ABC's transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.

Obama apparently thinks dictionaries are a bad place to learn the meanings of words. Good to know, good to know ...

In any event, this is beside the point since the Senate health care bill that is the vehicle for Obama's reform explicitly calls the mandate a tax. From the Politico:

In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.

But he could look it up — in the bill.

Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”

Read the whole thing here.

So who are you gonna believe? Obama or your lying eyes?

Get A Second Opinion ...

There's been a fair amount of talk in recent weeks about so-called "death panels" being part of the health care reform bill in Congress, especially since Sarah Palin mentioned it. Democrats have pushed back hard against this and virtually all mainstream news outlets have followed along. Only crackpots and cynical right-wing talk show host are pushing this, so the conventional wisdom goes.

It is true there is nothing specifically like that in any of the health care bills floating around Congress. So where does this notion come from? Well, from comments like this from Barack Obama:

In terms of these expert health panels -- well, this goes to the point about "death panels" -- that's what folks are calling them. The idea is actually pretty straightforward, which is if we've got a panel of experts, health experts, doctors, who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations, and find ways to reduce, for example, the number of tests that people take -- these aren't going to be forced on people, but they will help guide how the delivery system works so that you are getting higher-quality care.

Why should anybody who is concerned about rationing of care find such assurances that these panels will be merely advisory even remotely satisfying? One of the supposed purposes of this whole initiative is to reduce costs after all. Why shouldn't people who are on Medicare or some other government program fear that these panels will become more than advisory at some point? Especially when this effort is being lead by a man who has openly questioned whether his own grandmother's late in life care was worth the trouble?

Hey, Obama Said It, Not Me ...

After beating up President Obama for bullshitting about his healthcare plan, I should give him props for being honest in some comments he made Monday:

Would health care reform bring "greater inefficiencies" to the country's health care system?

That's exactly what Obama said Monday when he spoke about health care reform at the Childrens National Medical Center in Washington.

"The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system," Obama said in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers. "And greater stability and security to America's families and businesses."(emphasis added)

How refreshing.

Wait, I've just been handed an update by TtP's crack reporting staff. He's backing away from the comment:

The White House quickly recognized the mistake and inserted a "sic" in the remarks sent to reporters on Monday afternoon.

Josh Earnest, a White House deputy press secretary, said Obama "misspoke" in his remarks.

Ah, well. It was nice while it lasted.

Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well

The Problem: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that your health care plan is a budget buster, a massive black hole of red ink that will make health care more expensive, not less, as you have promised.

The Solution: If you are Barack Obama, you just ignore it and tell people to expect bureaucratic miracles:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that the proposals fall short of Obama's promise to slow the increase in health-care costs, leading critics to charge that those bills would only add to the nation's large budget deficits.

"That's simply not true," Obama said yesterday.

Reform is expected to cost at least $1 trillion over the next decade, and Obama has pledged to pay for it without adding to the nation's budget deficit.

He says the savings accrued by adjusting health-care incentives will eventually reduce medical costs and help tame the deficit.

"By helping improve quality and efficiency, the reforms we make will help bring our deficits under control in the long term," Obama said yesterday.(emphasis added)

Reason's Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie have dubbed the Obama administration the "magical realism" presidency. It would be funnier if it weren't true.

Can You Say Social Security?

As stay-at-home moms everywhere eagerly await the Smoker-In-Chief's upcoming 4th presser in about 3 minutes, (it seems like there have been more, no?) I remain unconvinced that he is going to be able to accomplish any of his lofty domestic goals, especially health care and that it could prove to be a Bush social security reform moment for Obama.

I'm not really basing this off of any of the recent polling data, it's more just a gut feeling from a sales guy about the angle Obama has taken on health care reform. Selling health care reform as a necessary part of balancing the budget is a pretty gutsy and transparent move. This might be a case of me giving too much credit to the average American, but I get the feeling that most people see right through his pitch, and that's the point where customers stop listening to a sales pitch.

For starters -- and lots of people have made this point -- it's tough to convince people you care about spending and balancing the budget when you are spending like Obama has, and will continue to do. Also, I'm pretty sure that most semi-educated folks understand that universal health care would cost more money, but feel as though health care is a right in a developed society and is worth the trade-off of additional costs. I don't agree with that, but it's a position that one can defend. Most discussions I get into with co-workers centers around the fundamental issue of whether people have a right to free health care, and exactly what "free" health care entitles one to. Until Obama has that discussion with the American public I don't think he can make much headway in his pursuit.

Socialized Medicine Now! (Figure Out The Details Later)

I really, really don't like the sound of this latest column by the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. The subject is why major health care reform is all-but-certain to come out of Congress this year:

One largely unheralded change is that health-care reformers have made peace with each other. In the past, groups advocating competing proposals were more interested in establishing their dominance than in passing a bill.

"People who advocated health coverage for all Americans wanted it their way, and the second choice was nothing," Waxman told me. This time, he said, reformers want to get to universal coverage by whatever route is open.

Well, what could possibly go wrong with all that? Just seize control of everything and then figure out how to make it work afterwards.

I suppose I should be grateful. At least this time there are not pretending that they have any respect for free markets or any goal other than centralized control.

The Headline that Wrote Itself

Surgeons remove healthy kidney through donor's vagina

So I got nothing. They pulled a kidney out of a vagina via a tube. What the fuck am I suppose to add?

I will note that while I believe that this procedure is much less invasive than a normal organ extraction, I highly doubt this:

"If you asked our patient, she said it was like getting a tooth removed. She was walking that night and left the next day," Montgomery said.

Right. You could bet that if a dentist ever tried removing a tooth via my penis that I would get up and leave immediately. Or pretty close to immediately. I might give him a minute or two to see where the ride is going, but after that minute or 20 I would definitely be on my way out.

Headline of the Day

Man Goes to Court After Butt Stapled Shut

BALTIMORE - A West Virginia man is suing a Frederick County, Md., doctor for allegedly stapling his rectum shut during an operation, preventing the patient from defecating for 17 days, the Baltimore Examiner reported.

Read the whole thing here.

The An(n)als of Medical Law

Headline of the day: "NY jury rejects man's lawsuit about unwanted rectal exam."

The story is fairly simple: a guy was hit on his head by a wooden beam, so the emergency room doctors decided it was time to get all up in that ass. The New York Supreme Court said yesterday, "Yeah, that's cool":

[Attorney Gerard] Marrone said his client, 38, was injured while working at a construction site in midtown Manhattan on May 20, 2003. At NewYork-Presbyterian, he said, [client Brian] Persaud got eight stitches for a cut over his eyebrow.

Meanwhile, Marrone said, Persaud denied emergency room staffers' request to examine his rectum. The lawyer said doctors told him the exam was a way of determining whether the accident caused spinal damage.

When Persaud resisted, the staffers held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that," Marrone said. Persaud hit a doctor while flailing around, so the staffers gave him a powerful sedative and performed the rectal exam, he said.

Hospital witnesses testified at trial that the exam was never completed, but Marrone said that when Persaud woke up he was handcuffed to a bed and had an oxygen tube down his throat and lubricant in his rectum.

Even worse, the doctors never called him after that. Read the whole story here.

Hat tip: Dave Barry.

Fix Your Coffee First, Worry About Socialized Healthcare Later

I like the newly reinstated Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz as a business executive. In fact, I'm probably one of the few people who thinks Starbucks is poised for a turn-a-round; but I could do with out overly dramatic statements like this:

What happened to your crusade for universal health care?

We were the first retailer in America to provide comprehensive health care to every employee, including part-timers. I've been fighting for health care for Americans for quite some time and have been to Capitol Hill a number of times. Obviously, [we're in] a Presidential election year, and there's not going to be much done until there's a new Administration. But if there's one thing that I think is the fracturing of the humanity of America, it's the fact that 50 million Americans do not have health insurance.

Look, I get that businesses have a motivation to see the government take over paying for health care, but that doesn't make any less of a bad idea.

It won't be much longer until the choice to NOT have health insurance will be taken away from individuals.

Interview here.

Disclaimer: I own a minuscule position of Starbucks stock, and occasionally enjoy buy an espresso from the Starbucks in my Safeway.

What a Pain in the Ass

Sorry, couldn't help myself with that title. Busy day at work; little time available for post-title-creation. Fox News reports:

Woman Goes for Leg Operation, Gets New Anus Instead

A German retiree is taking a hospital to court after she went in for a leg operation and got a new anus instead, the Daily Telegraph is reporting.

The woman woke up to find she had been mixed up with another patient suffering from incontinence who was to have surgery on her sphincter.

Previous health-care-related-hospital-fuck-ups blogging from Leonardo here.

Since I didn't write the post, I can quote her:

Perhaps the public health community ought to look within and focus instead on the real data that show how many patients they have killed each year in hospitals by mistakes and by rampant infections that hospitals cannot seem to control and do not prioritize. My total preventable deaths is approximately 117,000. Now that is a public health issue.

Agreed.

Canadian Healthcare Offers Final Solutions

The case of Samuel Golubchuk, an 84 year-old man on life-support, has been called the Canadian version of the Terri Schiavo controversy. That's hardly accurate though since his family is united in the belief that they want him to live. Moreover there's little doubt that Golubchuk himself would prefer to hang around since as an Orthodox Jew, his religion prohibits suicide.

So who's trying to pull the plug on the old guy? His doctors at the Canadian health care system:

An Orthodox family's fight to keep their 84-year-old father on life support against the wishes of a Winnipeg hospital will go to trial.

Winnipeg judge Perry Schulman ruled Wednesday that, under current Canadian law, doctors should not have "the final say" and ordered the case to trial.

In the meantime, Samuel Golubchuk, an Orthodox Jew, will remain on life support at Grace Hospital, connected to a feeding tube and ventilator he has needed since November. At the time, doctors decided to remove the patient from life suport, against the wishes of the family, who got an injunction from Schulman to prevent the action.

Doctors say Golubchuk has minimal brain function and that his chances for recovery are slim.

But his adult children argue that taking their father off of life support goes against their faith. They say hastening their father's death is a violation of Orthodox Jewish law.

The position of the Canadian health care system can be summed up as "Screw what the family wants. We make the life and death decisions around here.":

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Grace General Hospital each acted in what they believed were the best interests of the patient and will be reviewing the decision of the court, the WRHA said in a formal statement.

"Decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments are never easy and are not made lightly by medical experts ... The (WRHA) and the Grace continue to have confidence in the integrity and competence of our physicians and health care professionals."

Here's a crazy idea: Why not keep the old geezer on life support and then send his family the hospital bills? Or is allowing "choice" to grab a foothold in the world of socialized medicine just too radical of a notion?

Montgomery County Hospitals Ban Smoking Outside, and Smelling Like Smoke

A coalition of hospitals in Montgomery County, MD (a Nanny State), just banned smoking on their hospital campuses.

The use of tobacco products will be prohibited anywhere on the hospitals' grounds -- outside entrances, on walkways or in parking lots and garages. Gazebos where smoking has been permitted are being dismantled, and cans for cigarette butts will disappear...

They also printed small cards with "scripts" for staff members to follow if they see a colleague, visitor, patient or family member puffing away. The suggested dialogue is more courteous than curt, but employees could face disciplinary action for repeated violations. A worker with clothes smelling of tobacco might be issued disposable coveralls or asked to go home and change.

Maybe hospitals should instead focus on the 195,000 people they kill each year through error instead of policing the smell of smoke on one's clothes.

Maine Middle School Okays Dispensing The Pill to 11 Year-Old Girls

I am all for sex but a girl having sex at 11 is a tragedy.

Portland, Maine ought to be ashamed for not only providing birth control pills to 11 year-old girls via its public schools but also enforcing federal health privacy laws that prohibit parents from having access to their child's health record, and prohibiting them from knowing whether their girl has gone on school-funded and prescribed Pill.

117,000 Americans are Killed Each Year By Public Health Professionals

The public health lobby focuses on smoking to a riduclous extent, parroting Surgeon General Richard Carmona's frequently quoted comments on second-hand smoke that have no basis in research but have led to banning smoking in cars and just about every place in Calabasas, CA.

Perhaps the public health community ought to look within and focus instead on the real data that show how many patients they have killed each year in hospitals by mistakes and by rampant infections that hospitals cannot seem to control and do not prioritize. My total preventable deaths is approximately 117,000. Now that is a public health issue.

Infections, from the NY Times:

Nearly 19,000 people died in the United States in 2005 after being infected with a virulent drug-resistant bacterium that has spread rampantly through hospitals and nursing homes, according to the most thorough study to be conducted of the disease’s prevalence.

Hospitals' mistakes:

Two years ago, a blistering report by the Institute of Medicine said that medical mistakes in hospitals kill up to 98,000 hospitalized Americans a year, and it demanded major changes. The mistakes included prescription drug errors and misused or malfunctioning equipment.

What happened to Plan A?

Barr Pharmaceuticals, the company behind the illustrious Plan B, have created a Canadian website called ShareYourOops.com. The site makes intentional humor out of an unfortunate situation, thus eliminating the shame associated with going to the pharmacy and telling the judgemental person behind the counter that, "Oops...it broke."

Visitors to the site are asked to rate their most common/funny/ubiquitous reasons for needing Plan B and then the scores are tallied up so that we can all feel a bit of the "yeah that happened to me too" solidarity.

While amusing and frank, the site kind of rubs me the wrong way (pun intended). A lot of the ShareYourOops.com's reasons for needing Plan B are just excuses for when you were either too drunk, lazy, or plain irresponsible to put on a condom at all. Excuses such as "awe...tht [sic] sucks" as well as "Saranwrap and elastic sucks" are the "the dog ate my homework" of unprotected sex. Of course people should still be proactive about the consequences of their actions/accidents (and yes, I fully support all free and fair trade of Plan B (disclosure: I even sold it to minors when I worked at Planned Parenthood)) but I guess I just wish we didn't always feel the need to make a cutesy jokes about everything. Especially when, you know, you can still get chlamydia and stuff.

What About the Kids!?!?

Bush vetoes the SCHIP Bill, sends millions of uninsured kids to their deathbeds. Or something like that. All I care is that a $1 increase in cigarette taxes was defeated. Huzzah!!

Although, if passed SCHIP would have bolstered the credibility of my argument that I smoke for the kids. I'd still say, even right now, my argument is on pretty sturdy ground...

HillaryCare Nightmare

Hillary Clinton is proposing that every US citizen be required to purchase health insurance:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system.

She said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination."

Leo: Let's not parse words: Hillary is proposing that every American spend hundreds or thousand of dollars per month on health insurance in order to get employed. That might be the scariest thing I have ever heard from a candidate.

"Minute Clinics" Are Poised to Make Health Care Affordable, If Only Doctors Would Let Them

The US has a health care crisis, and here come Minute Clinics and their like. They are retail clinics that employ nurse practitioners who can diagnose common ailments that are now flooding emergency rooms and provide basic and convenient health care to the uninsured and insured alike. Who wouldn't like this, as our nation careens into a health care crisis? Answer: regulators and doctors, from the NY Times:

New York State regulators are investigating the business relationships between drugstore companies and medical providers to determine whether the clinics are being used improperly to increase business or steer patients to the pharmacies in which the clinics are located.

The craven AMA view on the retail clinics:

And doctors’ groups, whose members stand to lose business from the clinics, are citing concerns about standards of care, safety and hygiene, and they have urged the federal and state governments to step in to more rigorously regulate the new businesses.

Before I Make My Health Care Documentary, Remind Me To Become As Fat and Sloppy As Is Humanly Possible

When I got to the hotel this past weekend with the worst case of jet lag I've ever had, I watched Larry King's interview of Michael Moore on the only American TV station available. It was a surprisingly decent and fair interview, but there is one thing about the way the MSM continually portrays the health care situation that really rubs me the wrong way.

King summed up my frustration pretty well when he referred to the "other side" of the health care debate (as opposed to Moore's) as the people who run the HMOs and other problematic "providers" of health care. Really? Is that it? Those are the only options? Well then it's no wonder that a single-payer (read: government) health care system is currently so popular.

How the hell did the present American health care system come to be considered the "market" system? It's one of the worst abuses of facts I can think of. Seriously, it's up there with the drug war. For example, here's Cato's Michael Cannon in an article for TCSdaily,

On average, third-parties pay for 86 cents out of every dollar of medical
care American patients receive. That's about the same share as under
Canada's socialized health care system.

Where is this fact in a blockbuster health care documentary or in the media coverage thereof? I look forward to the day when free market means free market and doesn't just blindly refer to anything that is not directly provided by government.

It just goes to show how well government has managed to poke its nose into every facet of the economy and still mask its destructive actions so well.

Best article I've seen on Moore's SiCKO here. Like any good lefty-liberal, Moore can eloquently identify and explain any large scale "social" problem, and then come up with a jaw-droppingly stupid, destructive solution to it.

In Response to Comments, Just How Does the US Tax Burden (and benefits) Compare?

My earlier post on Obama's health care plan decried the fact that the US spends more on healthcare than any other country while charging similar, if not higher, tax rates. My argument was that European countries really aren't taxed that much higher than we are, and sometimes less, and their governments provide national health as part of package while our politicians seek to raise taxes more to accomplish what the Europeans can do with much less while 43 million Americans are uninsured and have no National Health. Ergo, we are getting screwed by major inefficiency. See: FEMA, CPA, etc. A commenter disputed the fact that UK corporations pay lower rates than do US companies, and I know it is hard to believe, but here are the corporate tax rates:

United States= 39.3%
Canada= 36.1%
France- 35%
Italy=33%
Denmark= 28%
Norway=28%
Czech Republic=26%
Finland=26%
Austria=25%
United Kingdom=30%
Sweden=28%
Poland=19%

And the highest-growing country in the EU, Ireland, has the lowest corporate tax rate of 12.5%.

But the US doesn't have a VAT, so aren't we better off, some commenters ask, as we don't have a VAT? Not if you live in DC, where you pay a 9.3% local income tax on top our equivalent of a VAT, which is a sales tax of 10% that applies to all purchases including the horrible "gross receipts" tax, which is applied to all phone and utilities bills. So as gas prices skyrocket, so do one's gross receipts taxes. If you add that all in, and throw property taxes in for good measure, the US taxpayer is not getting what the UK one is relatively. If anyone on TtP can show mathematically that US taxpayers get a better deal than UK taxpayers, including National Health, than I will take you out for a steak dinner with martinis.

Obama Gets the Health Care Problem Exactly Wrong

There is no doubt that there is a health care crisis in the US. We spend about $6,700 per person on health care, or 16% of GDP, yet 43 million Americans lack health care. As a comparison, the UK has similar tax rates, and lower ones on business, but manages to also fund the National Health.

Barack Obama has a plan to help the uninsured, but, unfortunately, it does not address the core issues of expense and repeats the folly of the US tax policy that made health insurance the province of employers and caused the problem to begin with.

The major cost accelerators in health insurance plans are the state-mandated coverage minimums. In Massachusetts, an independent business owner needs to pay for a policy that covers in-vitro fertization and podiatry, victories for both of those lobby groups. The only way to get to affordable health insurance is for the states to allow true competition and market rates for applicants. It ought to be a market in which customers select the things that they are covered for and pay a resulting premium. In home insurance, car insurance life insurance and just about any other insurance you can select your risk and pay for it. The average Joe should be able to purchase health insurance on the free market and pay accordingly for his own risks.

America Twice As Messed Up In The Head As Before

There's an interesting bit of news out today--OK, maybe only interesting to me--citing firgures that show diabetes pill RXs among teens has exploded in the US. Especially among girls where it's up 167 percent over 2001 to about .27 percent of all girls (use among boys is up 33 percent). That tells you something of course and I am sure a food/soda nazi will soon use these numbers to rant about the evils of soda pop sold at corner markets.

Just as interesting, or not, is that the use of anti-depressants and ADHD drugs by teens is down, but that the use of antipsychotics is way up. Antipsych use has doubled since 2001 to the point where 1.2 percent of boys and .75 percent of girls are popping Seroquel and Zyprexa. That works out to about 1.5 million Americans under 20 years old dosing on these drugs. And it ain't over a doubling of schizophrenia.

These drugs are being prescribed for ADHD, bipolar disorder and depression because a loose collective of pharma companies, medical researchers and advocacy groups (funded by pharma companies, of course) have made it their job to convince America that it is seriously fucked in the head. Which it is, but more in a Paris Hilton way than in a Ted Bundy way. But a doubling in the use of antipsychotics--you know, the really serious chemical voodoo that makes patients sleep and get really fat--sorta makes me wonder if we haven't gone a bit far as a culture. Because what's the sense in medicating the hell out of teens when it hasn't worked particularly in adults, who in many cases are given a drug like Seroquel to be used as a sleeping pill (seriously)? What's the advantage of doing this when the drugs are hardly researched in teens and the research in adults shows that they aren't particularly effective and the long-term consequences of their use are truly gnarly (um, like death)? Besides, ADHD, bipolar disorder and depression almost never lead to psychosis, so why are docs--who are supposed to be fairly conservative in how they treat human bodies--handing out antipsyhcotics? Why are there ads for antipsychtoics on phone booths near college campuses?

Or is America really that fucked up?

Damn Wal-Mart

and it's really cheap, convenient health care for all. Don't these corporate pigs know that showing the world how cheap health care can be in a free market undermines the case for socialized politicized medicine. How long before Gov. Spitzer (D-NY) charges Wal-Mart with practicing monoposny for ruthlessley forcing down prescription drug prices?

Reporter Goes Apeshit On Scientologist

John Sweeney, a BBC journalist, was working on a documentary about the CoS because the group/church/cult/whatever they are is apparently working its way into mainstream England in ways some Brits find chilling. Over time, things got testy, as is oft the case when anyone pokes around the Xenu destroyers and it looks like Sweeney was poking really hard. Then again, if he's like most journalists who've poked at the cult, he went in with his mind very made up. Anyway, the whole thing exploded into a scene of Sweeney going nuts on a Scientologist. Of course, it's on YouTube. As a journalist, it's fun to watch one's peers turn into fools. (Watch the YouTube here at Andrew Sullivan.)

Of course, Sweeney has issued a response.

"While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists and been chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers."

Travolta and Cruise calling someone a bigot? Sinister strangers in Los Angelese? Where can I get in on that?

Joking aside, we are at a very odd tipping point moment in psychology and psychiatry in the US and Britain and in other lands Western and high-tech. One that affects millions of people and billions of dollars and raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions about individual freedom--the psychological and behavioral kinds, at any rate--in modern urban America and elsewhere. But that's for another day.

Snake Bites, Cancer, Infertility -- What Problems Can Urine NOT Solve

From the Telegraph:

A dramatic surge in the popularity of "urine therapy" in Cameroon has prompted the government to ban its consumption and threaten persistent offenders with jail.

[...]

I had haemorrhoids for five years and nothing gave me relief. But six months ago, I started drinking half a glass of my urine every morning and I am practically healed," a shopkeeper from the capital Yaounde wrote to Le Messager newspaper. A magistrate claimed: "For several years I haven't had a hair on my head, but since I started drinking my urine it's started growing again - it's extraordinary."

When do we start seeing the late-night infomercials for fast acting, Urine Magic?

Via Samizdata. Full article here.

20/20

Tonight I'm feeling a little under the weather and ordering my hookers in; so I decided to take advantage of the night off and catch the Rudy/Judi interview on 20/20. I know, I know. Honestly though, I usually only watch a news magazine show if it involves a pedophile bust. Not because they're funny, but because I like to draw up a grid of where MSNBC has been in the last month or so. Remember what my advice on the Target security cameras? It's called doing your homework folks.

Anyways I was greeted first with a network orgy of a hit job. Big corporations and drugs. Jackpot for fear-mongering journalism. The story went like this: The proliferation of chain-store pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS that (heaven forbid) attempt to fill a lot of prescriptions for a lot of customers at a highly discounted price, are causing an "epidemic" (their words, not mine) of deaths and debilitating injuries due to their never-ending pursuit of the "bottom-line" (again their words, not mine). The chase of the evil profits leads them to hire teenage pharmacy assistants and over-worked pharmacist who make mistakes and cause children to become retarded. OK the last sentence is mostly my description. Still though, that's a fairly accurate summary from the 20 minute segment that I forced myself to watch because I felt like blogging on something.

A couple ill-informed, crazy libertarian thoughts. How many people are being saved from cheap drugs? How many people are being saved from a drug store on every corner? Aren't people still free to choose their local pharmacy where Tom, who sings in the church choir and has known their kids since they were in diapers, works? How many people are actually dropping dead from mistakes? If we introduced regulations that attempted to control how many hours pharmacist worked and who worked behind the counter, wouldn't we just be preventing the majority safe transactions from ever happening? Wouldn't any regulation be shouldered by the lower-income families more so than the middle-class and upper-class customers that could afford to shop elsewhere? Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong and add to what I may have missed. The whole segment left a nasty taste in my mouth.

As for Mr and Mrs Giuliani...Decent performance, though I'm not sure about Rudy's idea of inviting his wife in on future cabinet meetings. Last time we tried that we almost ended up with socialised health care.

The Low Bar of Expectations

An NY Times article on Sunday was sympathetic to US citizens who are being cut out of Medicaid because they cannot produce a birth certificate, passport or other form of citizenship. And these are US citizens, so it does not involve the issue of immigrants.

Medicaid officials across the country report that some pregnant women are going without prenatal care and some parents are postponing checkups for their children while they hunt down birth certificates and other documents.

The liberal money shots often invoke children. I am sorry but I have no sympathy for these people. Do we really expect so little of our population that requiring them to produce a birth certificate in order to receive the best health care in the US, funded by taxpayers who have crappier health plans if they have one at all, is too much to ask? How much of a nanny state have we become that we assume that adults are unable to produce basic documents?