Here's why "I'll sneak in just under the wire" should comfort no one

Paul Ryan thinks he can buy my vote by keeping me, at age 55, in the current Medicare system when I'm old. Of course those who are 55+ and think they can heave a sigh of relief because they won't be part of the group that's given vouchers to buy health insurance on the private market that will cost in the high five figures even if they can get it are fooling themselves. If you think resentment by screwed-over private sector workers towards not-yet-screwed-over public sector workers is ugly, wait till you see what happens when you have one segment of the elderly population that has Medicare and another that's paying $25,000/year for health insurance (if they can even get it).

But if you have a soul, you can't look at those a few years behind you on the continuum and feel any kind of relief, particularly people like Steven D. of Booman Tribune, to whom I've linked on a number of occasions and who posts about his own predicament over at What Used To Be Known As The Great Orange Satan Until John Boehner Took That Title Away:

The Republicans have a plan to destroy Medicare.

If enacted I will likely die an early death as will my wife.  

A little background: I have a chronic autoimmune disorder that forced me to retire from my profession over ten years ago.  The drugs I take each year (and I take mostly generic versions of those medications) cost roughly $5,000 last year.  With insurance, the amount I paid for those drugs cost about $1,200.

My wife is not so lucky.  She is a pancreatic cancer survivor (since 2006) who, as a result of the chemotherapy drugs she received, suffered permanent brain damage.  The details regarding the cognitive problems she struggles with are described in this post at Booman Tribune for those who are interested.  She is also a Type 1 Diabetic since the cancer and cancer treatments effectively destroyed her pancreas.  The drugs she takes for her health issues are much more expensive than mine.  They cost roughly $16,000 last year of which we paid roughly $4,000.  

>My wife, as a fully disabled person who receives SSD benefits, was shifted to Medicare A for doctor visits, etc.  Her drugs (as are mine, my daughter and my son), however, are still covered under the group insurance plan of her former employer.  The cost of those premiums is roughly $7000 per year and we pay the full amount.  Though the premiums have increased each year (roughly 5% give or take), we manage.  In this we are fortunate, since if we had to buy individual policies for health care the cost would be much higher.

In New York, where we live the average cost of an individual family health care plan in 2009 was a little under $14,000, but due to my wife's chronic condition (Type 1 diabetes and organic brain disorder), my chronic autoimmune disorder, and my daughters' chronic ADHD condition and anxiety disorder I suspect the cost of an individual health care plan for our family would be significantly higher if we had to purchase one on the open market in 2011.  

At present, including the costs of insurance premiums, drugs, dentist visits, doctor visits and other forms of medical treatment for our family we pay out of pocket roughly 21,000 per year.

Neither my wife or I will turn 65 before 2021, when the Republican voucher system would go in place and also at which time the eligibility age for Medicare would be raised to 67.  As an aside, I don't know what would happen to us at 65.  I can only assume our health insurance from my wife's plan would terminate but we would not be eligible for vouchers, leaving a two year gap.  I am presently 54 and my wife is 52, by the way.

At 67 (or 65), my wife and I will no longer have the luxury of relying on her former employer's group health care plan.  Under the Republican plan to eliminate Medicare and replace it with a "voucher" system we will be screwed.  Whatever insurance plan we might be able to buy would either cost far, far more than the voucher provided to us or not be worth the paper its printed on (i.e., the deductible would be so high that the insurance would be essentially useless).  But don't take my word for it.  Here is what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the Republican plan to kill Medicare:

Voucher recipients would probably have to purchase less extensive coverage or pay higher premiums than they would under current law, for two reasons. First, most of the savings for Medicare under the proposal stem from reducing the amounts that the federal government would pay for enrollees on a per capita basis, relative to the projections under current law. Second, future beneficiaries would probably face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.

So we would have no choice.  We could eat or buy extremely crappy health insurance.  In the event of a health crisis, it is highly likely that the person with the health issue would die because we could not afford the cost of even barely adequate health care such as we have today.  Certainly that would be the case if my wife suffered a recurrence of her cancer, or my condition worsened from merely a chronic condition to one that is life threatening.  

At that point the only rational decision for either of us might be to forego any medical treatment and die so as to salvage whatever savings and life insurance payments for our children we can, who lord knows will need all the help they can get in the coming years of this century.  Luckily, we have some savings and some life insurance that could be passed on to our children if we don't raid it to pay for health care, shelter and food we could no longer afford.

If you can read about Steven and his wife and still feel relieved that you'll get yours, you'd better go find out what happened to your soul.

How can you be "pro-life" and be opposed to women's health?

Women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are simply the shiny baubles that Republican males use as props in an effort to hide their very real feeling that women are nothing -- not human, not worth anything, just vessels for popping out babies (preferably white babies, in order to keep the Marauding Brown Hordes from taking over).

Because despite an intractable unemployment rate, crumbling infrastructure, and international crises, the first priority of this Republican House of Representatives is to make sure the dirty sluts are punished for not keeping their legs closed by being forced to bear the fruits of their sin. And they're doing it all under the mantle of "fiscal responsibility":

Invoking the mantra of fiscal restraint that has dominated House action since lawmakers reconvened last month, Republicans began committee work this week on two bills that would greatly expand restrictions on financing for and access to abortions. Another bill, one that would cut off federal dollars to women’s health care clinics that offer abortions, is expected to surface later this year.

Over and over, Democrats said that by bringing up the abortion issue now, Republicans were going back on their word to focus on the budget.

Yet the bills that have surfaced on the House floor this year have been fiscal in nature, including the repeal of the health care law, which was later rejected by the Senate, and some measures designed to cut spending.

“Republicans are focused on creating a better environment for economic growth and job creation,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, “and that is reflected in the legislation the House is passing,”

Not sure how denying women whose only access to medical care is through clinics creates jobs, Mr. Boehner. You got some 'splainin' to do there.

One bill, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” would eliminate tax breaks for private employers who provide health coverage if their plans offer abortion services, and would forbid women who use a flexible spending plan to use pre-tax dollars for abortions. Those restrictions would go well beyond current law prohibiting the use of federal money for abortion services.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, has drawn fire over language that undercuts a longstanding exemption on the ban on using federal money for abortions in the case of rape or incest; the measure narrows the definition of rape to “forcible rape,” a term that his office has never defined. Democratic lawmakers and others repeatedly hammered on the term, saying it suggested that victims of statutory rape and other crimes could not get abortions paid for with federal money.

While Mr. Smith’s staff said last week that the term "forcible rape" would be removed from the bill, the staff of RepresentativeJerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said that language remained intact as of Tuesday.

Another bill, sponsored by Mr. Pitts, addresses the health care overhaul head-on by prohibiting Americans who receive insurance through state exchanges from purchasing abortion coverage, even with their own money. The bill is essentially a resurrection of a provision in the House version of the health care law but was not in the Senate version.

The bill would also permit hospitals to refuse abortions to women, even in emergency situations, if such care would offend the conscience of the health care providers.

Imagine a woman with an ectopic pregnancy that's ready to burst. She arrives at the hospital, and some wingnut doctor who thinks removing an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion and an offense against God decides that his religious beliefs prevent him from performing the procedure to remove it. It's entirely likely that this woman will die on the floor of the emergency room because a doctor, whose job is to provide care, decided his so-called "pro-life" beliefs prevented him from saving an actual, real-life woman. Imagine any pregnancy gone wrong -- and it does happen -- and the woman is allowed to die on the hospital steps because of such doctors.

Why are women's lives and women's health always expendable to Republicans? Why is it that the only life they care about is fetal life -- but after said fetus is born, it's on its own? No paid maternity leave for mothers. No health care services for the poor. No food or medical care for babies who were beloved by Republicans as long as they were attached to what these Republicans believe is a worthless vessel by an umbilical cord, but as soon as they're breathing on their own, and especially if their pigmentation is unsuitable to Republican goals, they're on their own.

MOST of what family planning clinics do is provide basic health care for women and contraceptives -- you know, birth control designed to PREVENT unwanted pregnancies. But no, Republicans and their frothing, idiotic wingnut minions think that this is off-limits too -- no sacrifice is too great for their worship of the fetus.

Why is it that forty years after Roe, we're still fighting this battle -- and losing? And when are Democrats going to find their fucking balls and stop compromising on the backs of American women? Or do they too think women are nothing but vessels?

The other Jill who isn't Cookie Jill or me also weighs in, and has waited until she stopped wanting to put a fist through a wall to do it so she's far more coherent than I am on this.

More misogyny from Republican males

I'm not sure if I should be glad that I'm still shocked, because it means that I haven't completely sunk into a morass of utter cynicism and hopelessness. But even back before abortion was legal, men who would force women into childbearing weren't so open about their fear and loathing of women -- to the point of articulating that women are simply expendable vessels to be disposed of at will if it means "saving" even an unviable fetus:

The controversy over "forcible rape" may be over, but now there's a new Republican-sponsored abortion bill in the House that pro-choice folks say may be worse: this time around, the new language would allow hospitals to let a pregnant woman die rather than perform the abortion that would save her life.

The bill, known currently as H.R. 358 or the "Protect Life Act," would amend the 2010 health care reform law that would modify the way Obamacare deals with abortion coverage. Much of its language is modeled on the so-called Stupak Amendment, an anti-abortion provision pro-life Democrats attempted to insert into the reform law during the health care debate last year. But critics say a new language inserted into the bill just this week would go far beyond Stupak, allowing hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions to turn away women in need of emergency pregnancy termination to save their lives.

The sponsor of H.R. 358, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) is a vocal member of the House's anti-abortion wing. A member of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus and a co-sponsor of H.R 3 -- the bill that added "forcible rape" to the lexicon this week -- Pitts is no stranger to the abortion debate. But pro-choice advocates say his new law goes farther than any other bill has in encroaching on the rights of women to obtain an abortion when their health is at stake. They say the bill is giant leap away from accepted law, and one they haven't heard many in the pro-life community openly discuss before.

Pitts' response to the complaints from pro-choice groups? Nothing to see here.

"Since the 1970s, existing law affirmed the right to refuse involvement in abortion in all circumstances," a spokesperson for Pitts told TPM.

"The Protect Life Act simply extends these provisions to the new law by inserting a provision that mirrors Hyde-Weldon," the spokesperson added, referring to current federal law banning spending on abortion and allowing anti-abortion doctors to refrain from performing them while still receiving federal funds. "In other words, this bill is only preserving the same rights that medical professionals have had for decades."

A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA -- but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can't provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient.

In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn't qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.)

Pitts' new bill would free hospitals from any abortion requirement under EMTALA, meaning that medical providers who aren't willing to terminate pregnancies wouldn't have to -- nor would they have to facilitate a transfer.

The hospital could literally do nothing at all, pro-choice critics of Pitts' bill say.

"This is really out there," Donna Crane, policy director at NARAL Pro-Choice America told TPM. "I haven't seen this before."

Last month job creation was at an anemic 36,000. There is snow in Texas, there are floods and category 5 cyclones in Australia. Arctic ice is thinner than ever before. The Middle East is exploding. One in eight Americans needs food stamps to put food on the table. But all that Republican men care about is that the Evil Daughters of Eve be "punished" by forced continuation of pregnancies that will end up killing them -- so that they can deliver hopelessly deformed babies with no chance of survival. It's not about the babies. It's not about human life and it never was. Because these men do not see women as human. I've asked in the past at what point in the minds of these people when women cease to be human and become mere vessels. We now have our answer: It's always.

UPDATE: Best quote on this comes from, of all people, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs:

According to the “pro-life” GOP, an unborn fetus is a person — but a woman is not.

And there's more, from LGF and elsewhere:

Arkansas Anti-Choicers Reject Abortion Restriction Bill Because it Includes Exceptions for Rape and Incest

South Dakota Seeks to Force Women into Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Kansas House panel considers new abortion limits

And New Jerseyans who didn't think Chris Christie was going to shove his own religious beliefs into your homes, guess again: Abortion rights, in peril in New Jersey

Heh. If the Democrats had the slightest idea how to frame things, they'd call this bill the Human Sacrifice Encouragement Act of 2011.

What was that about "job-killing health care bill" again?

Of course, why should Idiot America let reality get in the way of its delusions?

The first statistics are coming in and, to the surprise of a great many, Obamacare might just be working to bring health care to working Americans precisely as promised.

The major health insurance companies around the country are reporting a significant increase in small businesses offering health care benefits to their employees.

Why?

Because the tax cut created in the new health care reform law providing small businesses with an incentive to give health benefits to employees is working.

Real Live Death Panels

Now we know who Republicans think should be making decisions about your health care: Republican politicians like Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona:

A second person in Arizona has died while waiting for an organ transplant. Not because they couldn't find a donor but because state budget cuts took the patients off the transplant list.

When CBS News first met 27-year-old Tiffany Tate in December 2010 she was in desperate need of a double lung transplant. Yet she and 98 other people in Arizona were kicked off the organ transplant list. The state decided it could no longer afford to pay for some transplants which can cost $200,000.

"If we all don't get our transplants, all 98 of us are going to die," says Tate. "We deserve a second chance. I didn't ask for this. I was born with this and I've fought my whole life."

CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports at least two people have died since November. Mark Price, a father of six, died waiting for a bone marrow transplant. Now the University Medical Center in Tucson says a man needing a new liver died due to the cutbacks.

A hospital spokesperson said, "We believe that it's likely that they died because they were unable to get a transplant."

"There's absolutely no way you can justify killing people to save really a little bit over a million dollars," says Ariz. Rep. Chad Campbell (D).

Campbell says cutting the transplant program is saving Arizona $1.4 million, or one-tenth of 1 percent of its $825 million budget deficit.

Ariz. governor Jan Brewer says Arizona is broke. "The state has only so much money and we can only provide so many optional kinds of care," she says.

"Optional kinds of care." In the world of Republicans like Jan Brewer, having functioning lungs, livers, kidneys, is "optional."

Here's how it's done

Dick Durbin throws down the gauntlet:

More like this please. MAKE them admit that they don't think other Americans should get the same health care that John Boehner and Eric Cantor and the rest of the anti-government Republicans who are happy to receive a government paycheck receive.

Uh....about that "The American people want health care reform repealed" line...

It's amazing how the media have been willing to just parrot the GOP line about how the American people don't want any health care reform, that they like the current system just fine, and how THEY in the GOP are going to give the people what they want by repealing reform and going back to the good old days of now, when the emergency room is regarded as health insurance for the uninsured, kids with cancer can be denied treatment by their family's insurance company, and employees of insurance companies who drop patients for no reason at all are praised.

There's just one problem.

That isn't what people want:

President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has divided the nation, and Republicans believe their call for repeal will help them win elections in November. But the picture's not that clear cut.

A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.

"I was disappointed that it didn't provide universal coverage," said Bronwyn Bleakley, 35, a biology professor from Easton, Mass.

More than 30 million people would gain coverage in 2019 when the law is fully phased in, but another 20 million or so would remain uninsured. Bleakley, who was uninsured early in her career, views the overhaul as a work in progress.

The poll found that about four in 10 adults think the new law did not go far enough to change the health care system, regardless of whether they support the law, oppose it or remain neutral. On the other side, about one in five say they oppose the law because they think the federal government should not be involved in health care at all.

The AP poll was conducted by Stanford University with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Overall, 30 percent favored the legislation, while 40 percent opposed it, and another 30 percent remained neutral.

Those numbers are no endorsement for Obama's plan, but the survey also found a deep-seated desire for change that could pose a problem for Republicans. Only 25 percent in the poll said minimal tinkering would suffice for the health care system.

Barack Obama, in his "never met a fight he didn't want to cry 'uncle' at before the other guy even threw the first punch" way, took single payer off the table at the beginning. Then he pulled the public option off the table. He never asked whether the American people wanted those. He just assumed, because a bunch of talking heads on television said so, that we didn't.

And that is the problem with living in the bubble.

And this is the MAINSTREAM of the Republican Party

Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt thinks insurance companies should be allowed deny coverage to adults based on pre-existing conditions:

Meanwhile, in other Republican news, as far as John ManTan Boehner is concerned, the GOP's #1 priority isn't jobs, or the economy -- it's repealing health care reform, making America safe once again for people to go broke because of health care costs and insurance companies to charge exorbitant premiums and not deliver coverage.

When frogs don't start falling from the sky, even the teabaggers will have to calm down

Well, not all of them. But when all the Medicare recipients who have been screaming "Keep the government out of my Medicare!" at rallies start getting $250 rebate checks as part of closing the prescription drug "doughnut hole", and see other immediate benefits as outlined by Rachel Maddow last night...

...the bellowing of John ManTan Boehner on the floor of the House the other night is going to look pretty damn ludicrous. Because this fall, the Republicans are going to have to run on the freedom of insurance companies to make absurd profits by refusing to cover your future pregnancies if you've ever been pregnant before, dropping you if you get sick, and raising your premiums by 40% a year.

Somehow that doesn't strike me as a winning platform. And as for John McCain, a clip of whom is shown in the segment above, is unlikely to be able to do anything to repeal it, because it looks increasingly likely that no matter how much he panders to the Ranks of the Stoopid in Arizona, he's going to get his clock cleaned by one of them in the primary.

Bart Stupak: Still an idiot. Still has to go.

And so in the end, Bart Stupak came around. Did your head explode listening to him all of a sudden paint health care for pregnant women and children who are actually here as "pro-life", when until the day before he was perfectly willing to jettison the whole thing if it meant that dirty sluts who can't keep their legs closed wouldn't be punished by being forced to bear children they don't want. Because let's face it, THAT'S what it was all about, otherwise the internal inconsistency of his [wide] stance would never have held up in any school of logic.

And after a decade of people like me being forced to pay in the form of my tax dollars for a war based on lies, tax cuts for the already preposterously wealthy, and Blackwater rapists -- and told to sit down and shut up -- in the end, Barack Obama was only able to get this thing through by promising Bart Stupak that dirty sluts who couldn't afford to pay for their own abortions would be suitably punished.

Amanda nailed it even before the vote came in:

Did they come up with this brilliant plan after Stupak has made it clear that his contempt for women’s opinions applies even to nuns?  Is it possible that Nancy Pelosi called up Obama and said, “Look, I’ve been telling him and Sebelius has been telling him there’s no federal funding for abortion in this bill.  He apparently needs to hear it from a man, so can you give us a hand?”

And in the end, Stupak's year-long concern with the zygote and the fetus above all else didn't save him from the wrath of lunatics.

Stupak gets no brownie points for this. You know what to do.

Waiting to exhale.

So here we are.

At the end of today, one of two things will have happened. Either this country will have taken a first step -- a very small first step, but a first step just the same -- towards a better health care system...or it won't.

Either we will have taken some small steps towards ensuring that all Americans can step away from the precipice of total financial ruin if they become ill...or we won't.

Either children with leukemia from lower-income working families will be able to receive medical care to battle their illnesses, or they will be turned away because Bart Stupak, who adheres to a religion the institutional structure of which seems these days to be little more than a pedophile protection racket, thinks a fertilized egg's "life" is more important than theirs.

The health care bill to be voted on today isn't what I wanted, nor is it what a great many others wanted. Maybe it isn't a start after all, but an endpoint. And if it's an endpoint, perhaps we all WILL be worse off. If the Democrats manage to find their intestinal fortitude today, it's going to be incumbent on us to keep their feet to the fire...and to support the real Democrats who have the guts to run against entrenched hacks like Bart Stupak, so that further progress can be made.

I would like to believe if this passes today, and the Seven Plagues aren't immediately rained upon us, that perhaps some of the screeching from the teabag right will calm down. But I'm not that idealistic. In fact, I think it will get worse. Because we all know that lying beneath much of the teabag protests -- and not far underneath if the signs we see at such protests is any indication, is a visceral terror that a man whose skin color is not the same as theirs is not only occupying the White House, but may very well succeed at it. And if Americans' lives DO improve from this, then this woman from yesterday's rally may very well be right -- that this country WILL re-fight the Civil War:

Because after all, isn't that what all this has been about all along?

When even the American Enterprise Institute says Republicans are hypocrites....

Norm Orenstein, right there in the Journal of the AEI:

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

Orenstein even has to ASK if there's no shame among the politicians on his side of the fence? The answer is obviously "No."

Here's what I don't understand: If opposing health care reform is such a sure-win for the Republicans this fall, why don't they let it pass, then run on a "repeal" message? Is it perhaps because...

The number of middle-income earners covered by employer health insurance fell by three million from 2000 to 2008, and government programs and the individual market aren't picking up the slack. The total number of uninsured middle-income earners rose from 10.5 million to 12.9 million, representing 16.2 percent of the income bracket -- a bigger increase than for any other income group.

"It really underscores how the problem of uninsurance is not something simply affecting lower-income Americans but is increasingly affecting the middle class," said Brian Quinn, the foundation's research and evaluation office. The most recent Census Bureau estimate puts the total uninsured population at 46.3 million.

Just 66 percent of people in families earning between $45,000 and $85,000 are insured through an employer plan -- 52.7 million people, down from 55.5 million eight years prior -- a drop of nearly seven percentage points.

People who earn less money were more likely to lose employer coverage, but also more likely to be covered by a government program like Medicaid. According to the report, only about half of the decline in employer-sponsored coverage for middle-income earners was offset by government insurance programs.

Those who missed the safety net have been flung into the cold-hearted individual market, where insurance companies deny coverage based on preexisting conditions and charge exorbitant, ever-increasing premiums. (Insurance companies, whose executives earn million-dollar salaries, routinely plead that other industries within the health sector have much fatter profit margins.)

"For a lot of middle class Americans, the individual market is not a real option," said Quinn.

The Republicans are the ones talking about the best health care system in the world and opposing any kind of reform other than that contained in the Paul Ryan Roadmap Off a Cliff: tax cuts to buy health insurance on the individual market -- IF you can get it. If the Democrats can't make hay off this kind of social Darwinism (the only kind of Darwinism Republicans believe in), they deserve to lose Congress. The problem is, their fecklessness takes the rest of us down with them.

Condolences to Keith Olbermann

Olbermann's dad died yesterday:

My father died, in the city of his birth, New York, at 3:50 EST this afternoon.

Though the financial constraints of his youth made college infeasible, he accomplished the near-impossible, becoming an architect licensed in 40 states. Much of his work was commercial, for a series of shoe store chains and department stores. There was a time in the 1970's when nearly all of the Baskin-Robbins outlets in the country had been built to his design, and under his direction. Through much of my youth and my early adult life, it was almost impossible to be anywhere in this country and not be a short drive to one of "his" stores.

My Dad was predeceased last year by my mother, Marie, his wife of nearly 60 years. He died peacefully after a long fight against the complications that ensued after successful colon surgery last September at the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. My sister Jenna and I were at his side, and I was reading him his favorite James Thurber short stories, as he left us.

I can't say enough about Dr. Jeff Milsom and his team at the hospital, and all of those physicians and nurses and staffers in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit who looked after my Dad all this time, and kept him in their hearts. And I feel the same way about all of you who have expressed your best wishes and prayers to him, and to me, and to our family.

My Dad was my biggest booster. A day after I was hired by CNN in the summer of 1981 as a two-week vacation relief sports reporter, I traveled by train to my childhood hometown, and walked from the station towards my folks' house. I was stopped half a dozen times before I got to my Dad's office by people congratulating me on my impending television debut. There was, of course, only one way they could have known. My Dad, the press agent.

Of course it was he and my Mom who took me to my first Yankees games (even though my father nursed a delightful grudge against the team for trading away his favorite players, Steve Souchock and Snuffy Stirnweiss - in 1948 and 1950). But as my interest in the sport began to take the shape of a dreamt-of career, it was my Dad also sacrificed family vacations so we could buy ever more tickets to Yankee games. When we could afford both games and vacations, four times those vacations were to Spring Training.

He was my inspiration, and will always remain so. His bravery these last six months cannot be measured. He is as much my hero now, as he was when I was five years old.

Theodore C. Olbermann's final struggle has resulted in some of the most heartfelt and incisive commentary about health care that we've seen. If anyone who has seen them still talks about "death panels", that person deserves to never receive health care again.

Thursday Alan Grayson Blogging

When you're working 7 days a week you miss stuff like this:

GRAYSON INTRODUCES PUBLIC OPTION ACT
Bill Opens Up Medicare To Anyone Who Can Pay For It

March 9, 2010

Washington, DC

Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Fla., today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.

Congressman Grayson said, “Obviously, America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that. But it’s just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice. A lot of people don’t want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive. We deserve to have a real alternative.”

The bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish enrollment periods, coverage guidelines, and premiums for the program. Because premiums would be equal to cost, the program would pay for itself.

“The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population. That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’ It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair. This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote,” Congressman Grayson said.

In keeping with the “Grayson style,” the bill is clear and concise. It is only four pages. You can read the bill here.

In case you hadn't heard, Alan Grayson is leading in the REPUBLICAN primary race in his district.

Word.

Help indeed.

Why do fetophiles oppose universal health care?

There's a strong overlap between the fetophiles screaming about the lives of babies and the teabaggers standing on street corners screaming about "Obamacare". Now, it's well known that I do NOT favor an insurance system that requires everyone to buy insurance from the shakedown artists known as insurance companies whose business model is to charge extortionate premiums and deny claims as often as possible. So I'm not defending the Senate bill that Rahm Emanuel wants the House to pass. But it's hard to argue for the status quo either (which is what the teabaggers are doing, since they offer no alternatives), when the status quo is this:

One of the worst abuses of private insurance companies is the practice of using spurious reasons to deny claims for medical treatments, which are often necessary for saving patients’ lives.

Kyler Van Nocker’s story shows that even 5-year-old kids are not exempt from this insurance company abuse. Van Nocker has neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.

Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.

Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”

HealthAmerica is a privately-owned company, so the compensation of its CEO, Robert Dawson, is unavailable.

What part of They Want Him to Fail does Obama not understand?

Either Barack Obama really enjoys being kicked in the teeth, or he wants to make sure Republicans share the blame when health care reform fails. Those are the only two explanations for this:

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.

Politically it may benefit Obama for the Republicans to be seen as simply obstructionist. But the longing for bipartisanship is something that does not exist in the American public, or at least it didn't until he started looking like a complete wuss for continuing to seek common ground with people who want him impeached as ineligible to be president, jailed for being a terrorist, or dead -- and that's the Republicoteabag party in a nutshell. Bipartisanship is a longing by the talking heads of the media, not by people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by ever-spiraling health care costs. Like calling for a three-year freeze in spending that would be the WORST thing to do for a still-sputtering economy, this has the smell of utter, abject, bullshit fear about it. And we all know that when Republicans smell fear, they go into a feeding frenzy.

Be a size 0 or be prepared to pay the price

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are very well aware that I am, shall we say, a person of some girth. According to all possible charts, I am fat, and therefore this culture defines me as unhealthy, despite my perfectly OK cholesterol, my 120/80 blood pressure, and the kind of ridiculously strong genes that make me fortunate to have TWO living parents at the age of 54. These parents, and I hope they don't mind me revealing a bit about them in the name of Making a Point, are hardly paragons of Conventional Wisdom either.

My father is going to be 85 this year. He's overweight, he's sedentary, he doesn't exercise, and while he eats relatively well, he enjoys a good marbled steak with an appetizer of spinach artichoke dip as much as the next person. He has minor health problems, including a chronic illness that does not seem to be progressing and a replacement hip, but other than that, he's fine. He finishes the New York times crossword puzzle every Sunday. He and his wife are in a French club.

My mother (who has been widowed since 2000) is 82. She had lung cancer about 20 years ago. Yes, lung cancer. Do you know what the average 5-year survival rate for lung cancer is? 15%. Mom has made it for 20. She's still smoking. Yes, she has COPD and other health problems, but this is someone who used to smoke nonfiltered Camels, has been smoking since the 1940's, has been overweight much of the time, and is still kicking at 82, living with her feisty little dog. By the way, her husband was slim, active, ate well, did not smoke, and died at 75 of thyroid cancer.

So here I am, with this presumably equally strong constitution. But does any of that matter? Nope. I still get the "lose weight" lecture every time I go to a doctor, with the answer to "What do you suggest" always being "Weight Watchers", notwithstanding the fact that if Weight Watchers were so successful, why is it still in business, and why is my co-worker on her FOURTH ROUND THROUGH THE PROGRAM???

There are bloggers like Kate Harding who try to promote "health at any size", but because in our society we simply cannot take on things like processed foods and corn syrup and plastics which leach crap into our food that promote weight gain, and the stresses of either looking for a job or trying to hang onto one, what we do is blame the entire cost of health care on Teh Fatties.

It should also be noted here that I do not eat donuts. I do not eat Twinkies. I rarely eat cookies anymore. I never eat fast food. I've gone cold turkey from even low-fat ice creams. I don't like chips and Bugles and Chee-tohs and other "snack foods". I work usually 55-80 hours a week. I have been out from work sick five days in the last nine years. So the trolls who want to talk about me sitting on the sofa all day eating baby-flavored donuts can go ply your business somewhere else, because I WILL delete your comments.

I have fought this battle for as long as I can remember. I remember realizing I was fatter than other kids very early on, but my first humiliating memory was of being eight years old, never having gone ice skating before, and going to an ice skating birthday party for a "friend", where I ended up being shlepped around the rink by the birthday girl's older sisters, who talked THE ENTIRE TIME about how if I wasn't so fat they wouldn't have to do this. I wasn't all that fat, either. I look at my old high school yearbook now, the one from my junior year where I'm in the front of the homeroom picture, wearing a zebra-striped jumper I'd made myself that barely covered my ass, with black tights, and wondering how on earth that girl ever thought she was fat.

The only time in my life that doctors haven't given me the Lose Weight lecture was in 1983, when I went on Cambridge Diet -- a 300 calorie a day, allegedly "nutritionally complete" liquid diet that was guaranteed to make the weight just POUR off. I weighed 118 when I started. Sixteen weeks later, I weighed 105 -- a massive weight loss of thirteen pounds in four months. During that time, I was going to a health club five nights a week, where I took an hour aerobics class, followed by a half hour of weights.

Thirteen pounds in sixteen weeks. Even with all that. But I was at last a size six. For about five minutes. I had no tits, but I was a size six.

The minute I started eating any solid food at all, the weight started piling back on. You see, I met Mr. Brilliant during that time. And when you date, you go out for dinner a lot. And I would sit in restaurants pushing my food around the plate and going on crying jags that I didn't understand. When I did eat, I'd go home that night, but on my Jane Fonda Workout album and do an hour of aerobics in my apartment before going to sleep. Later on I knew what the crying jags were about. I WAS HUNGRY, DAMMIT. Finally, one day at the Feast of San Gennaro, Mr. B had had quite enough of this. It was either stop this madness with food or be crazy without him.

As I go further into middle age, I'm making small changes to how I deal with food and recognize things that I could do better. This year I've given up diet soda under the assumption that when you are used to having a sweet taste in your mouth all the time, it just makes you crave sugar. I realized that sometimes I eat too fast just because I want to get to the seconds, when I'm really satisfied with the firsts. As I mentioned on our sister blog, Disciples of Joe, we're trying to eat less meat.

I know from past experience that defining oneself as "good" or "bad" as a person based on what one eats is a sure path to sitting down with a half-gallon of Edy's French Silk and a spoon...even if one doesn't even WANT a half-gallon of Edy's French Silk. For many of us, the minute the word "diet" is used, we want cheesecake, even if we don't LIKE cheesecake. "Breaking the diet" is, in my opinion, a sane reaction to an insane situation, that insane situation being substituting boxes of frozen crap put out by food conglomerates for actual food that satisfies and nourishes. Small, incremental changes are much easier to make, and far more productive in the long run.

How many people, particularly women, do YOU know who are heating up tiny boxes of frozen crap for lunch every day because they gained weight over the holidays? Come back in a month and tell me how many STILL are. Then check and see how many bags of M&Ms they have squirrelled away in their desk drawers.

A few years ago, I went to the gynecologist I'd been seeing for 20 years. I always liked her because we talked about movies and she never gave me shit about my weight. She was pretty, and maybe ten years younger than I was, so she was just starting to get to that thing that happens around age 45 when you start noticing changes in your face and your body on a daily basis. That year she was going to her high school reunion, and had lost 40 pounds on "The Accubead diet." On this one, you go to this psychologist who gives you these accupressure beads to put behind your ears. Then you alternate days: On Day 1 you consume 2-1/2 cups of whole milk and nothing else. On Day 2 you consume a pound of vegetables and nothing else. Repeat and repeat and repeat. When you get hungry, you press the beads and it tricks your hypothalamus into thinking you aren't hungry. 20 ounces of full-fat milk is about 500 calories. That isn't all that much different from the Cambridge Diet I was on. So, thanks but no thanks. So after 20 years I had to find another gynecologist, because mine had gone through a midlife crisis and wanted to look good for her reunion.

This is madness.

Weight is more than just calories in, calories out. In 1983, I was expending far more calories than the 300 a day I was taking in with three 100-calorie water shakes every day, and I still lost less than a pound a week. Study after study debunks calories in, calories out, and the answer researchers always give is not that we are all different, but "If you metabolize slowly, you just have to work harder at it than other people." It can't possibly be that our bodies are doing what our own, unique, particular bodies do. No, we just have to starve ourselves and work out five hours a day, that's all.

Now, all this said, there ARE things I can do to be healthier. Now that I'm older, I do feel the effects of weight more often. But I think the weight I'd need to lose in order to not feel these effects is perhaps 20 pounds, not the fifty that the charts would have you believe. There are ways I can eat in a more healthy way, like making barbecue brisket a treat instead of a habit. They are putting in a gym at work, so I can move this body during the day -- something that's hard to do outside of work hours when you leave the house at 6 or 7 AM every day and most nights don't get home till 6:30 PM and you need at least 6-1/2 hours sleep.

But thanks to the Senate, health care reform won't care about these changes, and it won't care about your health. It's only going to care about broad-based numbers in a one-size-fits all; even if you're 4'10" tall and couldn't get down to 95 pounds even when you were 25:

A little-discussed provision of the Senate bill allows insurers to expand so-called wellness programs that allow insurers to penalize subscribers by hundreds—and even thousands—of dollars for not meeting certain "wellness targets," such as a particular cholesterol number, blood sugar measurement or body-weight target.

Remember all those Democrats pleading plaintively, in the face of Republican accusations that the GOP had been cut out of the health care debate, that actually they included many Republican ideas in their health care bills? Well, this is one of them. One of the pro-business innovations of the Bush administration was to introduce into health insurance regulations a provision allowing employers to offer loosely defined "wellness" programs that carry incentives for employees meeting certain standards of premium reductions of as much as 20 percent. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? Sure, until you realize that there's no baseline for the original premium, meaning that, in reality, people who don't meet the standards are really carrying the burden of others' discounts and then some—paying as much as 20 percent more for a policy in which a family member's failure to meet a wellness target forces up the entire premium for that family's policy.

If you think that's a raw deal, consider the Senate health care bill provision introduced by Sen. John Ensign, the disgraced Republican of Nevada. Now that percentage of discount or penalty, depending on which end one finds oneself, can amount to a differential in one's premium to 30 percent, and eventually to 50 percent.

So what is "wellness", anyway? Is an anorexic with a BMI of 18 "well"? What about people with congenital high cholesterol? What happens to the livers of people who start taking Lipitor when they're ten? When will people not have to work 80-hour weeks to show how valuable they are to the company so they HAVE the time, and the energy, to take a walk, play tennis, do yoga, or other forms of exercise that don't feel like a chore?

Wellness is a laudable goal. We all want to be well, and it's to society's benefit that we be well (except to the extent that we cost more when we live longer). But wellness comes in all sizes and habits. And because the research community has never wanted to touch this fact, we are left with legislators who have plenty of time to use the Congressional gym telling the rest of us we just have to eat less and work out more. In 1983, I ate about as little as was possible, and worked out every day. I had no life, I was miserably unhappy, but I was thin. Perhaps a nation of misery is what they really want.

Vic Chesnutt: A high-profile case of murder-by-spreadsheet

I hope guys like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, as well as the entire Republican Party, are happy now.

Krugman calls for health care reform passage

What a cynical exercise this entire health care reform debate has been.

Now we have a situation in which Joe Lieberman, who rakes in cash from the insurance industry and whose wife is a lobbyist, and others stuffing their pockets with insurance company cash, are holding hostage real reform on the backs of those who can't afford insurance.

Today Paul Krugman joins the "Pass it, it's better than nothing" side:

At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.

All of this would be paid for in large part with the first serious effort ever to rein in rising health care costs.

The result would be a huge increase in the availability and affordability of health insurance, with more than 30 million Americans gaining coverage, and premiums for lower-income and lower-middle-income Americans falling dramatically. That’s an immense change from where we were just a few years ago: remember, not long ago the Bush administration and its allies in Congress successfully blocked even a modest expansion of health care for children.

Bear in mind also the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by. Thus Social Security originally had huge gaps in coverage — and a majority of African-Americans, in particular, fell through those gaps. But it was improved over time, and it’s now the bedrock of retirement stability for the vast majority of Americans.

Look, I understand the anger here: supporting this weakened bill feels like giving in to blackmail — because it is. Or to use an even more accurate metaphor suggested by Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, we’re paying a ransom to hostage-takers. Some of us, including a majority of senators, really, really want to cover the uninsured; but to make that happen we need the votes of a handful of senators who see failure of reform as an acceptable outcome, and demand a steep price for their support.

The question, then, is whether to pay the ransom by giving in to the demands of those senators, accepting a flawed bill, or hang tough and let the hostage — that is, health reform — die.

Again, history suggests the answer. Whereas flawed social insurance programs have tended to get better over time, the story of health reform suggests that rejecting an imperfect deal in the hope of eventually getting something better is a recipe for getting nothing at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, America would be in much better shape today if Democrats had cut a deal on health care with Richard Nixon, or if Bill Clinton had cut a deal with moderate Republicans back when they still existed.

I respect Paul Krugman, and I do understand his points. But I am cynical enough that the idea of "cutting a deal" holds no weight when you have a bunch of miscreants like today's Republicans, for whom "cutting a deal" means "doing it their way or not at all."

I also question the assumption that just because history shows that social insurance programs improve over time, it will remain that way in the future. This is the first major health care debate that has had not just the 24/7 cable news echo chamber, but the 24/7 internet. This is the first major health care debate that has a cacophony of faux-"grassroots" astroturf group fronts run by major corporations that use falsehoods and half-truths to influence a population too busy working or too frightened about not working to research the veracity of their claims. This is the first time that Dick Cheney's "one percent doctrine" has been applied to mainstream journalism, so that facts and utter horsepuckey have been given equal time, and the very notion of "alternative facts" is even part of public discourse. History may have shown that social insurance programs improve over time, but as the financial giants say about your "investments", "past performance is no indication of future performance."

It may very well be that this is the best we can get (and with so many amendments flurrying around, a simple read of S-1679 doesn't necessarily reflect reality), but my skepticism lies in the reality that just as with the current insurance system, there is absolutely no requirement that I've seen so far that actually requires the for-profit insurance companies to actually pay claims. It's easy to provide "coverage", because "coverage" involves issuance of a policy and the collection of premiums. But with no mandate to actually pay out claims for covered procedures, we have very much the same kind of system we have now, in which in many cases, payment is contingent on just how hard you want to fight with the person in the headset in a cubicle whose job it is to make you beg for actual payment of claims.

And if you want numbers about what the real impact of this gift to the insurance companies is going to be, Marcy Wheeler has 'em.