Don McCanne, MD, Senior Health Policy Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), on the Obama house parties on healthcare: Read more…

Christopher Caldwell writes in the Weekly Standard about history, central banks, bubbles, and capitalism. I'm not informed enough to evaluate what he says, but wanted to pass along some striking statements. To what extent this is mystification aimed at getting the unwashed to submit, I can't say.

Everyone is always hollering for clear rules and transparency. But a dirty secret of regulation is that it frequently influences conduct most effectively when it is capricious and opaque. Any regulatory system will reveal its vulnerabilities over long use. If it addresses economic problems in a predictable way, savvy investors will find a way to "game" that predictability. Read more…

McClatchy's top story today tells how a Kuwaiti subcontractor to our old friend KBR has been holding about a thousand men from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh in warehouses near Bahgdad for three months. These poor guys paid more than $2000 for the privilege of being treated this way.

The story has more heartbreakers in it than I have time to extract, so go read. Just a taste:

A group of about 50 men living in tents about a mile away were even worse off than the men in the warehouses, and they appeared to be victims of human trafficking. They live in huts they built with tarps and pieces of carpet, and said they had no access to food or water.
... Read more…

My local group fighting against torture informs me that the Second Court of Appeals has, amazingly, agreed to rehear the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen kidnapped and "rendered" to Syria for torture by our government using our tax dollars.

If there's any hope of turning back to the pre-Bush level of commitment to the rule of law, however imperfect, we have to account for what's been done through the justice system. We have to demand accountability. The truth is in the same "grave-like cell" that held Maher Arar for ten months, and it's up to us to bring it into the light. Read more…

The transfer of vital organs from the have-nots to the have-mores doesn't just play out in cinematic goings-on in seedy London hotels, but also in the humdrum precincts of the American health (couldn't) care (less) system. In a recent press release, the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) reveal that "People who lack health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate their liver or a kidney for a lifesaving transplant than to receive one". Read more…

Karen George is in extreme pain, taking "daily doses of Klonopin, Flexeril, and Lortab", but Aetna won't cover surgery to correct her disconnected jawbone, because it is "cosmetic".

Now that I have your attention, I want to change the subject from bashing Aetna. Read more…

BookMooch is now my preferred source and sink for books. With some patience, and the price of postage, I can get or get rid of many things. Shelf space is limited now, and most books come from the library, but sometimes they don't have what I want, or I want to own the book, possibly only for a while.

There is a small number of books on my shelves waiting to be read, and after that I'll put them up for "mooching". BookMooch is an unusual model in that getting the book costs you nothing (in money) but giving it costs you postage. It's all kept in balance by a point system that compares the books you've sent to the books you've gotten. Read more…

This old hat that I've got on,
The crown of him is gone,
And the brim is all gone to asunder.

John Conyers aptly describes our current health care-less system as "the current non-system of health care run by profit hungry insurance companies."

Non-system indeed; it is like a shirt with more holes than cloth, a hat with no crown or brim, nothing left to reform. It's not just the greed, it's the patchwork nature of everything. And of course, it's those far from the centers of power who suffer the most. Look at this story from Chillicothe in southern Ohio, i.e. Appalachia. The writer has just been informed that she must change either her doctor or her health insurer: Read more…

As dday notes, John Conyers has signed on to HCAN's Statement of Common Purpose, along with 31 other members of Congress.

Conyers's statement: Read more…

If a picture is worth a thousand words, McClatchy's front page today lays the blame for the current financial crisis at Bill Clinton's feet. Over the headline "Wall Street crisis is culmination of 28 years of deregulation" we see a photo of Bill grinning and giving the thumbs up, captioned "Bill Clinton in 1999 signed legislation that overturned nearly 70 years of regulation of the financial industry."

The commenters strike back with the facts, supported by linky goodness: it was a Republican bill, passed in the Senate on a straight party-line vote with exception of the DINO Hollings. Read more…

At American Medical News, a website of the American Medical Association, Emily Berry does some pretty good low-flying snark as she reports on the latest marketing ploys of "health plans":

Health plans are on a marketing mission. They "want you to know" how to "thrive" by turning to them for "guidance when you need it most" because "it's time to feel better," and their business is "helping people live healthier lives."

... Read more…

The Medical Quack explains some of the ins and outs of the insanity induced in our health "care" system by corporate bureaucracy. To try to sum up a bizarre situation, it seems the HMOs want to reward or punish doctors based on their effectiveness at getting patients to take their medication. The purchase of $4 generic prescription drugs through outfits like Wal-Mart destroys the paper trail that makes it possible to apply the incentives. So there are some efforts by the bureaucrats to get this information out of the patients: Read more…

The thing is, it's pervasive. It's not just the big things like sticking the (lack of) evidence on WMD on page 15 instead of page 1, it's the assumptions they're always slipping past me.

Here's the NY Times trying to get me to agree that torture works, or possibly that waterboarding works and isn't really torture, in the very first paragraph of an (actually worthwhile, scary) article on something else entirely:

The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete.  Read more…

It was my friend K who introduced me to good food. I'm invited there for dinner tonight and she has honored me by asking me to bring my olive bread. She is a gifted cook, a provider of reliable wines, and a treasured person, and we fear we might lose her soon. Read more…

After three days of rain, my tomatoes are fat sweet prizes in a wet wilderness. My fingers, questing gently, encounter . . . ugh. Slugs like tomatoes. Ugh.

or, Why Does Aetna Hate Ruth Kaufman's Toe?

There are two strands here: denial of care, and lack of transparency.

My health insurance, for which I pay $395 per month, will not cover the foot surgery my doctor says I need: a toe joint replacement that is supposed to last 20 years and which will restore mobility and reduce pain. Read more…

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette printed two good letters on HR 676 as follow-up to the excellent column by Clarke Thomas that ran the other day.

Hurray for our side. Keep plugging away, foot soldiers.

Short happy dance as the rest of the news out there looks pretty dire.

Truth Partisan, where are you? How can it be Sunday? Whither Corrente? Shall venerable tradition be so lightly discarded?

Ok, I'll start. What's your favorite book that nobody else you know has read or even heard of? Read more…

Bipartisanship, perhaps an oxymoron already, brings us an apparent oxymoron: "Drilling for Clean Energy" from Representatives Jim Marshall and Roscoe Bartlett, writing in the WaPo:

...a strategic plan to use the remaining value of our federally owned oil and natural gas reserves to fund a clean, affordable and independent energy future for America, a goal worthy of short-term environmental concessions and risks.

Their idea is to open up ANWR and offshore for drilling, but under changed financial terms that would capture more of the revenues for the federal government, and ensure that the money goes to develop solar, wind, nuclear, and "better" biofuels. Read more…

Praise to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a pretty powerful policy piece.

Why aren't business leaders pushing for universal, single-payer health-insurance coverage?

Memo to cost-conscious businessmen: You should be backing efforts to have a universal health-care system as a way to level the economic playing field with competitors abroad and at home. Read more…

Real Clear Politics has a "HealthCare Index" with much linky goodness and badness, most of which I haven't yet checked out.

I've recently made daily visits to RCP, and as far as I can recall, this is a new feature. This is further evidence that we can win the battle for the political agenda; the issue of universal health care keeps getting more and more play in the media all the time. I wonder what could be done to get single payer into their index!

Your intrepid reporter spent the morning in downtown Pittsburgh working the Labor Day parade on behalf of HR 676, along with other members of the Western PA Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare. The local letter carriers had kindly allowed us to march with them; as they were at the tail end of the parade, we had plenty of time to leaflet before hand, and we handed out the last of what we had as we marched. It was kind of fun playing carnival barker, calling out "Single payer, single payer, universal health care, everybody in, nobody out!" and shoving leaflets at people. Read more…

Who knew (I certainly didn't) that there was a reception at the convention on Tuesday for co-sponsors of HR676, the House bill for single payer health care?

Dr. Claudia Fegan spoke at the reception. It is a very eloquent piece of advocacy and well worth reading. Here is the last bit:

It is time to demand what we deserve. It is time to demand universal health care. We won’t get there by urging the insurance industry to play nice with others. We will get there by demanding a singlepayer national health insurance; Medicare for all. Read more…

In the unlikely event that you don't have enough to do, here are some single-payer healthcare events for your amusement:

Labor Day parades turn out to be a big venue for promoting single payer healthcare. You may want to check out your local event. Here in Pittsburgh we'll be handing out leaflets, as well as marching with the letter carriers. If any of you Pittsburghers want to come, look for us at "Freedom Corner" (Center and Crawford) or at the City-County Building before the parade. Most of us will be wearing red or orange shirts. Read more…

According to Market Watch, Aetna CEO Ronald Williams "earned" nearly $43 million in total compensation in 2007. The census bureau set the 2007 poverty line for a single person at $9944 (over 65) or $10,787 (under 65); let's just call it a nice round $10,000.

Meanwhile, this painter/sculptor might dispute the use of the word "earned" in the Market Watch story: Read more…