This morning …………….at 9:00am……………….I hosted a Q and A session for the bloggers. I had expected that few would attend as it was ……………well…………….9:00am and judging by how busy the bars and lounges were last night I didn’t think too many would come. I was wrong…………..about 100 people showed up and we had a lot [...]
Yesterday, but the U.S. Treatment Services Task Force announced that leeches aren't a particularly good treatment for most ailments. While noting that leeches might still be useful for certain specific circulation disorders, the USTSTF recommended against their use in other situations, like treating fever and abdominal pains.
Although the Task Force has no power to make anyone do anything, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich) was heard on NPR's Morning Edition saying, "Some people discounted the idea that the government would actually put people to death ... this actually is really showing how the insidious encroachment of government between the patient and their doctor plays out." Camp neglected to address the facts: (1) overuse of leeches is expensive, and science-based recommendations about appropriate use would save the government money without harming patients, and (2) bloodletting can lead to negative side effects, such as upsetting the body's natural humoral balance.
When the terrorist attacks of 9/11 hit the United States, and then suddenly we were plunged into war, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, I don’t remember anyone demanding that the wars be “deficit neutral.” No one talked about whether we could afford them. They were things we just had to do. When George W. Bush proposed giving vast sums to rich people in the form of tax cuts, no one argued that it would be “deficit neutral.” Rather, it was argued that cutting taxes wouldn’t bring in less tax revenue at all, it would bring us more tax revenue, because the economy would grow so much faster. And besides, it was somehow terribly urgent, something we just had to do. When the banks tottered and needed to be shored up with taxpayer money to the tune of nearly $1 trillion, there was no way to argue this would be “deficit neutral.” We might get the money back, we might not. Whether we could afford it was not the question, we just had to do it to save the banking system. Similarly, the “Stimulus Bill” was terribly urgent, and something we just had to do, whether we could afford it or not.
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what he planned all along?" title="The Speech: Could this have been
what he planned all along?" />
White House Photo
A conventional look at The Speech:
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Seniors care about death panels (apparently) but they usually really care about drug prices and costs.Part of the political rationale for the Republicans passing Medicare drug coverage in 2003 was to deny the Democrats the ability to bundle seniors’ desire for drug coverage with a universal coverage bill. So far the Republicans have to say the least muddied the waters as to whether universal coverage is a good thing for Medicare recipients—or at least the ones that don’t care about their kids or grand-kids.
Every night before I go to bed and every night when I wake up I think about the same thing …………Megan Fox’s bottom…………..oh……..and what the heck am I going to write about in the next blog. And every time…….when I think I will be sitting in my underpants ……….staring at a blank screen…………something happens.A few [...]
Key members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee announced on Thursday what they claimed were dramatically improved cost and coverage estimates for the latest version of their health care reform bill.
Headed by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, HELP members (in a Muzak-marred conference call with reporters) stated that the revised bill would cost only $611 billion over ten years, a figure apparently computed by the CBO, and that with a further expansion of Medicaid would provide coverage for 97 percent of Americans.
By Catherine D. Bertram, Esquire and Salvatore J. Zambri, Esquire
A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports that despite “a consensus that the use of health information technology should lead to more efficient, safer, and higher-quality care” , less than 2% of U.S. Hospitals have invested in a comprehensive electronic medical record system. The research was funded by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This study did not include Veterans Affairs (“VA”) Hospitals, which have been using computerized medical records for more than a decade.
Apparently there some kind of experimental clinical innovation going on in the UK. If this isn’t a typo from the Torygraph, how is the mental model of the free-marketeers going to survive? I suspect that Gratzer, Giuliani, Kling & the rest had betterjoin Michael in taking a seat. Yup, communism can mean innovation, (after all who won World War II)?
Meanwhile there is a little more news on the topic of Cato (Michael’s employer). First, they created some economic stimulus of their own yesterMonday, with a one page ad in the WSJ opposing the economic stimulus package. But they haven’t been listening to Robert Reich and the others suggesting that we get money into the hands of the poor to create more immediate economic impact, or at least they weren’t paying attention when they gave their cash to Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps they should have put it in Street Sheet instead!
Daschle failed to pay $128,000 in taxes
Didn’t he complete that ridiculously long formabout his pastthat the Obamanations wanted? Daschle may not have had a drunken picture of himself on Facebook but answering away not paying over $100K in tax is going to be tough. Did he think it wouldn’t come up? Now I know it was only a free car & driver, but apparently Daschle took three years to notice that he wasn’t paying for it, and that it counted as income.
