Recently in Health Care Category

Atrios is right. Sigh.

And if you haven't read Charlie Pierce's Idiot America yet, which expands on how dangerous this celebration of ignorance is, you should.

Paul Krugman correctly points out that even this imperfect health care bill probably would not have been possible without the radical conservatives in the Club for Growth forcing Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties.

Nice work there.

At some point, shouldn't repeated lying disqualify someone from being Mr. Morality in Politics (tm)? Brian Beutler writes at Talking Points Memo:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) raised hackles among liberals earlier this week when he claimed that the public option wasn't a part of the 2008 presidential campaign. He repeated that claim to reporters tonight, though acknowledged, when pressed, that then-candidate Barack Obama did in fact include a public option in his campaign health care proposal.

Over at Altercation, Charles Pierce makes note of Tom Daschle's statement that tort reform must be a part of any reform plan:

Just shut up, please. For my own edification, is there any provision of the 2008 Republican platform that Tom Daschle thinks should be left out of the Democratic health-reform package, now rapidly morphing into the Preservation Of The Greedy Insurance Bastards Act of 2009? School vouchers? Missile defense?

Alas, that is all-too-good of a question.

Ezra Klein explains how difficult it will be to pass health care reform at the federal level if it is not done this year.

I had lunch yesterday with a longtime Hill and administration health care adviser who argued, persuasively, that health care happens in 2009 or it doesn't happen at all. For the next year or so, Congress is going to be prepared for major action. It will be willing to spend money. It will be far from the next election. A year from now, all that crashes down. The midterms will loom. The recognition of how much we've spent will dawn. The public pressure for dramatic action will ease. The aversion to risk will return. It's not impossible to imagine health care happening late in the administration's first term. But it's very difficult. The money won't be there. The budget hawks will be reempowered. The boom-bust cycle of elections will reemerge, and with it, the natural caution of Congress.

Klein is more confident than I am that the Obama Administration understands the ramifications of this dynamic.

Over at Altercation, George Zornick raises a vital point:

On the topic of the raging debate over the veracity of Hillary Clinton's health care horror story, about a pregnant woman being turned away from a hospital because of a lack of insurance and later dying, Trudy Lieberman at CJR writes: "Beyond candidate stumbles, we would like to see news outlets find the real health care stories and problems that are out there -- there are so many -- and then ask a better question: How would each candidate's plan change the stories?"

That seems like exactly the right point. This is a clear case where discussing a candidate's policies is needed, instead of horse-race hysteria. It's true that candidates should always be truthful and be called on it when they're not, but the commotion over this incident seems out-sized. Does anyone actually challenge her underlying point, that thousands of people in America die every year because they don't have access to health care? Shouldn't we be talking about that? Hillary's missteps in telling the story were perhaps an issue of shoddy staff work, but she certainly wasn't foisting a fundamental untruth on the American public.

Alas, our reporters and pundits seem to be too interested in the horse race and other trivialities to do this harder. but absolutely vital, work.

Yes, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), blocking the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was quite an accomplishment. I suppose the kids should not expect to get gruel from the House Republican Caucus either.

Today's Republican Party fights against children. That's quite a despicable political space to seek.

Even for Wal*Mart, this is a new low. Stephanie Mencimer writes at the Mother Jones blog:

ust when you think that Wal-Mart had already exhausted every last possible strategy for screwing over its employees, here comes this story in the Wall Street Journal. Deborah Shank, a Wal-Mart employee gets into an accident with a semi and ends up permanently brain-damaged a few years back. Her Wal-Mart health insurance paid her medical bills, but she also sued the trucking company for damages. She wins $700,000, which after legal fees and expenses, nets her about $400,000, which was put in a trust to pay the nursing home she now lives in.

But Wal-Mart gets wind of the settlement and turns around and sues Shank for $470,000, the money its insurance company paid for her care from the accident. Now, the woman is reliant on Medicaid and Social Security and Wal-Mart apparently got a much needed windfall.

And Wal*Mart wonders why people like me hate the company so much.

This is a few days old, but I only heard it while listening to a couple-day-old Rachel Maddow Show while driving to Stockton so the family could watch the Stockton Thunder play ice hockey last night. The Los Angeles Times' Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports:

When Rudolph W. Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the spring of 2000, one thing he did not have to worry about was a lack of medical insurance.

Today, the former New York mayor joins two other cancer survivors in seeking the Republican presidential nomination: Arizona Sen. John McCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy, and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson had lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.

All three have offered proposals with the stated aim of helping the 47 million people in the U.S. who have no health insurance, including those with preexisting medical conditions.

But under the plans all three have put forward, cancer survivors such as themselves could not be sure of getting coverage -- especially if they were not already covered by a government or job-related plan and had to seek insurance as individuals.

"Unless it's in a state that has very strong consumer protections, they would likely be denied coverage," said economist Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, who has reviewed the candidates' proposals. "People with preexisting conditions would not be able to get coverage or would not be able to afford it."

The campaigns offered statements about how they were debating to fill this gap. Shouldn't this really be basic stuff? Making sure the candidate is covered by the program being offered?

Personally, I am just so surprised -- shocked, really -- that the magic of the free market system is failing to fix this problem on its own.

It is stories like this one that should make people angry with the pharmaceutical industry. James Love writes at the Huffington Post:

On December 15, 2005, AstraZeneca, the big pharmaceutical company, announced it would pull its cancer drug Zoladex from the market in New Zealand. Zoladex is used to treat both breast and prostate cancer.

The decision to withdraw the product from the Zealand market is due entirely to a dispute over the amount of money the New Zealand government would pay for the drug.

Altercation correspondent Stephen Anderson, who watched her sister die after he and her family decided to remove most life support equipment, offers this perspective on the political grandstanding surrounding the Terri Schiavo tragedy:

The hospital followed our wishes, and called the Doctor, who ordered treatment stopped.

But minutes later, in a virtual coma, she died. My brother, other sister, mother, and my wife were all there to kiss her and tell her we loved her as she began the next journey.

So I feel I have some perspective on the Terri Schiavo situation. And here's my opinion:

No politician who has ever voted for the '99 Texas Advance Directives Act has any right to be involved.

No politician who has violated the ethics of his previous profession has any right to be involved.

And no politician who has:

• mocked a condemned prisoner,
  
• voted for phony Tort Reform legislation which would stop payment of insurance settlements to people like Terri Schiavo,
  
• voted against DNA challenges in capital cases,
  
• refused to examine death warrants in Texas,
  
• talked about Terri Schiavo as being delivered to him for political gain,
  
• voted against States Rights in blatant disregard of the Constitution,
  

has any right to be involved.

If they do, then God damn them.

I'll second what Digby has to say below:

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liebral blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schivos because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

You know, it is stories like this one that make me glad the Republicans who run our govenment consistently choose irresponsible tax cuts over, say, strengthening our public health system.

A pandemic of human influenza could kill up to 100 million people around the world, a World Health Organization official said today, significantly raising the agency's earlier estimates of the number of deaths in such a catastrophe.

As Lindsay Beyerstein writes over on her Majikthise blog: "As a rule, I pay close attention to stories that include the phrase "The W.H.O. does not want to scare the planet, but..."

Well, well. Now we see what compassionate conservatism looks like in a second term. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum report on the Bush Administration's latest irresponsible tax cut plans:

Instead the administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth, according to several people who are advising the White House or are familiar with the deliberations.

The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said. (emphasis added)

At a time when the number of people without health insurance is a growing crisis, the Bush Administration proposes taking away the major incentive businesses have to provide health insurance in order to pay for a internet, dividends, and capital gains tax cut.

I suppose these Republicans will argue that taking steps to ensure our families have health insurance to protect them from the financial ruin one illness can bring is not a moral value.

But this plan really highlights just how morally bankrupt their policies can be after an election.

(Thanks to mmmm, brains for pointing this out.)

This image is a map prepared by the U.S. State Department of the countries in which Al Qaeda had operated as of November 10, 2001.

Check out Iraq. Funny how it isn't colored in -- meaning that Al Qaeda had not operated there.

Perhaps someone would like to ask the President about this inconsistency between the record and his rhetoric.

Oops. Sorry. That might lead to charges that the reporter is biased. So, perhaps the Kerry campaign could make an issue of it?

(Hat tip: Political Animal.)

Update: I edited the second paragraph to fix a typo that was poitned out by JJ in the comments.