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POPSNidal Hasan Terrorist Threat 'Not That Big a Deal'....Matthew Yglesias
I think a pretty good case can be made that this kind of situation actually is the main face of the terrorist threat. Not a big well-thought-out plot centrally directed from a “safe haven” in South Asia and undertaken by brilliant covert operatives, but the desperate violent act of a clearly disturbed individual. It’s going to be very hard to prevent this sort of thing. As long as the United States remains a country in which firearms are widely available"for the foreseeable future, in other words"we’re going to be unusually vulnerable to mentally ill spree killers of various kinds, including spree killers who nod in the direction of Islamist thinking. But the larger point is that while these incidents are serious crimes and major tragedies for the victims, they hardly rise to the level of a major macro-level social crisis. They’re certainly not a first-order national security threat. And even put in the lower-stakes context of violent crime in America
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POPSObamaCare endorsements: What the bribe was The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues. Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP — which supposedly represents them — will make more money
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POPSA Kilo of Metal Removed From A Peruvian Man's Stomach Now "he is being examined by mental health specialists". I wonder if he was practicing to get into a circus or some kind of "freak show". I have read about people who allegedly could eat metal - don't ask me where or even when I read that, it is all mixed it with the other zillions of bits of trivial information that gets collected in my brain. :-)
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POPSThree more quit over Nutt sacking Professor Nutt was sacked more than a week ago in response to views he expressed in an academic journal in January and a lecture he later gave at King's College London. He spoke out against the government's decision to toughen penalties for possessing marijuana and argued that the drug is less harmful than tobacco or alcohol.
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POPS Tom Tancredo Walks Off MSNBC Set Because Of Markos Moulitas "You're not going to do that. You're not going to try to insult me that way and then pretend like we're just going on and talk about that. You either apologize ..." When Moulitas did not apologize, Tancredo simply took out his earpiece and walked away. As a Republican student activist, Tancredo spoke out in favor of the Vietnam War but did not serve. After graduating from college in June 1969, he became eligible to serve in Vietnam. Tancredo said he went for his physical, telling doctors he'd been treated for depression, and eventually got a deferment.
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POPSKucinich: Why I voted NO I'm so torn. I think we should have fought harder for a single-payer bill, even though I know that would have been a much harder battle. But I don't think that voting no on this was the solution, either. As much as I would like BIG CHANGE, I know that can't happen in one fell swoop. Baby steps, unfortunately, will get us to that final goal. Hopefully, the public will realize, soon, that we need single payer!
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POPSHere Are Some Important Passages in the 2,000 Page Legislation. Eviscerating Medicare: In addition to reducing future Medicare funding by an estimated $500 billion, the bill fundamentally changes how Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, permitting the government to dictate treatment decisions. Sec. 1302 (pp. 672-692) moves Medicare from a fee-for-service payment system, in which patients choose which doctors to see and doctors are paid for each service they provide, toward what's called a "medical home." (The bill specifies that patients may have to settle for a nurse practitioner rather than a physician as the primary-care provider.) Sec. 1114 (pp. 391-393) replaces physicians with physician assistants in overseeing care for hospice patients. • Secs. 1158-1160 (pp. 499-520) initiates programs to reduce payments for patient care to what it costs in the lowest cost regions of the country. Sec. 1161 (pp. 520-545) cuts payments to Medicare Advantage plans (used by 20% of seniors). Advantage plans have warned this will result in . . . .
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POPSCorrupted doctors When you lied once at least, who will trust you further? :cool: Striking example of our totally corrupted medicine and health care. Corrupted by whom? Who corrupt society and its institutions? How we calling those who perform the corruption and their accomplices? If these organized individuals do corrupt our society, how can we expect any benefits for our health and well being from them, their actions? Lie cannot last forever and in the end the truth will find its way out. Who will resist to make it happen?
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POPSOink Report - 3 November 2009 I am so glad that children who won't be born for decades yet will be paying the interest on the money spent to keep the Merry-Go-Round Museum open. That must save or create a gajillion jobs.
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POPSCapitalism again proves to the the source of the problem
This article is a must-read. The unfair capitalist healthcare system causes a glut on doctors in rich areas where they can earn more, and a sparsity in areas where they would earn less, like poor communities. Do people still think that America can get by without reforming Healthcare? Doctor's salaries need to be standardized, so a doctor working in a dirt-poor area of Arkansas is going make the same amount (by scale of skill) as a doctor in Malibu, California. 50 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million underinsured Americans are too many people to be excluded from proper, complete healthcare. It's criminal, and amoral. C'mon, all you right-wingers! Don't you think that women and newborn children dying from perfectly preventable causes during childbirth is more important that wondering if federal money is going to perform abortions? Don't you think that people ending up losing limbs or eyesight due to lack of care for their diabetes is more important than getting all work
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POPSThe ‘Costs’ of Medical Care by Thomas Sowell NRO countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors’ income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences. Any one of us can reduce medical costs by refusing to pay them. In our own lives, we recognize the consequences. But when someone with a gift for rhetoric tells us that the government can reduce the costs without consequences, we are ready to believe in such political miracles. There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced, but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them. The high costs of “defensive medicine” " expensive tests, medications, and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits, rather than
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POPSWant to Lose Weight? Try Sleeping! Sounds pretty simple right? Then why do so many of us view regular sleep as something not all that important? "I’ll just make up the sleep on the weekend" we say. Well, unfortunately studies are showing it just does not work like that when it comes to sleep...
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POPSPot Paradise "Jacqueline Patterson, 31, uses marijuana to treat her cerebral palsy and a severe stutter. She fears she would be booted from the program if she tried to grow dope at home or buy it from street dealers. The upshot, critics say, is that a law crafted to help sick people has morphed into a lucrative trade, one in which rural farms are supplying urban dispensaries that cater to mostly recreational users armed with doctors' recommendation"
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POPSSeeing Through The Lies: The Worst Bill Ever It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that. • Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare"now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
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POPSThe First 500 Pages of Obamacare • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option,
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POPSObama's Malignant Narcissism
When Obama runs into brick walls, he seems to reflexively go into a state of rage. The same thing will happen to Obama if and when he loses the election in 2012. Since narcissists in power keep people around them in a constant state of fear -- everybody gets targeted and feels insecure -- you can expect a ton of dirty tricks in elections to come. But then Democrats constantly use dirty tricks. I fear two things with Obama. One is if the GOP fails to elect a House majority in 2010 to keep Obama within the bounds of sanity. A GOP majority is essential for the safety of the country and the world. But even if Obama is defeated in 2012, he will just turn into an angrier version of Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. He will haunt the political future of this country as long as he is alive, because that famished ego never gets enough. Malignant narcissism often gets worse over time. So even if the voters throw out this very dangerous cult-like administration, you can expect Obama to be poppi
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POPSJudge orders 3 to trial in Anna Nicole drug case A pharmacist said he refused to fill an order for drugs written by Eroshevich and submitted by Kapoor because taking them would be "pharmaceutical suicide." Possibly the most powerful witness against Stern was never seen at the hearing. A nanny who worked for Smith in the Bahamas was interviewed by an investigator who read her comments from the witness stand.
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POPSIt's Alive! End-of-life counseling in health bill I don't get it. Haven't patients had the "option of speaking with their doctor about how they want to be treated......"? What a crock! and isn't this bill already messin' with Medicare and it's payments to doctors and hospitals? This bill is one big screw up!
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POPSThe internal contradictions of ObamaCare Another major difference is that medical school is free in places like France. Here, doctors go to work with truly crushing med school debt that take years to pay down. Its hardly fair that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their education and could now be told they can’t expect the ‘doctor’ type compensation we’re used to seeing.
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