How Will the Debt Limit “Game of Chicken” End?:
“The Republican strategy seems to be to ram their Medicare abolition plan into law within the next two months – Treasury says the ‘drop-dead’ date for raising the debt limit is August 2 – before people learn what they are really doing to Medicare.”
(Via Capital Gains and Games | Washington, Wall Street and Everything ….)
Isn’t this exactly what the Republicans accused Palosi and Reid of doing with “Obamacare?”
You’re the Boss: A System That Encourages Small Businesses Not to Hire Older Workers:
“I have good reason to suspect that my costs and the costs of all of my employees are going to go up if I hire an older worker…
Our current system hides these costs, and I’m sure that this is a large part of the difficulty that older workers have in getting hired. Some of you will probably object that my system would result in lower wages for older workers. In some cases it might, but that beats no wages at all. As I said in my last post, it may be illegal to discriminate on the basis of age, but there’s always a way to rationalize hiring any given worker over any other one. If we can put a price on the insurance costs, then the skills and experience that older workers bring to the table can be properly accounted for.
Postscript: Yes, I know that a single payer system would solve this problem. But it ain’t gonna happen, so I’m not waiting for it.”
(Via Business and Financial News – The New York Times.)
Markets don’t make moral decisions. They make economic ones.
“Apparently, though, Dr. Harris has never needed to purchase insurance, at least until now. He wasn’t aware that COBRA allows him to purchase insurance for himself and his family so that they won’t be without insurance until the new policy kicks in. Because of that, he apparently went ballistic when he found out that his new government subsidized health insurance would not kick in until February 1st. He, like all of us, does not want his family to go without health care insurance coverage. I’m guessing he is intimately aware of what surgery and anesthesiology services cost to people who don’t have insurance — or how difficult it is for people without insurance to get care if they have an accident, injury, or illness while they are uninsured.”
(Via God’s Politics Blog.)
Like I said in the past, you get the government you deserve. If you want better government, vote for better people. Harris is just one more example of why I don’t trust GOP rhetoric or ideology. It’s just a cover for selfishness in its many forms based on ignorance.
Why Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican, Ever: “
Ezra Klein watches newly-elected Republican House member Andrew Harris (R-MD) demonstrate why he should immediately resign his post and let himself be replaced by somebody who is more intelligent:
GOP legislator frets over 28 days without insurance — but what about 30 million he’d leave uninsured?: It’s worth dwelling for a moment on the reaction of Rep. Andy Harris, an incoming legislator who staunchly opposes the new health-care law and ran promising its repeal, to news that he’d had to wait a month for his government-funded health-care benefits to kick in:
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health-care policy would take effect Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in. ‘He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,’ said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. … ‘Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,’ added the aide.
The point is… Harris’s fear at being uninsured… whatever else you think of the health-care law, it really does keep people from being uninsured…
“
(Via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.)
One must wonder whether physicians, nurses and other workers toiling day and night in health care — let alone the medics and helicopter pilots who risk their lives to help the wounded — see their work and its product quite as Mr. Limbaugh casts it.
One further wonders whether families with a cancer-stricken member are likely to view going without health care as the moral equivalent of going without a beach house.
via Is Health Care Special? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com.
Great article. There are moral dimensions to healthcare and it shows how economics can handle something as thorny as morality. But, as for Limbaugh, I can see why Jon Stewart calls him a douche. Wow.
Democrat stands ground after ‘die quickly’ health care remark – CNN.com:
“Citing a Harvard University study released this month that said 44,000 Americans die each year because they have no health insurance, Grayson called on Democrats and Republicans ‘to do our jobs for the sake of those dying people and their families.’
‘I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,’ he said.”
(Via CNN.)
Payback it is a …
Technorati Tags:
healthcare reform, politics
MSNBC’s Ratigan battles McCaughey – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
(Via Politico.com.)
McCaughey gets her rear end handed to her. This is what happens when someone demands an actual answer to a question.
Technorati Tags:
healthcare reform
Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200 | FactCheck.org:
“A few readers alerted us to the fact that a state representative in North Carolina, Rep. Curtis Blackwood, published a version of the e-mail in a newsletter to constituents, telling them that while going through e-mail, he came across ‘some interesting information on the Democrats’ big health care bill, H.R. 3200. … While this is federal legislation and not state, the topic is of enough significance that I thought many of you would be interested in reading it.’ We’d refer Rep. Blackwood to our special report on viral messages titled, ‘That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.’
We can trace the origins of this collection of claims to a conservative blogger who issued his instant and mostly mistaken analyses as brief ‘tweets’ sent via Twitter as he was paging through the 1,017-page bill. The claims have been embraced as true and posted on hundreds of Web sites, and forwarded in the form of chain e-mails countless times. But there’s hardly any truth in them.”
(Via FactCheck.org.)
And this is why I said that the GOP leadership is behaving in a fashion devoid of morals, truth, and decency. A congressman, with access to the actual bill and the staff to read it, sends a chain email (!) from a conservative blogger, one with a reading comprehension problem, to his constituents. Now that’s constituent service for you.
‘SpotCheck.org’? We Disagree. | FactCheck.org:
“[McCaughey] claimed that we failed to note a section of the bill that she says sets up a ‘penalty’ for doctors who fail to give patients such advice and that ‘if there’s a penalty, it is mandatory.’ But she’s actually pointing to a section that would make ‘quality measures of end of life care’ one of more than 150 quality-of-care factors to be considered when awarding physicians a 2 percent bonus under Medicare. And physicians only have to report on a small subset of the measures in order to receive the bonus. That’s a far cry from creating a specific penalty for failure to counsel patients, much less making consultations ‘mandatory,’ as McCaughey originally claimed.
Furthermore, McCaughey went on to claim that doctors would be penalized ‘if the patient or their family changes their mind about their living will.’ But the bill says nothing of the sort. As one expert tells us, advance directives can be changed at any point.”
(Via FactCheck.org.)
QED.
UPDATE:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Betsy McCaughey Pt. 1
Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Healthcare Protests
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Exclusive – Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1
Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Healthcare Protests
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Exclusive – Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 2
Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Healthcare Protests
Jon Stewart keeps pointing out that the fact that conservatives are simply making up everything they say. they have no evidence or stand in truth. Period. McCaughey says she has evidence but can’t answer the simple question, “WHERE?” QED.