Al-Jazeera

November 20, 2009, 18:20 GMT

Senior officials from six world powers have expressed disappointment at Iran's response to an offer of a deal intended to delay its potential ability to make nuclear bombs and have urged Tehran to reconsider the proposal.

[....]

"We are disappointed by the lack of follow-up on the three understandings [in the proposed deal]," said Robert Cooper, a senior European Union official, after a meeting of officials from Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Russia and China in Brussels.

Cooper said: "We urge Iran to reconsider the opportunity offered by this agreement ... and to engage seriously with us in dialogue and negotiations."

Sanctions discussed

[....]

'Extreme distrust'

Earlier on Friday during a speech in Berlin, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, pressed Iran to work with world powers over the issue.

"I would hate to see that we are moving back to sanctions," ElBaradei said.

"Because sanctions, at the end of the day ... really don't resolve issues."

He said the IAEA had not yet received a formal reply from Tehran to its proposals, although Iranian officials had told him they would not send uranium for reprocessing abroad unless they first received promised fuel rods.

ElBaradei described Iran's stance as "an extreme case of distrust".

"And what we are really trying to do is replace distrust by a degree of trust," he said.

Mottaki played down the threat of sanctions on Thursday, saying embargoes had proved ineffective in the past and that he did not believe they would be tried again.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/11/20091120162734626961.html

PARIS - Senior officials from six world powers on Friday discussed the possibility of new sanctions on Iran for flouting the United Nations Security Council's demands and expressed disappointment that Iran had not yet accepted a draft agreement to export most of its enriched uranium for needed nuclear fuel.

The officials met in Brussels to discuss where matters stand with Iran and the possibility of new sanctions should Iran continue to play for time. While a joint statement after the meeting was expressed in diplomatic language, the meeting itself was a sign of considerable exasperation with Iran.

Even President Obama, who has been most willing to give Iran time to decide on the proposal, as a means to broader negotiations with the United States, said on Thursday in South Korea that Iran has “been unable to get to ‘yes,’ and so as a consequence, we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences.”

Mr. Obama added: “Our expectation is that over the next several weeks we will be developing a package of potential steps that we could take that will indicate our seriousness to Iran.”

Iran has rejected an understanding...

cont. @

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/world/middleeast/21nuke.html

Actually O¿O has a leg up from someone like that, since they paid insurance and they are sitting there with zilch, while he at least got the service, wasn't denied ahead of service.

I don't know his entire situation, but on second thought seems to me he shouldn't even be working so hard at it, taking on the responsibliity that the bills get paid, he should be telling providers that he got it done fully insured, and it's their problem to straighten out, and that if they want to get paid, they should contact the insurers and straighten it out and not expect him to do it. I know some people get very frightened of ruining their credit rating, or irritating the doctor or whatever, so they do all this legwork, but really this health care system is used to having to straighten this stuff out. Often it's a provider that triggered it by coding something wrong or doing some claim process wrong, and the patient can't solve that. Of course everyone involved would love to see the patient get scared and pay and not have to bother, but that's not what you do. Patient should just say they wouldn't have done it if they thought they weren't covered, they were just following their professional caregiver's instructions on what to do. It is especially outrageous for a Medicare Advantage program, as they are supposed to be managing patients more closely than Medicare, not abrogating responsibility. If they thought his wife's insurance should cover some things, they should have been taking it up with that company. It really is a case for an insurance commissioner, but it should be the doctors and hospital et. al. that should be contacting the insurance comissioner, not him. If he was on plain vanilla Medicare, they'd be contacting the government if they weren't paid Medicare's portion, not expecting him to straighten out the problem; I don't see any difference.

They are all insurers, including Medicare. Plain vanilla Medicare is fee-for-service and relatively high co-pay, so much more stuff gets approved, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen that they might deny payment sometimes. It's just not the patient's usual business to collect that after the fact if there's a problem, as everyone knows that everyone over 65 is covered one way or another. Comes to mind that that is what true universal coverage should do for everyone else, what providers would be chasing you down for if they weren't paid is your co-pays and deductibles.

Once again, his situation is especially ridiculous, but I add that he shouldn't feel so responsible to get the providers paid. And if they don't like that, well then they should be promoting a National Health Service system where they all get paid salaries or hourly wages and don't have to worry about collecting from an insurance company, or government insurance, for the that matter, for their services.

FIND YOUR STATE'S INSURANCE COMMISSIONER'S 1 800 NUMBER
U.S. State Departments of Insurance

You were triply covered, one of them has to pay, end of story, period. Small chance you might have to pony up more or different deductible or co-pay, that's all.

Also, good luck with the knees; I have heard tell that that's the toughtest joint replacement to go through, so much so that some just don't do the second one. You are brave!

On your statement tha tanything less than a public option will lead to a lot more stories like mine, though, I have to ask, how do you figure? Your Medicare Advantage is like a public option is going to be. Anyone with more than one insurance plan, any kind of supplementals, can run into this, no matter the system, public or private. The only thing that could avoid it is single payer with no option to buy any other insurance. (Then you get a clear yes or no from the single payer, and should they happen to say no, you're paying, story over.) All insurers love to say the other guy should be paying, tis the reason for no fault laws regarding auto accidents.

You got it. Example: you got allergic symptoms, they spit out a script for a steroid nasal spray, simply because it's the most currently popular script for the presenting symptoms at the time. Could be that use of it will exacerbate your symptoms astronomically, but they followed "standard" practice for your average human cog, so they are ok. It's the patient's responsibility to know that the script is what is causing further major havoc, to know what his/her actual problem is and realize that that is the wrong thing to do, and bring it to the doctor's attention. It's long ingrained in our system--they yank all kids tonsils, then a decade or so later, policy is they won't yank a single one, even if it might be the best thing to do. Actually could twist this around and say the patients are treated like computers, except that I think most techies treat computers more like individuals than some U.S. doctors treat patients....

What the heck are you arguing here, destor? I think you might be surprised at how many individuals there are with care bills that go that high, it's part of the reason for the growth of the practice of recission, for example. Seems to me here you are complaining about the nature of insurance itself, the unfairness of the possibility of a "pay off", almost arguing for the practice of recission in a way, which is fine, I guess, but realize that is what you are doing. With single payer or even with UK style national health care, if you are healthy, you are going to be paying for the huge bills of the sick, that's the deal.

Er, that's neither here nor there because health care costs are basically going up worldwide in all systems.

You know, it just made me realize that I tend to like and stay with doctors who: 1) seem to try to keep up with medical practice in their field in other countries, 2) like to talk a bit to their patients about their reasoning if the patient shows interest. #1 has proven to be especially important to me; I'm convinced that in the past I've had iatrogenically-induced problems caused by doctors following standard U.S. protocols, and have been cured of those by finally finding doctors who had skepticism towards those.

from their Mammography page:

When to have a mammogram:

Core Screening

Many doctors and screening programs recommend screening mammograms every two years for women who are 50 to 69 years old....

Minimizing Your Risk

....All women should talk to their doctor about the risk of getting breast cancer. This is especially important for women with a family history of early onset breast cancer; if this is your situation, you may benefit from having mammograms, as well as genetic screening.

Women who are 50 to 69 years of age should have screening mammograms every two years....

Also, I have noticed over the years that Marshall most often seems to comment on Reader Blogs on Sunday or Saturday, don't know if that means that that is only time he takes a serious look at them. One thing I am sure of, that one has a better chance of getting his attention by emailing him than by posting a reader blog titled to his attention--I've seen hundreds and hundreds of examples of the latter unanswered.

...by Laura Fitzpatrick, Time Magazine, Nov. 23 issue

The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures

By Nicholas Wade

Penguin Press; 310 pages

Whether a higher power exists is debatable, but widespread belief in one has helped humanity advance for millennia. Wade, a New York Times reporter, defends that provocative thesis with evidence drawn from biology, archaeology and anthropology. Humans may be innately selfish, he argues, but early hunter-gatherers needed to subordinate self-interest to the will of the group in order to survive, and "the solution that evolved was religious behavior"--humankind's best organizing principle. Ritual chants and dances fostered kinship and inspired tribes to battle outside threats. As language developed, people ascribed their good fortune to the supernatural, and efforts to please a deity later kept order in nascent civil societies. As our ancestors learned to read, they wrote sacred texts; as they created social hierarchies, they introduced priests. Religious fervor has dwindled of late, Wade argues, because Judaism, Christianity and Islam have failed to keep pace with human knowledge. For faith to thrive, religions must adapt. History shows they can.

Was also imagining that Mr. Wade and his thesis wouldn't fair too well with the majority of the TPM crowd, though I am quite sympathetic to and interested in his argument (and that's coming from a sometimes agnostic, sometimes atheist.) Not that I think it's correct to attribute it to "the" scientific evolution, but the word "evolved" fits more than that.

I'd like to offer my opinion that over the years I have been an interested user here (over 4, I think), the most usual situation has been anarchy. It is atypical--though it has happened from time to time--for management to explain anything going on with the site. It has been much more common to ignore threads like this one. And if you want to catch the rare management statements and thoughts on meta issues, it's best to check Josh Marshall's comment list regularly (@ user page:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/ezekiel/comments.php) as as his habit has been to put them in the middle or at the end of long discussion threads.

1) Are reader blogs a feature capable of drawing more "influentials"?

July 12, 2009 New York Times:

The political news Web site Talking Points Memo this weekend completed a round of investment, of $500,000 to $1 million. The move is intended to increase the number of employees, to roughly 20, from the current 11, in the next 10 months.

The financing is the first part of a three-year plan to increase the site’s staff to 60 employees, Joshua Micah Marshall, the site’s founder, said in an interview at his offices on West 20th Street in New York.

He would not identify his investors, who he said were angel investors, not venture capitalists. One name that has been made public is that of Marc Andreessen, who is investing personally, not on behalf of his new venture capital fund.

“We could have gotten a higher dollar amount — I didn’t think we needed it — but it would have come with strings attached,” Mr. Marshall said. “It would not have been best for the site.”

Practiced in explaining his business model as a result of courting investors in the last eight months, Mr. Marshall detailed the affluent, educated audience his site had attracted — thick with “influentials,” he said, apologizing for resorting to marketing speak to describe opinion makers. He said the site had more than 1.6 million unique visitors in June, its best month other than the one before the presidential election.....

If so, maybe they can eventually have one of those 60 employees assigned to take care of their needs? (If they stop complaining about the ads and start clicking on them, that is?)

2) Will reader blogs be something favored by the new Publisher and the new Social Media & Publicity Associate? Will they help them grow audience and be desirable content for "mobile media and partnership strategies," and will they help interact with the "emerging social media world, including key sites and communities, as well as emerging trends in the field"?

3) Are reader bloggers some of the 7,797 currently following Josh Marshall's twitter feed, updated every few hours? Are they some of the 14,980 fans on TPM's Facebook page? Are they the same people who are sending Josh Marshall emails that he often quotes on the TPM main page or are they different people? Are they considered part of the main audience, do they interact with the rest of the site, or are they mainly considered sort of like a squatter community, one that doesn't even pay much attention to the main contributors on the TPMCafe host site?