I'm fully in support of Joe Liebermann. Let's surprise the crap out of him by forcing the antitrust issue farther into the open right now.
And since they've already threatened to punitively jack up premiums because we're threatening to normalize their wacko bubble industry, I want to follow it when the first investigation is about a week old with a racketeering charge against somebody over there in Connecticut.
He's already lost us as friends, I think we should ensure that when he goes home the bed he shares with Aetna and Pfizer, etc. is at least a little colder.

I took 30% off my last post before submitting, and it’s still too long. I had trouble getting concise and adding enough information to make a point, and then I had to throw in more points, which required more and more characters. Just added two lines to this one. And here. I’m still sure I should have added even more text. because I can’t tell if any of my stuff makes non-universal assumptions.
And it didn’t link anywhere. I’m sorry, I think I don’t do it enough to be as good as some of you.
If you have an outline of your ideal blog article or a favorite-post-ever, assuming that if you’ve read this far you’re interested in the writing of a writing, I’d like to read about it. And others who trip over it may come away glad.
I started playing basketball with people who’ve clearly played before, and it made me think I’d like to raise my game in general. It dawned on me as a syndrome, causing me to add distance to my running too.
I’m not likely to become a professional writer, certainly not a ball player, but as long as I’m helping to crowd the space…

I think it’s a great idea if insurance companies have a list of product packages tailored to one’s lifestyle. I’m a white non-vegetarian moderate drinker with a family history of heart things, drinking and diet-related things like diabetes, hepatitis and cirrhosis, and old women. Someone like me would be prudent to get a doctor to check out some glands, listen to my heart and keep track of bp, pulse, etc. I might want to insure my pancreas, heart and liver, right? Buy one now, keep on ice.

I don’t know if they do, because I haven’t shopped in any depth for such personalized health insurance. We couldn’t afford it at all until one of us took a job with a company offering HMO-style benefits a few months ago. We pay about $300/month for two adults, no copay on visits, moderate deductibles and specialist policies we’ve heard horror stories about, but we both turned 40 this year and would prefer to subscribe to a plan to take the edge off what could become the year I get an injury. I started playing basketball with a lunch league of men who clearly all played in college. And since I have insurance, I might go skiing*.

I’m sure many people who have insurance lead lives they wouldn’t if not for the safety net of an insurance company to underwrite their ambulance ride, emergency room visit, ICU, Stepdown and physical therapy. Sure of it. If it weren’t too far to be practical, I’d be attending the Friday Night Fights at my old dojo, now that I have health insurance right now.

Knowing one’s back is covered leads one to increase the risk one entertains. If the millions of us without coverage get access, they will take it. It means a lot of people are going to be diagnosed right away with lingering undiagnosed illnesses, chronic stuff and cancers requiring lotsa care. My family is prudent with diet and exercise, we know first aid and a lot about our bodies, and my doctor tells me we’re in the minority. So if the millions (including me until September) get access to health care, are 2/3 going to consume at the present rate in the general population or will it be worse, since many of them are restricted for preexisting conditions? It’s going to look like a run on the bank and get a lot of bad press. It’s also going to stretch resources. In an open market economy we’d expect that to raise prices.

I am FOR health reform now, in whatever form. Changes can be made. I want it on the books that we the people acknowledge that we, people, are mortal and all need more health than illness. I am in favor of letting our government take that early financial hit. That’s what government does: Pool resources to address some topic of interest. So when it’s time for another NeoCon to use war to steal billions into the war industry our armies and their contractors will have Theraflu, if not armor.

I can’t help but raise an issue I have. Things are loaded into the concept of health I’d like to get some people to question. For example, reproductive health. An IUD may be covered by insurance. That’s elective, unless we can get the state to step in and tell, for example, Octomom and Whats-her-face with the hair, to cease and desist all reproduction. This radical step would not address any health issue, except perhaps when these two postnuclear-family social epidemics reach driving age.

Having a baby with the help of drugs, petri dishes, etc. is elective. I’d rather not participate in it in any way.**

So this isn’t health. This is stuff that’s available to us here in our marketplace. It’s controlled substances. In order to get access to it, you need to see my man. He has the stuff. I’d like to differentiate the Dealer Doctor from the one I’ll see about that aneurysm.

Vasectomies (probably getting one) seem like pretty low-maintenance, low-risk elective procedures, but breast implants are also performed by medical professionals, sometimes with real health goals in mind- mastectomy patients get them. However, I’m sure again about this: Many, many of those modified IV bags were not medically necessary. They are aesthetic in nature. I understand they get stiff and need to be massaged? They last about ten years? There are complications, no question, including possible serious infection because you’re getting an operation like your grandfather’s bypass in the important ways. But they ensure the comeback, the return visit to a health dealership, or to a hospital for Autoimmune treatment, or a lifelong prescription required to keep them alive. The pharmas- the prescription keeps the pharmas alive.*

So these elective procedures overlap everything else as load on the health system. It’s all profit, which is important to keep the health industry itself solvent and successful, but it’s also the reason prices rise.

Is there a prescription plan that includes condoms? Do we want the Federal Government of United States of America passing out condoms, like that fellow from Condom Nation? Certainly want to contribute to public health clinics for that very purpose, but probably not quite dignified. Do we want the government to administer the care of breast implants and tummy tucks? Viagra? Abortions? I was shocked to hear talk of abortion insurance. I’m strictly pro-choice, but respectful of the gravity of some people’s convictions on the other side. I prefer they don’t become worthless to the ambulatory though. I wouldn’t want to allow this single-minded bloc derail an assurance, backed by the Full Faith and Credit, that a car accident or ski trip should leave you in roughly the same place financially without applying a fixed price to a lost loved one or limb.

The grim underbelly of this beast is that something like your botox would be made available to the public at large under a government-administered plan to help people afford medical care. In this case it’s a glaring example of a way the status quo is about to morph further into simple marketing of products by the government, which is presently the enforcer of the licensing system for your man, the Dealer. The government was in bed with Joe Liebermann’s home state of Aetna only a few hours ago assuring them Joe’s latest bombast was meant to buy political cover. Now he’s threatened the process AND their antitrust protection. Which way do you think that sly political swinger really goes?

Furthermore, with that system of safety in place, more people will consider and get implants of various shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, an abortion is something one would probably do whether they could afford it or not. It is medically necessary in cases, including the choice between a living woman or a born baby. This is vanishingly small, and in no way approaches the frivolity of (I’m sure) nose jobs. We can’t predict whether abortions would increase, but I really doubt it.

I propose such meta-medical procedures like non-reconstruction breast implants and vasectomies be left off the federal schedule of services. Abortion must be in there, but the opponents of female self-determination are not going to be able to politically survive any language that would specifically permit an abortion. It might not be do-able this year, but companies will rise to compete with the public plan, and they can sell abortion insurance if they want to. I can’t imagine having the foresight.

Because I’m frequently unclear, and by the way this is the end, I reiterate: I’m for the reform bill regardless of its content, simply because I hate being the only real country on earth where society appears to not value the health and well-being of its people. Make it happen, we will improve it.

*I left a Poconos trip the night before Burns broke his femur at 5 spots skiing off a jump we grooved out in the hard ice along a tight turn. It was actually them, I was a pretty cautious skier. But Burns was stuck in Scranton for months. That and my lack of insurance for a lot of the past ten years turned me into more of a sledder.

** I have a huge problem with lifestyle(obesity)-induced illness being accepted glibly as a public health reality, but again, I want the bill to pass so we can start building this thing. Getting health programs into schools, encouraging moderation could come later, but not without the establishment of the system.

* I propose a health lottery, where the sickest people or whatever take a chance at getting a fortune from a pharmaceutical company, to complement the huge, free mandatory market we’re giving away. See? We can improve the bill along the way.

And imaginary Russian vistas. And a phony finger on what would be a pulse if they believed in rhythm and knew where to look for it. And they have the imaginary impression (If it’s shouted at you every 22 minutes, it’s not impression but retention) that ‘rogue’ is a good thing, and that a talking head who doesn’t sneer can’t be trusted.

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/even-fox-news-fact-checks-palins-claims-about-dollar-coin.php

I guess they need something to feel about, given their complete lack of 'feel-good'. But Corzine was beaten senseless throughout his term and Virginia is really pretty red. Meaningless. I've been to New Jersey, and they have insane taxation, owing to their highest-in-the-union population density. I've also been to Virginia, where Confederate flags still fly, although their days are numbered.
Steele on Parade
But now they know their 'core values' will lose them seats, and now they have to watch Christie get skinned alive in NJ (all that biomass probably going to bioenergy research). He'll have to cut services drastically to come close to alleviating budget troubles, leading to worse conditions in Trenton, Camden and Newark, which will lead to worse conditions in the suburbs.
Then NJ will go D again, Captain Pyrrhus. Will the same be true for NY-23? I don't know about Virginia, but I expect they're warming to the present and will continue to go blue at the edges.

I saw this leditor in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning, and my eyes rolled too far. I had to get in there with an emery board to pull it back around to the front. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t brain damage, but after that it became clear that 2009 would be a great time to start making our exit.

Only a little while ago we were in tensions with the USSR. When they disintegrated, their former wards and satellites became independent to varying degrees. In fact, Afghans became completely independent, offering cowboy excess to anyone with more friends or bullets than the other guy. None from the community of real countries recognized any government there, and their isolation was increased by their actual, technical, geographic isolation. And they had no oil. They were a pretty serious bunch before that, and they’ve always been in that hyperbaric neighborhood. But without oil, or even apparently grass, our State Department mostly ignored them, after the late ’80s when we no longer needed to use them.

Thus, Afghanistan became the year 120 bce for almost everyone, while it became summer camp for a group of pretty sophisticated and modern religious psychopaths. They would establish a Nathaniel Hawthorne-era reality show with witches stoned instead of burned, while training and planning to attack the United States of America and its evil interests from the quiet of a cave lost among millions of acres of nothing but crag. This after decades of the USSR attempting to govern them while the USA funded all insurgents- effectively training the counselors who would run the camps. Who goes to a camp without a pool?

When alumni of the training camps in geographic Afghanistan carried out the September 11, 2001 bombings, we finally broke up the power structure there. We occupied the country after several hours of conquest. Then, for some unknowable reason, the Impossible President stopped with the Afghanistan thing, and got on with the Iraq thing. We won the battle and completely forgot about the war- but somehow we also got killed, flew through Clinton’s surplus, looked like a giant idiot and re-installed the same bunch of retarded sociopaths in the Executive.

If any sane people were involved, we would have seen the power vacuum in Afghanistan immediately filled with a post office in every burg, chickens in pots, etc. After 50 years of rubble and privation, this would be the ‘awe’ part after the shock of believing your daughter may be one day allowed to learn to write her name. But nothing. Thus, nothing substantial changed and Afghanistan was again encouraged to remain a collection of flat spots between mountains, more a moon of Earth than geographic territory.

Oh, we built a government, some buildings, some stuff. But then the people ruling by fist came back, offering more carrot and more stick. Bush gave the country back to the people he took it from. Our man in Afghanistan now runs the capital city. He’s a mayor.

So when you look at the exit strategy Bush refused to offer, you’re right. Safe-ish elections in 2003, safe ones in 2006, someone charged with finding the elusive way to turn Afghanistan into something other than the angry dog chained in the backyard of someone else’s trailer, somebody in charge of siphoning money from the Food-for-Oil program (in my fantasy, amid all the other imaginary things in this list is a lack of Bush vs Iraq II)…

In the world as it should be, Afghanistan’s chief export today is young people going to Western Universities, their farmers are growing pot (and tobacco, but they’ve always smoked), their women are dominant in international goat-head soccer, and Imam Jeri is on the Billboard Top 1200.

It does not glorify violence if you’re appropriately offended by the whole concept. Abortion, pro or con, is horrible. The fact is that the overwhelming preponderance of anti-abortion literature panders. The glassy-eyed armageddonists are cool with purging of human society of Jews and single mothers, so obviously they aren’t going to see it this way through all that crazy. Still, they play solely and entirely for emotional reactions to the most salacious, prurient and deeply touching images of gore and relevant horror-movie graphics. 

It’s snuff porn, for bondage freaks who want society to spend its resources controlling the behavior of a shocking minority of females of breeding age. And it’s selling like hotcakes, because that kind of Christian is such a doom-pervert.

Admit it: You like it, or you wouldn’t obsess over it.http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/11/artforarts_sake.php

The south is fatter than the north. I’ve been there, and they fry bread. Iced tea is made by adding brown water until the sugar dissolves. Cookies there are actually carved from starchy root vegetables and collagen deposits found along the back of cow thighs and deep fried. Two things are true: I have been in the southern US, and the south is fatter than the north.

The south is also redder and more paternalistic/parochial than the north. We’re regionalistic shut-ins too, but our population and development make it more difficult to ignore the world actually happening behind the preacher, talking head or other messenger a citizen may consult for news of the world and … the others. Given their narrow political pallet and paucity of populace, the debate about health care may come down to a nation of assent stymied by shouts from one cantankerous double-wide.

They fought the railroads, emancipation, resented the civilizing influence American capital and talent brought after their primitive cave dwellers lost the battle to preserve their ‘way of life’ to our Union. What we know up here involves a lot of back story, including our long tradition of trying to make sure we all fit. They just didn’t want it, for some reason. The reason? It involved changes, the changes were alien, and the changes made it possible for the government to establish a way for southern products (100% agriculture) to be moved to places where people could buy them. Did they want to keep all that barley?

I want to see a poll map, one of those interactive jobs like CNN and Jon Stewart uses, to show ‘do you support a fact-based, technological and egalitarian reform of the health industry?’ answers drilled down to zip code or county. Is health attitude like general Republicanism, where the more space between people makes them less interested in knowin’ stuff and in the general welfare, or is it even more regionalistic, with the Jesus and other cults in the midwest and Texas reporting enough data points to show up in the homogenized national polls? Can we tell whether they’re afraid the government will ration sugar and grease? Step in and clean up Atlanta’s air traffic? Ban NASCAR?

They don’t necessarily have to be getting information along with their positions, but they’re listening to someone who doesn’t want the federal government to have the resources to contain or definitively end something like a swine flu epidemic. Who the hell would advise that? Exactly: they’re either stupid, desperate for armageddon, or on a different page altogether.

Aetna lives in Connecticut, and he's already an asshole. Therefore, when his real constituent barks, he doesn't even ask how much. Just starts throwing bones.
Jackass.

It's our fault. We took the reins from the drunk, pill-popping unfaithful Jesus freaks and gave them to an Ivy Leaguer- and a Black one at that! And here we are now, with out majority, working out the problems with the Bush economy we were left with, a starved and overdrawn version of the bullshit economy left after Reagan's RNC orgy and the ten-year stretch where the RNC demonstrated exactly what they would do if they were in charge (F everything up). 
And we'll fix them, too, and we'll do it with book-learnin' and cooperation- and that has to irritate these RNC nut jobs. Lose again, is what they should do. But that won't teach 'em either- they took over the 'persecuted minority' whine long before they became the minority in DC. Because they are deluded and should not have standing.
Even the 'born in the USA' t-shirts they wave are made in Honduras or Vietnam, but they're not about reading or understanding their points. They're about smearing shit on our faces if they have the power, and about smearing shit on our faces if they don't.
Us bastards, fanning the flames of strife at a time like this, with two Republican wars going on and one big fat Republican theft/recession. Heck, we're just about to ruin that recession they worked so hard on!
Payback SHOULD be a bitch, but the only revenge we seem to be taking is the stabilization of grocery prices. Would they be happier with flogging? We could flog them for doing so many stupid things in the recent past, or for being so stupid now. Or both.
I guess for now we just have to keep dangling it in their faces, maybe they'll all die from aneurysms- or suicide!That would be cool.

My son turned eight this year. He was born in April of 2001. That morning, I was in the Baltimore Convention Center, getting ready for the day. My wife called. She was listening to Howard Stern. Someone flew into the World Trade Center. Minutes later, a cable patch was displaying CNN. The second plane hit.

I believe the White House knew something was coming, neglected to mobilize anything since they needed a rationale for their pre-ordained war in Iraq, and that they underestimated what those people could actually pull off. If you trusted them, then you probably shouldn't be trusted either. Today Republicans want to smear everything good, and refuse to be held accountable for what they've done. "Let's not look at the past, we'd rather move forward to an imaginary 1950s.

Clinton could never have been impeached without the thick vein of hatred expressed in the RNC, which operates back-channel dialog with its constituency via the hateful talking heads they bankroll. They aggressively undermined the Presidency immediately, apparently threatened by such a successful and popular President. That was a threat to their grandiose worldview, where opposing opinions are pointless distractions. They know it all, and that's that. Never mind that they're always wrong these days, and they want to rule the world, globalize, and keep such a parochial perspective despite their Grandiose Ossified Perspective which would deny any value in the rest of the world aside from the OPEC industry, which is the only thing they protect. Even privacy, on which their do-it-yourself (or go-fuck-yourself) philosophy depends, is negotiable.

Now they're denegrating the Presidency again, but the party has shrunk to the dregs. Bigots, weridos and glassy-eyed armageddonists. Tax cheats, philanderers, drug addicts, gamblers, liars, morons. Will we tolerate this? How do they dominate the news? They demanded their children be 'protected' from the President's message. They live in a fantasy world where they can sustain denial of his American Birth.

I'm raising my son to be skeptical of authority, but especially of crowds and conventional wisdom. Common sense is not common, entertainment is not the same as art, and the Republican Party is not the one my grandfather believed in. Can't be. He was sane, practical, concerned with the common good.

I would like some lawyers to prepare an injunction, a very general one, to be used whenever the RNC attempts anything. No meetings should be allowed without a censor for bullshit. And if they're so angry, let's send them to Afghanistan to complete the work they failed to do when it was their call.

Show some humility? The President of the United States? You're a representative of what? Who did you think you were when you were sucking off that last 'President', the jackass from Texas?
Shove it Saxby. Both your names trigger spell check, just like 'creationism'.
Freak.

I'm astonished, reading JF's blurb after such a drawn-out beat-it-into-you immersion in RNC politics.

For those of you not paying attention, that is the story. Republicans are about hypocrisy. It's burned into the wood planks under their feet, up on that 'platform'. They are about obstruction when it's not their turn, and they are about theft and deception of all scales when they are in power.

It's been a long time since Nixon ushered in the 'interests no principles' era. Although most text books are printed in Texas, there are plenty of old people around who remember people like Eisenhower and Truman, the various Roosevelts. People used to behave differently.

Democrats ignore this simple truth at their legislative and morale peril. They should be mentioning it at every speaking opportunity: "Of course the RNC would have you believe otherwise, but today is Friday and patriotism doesn't mean acting stupid."

Carthage must be destroyed.

The release of the only Lockerbie convict was an outrage. US leaders condemned it. It made my stomach turn. If it is tradition to release the terminally ill from prison in Scotland, then they should open the doors and allow anyone afflicted with mortality to leave.

But that crime has a stronger smell over here, where despite all those years of fear mongering and paranoia, the two ingredients other than Cheney fumes that kept the Bush administration steamroller going for so long, the same thing will happen hundreds more times as the United States fails to bring any of these fools to court.

The Bush administration's sole purpose was to keep us busy while his boys ruined as much of the country as possible. They undermined our ideals, thwarted even their own goals, and made off with Clinton's half-trillion dollar surplus. And now we come to understand that the 'legal' black hole in Guantanamo is really, really black. None of those bastards, as dangerous as the liars say they are, can be prosecuted. No confessions are going to stand, even if charges can be brought.

These thieves and liars were so bad at justice and law that the 'worst of the worst' are now nothing more than props in their wierdo apocalyptic pantomime. And we still own it. Jeez- what will the Republicans saddle us with next (if the Old Irritated People Bloc stays together) time they get the top gubmint job?

That they claimed to be so bent on catching and bringing justice to the bad guys (guilty of punching back at them?) without ever giving a thought to anything, let alone how justice would be applied, is a crime of tragic and expensive proportion. Is 7 years of torture enough? Call it even? Do these guys go back to a quiet, normal life, or will they capitalize on their stay at Club Fed ?

Stupid, stupid. So now it's going to fall on the soldiers who carried out their nefarious and illegal designs? I hope the Holder investigation is thorough, and I hope some spooks get hurt for being assholes. But if it doesn't lead to the leadership it's a sham.

Our culture is pretty permissive and forgiving of executives who ski to the lodge while their former employees attempt to stretch their severence after their horrible performance ruins a company. I hope the patriots among us hold their President and his Secretaries to a higher standard than some money whore, as if that 'President' were anything more.

My suggestion that lifestyle choices like Sweet Tea or smoking increase risks to personal health was met with some hostility. In reality land, we'll absolve everyone of their responsibility to eat well, move around as if they were alive, and avoid ingesting concentrated toxins by outlawing risk and pre-existing conditions from insurance companies' gambling methods. Moral Hazard.
I'm ignoring the legions of people born without the muscle proteins to allow them to walk a few miles once in a while, or to digest.  Forget the injuries leaving a normally active person bed-ridden. It's the big, fat, normal, mediocre middle of the bell curve we need to consider.
I'm also consciously ignoring the fact that Detroit, MI and Chester, PA have no supermarkets. We're not talking about opening US Federal Supermarkets. The Burka, the impending caning of a 32-year old mother of two in Malaysia for drinking a beer came up at breakfast this morning, and my five-year-ld daughter said, "Why don't they just leave?" The boy, 8, was confused for a while. The truth is that people are portable, and if the landscape is barren they should move. Change.
I'm focusing instead on the idiots in southern California whose neighborhood burns every year, and they rebuild with insurance money. At some level, all insurance is a gamble, and beyond that level it's not a gamble at all. There is no risk of a flood along the Mississippi flood plain, there is certainty. Now think of the mouth-breathing, gasping obese adults who can't climb a flight of stairs and their families. How long does it take to gain 200 pounds?
There's a non-insurance solution to most health problems, and that is to go back in time to when you were being raised, and pay attention to health class and demand your parents stop feeding you TV dinners. Get into a habit of movement.
If we're talking about including everybody at equal risk, then we aren't planning to retain the insurance company model at all, and the only way to use that insurance model is to start making guidances about lifestyle.
Only the Public Option can do that, and it can't do that here. So what has to happen is a simple Feddie Med insurer, with income-based premiums, providing 100% coverage to all the uninsured who choose to participate. Only then the commercial sector will be forced to compete, and only in this way can a system emerge without destroying its vital components.