Bearing in mind that before I was rehabilitated, I was about as aggressive in inventing potential breaches of the standard of care as any gunslinger in town, even I would have a hard time mau-mauing an errors and ommissions adjuster about how PCA turned out to actually be a cleverly concealed pregnant woman and there are possible deformed baby damages subject to to discount to a reasonable settlement figure.

This touches on the point I mentiond downthread in response to jan. It seems to me that from apurely practical point of view, the person whose change of mind can do you the most good is some sort of hospital vice preznit for something or other--I suppose the bureaucracy mavens AA alludes to could identify the person--that done, one asks how he/she can be helped in achieving a positive rather than negative job performance this year insofar as the care of Mr. Ants is concerned..

Somehow that must raise a standard of care issue...I would think the simplest solution would be either to get an attending at the hospital certified (maybe on an emergency basis??) or the hospital hires a certified person on an adjunct basis.

For motivation, (since nothing turns a doc off like an alienated patient, and you don't want to be muttering anything that might even be mistaken for the words "standard of care") maybe you execute a living will with an extraneous clause that accidentally gets in directing that so and so is to be considered your legal proxy for purposes of pursuing any causes of action accruing to your estate on account of the hospital making proper treatment impossible, or failing to make it possible...sumpin like that.

This is, of course, the legal advice of a stripper, and therefor worth what you are paying.

I forget which of the opponents had the ill-advised candor to worry that it was just "the nose of the camel under the tent" (already a very suspect metaphor).

Of course, just as this worthy opined, the idea is for the public option to swallow up all the plans delivering less care for more cost (how's that for the invisible hand of the market?) and turn into single payer.

So this guy is not wrong about the outcome--he's wrong in deploring it.

Syntax and usage be damned! Sharpen your cutlass and tie up your balls, we're going to board her!

Which is to say, I'll probably take the shorter non existent verb over the longer one...

I guess cutting the banks out of their old student loan racket can only help, but my thumbnail number on annual inflation in trade school tuition feels like 10-15%...on almost a permanent basis, which makes me sorry i didn't take that job at University of Illinois--who knew teaching was going to be so high paying?

(OK, so we know the money isnt going there, unless you get your textbook adopted at 2-3 dollars per page, but obviously, the next area of attack is on restrictive trade school practices and generous deals involving debt forgiveness in exchange for some number of years practicing in East Jibib.

Compare France, where the free public higher education turns out sufficient medical professionals to keep the costs of their free health care in bounds. But who wants to be like the french...(who wants beautiful women who spend twice as much of their disposable income on beauty as other women...who wants bread baked a half hour ago...never mind...)

American Exceptionalism, worth every penny it costs--"you gotta pay the cost to be the boss"...

True, boat payments are onerous...

Which is to say, "struggling" may mean treating half your patients on a barter for live chickens basis and working 15 hour days to make sure no one is left without care, or, it may mean letting the gardener go part time.

Part of the re-evaluation of health care delivery certainly may bring us to ask how many standard deviations from the median family income it takes to "incentivize" (precious blood of the sweet baby Jesus, that is not a word!) the choice of medecine as a career.

What do you mean, "paranoia"

Did you not just describe the "market maker" function? (cf. the stock exchange specialist). The specialist maintains an inventory the management of which is intended to be counter to the market.

Which is to say, this is merely meta-capitalism.

(disclaimer:written before reading comments. If, as is so often the case, Ellen got here before me, sorry for the redundancy...)

I always thought it was a Soviet Security Service joke....

Yeah, ain't it cool? They go for the okie-doke every time, and now they are setting up the public option to cruise in becz, it, of course is the only way to seriously attack costs, which is what the pugnants are now demandind; the tactical mirror to this strategic trap is that if the pugnants actually get to 41 votes in the senate, Mean. Ol' Mr. Reconciliation will be the new sherriff in town. These two support each other, because only thru the impact of the public option can the Byrd rule be trumped for so much substantive reform.

I am guessing that the particular demands of the reconciliation strategy dictated that Ahref="http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/jollyroger/2009/09/relax-max-reconcile-your-bad-s.php">weird dance around Baucus

I know Sipowitz was always the bad cop, and I think Jimmy Smits was one of the rotating good cops, but anyway, do you remember how the "good cop" used to fool the perp, and you'd say, man, that perp is stupid to believe that good cop act...?

Just because Dub was stupid enough to want to be the bad cop so his dick would occasionally get hard, that doesn't make it smart theatre.

Just like you, I want to see Prez kicking ass and taking names, but that is not the model for successfully overturning the encrusted chains of 300 years of white/male/rich/het privelege.

I have several impressively calligraphied pieces of genuine virgin vinyl simulated parchment, bearing the signature of Kirby J. Hensley, which entitle me to perform a variety of social, legal, medical, spiritual and forensic duties, including, but not limited to, the drafting of wills, giving of last rites, empowering fetishes, cursing enemies, making rain-- also baptism, burial, cremation, resurrection (not in that order...) coronation, and circumcision.

What can I do for you?

I am able to report that I have made real progress in the last five years or so, and now I can get almost five or six bars into Jerry playing before it happens, unless he says "take me to the leader of the band" in which case it happens immediately, but anyway, there is a real chance that in another ten or twenty years I will get through a whole song before the uncontrollable crying thing.

I hate heroin

I am able to report that I have made real progress in the last five years or so, and now I can get almost five or six bars into Jerry playing before it happens, unless he says "take me to the leader of the band" in which case it happens immediately, but anyway, there is a real chance that in another ten or twenty years I will get through a whole song before the uncontrollable crying thing.

I hate heroin

EEeew.

No, I suppose from the sober distance of five years or so, looking back on my last venture into "fancy garb", I entertained two possible lines of garments.

One, "Skimpy Skirtz and Tiny Topz"(tm-the funny spelling lets you trademark...). '"wear'em while you can girls, mean ol *Mr Gravity knows your home address" a line of stripper style outfits for "citizen chicks"

and

my pet hobby, undergarments for ladies made of silver chain (I still have several hundred yards of very fine chain, somewhere...)...Anyway, based on that, I guess my idea of fancy outfits involves chain mail, or variations thereupon.

*(based on the Purple Pieman and Mr. Tooth Decay--do I date myself?)

Just to preempt any riposte potentially founded in the stated principle, permit me to inform you that I am 19 years old, and yet I declare my admiration for Janey without blushing.

What, no dick for granny? Might you be an ageist?

I'll have you to know that I am shortly being taken off the DL, and beginning a rehab tour of nursing homes...those grabbin grannies are brutal, brutal I tells ya.

Moreover, Nancy is my very own representative, and she can have my, uh, support, any time.

Two more words: Jane Fonda

At last. a promotion from "toady"...Do cronies get fancy uniforms?

Altho I am grateful for his endorsement of Prez back in the campaign.

Somehow,I failed to convey my personal contempt for Powell--obviously he should have resigned long before he turned into Bush's butt boy.

That said, there are plenty of people who don't share my opinion.Those would be the target of the triple appointment.

Precisely.

But since that is the playing field, at least the Powell Doctrine (which has a clear parameters including the strategic mandates ofoverwhelmiing force, exit strategy, etc.) would obviously rule out escalation in af/pak.

shortev version:

I'd like less Martin and more Malcolm.

Certainly not by me--but I am not the audience to whom the appointment would play.

I was perhaps too brief in my exposition. We have, (as Dr. Demento used to say in a different context) the democracy we have,not the one we would want...

I'm thinking of the unthinking centrists who prides themselves on being independent" (read:uninformed, uncaring, and easily confused).

They like Powell. Personally, I think he's a warm criminal squared (once for My Lai, once more for the UN speech.)

What he does have is a Doctrine. Not everyone has a doctrine (after all). As it happens, there has been enough lip service given to the Powell Doctrine in the war colleges over the years, that it provides a useful forensic tool for shutting the neocons up.

Both

But I, for one, would hope to Jesus that you can't write emails like that without blowing the top off that building on Mission St. where the ATT room is.

Otherwise, what the fuck are we paying for?