Politics: September 2009 Archives

Then read this.

It begins:

"The South Carolina Supreme Court has ordered an insurance company to pay $10 million for wrongly revoking the insurance policy of a 17-year-old college student after he tested positive for HIV. The court called the 2002 decision by the insurance company "reprehensible."

"That appears to be the most an insurance company has ever been ordered to pay in a case involving the practice known as rescission, in which insurance companies retroactively cancel coverage for policyholders based on alleged misstatements - sometimes right after diagnoses of life-threatening diseases."

This kind of thing happens all the time.

And yes, it is reprehensible.

Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, unveiled his health care reform legislation yesterday.

Apparently it was written by insurance company lobbyists. It contains loads of gifts for the insurance lobby and pretty much guarantees that health care will be more expensive for the middle class.

So far, Republicans hate the bill. Democrats hate it.

So who likes it?

Let's see.

The New York Times reported: "Shares of U.S. health insurers rose broadly on Tuesday on hopes a health reform bill would not include a government-run option, which has drawn strong opposition from insurers who fear it would destroy the private marketplace.

"The S&P Managed Health Care index of large U.S. health insurers closed 6.5 percent higher.

"Aetna rose 12.6 percent, Coventry was up 12.7 percent and Cigna was 7.7 percent higher, all on the New York Stock Exchange. Centene rose 7.9 percent."

That should tell you all you need to know about Baucus' bill.

An activist judge is, by definition, one whose opinions you disagree with.

That said, federal Judge Clay Land of the Middle District of Georgia is about to be tarred as an activist judge by the wingnuts who are known as "birthers," people who believe that President Obama was born in Kenya, or on Saturn, or whatever.

The case, filed by Orly Taitz, who, when she's not being a narcisistic psychotic on TV, is actually a lawyer, was about an Army doctor who was refusing to be deployed to Iraq because she claims Obama is not the president.

The lawsuit defied any logic. The doctor had no problem serving her commander-in-chief while stationed stateside. It was only when she was going to be sent to Iraq that she objected.

Besides, the lawsuit made tons of allegations that had no basis in any known reality.

The judge tossed it.

He wrote, "Plaintiff's complaint is not plausible on its face. To the extent that it alleges any 'facts,' the Complaint does not connect those facts to any actual violation of the Plaintiff's individual constitutional rights. Unlike in 'Alice in Wonderland,' simply saying something is so does not make it so."

Wow.

This judge must be some kind of liberal activist.

He was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush.

From the Washington Post's review of Moore's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story":

"In building his indictment against the ill-fated marriage of Wall Street and Washington, Moore zeroes in less on GOP string-pullers than he does on White House economic adviser Larry Summers, Clinton-era Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and Sen. Chris Dodd. Especially Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Moore gets an on-camera interview with the mortgage officer who handled the special VIP loans provided to Dodd and other big names, an issue that has dogged Dodd's reelection bid.
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"The film also maintains a delicate ambivalence about President Obama, casting him as a change agent and depicting joyous images of his victory last November, but also implying that Wall Street had showered money on Obama's campaign in an effort to buy him. The question of whether Wall Street succeeded in doing so is left more or less unanswered."

Moore said, "One of the important things to recognize in my films is that I always went after whoever needed to be gone after."

Good for him. There are lots of people who need to be gone after.

Here is the president of the United States calling Kanye West "a jackass."

OK, so what's the problem?

We're paying more for less, when it comes to health insurance.

That's the conclusion of three studies cited in a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site.

An excerpt:

"Americans with job-based insurance can expect to pay more for less next year. Hit by the recession and rising health-care costs, employers are cutting a larger chunk than usual out of their health-care budgets, new national surveys show.

"In 2010, nearly two-thirds of employers plan to shift more of the cost of care to workers and their families through higher premiums contributions, deductibles and copayments. One out of five companies plans to cut out higher-cost health plan options in favor of less generous coverage, according to the preliminary findings from a survey by the consulting firm Mercer LLC."

Read the whole thing here.

Slate.com has more analysis here.

A passage from the story:

"But because of the peculiar way the health industry has evolved in the United States, it's nearly impossible for most people to know how much they're paying even for something as simple as a health insurance premium."

What's that argument against health care reform again?

Todd Platts does it again, getting his photo taken with the president before a big event. That's an Associated Press photo. Todd also appeared in the photo on the front page of Thursday's New York Times.

In a body where the competition for being the dumbest and craziest elected official in America, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson stands out.

The South Carolina Republican yelled out, "You lie!" during President Obama's speech to Congress Wednesday night. He was responding to Obama's statement that health care reform would not result in coverage being extended to illegal immigrants, a favorite lie being told by right-wingers to try to derail health care reform.

The truth of the matter is that no where in any of the proposals being floated on health care are illegal immigrants granted health care coverage. So the liar here is Wilson.

Had Goober taken the time to read the House bill that's floating around, he would have found, on page 143, this:

"Sec 246 -- NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS

"Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."

He's a fool. And a liar. And probably nuts.

Sadly, though, he's not close to being the most idiotic member of Congress. He's got a lot of competition. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., for instance, is 10 pounds of crazy in a five-pound bag.

And it makes you wonder what's wrong with South Carolina. The state has a governor who disappears, says he's "hiking the Appalachian Trail," when he's really sneaking off to South America to cheat on his wife. The head of its public education commitee, a woman who home schools her kids and is identified as a family values Christian, was outed for writing hard-core porn on the Internet.

Must be all that humidity. Makes people stupid.

South Carolina has a lengthy tradition of this kind of craziness.

Consider Rep. Preston Brooks, a Democrat who served in the 1850s. On May 22, 1856, Brooks attacked and beat Sen. Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber with his cane. Sumner's apparent offense? Giving a speech critical of President Franklin Pierce and Southerners who supported violence as a means to engaging anti-slavery activists.

Brooks later apologized, kind of. He said he didn't intend to kill Sumner. Had he intended that, he said he would have used a different weapon.

UPDATE: I just watched Goober Wilson being interviewed on MSNBC and he's still saying the bill would extend health care benefits to illegal immigrants -- a lie. He lies. Or course, he could have an excuse. He could just be a moron.

Carl Hiaasen is a great columnist, and novelist. Here, he tackles heath care.

He writes:

" Anyone who's been in a hospital knows the cost of care is so insanely high that, without some form of coverage, many people would find themselves pauperized by a health crisis.

"A close member of my family recently had an accident in which she suffered multiple bone fractures and a partially collapsed lung -- painful, but not life-threatening.

"She was taken to the nearest hospital, where she was monitored for a few hours in the intensive-care unit before being sent to a private room. The next day, she was transferred to a hospital closer to home.

"In all, she spent barely 24 hours as a patient in the first hospital. Yet the cost for that overnight stay -- not including doctor fees -- was $11,392.56."

Read the rest of it here.

Here is an excerpt from President Obama's back-to-school speech to kids.

"But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
"And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself."

And then, there's this:

"And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it."

I can't wait for the Republican rebuttal. Maybe they can a certain former president to tell kids that you can coast through life, be a mediocre, at best, student, ride on you parents' coattails and still be president.

Read the entire speech here.

You'd be surprised who they are.

According to Newsweek's excellent business columnist Dan Gross, it's the Republicans.

He writes:

"The conventional wisdom on the right holds that President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are setting themselves up for a big fall through their overreaching. But I'd argue that it's the Republican Party, which was always on the side of greater growth, higher stock prices, and more wealth, that has painted itself into a corner. Many Republicans opposed the initial bailouts because they were conducted by an unpopular Republican president in conjunction with a Democratic Congress. (In Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair article, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson conspicuously praises congressional Democrats and conspicuously says little about congressional Republicans.) Then they doubled down with virtually uniform opposition to the Obama stimulus bill, which had been watered down to attract Republican votes. In order for Republicans to be vindicated politically, the bailouts and the stimulus--and the economy at large--must fail. Thus considered, every positive data point, every sign of stabilization in the housing market, every rise in the S&P 500, every TARP repayment, is something of a rebuke. As the clouds part, the historic party of economic sunshine is in the strange position of praying for rain."

Those who put political expedience and their political fortunes before the good of the country are among the lowest forms of life. And they are what's wrong with our political culture. Instead of trying to seek solutions, they merely hope the other sides fails so they can grasp power.

I hope they fail.

Read Gross' column here.

Some great reporting by former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid about the five myths about health care around the world.

He writes about "the most persistent myth of all: that America has 'the finest health care' in the world.

"We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero."

Read it here.