This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Health Care debate

  • We’re All Zombies on This Bus

    Are zombies real? Maybe… but they CAN teach us about ourselves.
    What Zombies Can Teach Us About Braaain Science

    Dr. Steven Schlozman, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a lecturer at the Harvard School of Education, uses the undead to teach the living about the brain. In fact, he says, talking about zombie brains and folklore, like those in Romero’s classic, can give people a safe fictional context to discuss serious issues in medicine.

    “You watch Romero zombies and you can see there is something not right about them, and you can pinpoint what’s wrong with them,” he explains. “You can postulate what’s going on biologically.”

    So, just to be safe, tell the next zombie you see – Thanks.

    Or maybe you can do the same thing with some of the OWS types and they won’t eat your brains. Who knows?

    H/T John Gresham on FB.

  • Health care as a political weapon

    Last month, Indiana voted to stop providing tax payer money to Planned Parenthood which provides about half of the abortions in the state. The Obama Administration has threatened to cut off funds of low income families’ health care if the state doesn’t restore funding to Planned Parenthood;

    The question facing the Obama administration is whether they are willing to leave low-income families without health care to punish Indiana. Last week the White House and HHS ordered Indiana to reinstate funds for Planned Parenthood.

    Where do things go from here? Possibilities range from nothing happening at all and the defunding standing to the Obama administration withholding all federal Medicaid funds from Indiana.

    So I guess the administration is bound and determined to kill poor people one way or the other – either by abortion or by cutting off their medicaid and medicare. I guess we can expect this level of extortion if they get their way with single-payer universal health care.

    But, hey, at least we can dance in the Jefferson Memorial…we have that goin’ for us.

    Thanks to a link from ROS.

  • In the Wreckage of an Almost-Shutdown

    Today, a lot of us are taking a slightly ragged breath and relaxing a bit. Last night, around 11PM, a deal was reached that would extend for a week the operations of government as we know it. This is particularly meaningful for all of our servicemembers, many serving in harm’s way, who had already opened up Mypay to reveal a LES with only half the pay anticipated for it. This will allow them to get their midmonth pay.

    Let me stress, for those few who might happen to be unaware, that unlike the rest of the government, when the military isn’t getting paid, the military is still working. People don’t stop trying to kill them just because they’re not getting paid. Instead, it’s just another worry on their mind, preventing them from being fully focused on the dangers surrounding them, because they’re too busy wondering if their family will be able to pay the rent or buy groceries.

    I’d like to take a moment to thank those organizations that went above and beyond in order to make sure servicemembers didn’t have to worry about where their family’s next meal would come from: such as the Navy Federal Credit Union, that promised all servicemember’s mid-month checks would be covered by the institution. I’d also like to thank (and this is rare) the VA (or as Brandon Friedman likes to remind everyone, Veterans Affairs) for putting out a Veterans Guide to the Shutdown, to help address the justified concerns many veterans had about whether their disability checks and education benefits would arrive on the 1st.

    However, what really needs to be addressed is not so pretty: why did it come so close in the first place? A lot of people in both political parties want to blame the other party. But really, both parties are to blame, and both parties gambled way too much with the lives of people who have already given up a lot to serve their country.

    The one bare-minimum standard any governmental body that deals with money has is to pass a budget for the next year. But nobody wanted to pass a budget before the elections, because then they’d have to deal with possible consequences for their votes. And after the elections, when Democrats realized that they were going to be out of power next year, they hurried with pushing through the healthcare reform, instead of worrying about doing their job and passing the budget.

    But the Republicans aren’t off the hook yet. Passing a budget was their job, too, and they chose to focus on ideological battles also. They decided to play a game of brinksmanship to show how tough they were for the next budget fight, ignoring the people it was going to impact. They tried to create a temporary bill that supposedly would fund the Pentagon all year, and the rest of government a week, to save the military, but then again added ideological riders on it.
    Why do we put up with this? People on both sides, why do we act as though our party protects veterans and servicemembers? I think we need to acknowledge that both sides use us for photo ops and for talking points on the halls of Congress, but when it comes down to it, they don’t really care.

  • Zombie; Death Channels

    Our buddy, Zombie, sends us a link to his/her latest post;

    In short: a relative of mine became mortally ill, but the hospital would not treat him due to an “Advance Health Care Directive” he had signed long ago saying he did not want doctors to “artificially prolong” his life in the case of serious illness. The highly personal essay examines my encounter wth this new building block of our health care system (end-of-life planning was a controversial component of Obamacare, as you may remember).

    Go read the rest.

  • Loosely related stuff about the Tucson shooting

    I’ve been on pins and needles wondering what the VFW thought of the shooting. They sent me an email to let me know that they condemn it. I’ll bet it was a real squeaker in committee.

    Gateway Pundit says that Bob Kerrey claims that Louchner was upset that Republicans were going to repeal Obamacare. Seriously? Does anyone honestly think this pothead even knows what healthcare is let alone worried about who’s going to pay for his?

    Someone somehow connected to the military leaked to Associated Press that Loughner was rejected because he popped hot on a piss test.

    Our president is going to stand for a moment of silence on the White House lawn today. How long did it take for him to acknowledge that the shooting in Fort Hood even happened and already he’s spent three days on this one…I guess bureaucrats getting shot is more important than soldiers preparing to go to war getting shot on their base.

    Hillary Clinton took a leap today and called Loughner “extremist” at a townhall meeting at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed University. I guess she’s the only one who can summon the testicular fortitude. Everyone else passes him off as a run-of-the-mill Republican, minus the monocle, top hat, cane and cigar.

    Speaking of Hillary, the refugees at Hillbuzz have words of warnings for conservatives;

    If you are a conservative and you are reading this, I hope you realize that “taking the high road”, “just ignore them”, and all the other cliches commonly tossed at you to make you sit quietly and take whatever the Left is doing that day are just not acceptable anymore. You must see the Left and its media propaganda wing for what they truly are — and you must realize the two work hand in hand to do whatever they can to help Democrats.

    Old Trooper sent us a link to Michelle Malkin’s lead today. It’s a loooooooong refresher of the Left’s hate over the last decade or so. You’ll want to spend some time reading it.

    You’ll be relieved to know that the Homeland Security Department hasn’t found a link between Loughner and the Right Wing yet…but you can bet it’s not from the lack of trying.

    A suspicious package, which apparently turned out to be nothing, cleared the Metro station out on Capitol Hill today. Another former Democrat staffer was found dead in her burning car in her burning garage this morning.

  • Wikileaks: Cuba didn’t like the propaganda in “Sicko”

    The Guardian reports that one Wikileak-released State Department cable discussed the Cuban reaction to Michael Moore’s Oscar-nominated (for the lack of a better word) documentary “Sicko”, supposedly a comparison of the US health care system and that of the Caribbean island.

    Cuba banned Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted such a “mythically” favourable picture of Cuba’s healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a “popular backlash”, according to US diplomats in Havana.

    The revelation, contained in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks , is surprising, given that the film attempted to discredit the US healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.

    But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so “disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room”.

    Castro’s government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”

    Most of the readers here probably aren’t shocked by these revelations, but why would the government keep revelations like this quiet? Unless there is an agenda at work.

  • Nurse accidentally pulls the plug on patient

    ROS sends us a link to a news story about that wonderful social medicine in Britain. 37-year-old Jamie Merrett, paralyzed from the neck down and around-the-clock care, went without machine-supplied air for 21 minutes;

    In 2008, though, he started to become increasingly concerned over serious errors made by nurses operating his ventilator, his sister Karren Reynolds told the BBC. He sent off several e-mails to local health bosses, and — after his concerns weren’t acted on — asked for a camera to be installed in his bedroom so he could record any accidents.

    Unfortunately, his fears were well-founded. Just a few days after the webcam was set up early last year, it filmed nurse Violetta Aylward accidentally switching off the ventilator. In the video, the life-support system can be heard emitting a long, loud beep, causing Aylward to shout for help. A care assistant rushes into the room and asks the nurse: “What have you done?” Aylward replies, “Switched this off.”

    See, that’s the kind of stuff that happens when you expand the health care system too quickly, rush badly-needed professionals through their training and send them out into the world with only rudimentary skills. Here’s the video of Merrett’s last few moments on Earth;

  • Maggie’s ironic post

    My buddy Boston Maggie reprints Patrick Henry’s speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses at Williamsburg on this day in 1775. It’s Ironic because of today’s events 235 years later.