The Fulcrum
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Troops Get Turkey for Thanksgiving
You all know what I'm talking about...
It was a great photo-op; and it really was the right thing to do. I guess that's why it surprised me. Unfortunately we'll be seeing those pictures longer than we saw the flightsuit photos. Endlessly.
Being ex-military, I know how much that meant to the soldiers in Iraq.
Now, how about those funerals?
It was a great photo-op; and it really was the right thing to do. I guess that's why it surprised me. Unfortunately we'll be seeing those pictures longer than we saw the flightsuit photos. Endlessly.
Being ex-military, I know how much that meant to the soldiers in Iraq.
Now, how about those funerals?
Happy Thanksgiving
Despite all the things that we on the Left have to complain about, to improve on in the desire to protect and improve our society and country, we should not, on this day, forget all the things we have to be thankful for. Most of us probably have family around, lots of food and drink on the table and the ability to not only know what is going on in our country and the world, but to comment freely on them.
So as we contemplate how we could make things better, let's not lose sight of just how good they are already.
I hope that everyone who regularly reads my contribution to the national dialogue - or anyone who just drops by - will have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving. If you're not from the US, I hope that your day and week are full of things that you are thankful for. Don't forget to take a few minutes to think about those people and things that make you happy, don't forget to let those people know how much they mean to you.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the blogosphere!!
So as we contemplate how we could make things better, let's not lose sight of just how good they are already.
I hope that everyone who regularly reads my contribution to the national dialogue - or anyone who just drops by - will have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving. If you're not from the US, I hope that your day and week are full of things that you are thankful for. Don't forget to take a few minutes to think about those people and things that make you happy, don't forget to let those people know how much they mean to you.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the blogosphere!!
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Market Driven Health Care
After passage of the soon-to-be disastrous Medicare bill, aWol is crowing about the Repug stranglehold on the law making apparatus. And, as always, the Wall Street Journal joins in.
One of today's opinion pieces makes the hard sell - again - for a health care system driven by... what else... the free market. The author, Regina Herzlinger, is not a doctor, not a health care professional of any kind. She's not even an HMO or insurance company flack. Ms. Herzlinger is a professor of business administration at Harvard. Surprised? No? Me neither.
I won't go into a lot of detail about the article - it is the usual pean to free markets. What I will do is say one thing about what I believe a true, free market for medical care will get us all.
Porsche vs Yugo.
I don't believe that access to medical care is a fungible, consumer good; it is not just another discretionary purchase. For those who need medical care, that service is not readily exchangeable for another set of goods or services: if a heart transplant patient can't afford the suite of devices and services that treatment requires, he cannot either shop for something a little cheaper or decide to put it off and buy that new pair of sneakers he's been eyeing instead.
And yet a market driven health care system would treat people like customers instead of like patients. The "system" would offer all the best treatments with all the latest drugs and devices and would price them according to demand (and the cost of provision). Just like cars. You want that heart transplant which requires the latest techniques and devices? You can have it - as long as you can afford it. Yes, sir, here's your Porsche! Otherwise, save your pennies or you can mosey on down to the Yugo dealer down the street. They'll give you some aspirin, maybe. Or some generic drug that's three generations removed from the current one.
Is that how we want to treat our fellow citizens who need help? Is that how we want to be treated when we are in need? According to the Rethuglicans, yes.
Turns out accessible health care falls into the same category as international treaties like the Montreal Protocol (see the post below). It helps out mostly poor people. And we know what kind of deal BushCo likes to give them.
One of today's opinion pieces makes the hard sell - again - for a health care system driven by... what else... the free market. The author, Regina Herzlinger, is not a doctor, not a health care professional of any kind. She's not even an HMO or insurance company flack. Ms. Herzlinger is a professor of business administration at Harvard. Surprised? No? Me neither.
I won't go into a lot of detail about the article - it is the usual pean to free markets. What I will do is say one thing about what I believe a true, free market for medical care will get us all.
Porsche vs Yugo.
I don't believe that access to medical care is a fungible, consumer good; it is not just another discretionary purchase. For those who need medical care, that service is not readily exchangeable for another set of goods or services: if a heart transplant patient can't afford the suite of devices and services that treatment requires, he cannot either shop for something a little cheaper or decide to put it off and buy that new pair of sneakers he's been eyeing instead.
And yet a market driven health care system would treat people like customers instead of like patients. The "system" would offer all the best treatments with all the latest drugs and devices and would price them according to demand (and the cost of provision). Just like cars. You want that heart transplant which requires the latest techniques and devices? You can have it - as long as you can afford it. Yes, sir, here's your Porsche! Otherwise, save your pennies or you can mosey on down to the Yugo dealer down the street. They'll give you some aspirin, maybe. Or some generic drug that's three generations removed from the current one.
Is that how we want to treat our fellow citizens who need help? Is that how we want to be treated when we are in need? According to the Rethuglicans, yes.
Turns out accessible health care falls into the same category as international treaties like the Montreal Protocol (see the post below). It helps out mostly poor people. And we know what kind of deal BushCo likes to give them.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
"More Poor People Dying? Cool." - g.W.b.
In the vein of never meeting an international treaty he liked, read up on just one that aWol is trying to break; The Montreal Protocol.
But Punta Arenas is full of poor, brown people, right?
Via Working for Change.
But Punta Arenas is full of poor, brown people, right?
Three years ago, the mayor of Punta Arenas, Juan Enrique Morano Cornejo, succinctly summarized the effects on the hoi polloi of this kind of politicking. "Around here," he told me, "we call it the Ley del Gallinero" -- the law of the chicken coop. The law of the chicken coop turns out to be a lot like the law of gravity: Things fall downward, and for the chickens at the bottom of the coop, life is, well, kind of shitty.Same kind of deal BushCo wants to give everyone: shitty.
Via Working for Change.
Cobalt Goes Missing in Iraq
If that headline doesn't grab you and send a shiver down your spine, you must be dead.
Read the full text in the NYT.
The lead graph:[UPDATE] I forgot to add that the Cobalt was all found but that several people in the local villages are thought to have radiation poisoning.
Read the full text in the NYT.
The lead graph:
A seeming lapse in surveillance by American forces has led to the looting of dangerously radioactive capsules from Saddam Hussein's main battlefield testing site in the desert outside Baghdad and the identification of at least one 30-year-old Iraqi villager, and possibly a village boy, as suffering from radiation sickness.And the question everyone would like an answer to:
Under investigation is how American surveillance of the area, now under the control of the 82nd Airborne Division, failed to spot villagers entering the testing site with heavy vehicles to dismantle three of the poles, or towers, for scrap, leaving heavy tire tracks in the desert.Possible answer:
Looting of military depots has been a persistent problem since the fall of Mr. Hussein, prompting suggestions that the 130,000 American troops in Iraq may be too stretched.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Freedom of the Press - Baghdad Style
Could this be the new model of a "free press" in the U.S.?
From CNN.com:
From CNN.com:
MOSUL, Iraq (CNN) -- The Iraqi Governing Council ordered the Arab language television network al Arabiya to shut down its operation in Baghdad on Monday, sending the Iraq Interior Ministry to the network's headquarters to "seize their uplink and transmission equipment until further notice."I mean, we have been told that the U.S. is exporting democracy to Iraq, right? And while this was on CNN, the article was mostly about the incidents over the weekend (yes, I'm avoiding that for now...) it was rather a small part of the story. What I want to know is why this isn't seen as alarming to the media. Or at the very least, hypocritical given the whitewash of "exporting democracy" that the administration is slathering all over anything related to this adventure.
Now That's A New Drug I Need!
It turned out to be a case of misreading the lead paragraph in a Wall Street Journal story, but...
I thought the sentence read that a certain drug company was looking for FDA approval for "a new omnipotence drug." Of course that's not what it said at all. And, of course, the government would never let a drug like that out on the market even if they could invent one. And since the powerful are almost always the first ones with access to new treatments, I'm pretty sure in retrospect, that there was no such "omnipotence" drug.
I mean, really; do you think Bush has had access to such a thing?
But of course, reality intruded on my momentary lapse of reading comprehension. Thankfully I don't need the drug the article was really about!
I thought the sentence read that a certain drug company was looking for FDA approval for "a new omnipotence drug." Of course that's not what it said at all. And, of course, the government would never let a drug like that out on the market even if they could invent one. And since the powerful are almost always the first ones with access to new treatments, I'm pretty sure in retrospect, that there was no such "omnipotence" drug.
I mean, really; do you think Bush has had access to such a thing?
But of course, reality intruded on my momentary lapse of reading comprehension. Thankfully I don't need the drug the article was really about!
