They Just Don't Want to Listen

claire mccaskill seems like a very smart lady. she is clear in her explanations and very direct with her constituents. but the people in the room don't seem to want to listen. she explains that there is no government funding for abortions in the bill. they boo. she strikes down their argument that there should be no government interferance in health care by following their argument to its logical conclusion: if that is true then we must get rid of the VA and medicare. they boo. they have some nonsense argument about congress' special health plan...i'm not exactly sure what this argument is all about...the government negotiated a health care plan for federal employees just like any company would, so i don't really get their point of contention. regardless, they don't seem to care. no single payer plan...they can't get over it.

WTF is wrong with these people? well, they just said it. they don't trust her. why don't they just vote for rush for president? that seems like who they believe. i just don't get it.

i can't wait until this bill passes and the mass euthonizing can start. that is the obama plan to electoral victory: (1) kill all the old people because they don't support him which would skew the demographics of the country younger and therefore make more of the population likely to vote for obama. (2) steal people's money out of their bank account which will make them poor and dependent on the government and therefore more likely to vote for obama.

and, yes, some fuckwad just gave mcckaskill the finger on national TV. way to go. grow up you fucking little baby. thats all these people are: spoiled little brats. they want it their way or they are going to take their ball and go home. i give mcckaskill tons of credit for the way she has handeled herself in front of these dipshits.

The Republican Plan for Health Insurance Reform

What Is More Dangerous...

indefinite detention or universal health care?

i'm done with these people. i say "fuck 'em". you lost the fucking election, so don't go on with this whinny-ass, spoiled brat behavior. george w. bush took this country in some radical directions after an election that he barely (questionably) won, but you know what...HE WON THE FUCKING ELECTION! obama won with a significantly larger margin and larger mandate than bush and he is doing exactly what bush did: he is trying to enact the policies he ran on. what is the problem here? you don't agree, fine, but quit this bullshit and start acting like grownups.

maybe in 2012 obama can run on his true platform, "kill the seniors".

Will Robot Insurance Be Included in the Public Option?

since the congress has already made their anti-senior agenda clear, i ask you this, member of congress: will the new health care bill cancel my existing robot insurance?

WTF Is She Talking About?

palin claims that if obamacare passes "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

really? well, in honor of abraham lincoln, the de facto founder of the republican party, i hereby challenge you to a "spot resolution challenge". what is a "spot resolution challenge"? the "spot resolutions" were a series of bills authored by lincoln that challenged president polk to point to the spot on american soil where blood was spilled, the alleged justification for the mexican-american war (here is the wikipedia entry).

in my version of the challenge, i challenge the former governor to point to the spot in the president's health care bill where it specifically authors "death panels" and/or where it calls for eliminating health care for down syndrome babies. point to the spot. show me where because a) i don't think i support a bill that authorizes "death panels" but b) my BS meter got up when reading her claim. so, in fairness, point to the spot. my BS meter goes down and you win the day.

on a side note, it seems like the parents of down syndrome children would WANT some form of government health care that protects parents' ability to get the necessary medical coverage for their children without the fear of rising premiums or cancellation of coverage. but thats just me, you know, here in the land of reality.

Soylent Green is People!

sometimes i feel a little like charlton heston at the end of soylent green. watch the clip below. you could replace his words with "medicare is government run health insurance!"

Is This Guy F**king Crazy?

ladies and gentleman, please meet paul campos. mr. campos is the author of a book called "the obesity myth", which from what i can tell, makes the argument that obesity is not a public health issue at all. that thesis is so outrageous on its face that it actually makes the birthers look sane (only in comparison...the birthers are still batshit crazy).

based on the quick and dirty from amazon, there is one argument that i do agree with that BMI is a horrible statistic. there is nothing wrong with calculating BMI, per se, i just think the formula is off. my BMI is on the high end of where it should be, and i am tipping the scales a little bit higher than i would like to right now, but in no way am i in danger of being obese. based on the current BMI formula, i bet 90% of professional athletes would be considered overweight or obese, but guys who play in the NBA who are 6'3", 205 lbs (my height/weight) are not overweight: they are solid rock.

but back to the point. this moron campos did an interview with megan mcardle of the atlantic about the obesity myth. in the interview he said "The correlations between higher weight and greater health risk are weak except at statistical extremes. The extent to which those correlations are causal is poorly established. There is literally not a shred of evidence that turning fat people into thin people improves their health. And the reason there's no evidence is that there's no way to do it." is he fucking kidding me? there is no evidence that being fat is bad for your health? really?

reading further down the interview it seems that his main argument is slightly off-base. his argument is with the BMI, which as i said before, i agree that the BMI is meaningless, not because the BMI itself isn't a useful statistic its just that the formula used to calculate the BMI seems off.

campos just seems like another one of these right-wing assholes (without actually knowing his ideology) who doesn't think that governmental policy can change behavior and influence outcomes. megan poses a simple question:

What should we do instead if we want to reduce health care costs? Here are some proposed ideas I've heard:

• Taxes on soda
• New urbanism (make people walk more)
• Bring back physical education in schools
• Make gym memberships tax deductible
• Menu labelling.
  

Will any of these make us healthier, if not thinner? And if not, what will?

campos answered:

Some of those ideas may have merit independent of whether they'll make people thinner (they won't). It's good to encourage physical activity, but NOT if the purpose of encouraging it is to try to make people thinner. Then it's counter-productive. People will be healthier if they're more active and don't smoke and if they avoid eating disordered behavior (like dieting in particular).

But Americans are actually very healthy and getting healthier all the time, despite the massive inefficiencies and dysfunctions of our health care system.

how can one argue that new urbanism, which encourages daily walking, won't make people thinner, which on the balance will make people healthier? same for bringing back phys ed. and menu labeling helps people make smart choices about what to eat. new york's experiment in menu labeling i think is great. i love having nutritional info in front of me when eating out (although, i have to say that i rarely go into chain restaurants which are the only ones required to post this info, so its impact on me is slightly limited). and a soda tax? i'm all for it. we tax the shit out of beer and cigarettes, so why not soda? soda leads to unhealthy outcomes and therefore its true cost to society goes unrealized. people complain that this is government interfering in daily choice. this is untrue. it is more accurate pricing of a good. soda is negatively impacting society, like carbon, and needs to be priced. look at what increasing cigarette taxes has done. almost no other crop, save for maybe cotton and cord, has had the impact on our history that tobacco has had, but yet it is not a right to be able to smoke tobacco (full disclosure: i am not arguing that tobacco should be banned. adults can make their own decisions. it just has to be accurately price to reflect its true cost on society). drinking soda is the same...its not a right, its a privilege.

but to claim that we do not have an obesity problem in this country is nonsense. obesity leads to a whole host of health issues from diabetes to heart disease and those people are driving up health care costs. i want to scream when i see fat-ass little kids drinking soda, eating chips and other crap who obviously have never exercised in their life. they are the people who are going to have serious health problems when they grow up. no one can argue otherwise. if your issue is with the BMI, fine. but dont confuse the point: obesity is bad for you. we need to find a new statistic, whether it is a new BMI or otherwise, to accurately measure this so we can predict its impact on health and costs in the health care system.

No More Seniors on Medicare Complaining About Health Care

if i hear one more damn senior (apologies to seniors, including my grandparents) complaining about the cost of health care, what operations they can or cannot receive (some lady asked about hip and knee replacements to give you an idea of where she was coming from), and what reform should look like, while at the same time receiving medicare i don't know what am going to.

please. just stop. now. if you have private health care, fine, you can speak. but no one, i mean no one, on medicare should have the audacity to question a public option on health care.

medicare was created to take care of you and to ease the burden on families and society. now, can i have a turn? am i somehow less deserving?