Try this on for health care

A model based on delivering health care to patients...not based on insurance company profits. What a novel idea, right?

As you read this article, you might wonder "isn't this how it should always have been"? You might remember a time when the doctor was someone who cared about his patients, and when your insurance was there to help you, not turn you down.

Maybe, instead of taxing our benefits or fining those who don't have insurance, we should look at reforming the insurance industry itself. Health care is, as the author states, a moral responsibility of a just society...it's one of those few business areas that really should not be a profit-driven free market.

Quite simply, making a profit from something as fundamental to human life as medical care seems morally wrong to me. Especially when the profit comes not from providing actual care, but solely from facilitating the financing of that care.

I cannot say that medical care is an individual right. It is not. But I have no problem at all stating that providing medical care as needed is a moral obligation of a just society. Our current private health insurance system does not contribute to fulfilling this obligation. Its sole reason for existence is profit.

A mutual non-profit system is his proposal, and it is a good proposal. Think of it in analogous terms to a local electric co-op...the goal isn't shareholder dividends and/or boosting the CEO pay, it's about providing an affordable service to the community it serves. Quality is improved, costs are kept in check, and fraud/abuse is kept to a minimum.

Novel idea? It's actually a somewhat old-fashioned idea that probably needs to see the light of day again. It almost reminds one of the days when we all cooperated to help one another, not for gain, but because it was just the right thing to do.

And in many instances, decisions made at the lowest level are better, more responsive, and more attuned to the needs of the end user.


Technorati Tags: Politics, Health Care

Confirmation theater

Ahh, politics. The reality of the Sotomayor hearings is that there is very little real "advise and consent" and a lot of theater for both sides.

Where does politics enter into all this? The Democrats now have 60 votes in the Senate and any Democrat who opposes his President's choice here will have hell to pay later, so Sotomayor's confirmation is assured. All that is left is political street theater. What the Democrats are hoping for, and will do their best to achieve, is for the Republicans on the committee to attack Sotomayor mercilessly. The result of such attacks will be to offend Latinos (and to a lesser extent, women) and thus make Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada (currently 19 electoral votes) Democratic for the next 10 years. The nature of the attacks doesn't matter. A large majority of Latinos consider Sotomayor qualified and will see an attack on her as an attack on Latinos in general. The Democrats will do everything they can to goad the Republicans on.

But the Republicans aren't stupid. They understand this issue full well. However, they have a different agenda. They want to energize their base by emphasizing conservative principles, in particular, the rule of law. By attacking Sotomayor on her presumed willingness to substitute her own judgment for the rule of law, they score points with conservatives everywhere, independent of their political affiliation, but most are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, of course.

And what about this whole black-and-white-law vs. life experience thing?

Consider, for example, the recent case of Savana Redding, a 13-year-old girl and honor student who was strip searched by her school nurse because a classmate said Redding had prescription-strength ibuprofen on her body. Prescription-strength ibuprofen is simply a pill with the same amount of active ingredient as two over-the-counter ibuprofen pills, which Redding could have legally brought to school. But the school has a policy of no prescription drugs in school without notifying the school nurse and said it was just enforcing its zero-tolerance-for-drugs policy. Redding was humiliated and her mother sued the school. Redding won the case and the school appealed to the Supreme Court.

Now here's the problem with the "robot theory" of Supreme Court justices. Suppose a justice is 100% committed to following the constitution so when the case hits, he or she Googles "United States constitution" and discovers the fourth amendment, which says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ...

Great. So if this search was unreasonable, it was also unconstitutional but if it was reasonable, it was fine. Trouble is, the constitution doesn't spell out what is reasonable. The justices had to make a judgment call here based on their life experiences. If the nurse hadn't insisted on peeking inside her bra and panties, would that have been reasonable? Suppose the nurse had done a pat-down search, the way TSA employees pat down thousands of passengers at airport security checkpoints every day? Suppose the nurse had merely asked Redding to empty her purse and pockets but leave her clothes on? What if the suspected drug had been marijuana instead of ibuprofen? Suppose three students had incriminated Redding instead of just one? Would it have been any different if it had been a boy rather than a girl? What if she were a 7-year-old or a 17-year-old instead of a 13-year-old? The constitution doesn't say a damn thing. So each justice has to make up his or her own mind. That's why the argument that a justice has to put aside his or her own feelings and just follow the law doesn't fly: in these tough cases, the law doesn't say what to do. In this case, the court decided 8-1 (with justice Clarence Thomas dissenting) that the search was illegal, but who knows what it would have decided in any of the variant scenarios sketched above.

This is why life experience...HUMAN experience...is necessary. Any computer can follow written instructions that are black-and-white, that are clear and precise. Law and the Constitution are anything but clear, precise, or black-and-white, as the above example shows. If it were, every Supreme Court decision would be 9-0...and frankly we wouldn't need a Supreme Court, because lower courts would be able to clearly and precisely apply the law.

But it's not that simple...which is why experience and background matter. We have 9 human beings on that court for a reason; because the Constitution and our laws are not computer code, not math equations. They are often open to interpretation, and nearly every situation is different. Like...what is "reasonable"? Well, it certainly depends not only on experience and worldview, but the situations in place at the time. Airport strip-searches may have been completely unreasonable until 9/11/01, for example, but are not so out-of-the-box now.

But in the end the hearings will be political posturing...Sotomayor will be confirmed, as she should be, but will be painted by the GOP as the next great judicial evil, and by Democrats as the next great American jurist, and both sides will use votes on her confirmation as political ammunition.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Senate, Sotomayor, Supreme Court

Finally...a glimmer of wisdom in the GOP

A majority of Americans think Sarah Palin is stepping down as Alaska's governor for political reasons, according to a new national poll, with a majority of Republicans now saying that they do not believe that Palin would be an effective president.

Only 33 percent of Republicans questioned in a CBS News survey released Monday night say that Palin would have the ability to serve effectively as president. Last fall, 71 percent of registered Republicans felt that way.

Well I suppose a dose of common sense was bound to hit Republicans eventually...

Technorati Tags: Politics, Palin, Republicans, Fail

Free Republic...a real family values class act

Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.

Such was the onslaught of derision on the site that the person who originally complained about the slurs, a Kristin N., claims only one comment in the first hundred posted actually criticized the remarks as inappropriate.

After attention from other blogs, the thread was suppressed and placed under review, but before long it was returned to the site intact, and attracted a new series of racial slurs when the original complaint email was posted publicly to the site, with the sender's email address intact.
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Among the comments on that thread, according to the Sun, were: "A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."
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Some of the quotes in Free Republic's original thread, as reported by the Sun:

"Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?"

"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps."

Good 'ol conservative family values...calling an 11 year old (Malia Obama) a "street whore". Good 'ol conservative racial values..."mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law".

Good 'ol conservative values.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Conservatives, Racism, Free Republic

Wingnut Texas Governor Perry appoints a creationist to head the state's education system

Gov. Rick Perry has appointed a new State Board of Education chief, Gail Lowe.

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However, she has fervidly advocated for Creationism in the classroom enough to draw plenty of criticism. The former SBOE chairman, Don McLeroy, lost his position partially due to his polarizing views on the subject.

Let's turn back the clock in Texas a few more years, shall we?

Technorati Tags: Politics, Republicans, Creationism, Evolution, Texas, Rick Perry

Audra Shay...Young Republican leader and Young Republican racist

Collectively her comments are products of an increasingly common GOP mind-set I call Obama Derangement Syndrome, the right-wingers’ version of a virulent strain of obsessive presidential hatred that many liberals exhibited during the Bush years. Symptoms include comparing the president to Hitler and ascribing to him every evil and unconstitutional intention imaginable. It is accompanied by the belief that such a partisan fever is patriotic.

And...she's a racist.

Specifically, a thread where one of her friends posts that “Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals,” and Shay responds eight minutes later with: “You tell em Eric! lol.”

She's currently the National Vice-Chair at Large of the Young Republicans, and is in the running for Chairman.

Nothing like infecting another generation...

Technorati Tags: Politics, Racism, Republicans

Cheney Ordered CIA to Keep Information from Congress

The CIA "withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees," reports the New York Times.

Imagine that...

Technorati Tags: Politics, Bush, Cheney, Corruption, Lies, Counterterrism

Burris reportedly will not seek Senate seat in 2010

Sen. Roland Burris, D-Illinois, is expected to announce Friday that he will not run for a full six-year term next year, a well-placed Democratic source told CNN.

Good. He should never have been seated in the first place.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Burris, Blagojevich, Corruption