Avdat

Wright is wrong

A lot of people have bent over backwards to defend Rev. Wright, and not without good cause.  But I was depressed to hear that Wright used his platform at the National Press Club to repeat the old canard that AIDS is a government-sponsored war on black people.  There's a difference between using hyperbolic rhetoric to make legitimate or even debatable points and using hyperbolic rhetoric to give credence to lies. 

Since it burst on the scene nearly 30 years ago AIDS has been politicized by both the right and the left.  The former said it was God's vengeance on alternative lifestyles, and we shouldn't get in the way.  The latter said that if you tell people not to have anonymous, unprotected anal sex you're infringing on their personal liberties.  It has hardly ever been treated strictly as a public health crisis.  This is partly why so many people have died of the disease.

Wright's comments are yet another regrettable effort at politicizing a medical problem.  Not only are they untrue, they cast the very institutions and resources that can help the people most at risk in the worst light possible.  It's unconscionable.

Robert Samuelson is not a hero

Robert Samuelson must have a hypochondriac great aunt.  How else to explain his bizarre diagnosis of what ails our health care system:  people don't pay enough for it.  If they had to pay more, then they'd be forced to make hard choices, and that would reign in costs.

So, I'll put it to you, Gentle Readers:  Do you make out like bandits with your nearest hospital/pharmacy/doctor's office?  When you see the bill for your colonoscopy/MRI/labor and delivery, do you guffaw like a used car salesman who's just sold a lemon to some sucker for a couple grand more than the blue book value?  No? 

Look, people do not get medical procedures the way that they load up on bric-a-brac at some outlet mall at the beach on a rainy afternoon.  They generally get them because they're sick. 

In fact, the problem is just the opposite from Samuelson's diagnosis.  Because health care is so expensive, people put off doctor's visits until they have to.  Which means that the disease or disability has progressed to the point of requiring an even more expensive treatment.

One solution is precisely the one Samuelson dismisses:  universal coverage.  Yes, even for the young and fit.  Getting people into a doctor's office for routine physicals and other preventative care will keep them healthier over the long run.  That will reduce the need for expensive therapies.

Samuelson fancies himself a living, breathing profile in courage for wanting to jack up health care costs on average Joes.  But some policies are deeply unpopular because they're dumb.  And there's no virtue in being an advocate for dumb, deeply unpopular policies.

Dickering

In August our autistic son had an MRI and an EEG to rule out any adverse side effects from the medication he takes.  The good news is that his brain is healthy.  But even after insurance we were left with a sizable bill.

Now we have savings for just such occasions, and I am well-paid by my congregation.  But... I just didn't want to part with that much money.  The statement said, "Contact us about our financial assistance plan," so I did.  Provided that there were no interest payments, I wanted to pay it off in monthly installments.  At least the money is in the bank longer, earning a tad more interest.

But the operator says, "If you can pay it today, we'll knock 20% off your bill."  Um, yeah!  Let me get my credit card!

So, who knew that hospitals aren't at all like Carmax?  You can dicker on an MRI.

I'll bet a lot of people don't know, and they pay in full.  Or worse, they can't pay, don't read the fine print, and they hide the bill in the drawer, hoping that it'll just disappear.

So I pass this info along in order that you too, Gentle Reader, can save 20% on your gall bladder surgery or whatever.  But I also pass it along because it doesn't seem quite right that the savvier you are, the cheaper your health care is. 

Party like it's 1991

Wildly popular, morally just, pragmatically sound legislation defeated by sclerotic GOP orthodoxy.  The fate of the SCHIP bill reminds me of when the President's father vetoed the Family and Medical Leave Act.  All it meant was that we had to wait until a new administration was in office for a month or so to break the logjam.  And so it will be...

Against hysteria

Oh dear:

Sabrina Rahim doesn't practice any particular faith, but she has signed a letter declaring that because of her deeply held religious beliefs, her 4-year-old son should be exempt from the vaccinations required to enter preschool.  She is among a small but growing number of parents around the country who are claiming religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children when the real reason may be skepticism of the shots or concern they can cause other illnesses.  "It's misleading," Rahim admitted, but she said she fears that earlier vaccinations may be to blame for her son's autism.

I mean, when you can't tell the difference between an atheist and a Christian Scientist, well... there's something deliciously ironic right on the tip of my tongue, but I can't seem to get it out.  Will leave it up to Hitchens.  He is a gifted writer, even if he is a bigot and a warmonger.

Meanwhile, we seem to be in full-blown MRSA meltdown.  Yes, it appears as though staph infections kill more people than was previously thought.  Still, this recent front page story on one of those moms who was just shocked (!) that her child had to go to school with a child with MRSA is telling.  Titled "Parent says schools aren't doing enough to prevent spread of MRSA infection," it could have just as easily been titled "Mom freaks out" because the facts reported in the article, namely, that MRSA can be easily dealt with by hand-washing, covering the boil, and a regimen of strong antibiotics, belied the mother's concerns.

TMI is a great acronym for everything from that drunk chick at the bar telling you in no uncertain terms what her ex-boyfriend used to do for her, to that office mate who thinks you need to know every single excruciating detail about his colonoscopy, but it could just as easily be applied to the information overload that's typical of modern life.  There's always "breaking news" on CNN, even if they have to go live to a car chase in Oklahoma City, and you live in Pittsburgh.  There's always somebody texting you OMG!!!  It's hard to weigh genuine threats from peripheral ones.

Or is it?  The exotic, the new, the poorly understood, and the rare seem to take on an exaggerated importance for those prone to anxiety.  Never mind that no one's died from autism, but untold numbers of people have died from communicable diseases.  Never mind that one child died from a staph infection in some school somewhere, but thousands die from accidents.  The utterly implausible specter of your child being unwittingly subjected to some kind of Nazi medical experiment by BIGPHARMA and its legions of lab-coated misanthropes rubbing their hands together and chuckling malignantly is far more compelling than your child dying the way lots of children die each year in this world:  some airborne illness that brings fever, brain swelling, and death.  Why, my child is way too special for that!

Yes, for Little Miss Precious, only paranoia on the scale of Oliver Stone's JFK will do.

It's not my back; it's my fabulous health insurance that deters me from running

Put this way, I'm not sure why anyone would vote for any GOP Presidential candidate based on their health care plan:

On each side, the plans are basically united. The Republican plans make you pay more for your healthcare so you'll buy less. They do this by weakening the protection that insurance offers from health expenses. The Democratic plans bring everyone into the system, then use that leverage to reform the insurers and extract savings through efficiencies of scale.

Sure, there's plenty of other reasons why people would vote for that lot.  If you think that diplomacy and adhering to the Geneva Conventions are for guys who go in for anonymous gay sex in bathrooms sissies, then you might put up with the GOP's strange notions about health care in favor of far more important things like torturing and killing as many Moslems as possible.  Or, if you make the big bucks, maybe the cost of health care is irrelevant.

At any rate, all I'm hoping for is a guy out there who can turn Klein's analysis into a 30 second ad.  That shouldn't be too hard, now should it?

It Takes a Village to Maintain One's Virginity

Some in the left blogosphere have greeted Michael Gerson's op-ed on teen sexuality with profane derision.  Others are baffled.  I think that they miss the point.  Gerson's not writing to the general public but to conservative Evangelicals, although the rest of us are allowed to overhear.  With a lax ecclesiology and and emphasis on personal decision-making, conservative Evangelicals might think that all they need to do is get their kids to sign a virginity pledge, and that out to keep them chaste until marriage. 

In fact, teens need positive peer pressure.  They need friends who will not scorn them for their lack of sexual experience, who will even praise them for their restraint.  They need frequent conversations with parents, pastors and other mentors about dating, sexuality and marriage. 

I suppose that if you loathe Gerson for providing the rhetorical window dressing for the disastrous war in Iraq, or if you're inclined to think that conservatives are, in general, hypocritical and repressed about sex, or, if you think that teens having sex is great as long as they use protection, then it might be easy to miss his point.  But as far as it goes, it's fine.  It's a short argument for communitarian ethics.  I've got no problem with that.

Krugman

Paul Krugman demolishes the "socialized medicine makes for agonizing waits" meme by pointing out something we all know:  We're already waiting forever to get treated, even in our blessed free-market health care system.  The only difference between health care here and on the far side of the pond is that here, it's more expensive, and here, fewer people have access.

It'll be hard to knock down this urban legend, but shoot, it's hard to knock down any urban legend.  I still get email forwards begging me to write the FCC and put a stop to Madeline Murry-O'Hare's plot to void the airwaves of religious content, even though the lady's been dead for years now.  But bully for Krugman whose 750 words are worth more than all the blathering on AM Radio about the "socialized medicine" bogeyman.

Perhaps the best thing about Krugman's article is it shows that the President's disassociation from reality isn't limited to Iraq.  "Let them get treated in an ER" is a truly Marie Antoinette-like statement to the 40 million Americans without health insurance.  Again, you know this, even if GOP politicians don't, but for the millions who live between Medicaid and the ability to buy medical insurance, you're but one ER visit away from bankruptcy.  We can do better than forcing millions of people to choose between getting their child's broken bone set and their ability to save some money for their college education.