Recently, our own GoRight challenged my to a sparring match.  It was part of a subthread that I instigated by lamenting that, essentially, Republicans suck .  We both caught a bit of grief from B Rational about being hyperpartisan and biased, which resulted interestingly enough in our both attacking the purplebar, with I calling him a mealy-mouthed Broderite and GoRight attacking his condescension. 

The parents of a former Monroeville High School student filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Center for Organ Recovery & Education in Pittsburgh

Obama has released his FY 2010 Budget , and there's a lot to digest in there. NPR has a helpful overview by department. My personal, overall impression is that there is some great stuff in there, but it is too big.

I've always been reasonably healthy, don't need to visit the doctor much, and have never had major surgery. Consequently, my evaluation of our health care system mostly comes from second-hand reports: conversations with family and friends, articles in newspapers or magazines or blogs, statistics found online. The upside of this situation is that I have some detachment and perhaps a little more objectivity than I would otherwise, but the downside is that I am not personally confronted with the frustrating trade-offs that often characterize health care in the US and so I'm not required to think too deeply about them. That's changed now that I have a young child. We recently visited the ER (he's fine) and in the aftermath I found myself wondering about the competing incentives that drive decisions related to medical care, particularly in an urgent or emergency situation.

Hat tip to Arnold Kling

An article in the WaPo looks at a debate going on at the state level in RI over Medicaid spending. Its state budget bursting at the seams, the state legislature is embattled over what to do with Medicaid, which comprises about a quarter of state expenditures.

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As many here at Swords Crossed are aware, I am a steadfast advocate for following the Golden Rule. So much so, in fact, that I assume that my political opponents are all honorable people who, themselves, likewise follow the Golden Rule. As such, I feel duty bound to treat Democrats and "liberals" the same way that they are treating people on my side of the political aisle. The logic being, of course, that since my opponents are following the Golden Rule that they must be treating me the way that they, in fact, want to be treated themselves.

I was surfing around the web looking for a piece of humor to mirror the satirical humor so often found on the liberal side of the web but from a right wing point of view. I found this piece from a random blogger who shall remain nameless on a website that shall likewise remain nameless, which fits the bill perfectly.

The author, not unlike myself, is angry about how cruel satirists can be when making their points. As such, the piece that follows targets left-wing satirists and their art by demonstrating the cruel realities of how their pieces are perceived by their political opponents.

My car is making a funny grating sound at low speeds, as if something is rubbing together. We have mechanics in town that we trust and who do good work, so we dropped it off this morning. Despite my faith in the shop, I couldn't help thinking to myself I guarantee they'll find something wrong that a few hundred dollars will fix right up. Not fair of me, but then again they make money when the car requires substantial work -- they have an incentive, in a way, for my car to break down. It's arguably balanced somewhat by the potential for me to switch mechanics if I feel like I'm getting substandard service, but honestly how would I know?

How to Get Universal Health Care

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they believe in giving Americans universal health care. I don’t believe them. Anyone who takes the time to understand universal health care should conclude that only a simple single payer system will reform the current outrageous system that benefits the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

The contorted plans from Clinton and Obama are not sufficient reforms. And what John McCain has proposed is sheer nonsense and by itself should cause any conscious American to avoid voting for him.

I took the liberty in creating an SC Folding@Home team .

For those of you not familiar with F@H, I'll let their FAQ do the talking. Essentially, you run a program that runs only when you are not actively using your computer. It does complex mathematical calculations involved in protein folding, which has applications in treating many diseases.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen .

Tyler comments on a post by Megan McCardle at the Atlantic about what the legal ramifications should be for drug companies' products that pass the FDA approval process. Megan's commentary was, in turn, prompted by a post by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly .

Starting with Drum:

Promoted for discussion by Brendan

This is inspired by this diary by All-Time QB about Britain’s NHS, and by our need to address the issue of healthcare. I am a bit leery of saying we should copy Country X’s system, but our system is clearly dysfunctional and some expanded form of nationalized healthcare is in our future. So, what problems need to be addressed, how might we structure a system to address those problems, and how can we do it without complete destruction of the market forces that support both innovation and supply?

Promoted by Brendan; paragraph from within text copied to top to introduce topic.

When the New York Times printed this story last week "A heartfelt appeal for a graceful exit " it struck a chord, that I wanted to amplify here. The chord is both personal, for me in the not too distant future, and my Aunt, who will turn 105 this month.

Promoted by Brendan

I think this story helps to illustrate what's wrong with the medical insurance industry in this country, and why/how we should change it.

The plan to provide universal health care in CA, a bipartisan effort led by Republican Governor Schwarzenegger and Democratic Assembly Speaker Núñez, was voted down Monday 7-1 in the Senate Health Committee. In the end it faced opposition from both Republicans and Democrats, as well as from powerful special interest groups like the tobacco industry.

Below, some quotes from this summary and brief thoughts on implications.

Hat tip to Kling at EconLog :

The Boston Globe reports :

Mayor Thomas M. Menino embarked on a highly public campaign yesterday to block CVS Corp. and other retailers from opening medical clinics inside their stores, an effort that exposed a rift between Menino and the state's public health commissioner, a longtime ally.

In my diary entry 70,000 Britons expected to escape the NHS this year we explored the quality of care concerns that are leading many Britons to look at healthcare overseas.  A few posters correctly pointed out that it's not a phenomenon limited to the NHS.  Many people look to "escape" our healthcare system because of rising costs.

Tyler Cowen has an excellent piece up over at Marginal Revolution .

Cowen discusses come of the finer points made by Jon Cohn of TNR.

I highly recommend reading both pieces starting with Cohn's. The beginning and very end is where most of the meat is. The personal story is nice but it's not where the relevant policy information is.

This column by Bob Herbert of the New York Times struck me in a way that he did not anticipate. It was meant to dramatize the tragedy of leaving people to fend for themselves without universal health care. But, it actually illustrated one of the unexamined reasons why such an entitlement will be impossible to achieve in today's America.

Well, not me actually. I lack the...just about everything....to do this. But Michael Cannon , Director of Health Policy Studies at Cato, has the goods to carry out such an endeavor and that was his CHALLENGE to Krugman on SCHIP in particular although I'm sure Cannon would draw many similarities with Health Care in general.

This is an idea I've heard from people connected to handling healthcare for companies/corporations, and not something I came up on my own. I thought it was interesting and worthy of consideration for the reason I'll briefly outline below, which might conflict with the Conservative emphasis on letting the free market handle most of the costs balancing. In this brief essay I will focus on the already insured, whether through the private plans or through Medicare and SCHIP. I will leave insuring the uninsured to Liberal thinkers as that is a minor (though substantial) part of the problem.

There comes a time when even people floating in the clouds of Free Market glorification (guilty to some degree of course) have to come to grips with reality of what is going on in this country. Our Healthcare system is out of control, the costs inflation has run away, and it has the potential to actively degrade our Country's overall standard of living. As far as I am concerned there are two branches of degradation of the standard of living. One branch is where we as a country are declining through no obvious/active fault of our own and where the World/Environment/whatever conditions are negatively affecting our country. The other is where we as a country are fully responsible for what is happening through letting certain detrimental policies run amock and afoul of the basic principles of fairness. I think the cause of our Healthcare crisis is the latter.

Read on...