progressive involvement

Works now

I went to healthcare.gov this morning and browsed around.  I know HHS has had problems with this website, but it worked just fine this morning.  

In fact, it seems pretty well laid out.  If you're a business you go one direction, if an individual you go another.  Simple enough.  For individuals, the next most important thing is what state you live in.  For Colorado, you are directed off the government site to the state site.

If you're in a state that doesn't participate in ACA, and has done everything it can to undermine it, like Texas, for example, you stay on the government website and then must open an account.  I would imagine that this is where the sand got in the gears.

Cong. Fazio hopes the White House re-thinks its position

 

They were for it before they were against it

Flag-ship evangelical school, Wheaton College, was all het up to protest the administration's contraception coverage mandate because the rule forces the school to cover emergency contraception.  Then, it came to their attention that Wheaton's health plan already covered emergency contraception.

They had to quickly change their policy so they could be properly outraged at the administration.

Less enthusiasm please; I'm a Democrat

As Dan puts it:  "So a healthcare plan developed by the Heritage Foundation, enacted by Romney and expanded by Obama - which funnels money into for-profit corporations - is upheld because of the vote of a Bush appointee, yet liberals cheer and conservatives weep. Only in America."

Yes, there's definitely that.  If Obama's health care reform had been declared unconstitutional, eventually we would have had to go to single payer.  The reason is because it's the law that hospitals must treat the sick.  Somebody is going to have to pay for that.  At some point, it will dawn on people that single payer is the least expensive way to do it.

In my view, that's one of the two reasons John Roberts voted as he did.  He knew that, if this didn't go, single payer was down the road.  

Secondly, he may have been sensitive to the reputation of the Court.  Bush v. Gore alienated half the country, and Citizens United alienated half of the rest.  How would another 5-4 party-line vote look to the public?

So color my reaction "mixed."  On the one hand, this ruling actually delays getting us to what I think is the best and least-expensive option, and yes, it's a Republican plan that shovels money to the insurance industry.  (If we were going to go with a Republican plan, we should have gone with Nixon's.) 

On the other hand, it does establish the principle of universal health care.  The poor catch a break for once--not much of one, and it needs to be improved, but a break nonetheless, and that's worth something. 

The "morning after" pill does not cause abortion

It prevents egg release.  It doesn't work if the woman has already ovulated.

Cash price for a CAT scan at Los Alamitos Hospital (CA) is $250

But they charge insurance $4423.

Snapshot of health care reform

Click to enlarge.  HT:  Michael

No doubt

Some people apparently have the idea that health care reform has a chance of not being overturned by the Supreme Court.  They are naive, and they are wrong.  The vote will be 5-4 against.  They'll cook up some reasons.

Big government perverts

Talk about intrusive government.  The Virginia legislature has passed a bill saying that women who want to get an abortion must first have a "transvaginal ultrasound."  The ultrasound is medically unnecessary except for all but a few cases, which means that women have to get their bodies invaded for no good reason at all, except to humiliate them for having sex in the first place.

The idea is to get a picture of the fetus so it can be waved in the woman's face in order to deter her from getting an abortion, an approach which, incidentally, almost never results in the woman changing her mind about the abortion.

Why is it that the very people who rail against "big government" love, love, love the use of government power to shame and humiliate people for having sex?  

Let's call it what it is:  sadism.  Worse, not only are these sadists in denial about their own perversion and cruelty, they actually think they're swell people doing the Lord's work!  What is it about male-dominated heirarchies that generates the toxic mixture of self-righteous posturing and cruelty to women?