From Esquire, excerpts that illustrate why I generally support and often admire Dennis Kucinich's political perspectives and decision making processes:

"The angst that members are feeling about this bill — the temperature that's been raised in the body politic over this bill, the characterizations of the bill in a debate that's been quite distorted — all of those things argue against bringing up another health care bill in the near future if this bill were to go down."

"Well I had to consider that. Because I have to take responsibility for that."

"People were telling me, "Dennis, you are helping to gather momentum in the direction toward the defeat of the bill." That's what people were telling me. That's what the message was. And: "Is this something you really want to do?" And of course I have to consider, when the vote is close, and however the final tally turns, but whether the bill passes by one vote or five votes or more, the question of momentum was something everyone was concerned about at that point. And people were concerned that if I continued to maintain my position of hammering away at the defects of the bill that I may cause its defeat. That's a legitimate criticism. It's something that I had to take into account in terms of my personal responsibility for the position that I held, and the impact that it would have on my constituents. We always have to be open to people who may hold a view that may be different than yours. Because you might learn something."

"And so as we came closer, and it appeared that I would be in a pivotal position, I realized that the moment required me to look at this in the broadest terms possible. To look at this in terms of the long-term impact on my constituents, of the moment in history in which we now stand, of the impact on the country, of the impact on the Obama presidency, on the impact on the president personally. I had to think about all of this. I couldn't just say, 'Well here's my position: I'm for single-payer, and this isn't single-payer, so I'm going to defeat the bill.'"

Hooray for H.R. 3590 and 4872 — Because, in the end, rice and beans is better than no rice and beans. We should have had Universal Single Payer coverage, but for the tea party tinfoil hat brigade. Give it another 40 years for that vestigial DNA to flush out of the gene pool and we’ll finally get there. I’m sorry we didn’t get it done for you son, we simply didn’t try hard enough.

So there we have it. Static (music | lyrics) killed healthcare. We are left with nothing but A Gun Against Our Heads and NO OPTIONS.

Then, on Christmas Day 2009, something bad might have, could have, conceivably almost really nearly ... happened. Something that could have, if it had happened, harmed nearly 0.000001% as many people as bad shellfish kills in any given year. This dimwitted act by dimwits on the other side of the pond is now being served up as justification for the dimwits and thugs on our side to "protect us" from such very real possible potential threats with increased violence and militarism, directed primarily at our own domestic population.

Brilliant. If you want me, you can find me, in the outskirts, in the fringes ...

Shared by @silverton: As tweeted earlier http://twitter.com/silverton/status/3902022666 ... leave it to Dr. Reich to expound the rationale PRECISELY!
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I was just on the phone talking with a reporter for a national media outlet who referred to Senator Olympia Snowe's idea for a public option "trigger" as the "centrist position." Whoa. When the mainstream media start naming something as "centrist" the game is almost over because just about everyone with any authority in our nation's capital wants to be at the "center."Let me back up a step. The public insurance option has become a lightening rod for Republicans, hate radio jocks, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, and lobbyists for the health-industrial complex who accuse the White House and Democrats of planning a "government takeover" of health care. Anything that has the word "public" in it is always an automatic target for their rants. But most Democrats understand that a public insurance option is essential to control healthcare costs and expand coverage -- both because private for-profit insurers now face so little competition in most markets that only the prod of a public option will force them to lower costs and extend coverage, and also because a nationwide public option would have the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and healthcare providers, thereby pushing private insurers to do the same.The White House is looking for a way to be in favor of a public option but also get enough Blue Dog Democrats -- many of whom hail from swing districts and states, and therefore need some cover -- to vote for it. One such cover is a Republican Senator from Maine, named Olympia Snowe. If she votes for the bill, Blue Dogs can calm their constituents -- who have been worked up into a lather by the right -- by saying "you see? Even a prominent Republican senator is voting for this."So will Snowe play ball? It depends. Her idea (evidently encouraged by Rahm Emanuel, the President's chief of staff) is to hold off on any public option. Give the private insurance companies a period of time -- say, five years -- within which to make changes that extend coverage to more people and also drive down long-term costs. If those goals for coverage and cost aren't met by end of the five-year grace period, kaboom: the public option is triggered -- which will force such changes on the insurance companies.The beauty of Snowe's proposal is that it seems to offer Blue Dogs a way out and liberal Democrats a way in. Nobody has to vote for or against a public option. The public option just happens automatically if its purposes -- wider coverage and lower costs -- aren't achieved. And the trigger idea seems so, well, centrist.The problem is twofold. First, it's impossible to design airtight goals for coverage and cost reductions that won't be picked over by five thousand lobbyists and as many lawyers and litigators even if, at the end of the grace period, it's apparent to everyone else that the goals aren't met. Washington is a vast cesspool of well-paid specialists who know how to stop anything resembling a "trigger." Believe me, they will.Second, any controversial proposal with some powerful support behind it that gets delayed -- for five years or three years or whenever -- is politically dead. Supporters lose interest. Public attention wanders. The media are on to other issues. Right now the public option is very much alive because so many Democrats care deeply about it, with good reason. But put it off for years, and assign it to the lawyers and lobbyists I just mentioned, and you can kiss it goodbye for ever.If the idea is to have a public option waiting in the wings in case private insurers blow it, why wait for it at all? If it gets lower costs and wider coverage, it should be included right from the start.What worries me isn't just that the mainstream media are calling Snowe's trigger "centrist," but that the White House might see it as an easy out. "I continue to believe that a public option within that basket of insurance choices would help improve quality and bring down costs," the President said Monday. Fine. But he hasn't yet said the public option is essential. He hasn't threatened to veto a bill lacking it. There's even reason to believe the White House has quietly encouraged Olympia Snowe to pursue her "trigger."The best way to give Blue Dogs cover is for the President to explain clearly and boldly why the public option is essential to health care reform, and why he's ready to veto any bill that doesn't include it. That's also the only way to give the nation a good chance of getting true health care reform. Hopefully, that's what he'll do Wednesday evening.Otherwise, we get a trigger to nowhere. [extracted from The Snowe Job, and Why a "Trigger" for a Public Option is Nonsense via feedly]

Shared by @silverton: "If you are as a professional humor writer, and there is a giant colon within a 200-mile radius, you are legally obligated to go see it. So I went to Miami Beach and crawled through the Colossal Colon. I wrote a column about it, making tasteless colon jokes." - Dave Barry #MadScienistClown

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  Posted by Big Picture

(This Dave Barry column was originally published Feb. 22, 2008.)http://www.miamiherald.com/dave_barry/story/427603.htmlOK. You turned 50. You know you're supposed to get a colonoscopy. But you haven't. Here are your reasons:1. You've been busy.2. You don't have a history of cancer in your family.3. You haven't noticed any problems.4. You don't want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.Let's examine these reasons one at a time. No, wait, let's not. Because you and I both know that the only real reason is No. 4. This is natural. The idea of having another human, even a medical human, becoming deeply involved in what is technically known as your ''behindular zone'' gives you the creeping willies.I know this because I am like you, except worse. I yield to nobody in the field of being a pathetic weenie medical coward. I become faint and nauseous during even very minor medical procedures, such as making an appointment by phone. It's much worse when I come into physical contact with the medical profession. More than one doctor's office has a dent in the floor caused by my forehead striking it seconds after I got a shot.In 1997, when I turned 50, everybody told me I should get a colonoscopy. I agreed that I definitely should, but not right away. By following this policy, I reached age 55 without having had a colonoscopy. Then I did something so pathetic and embarrassing that I am frankly ashamed to tell you about it.What happened was, a giant 40-foot replica of a human colon came to Miami Beach. Really. It's an educational exhibit called the Colossal Colon, and it was on a nationwide tour to promote awareness of colo-rectal cancer. The idea is, you crawl through the Colossal Colon, and you encounter various educational items in there, such as polyps, cancer and hemorrhoids the size of regulation volleyballs, and you go, ''Whoa, I better find out if I contain any of these things,'' and you get a colonoscopy.If you are as a professional humor writer, and there is a giant colon within a 200-mile radius, you are legally obligated to go see it. So I went to Miami Beach and crawled through the Colossal Colon. I wrote a column about it, making tasteless colon jokes. But I also urged everyone to get a colonoscopy. I even, when I emerged from the Colossal Colon, signed a pledge stating that I would get one.But I didn't get one. I was a fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I was practically a member of Congress.Five more years passed. I turned 60, and I still hadn't gotten a colonoscopy. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from my brother Sam, who is 10 years younger than I am, but more mature. The email was addressed to me and my middle brother, Phil. It said:Dear Brothers,I went in for a routine colonoscopy and got the dreaded diagnosis: cancer. We're told it's early and that there is a good prognosis that they can get it all out, so, fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that. And of course they told me to tell my siblings to get screened. I imagine you both have.''Um. Well.First I called Sam. He was hopeful, but scared. We talked for a while, and when we hung up, I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis. Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BUTT!''I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ''MoviPrep,'' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes -- and here I am being kind -- like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ''a loose watery bowel movement may result.'' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ''What if I spurt on Andy?'' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the hell the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was Dancing Queen by Abba. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, Dancing Queen has to be the least appropriate.''You want me to turn it up?'' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.''Ha ha,'' I said.And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, Abba was shriekingDancing Queen! Feel the beat from the tambourine . . .''. . . and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.But my point is this: In addition to being a pathetic medical weenie, I was a complete moron. For more than a decade I avoided getting a procedure that was, essentially, nothing. There was no pain and, except for the MoviPrep, no discomfort. I was risking my life for nothing.If my brother Sam had been as stupid as I was -- if, when he turned 50, he had ignored all the medical advice and avoided getting screened -- he still would have had cancer. He just wouldn't have known. And by the time he did know -- by the time he felt symptoms -- his situation would have been much, much more serious. But because he was a grown-up, the doctors caught the cancer early, and they operated and took it out. Sam is now recovering and eating what he describes as ''really, really boring food.'' His prognosis is good, and everybody is optimistic, fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that.Which brings us to you, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. Over-50-And-Hasn't-Had-a-Colonoscopy. Here's the deal: You either have colo-rectal cancer, or you don't. If you do, a colonoscopy will enable doctors to find it and do something about it. And if you don't have cancer, believe me, it's very reassuring to know you don't. There is no sane reason for you not to have it done.I am so eager for you to do this that I am going to induce you with an Exclusive Limited Time Offer. If you, after reading this, get a colonoscopy, let me know by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to Dave Barry Colonoscopy Inducement, The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132. I will send you back a certificate, signed by me and suitable for framing if you don't mind framing a cheesy certificate, stating that you are a grown-up who got a colonoscopy. Accompanying this certificate will be a square of limited-edition custom-printed toilet paper with an image of Miss Paris Hilton on it. You may frame this also, or use it in whatever other way you deem fit.But even if you don't want this inducement, please get a colonoscopy. If I can do it, you can do it. Don't put it off. Just do it.Be sure to stress that you want the non-Abba version.

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[extracted from Dave Barry: A journey into my colon -- and yours via feedly]

STANFORD-NETWORK Digest for Wednesday, September 02, 2009.

Subject: sixty years to enact universal health care is not "rushing"
From: john paval
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 09:34:30 +0200
X-Message-Number: 2

I don't agree that there is any "rush" to get universal health care put in place.

It was first proposed in 1949 by President Harry Truman.

The issue has been studied to death, and proposals have been on the table constantly for decades.

The arguments are so recycled that, at this point, conservatives who opposed the administration's plan as a "government takeover of the health industry" are actually proposing that we instead turn to the option of health care cooperatives.

Sound familiar? If it doesn't, it should. And perversely so. The Clinton health care proposal in the early 1990s was based on creating large scale health insurance cooperatives. They, in turn, got that idea from conservative think tanks in the 1980s. Nonetheless, the opposition at THAT time lambasted the proposal for health care cooperatives as SOCIALIST.

The bouncing up and back of the idea of health care cooperatives from conservative think tanks to the clinton administration back to conservative opposition is...bullshit historical obstructionism on a staggering scale. There is no shame in those who raise the issue now, just as there was no shame when rightwingers who shut down the government in the 1990s on the grounds that we had to balance the budget then ran up trillion of dollars in deficit spending once they got control of the white house as well as the congress.

At this point, you have to be out of touch with historical reality to argue that health care reform is being rushed.

Of course, in a media age where people forget last week...that happens a lot.

When I hear people say, "what's the RUSH" on this issue, it reminds me of the way segregationists always argued that we needed to go SLOW on civil rights legislation. And they did, at every step of the way.

Even though action on that issue was one hundred years overdue. When you are on the wrong side of an historical moral issue, just argue delay, for technical reasons. It worked on slavery, it worked on civil rights, it worked on women's rights. What the hell, it can work on health care, too.

For health care, action is sixty years overdue, and counting.

The question is not whether the U.S. is RUSHING towards providing health care for everyone.

The question is how much longer can the american people, in good conscience, DELAY doing so.

Even the most prudent estimates indicate that tens of thousands die in the U.S. every year for lack of access to adequate health care. So this delay...is bloody. It's been a holocaust, spread out over decades.

Enough is enough. It is unconscionable to continue denying every american the human right to decent health care just so some americans can make more money off the system or so that others can preserve some special advantages they have in the present system.

It's time for this delay to end, at LAST.

best,

John

Shared by @silverton: I'm a huge fan and advocate of WFMI's "Shared Fate" philosophy and its 19x Salary Caps. This article is interesting; although I haven't seen the deductible structure for the Public Option, yet. While deductibles do seem like a reasonable way to contain costs, they can also present a significant disincentive to preventive care or seeking timely care for the majority of paycheck-to-paycheck workers; which means most of us. Waiting too long to seek care is a great way to lower baseline health, hence productivity, and send catch-up costs through the roof. If this were easy, there wouldn't be Townhall Tantrums. Thanks for the post.

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I've written several columns over the last couple months about the attempts by Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress to impose nationalized health-care insurance -- so-called "Obamacare." I've said it's bad for corporate profits, bad for the stock market, bad for the economy -- and even bad for people seeking quality health care. I've never had such a huge volume of reader response to anything I've written here, and never so polarized. To half of you, I'm a messiah. To the other half, I'm a pariah. So I was glad to find support in this perilous position from one of my favorite CEOs, John Mackey, who runs one of my favorite companies: Whole Foods Market (WFMI). Before I get into how Mackey and Whole Foods play into the Obamacare debate, let me just say a few words about this wonderful company. Back in 1980, when Whole Foods started, if anyone had asked the question, "Does the world really need another chain of supermarkets?" the answer would certainly have been "no." But from a single store in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods now has more than 280 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. They've done it by catching the new wave of the way people want to eat and shop now. They want all the amenities of a supermarket -- variety, low prices, large inventories. But they want higher-quality food -- healthier, lighter, organic, in an environment that doesn't blare commercialism and dehumanization. Whole Foods' stock has pretty much risen and fallen with the market over the last several years. In the recession, the company has had to pare back growth plans, and the widespread belief that consumers are going to have to scrimp and save for a while has led investors to question whether a "high-end" grocery store can thrive. I think the stock is cheap. The recession is over, and Whole Foods will surely start expanding again. And it's a mistake to think of it as a "high-end" retailer. One of the things I love about it is that its prices are so competitive -- especially adjusted for the higher-quality level, on average. As confidence in the economy and the U.S. consumer comes back, I think Whole Foods could have a nice run. But back to the matter of Obamacare. Another reason Whole Foods became a success is the way CEO Mackey runs the business. Here, too, Whole Foods caught a new wave. Whole Foods has always had a philosophy of treating its employees as intelligent human beings, empowering them to made decisions not normally delegated to people who might otherwise be seen as unskilled labor, and giving them significant incentives to improve their performance and productivity. Part of his formula for treating employees well has been the company's approach to health-care benefits. He talked about it in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal last week. Here's the essence of it: Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members …for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness. And then later on: Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Do you see the essence of what he has done? First, by offering high-deductible insurance, he has returned the whole concept of health insurance back to what it should have been all along -- a safety net against the really bad health catastrophes. Second, by giving employees the funding to pay for their own care when they just get the sniffles, he returns health care to the discipline that all other markets for any other kind of service have to face -- consumers making careful decisions about how to spend their own money. Mackey went on in his commentary to criticize Obamacare as the very opposite of his own plan's aspirations. It emphasizes low-deductible insurance, and positions health care as a "right," like the right to free speech, rather than as something that people have to earn and make careful decisions about. Government would end up making the decisions -- and that's just a polite way to say "rationing." If Whole Foods had to switch over to an Obamacare-style approach, its costs of doing business would rise. And his employees would not be pleased, either, because under his enlightened approach to management he's already crafted his company's health benefits to reflect his employees' stated wishes. As he puts it, "Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction." Labor is the largest cost for most companies. Benefits are the fastest-growing component of labor costs. And health-care insurance is the fastest-growing component of benefits. If Obamacare is enacted, labor costs are only going to go higher -- which means that corporate profits will have to go lower, unless companies pass the costs on to consumers. Any company CEO -- and all the more so, people who run small businesses where labor costs are high and profit margins are already slim -- needs to be concerned about this. But Mackey is coming from another place, as well. He's pointing out the very good news that corporate profits and providing generous health benefits don't need to be at odds. He's already found the way -- he just needs to keep government from messing it up for him and his workers. And yet Mackey has been demonized for expressing these views in print. Left-leaning bloggers have tried to organize a boycott of Whole Foods to punish Mackey. One prominent blogger even made the absurd statement that "very few businesses go as far as Whole Foods in marketing their products specifically as part of a quasi-politicized left-wing lifestyle and few CEOs go as far as Mackey in public advocacy of political views that are only tangentially related to his business." Oh, come on. There's nothing left-wing about eating healthy. And health-care costs and employee satisfaction are certainly not tangential concerns for a corporate CEO. But do you see now why I keep saying that today's political environment is such a threat to business? If a CEO can't reasonably disagree with President Obama and propose his own worthy alternatives, his political opponents retaliate by trying to destroy his company. How come they think that health insurance is a right, but free speech is not? And I think this has a lot to do with why stocks have rallied 50% from the March lows -- because that threat hasn't materialized as strongly as was initially feared. Think about it. We have a popular president. A Congress strongly dominated by Democrats. And in health care, a popular issue. And yet it seems they can't get it done. If guys like John Mackey can keep taking the heat, and keep fighting the good fight, maybe this economy and this stock market have a chance after all. SMARTMONEY ® Layout and look and feel of SmartMoney.com are trademarks of SmartMoney, a joint venture between Dow Jones & Company, Inc. and Hearst SM Partnership. © 1995 - 2009 SmartMoney. All Rights Reserved.

Dear Reader: If you know anyone at MoveOn or similar organizations, please do pass this along.

We cannot allow the tinfoil hats to sabotage healthcare this time. As Dr. J suggests, we may not get another chance for 20 years. I propose a series of commercials to counteract this week's obtuse right-wingnut media assault on Martha's Vineyard. The commercials should baldly expose the Townhall Tantrum wielding, fear mongering opponents to authentic reform for what they are: crazy.

These people simply don't play by the same rules that you and I recognize as foundational to informed, dialectic, civil society. Far too many actually do believe that "capitalism is from god & jeebus" and "socialism is from the devil." Seriously, this is the level of mental disability we're dealing with, here; in frighteningly large numbers.

So, the commercials I propose might begin by portraying video snippets of people who look exactly like the Townhall Tantrum crowd, explaining how Roswell UFO's are a huge "government" coverup (this won't be hard, because many are indeed the same people); next, a few more explaining why the moon landing was a "government" fraud; next, a few more explaining America's christian capitalist roots & how slavery was an unfortunate, but necessary and excusable evil that made this, "the great nation" that it is today; next, a few more explaining (body language now less confident, obviously fabricating) that "socialism" is equivalent to anything from the "government" while "capitalism" is anything from "regular people."

Essentially, the message of this "testimonial montage" is that these people are painting "socialism" with the exact same brush as UFO's, moon landing conspiracies, JFK schemes, and any other popular conspiracies we can come up with to quickly portray; because, in essence, this is precisely what they are doing.

Our opponents took their gloves off long ago. To date, we've courageously taken multiple full impact body blows and more recently some straight shots to the jaw. Our opponents wrongly interpret our accommodating natures as weakness -- always have, always will. It's time to stand our ground. It's time to expose those who would today descry a Public Option for healthcare and tomorrow file lawsuits because the "government" didn't protect their children from the H1N1 virus for precisely what they are: crazy.

If we lose this battle, friends, I am deeply concerned that we will have only ourselves to blame for the potential backlash hillbilly fascist tyranny that could all too easily follow.

A NOTE FROM DR. J.
(Reprinted from Emergence - The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) Newsletter (subscribe)

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Surprisingly I had not watched Michael Moore's Sicko, a documentary about the failures of the American healthcare system, until tonight. My thirteen year-old son and I watched it while working out on our elliptical machines. I was interested in his reaction, his growing sense of youthful disbelief and outrage, while jaded I was simply sad and bemused. I confess I did cry. But my overall reaction was simply shame that I have not done more to fight for universal healthcare coverage in the last decade.

My father was a Blue Cross Vice President, an actuary, and my mother was a lobbyist for public mental health services. Our family was deep into healthcare politics from about 1965 on, when the first attempts at public coverage were enacted in the United States, Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. From then on my parents grew increasingly disgusted with the failures of American health insurance, and both strongly supported a public, universal health insurance program like Canada's.

My experience of public universal coverage was during my year in Japan. My now wife, then girlfriend, had contracted amoebic dysentery while briefly visiting me in Sri Lanka. She was treated for months after in Japanese hospitals for free, as was I for more minor ailments when I joined her later. It wasn't till I returned to the U.S. and began to study health policy at the University of Chicago that I began to understand what a radical failure the American disordered "system" is in comparison to rest of the industrial world.

During the 1994 Clinton health care reform push bioethicists I worked with or knew were part of the "committee of 500" that drafted the Clinton plan. Although I supported single payer universality for its political and administrative simplicity, I was won over to the virtues of a Clinton-style system universal voucher based choice, one which could ensure relatively equitable healthcare for all while allowing a greater diversity of healthcare options than a single payer system. One of the things I read at the time that influenced my views was Ezekiel Emanuel's The Ends of Life, which also argued for universal vouchers with a choice of multiple plans, as Emanuel did again most recently in his book with the highly respected Victor Fuchs in Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America. (You may recognize Emanuel as the head bioethicist at the NIH, chief healthcare advisor to Obama administration, and brother to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.)

Frankly I would have been happy with either single payer or a universal voucher system like the Clintons' and Emanuel's, but on the margin I was intrigued with the idea that with a universal voucher we might have a Catholic health plan without birth control or abortion, an alternative medicine health plan with homeopathy, and a transhumanist health insurance plan that could spend a lot on experimental gene therapies and life extension drugs, but shave costs by sticking you in a vat of liquid nitrogen if you had a bad prognosis.

The Republicans and the health insurance industry demagogued the Clinton plan to death in 1994, calling it "socialism," like every other attempt at health insurance reform since 1914. And they are doing the same thing today, aided now by their Faustian alliance with the frothing, right-wing conspiracy-mongers, gun nuts, racists and anti-government activists collectively known as "teabaggers." The difference is that this time the reforms on the table offer far less in terms of regulation of health insurance than in 1994.

The big difference this time is that the proposed reforms will ensure that the 50 million Americans without health insurance will have a public insurance option to choose in addition to the private health insurance options. In the 1994 proposal every Health Insurance Purchasing Cooperative would have had to ensure that there was at least one fee-for-service, one PPO, and one HMO to choose from, all non-governmental. This time, at least in the more progressive House version of health reform, we would be guaranteed a choice of a for-profit health care or a public health insurance plan.

This is not socialism, and not a government take-over of health care, although I confess that I wouldn't lose any sleep if the public option grew and eventually drove out private health insurance.

Now the craven sold-out right wing of the Democratic Party in the Senate, pockets bulging with health care lobby money, wants to remove the public option in their mind-numbingly futile effort at seeking "bipartisan consensus" on healthcare.

How can we have bipartisan consensus with people practicing the Big Lie straight out of the Goebbels playbook? People inventing their own Protocols of the Elders of Zeke, screaming that "Obama is a Communist Nazi" and that the Democrats want to kill old people?

The opportunity for healthcare reform comes once every twenty years in the United States. By 2029 we will have gene therapies, anti-aging therapies, organ and tissue engineering, and nanomedicine. Today being uninsured will take a couple years off your life expectancy. In 2029 even fewer people will have health insurance, and being without will take decades off your life expectancy. Today our exploding healthcare costs from wasteful, for-profit administrative costs and overtreatment are already crippling the American economy. The health cost cancer will be unimaginably worse without reform in twenty years.

Don't get me wrong: I would still support reform legislation with a public option, if only to ban insurance companies from screening for pre-existing conditions, one of the most obscene practices of American health care. And the reforms will still attempt to mandate a kind of universality, by requiring everyone to purchase healthcare, with subsidies if necessary. (The Clinton reforms would have ensured universality by issuing every citizen a voucher.) But we can and should do far better.

This is an essential technoprogressive value: every person should be ensured access to life enabling benefits of safe, effective biotechnology. In every other industrialized country the debate over enabling technologies is whether they are safe and effective enough to be included in the universal health plan. I fervently hope that, after more than one hundred years of American health reform agitation, we can finally create a system mature enough to allow that debate here.

* It could get bad. Really bad. While the Centers for Disease Control calculate that the number of deaths over the next two years could range from 90,000 to several hundred thousand, the World Health Organization believes H1N1 is still in the "early stages" of a new pandemic. They estimate that 2 billion people (one-third of the world's population) could be infected over the next two years.

* Older people are less affected by H1N1 because they've had it - many times. Dr. Peter Palese of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, a Big Think expert, says people over the age of 55 have built up an immunity against swine flu. Why? The viruses that circulated 50 years ago are more closely related to the swine-origin H1N1 viruses than are present day seasonal H1N1 viruses. So exposure to the earlier viruses gives them protection.

* Screening for fevers at airports might be a waste. Unlike SARS, a surprisingly low percentage of H1N1 patients actually suffer from fevers, says Big Think panel expert Barry Bloom of Harvard School of Public Health.

* Contrary to popular belief, the injectable H1N1 vaccine is not a live virus. So says U. Penn's Dr. Neil Fishman. The injection generates an immune response to make the person feel like he has the flu. The nasal vaccine, on the other hand, is a live virus, but the virus is mutated so it can only replicate at lower temperatures (at the front of the nose). Once it makes its way into a persons lungs, it can't replicate.

* The vaccine won't be one prick. Scientists believe the H1N1 vaccine will be most effective if administered in two doses that are three weeks apart. That won't get you out of your regular seasonal vaccine, though, which has to be in a separate dosage. Alternative medicine practitioners are getting in the act. Dr. Arun Bhasme, the vice president of Central Council of Homeopathy in New Delhi, claims that homeopathy can treat H1N1 patients more rapidly than any other vaccine. There are seven to ten drugs (including Glesemicum, Breionia Alba, Aresenicum naplus and Beladona) on the radar.

* Tamiflu might hurt children more than it helps. Researchers at Oxford conducted trials of the treatment, which included 248 infected kids. For children under 12, the side-effects outweighed the benefits. 51% reported side-effects (of those, 31% felt sick, 24% suffered headaches, 21% had stomach aches). Peter Holden, the British Medical Association's H1N1 expert questions the overuse of Tamiflu: "The threshold for getting Tamiflu should be quite high."

* Pregnant women face a dangerous dilemma: they are at the highest risk of becoming ill from swine flu, but nobody in that group will have a chance to test the vaccine. Why? Testing any type of vaccine or drug on pregnant women (and their babies) poses an ethical dilemma - and always has. Dr. Ruth Faden, Executive Director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins, says, "Medicine is flying blind in many cases. Many of the drugs that women take in pregnancy because they're seriously ill, we just have no evidence what the impact is for them or what the impact will be for their babies."

* The best place to go for information? There are tons of websites out there with handy tips, statistics and roundups of - sometimes false - information. For a comprehensive one-stop shop, Dr. Fishman recommends Flu.gov.

“You know the drill. The bills will be in your hands before the pain medications wear off” … and your credit rating obliterated before you can finish filling out the redundant claims forms that wastefully repeat the information that is already in the insurance company’s computers.

“PBS pointed out that the health and insurance industries are spending more than $1,400,000.00 a day just to destroy the Public Option. Most of this money is going to, and through, Republicans. The evil truth is, the insurance industry, along with the hospitals, HMO’s, pharma, nursing homes — it owns Democrats, too. Not the whole party … hundreds of Democrats have taken campaign money from the health sector without handing over their souls as receipts. But conveniently, the owns that ARE owned have made themselves easy to spot in a crowd. They call themselves Blue Dogs.”

MUST VIEW video!