Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

ER: It is the law, and often a slogan "Everyone can get care"

Rdan Not only is ER care enormously expensive for ‘more routine’ health concerns than a clinic, but perhaps are not equal for insure/uninsured even for traffic accidents, not withstanding our best wishes. Sphere notes a report from the Archives of Surgery: It’s federal law: All seriously injured emergency and trauma patients must be given equal […]

More on the CMS Report

Robert Waldmann+ I paraphrase Kevin Drum My post last night about the CMS report on healthcare reform … [was not] a model of clarity. For more, see Ezra Klein here and Jon Gruber here. Combined with … [Drum’s original] post and this Wonk Room post, you should get a pretty good idea of what’s up. […]

Health Affairs States the Obvious, So We Don’t Have To

Bob Somerby has been on a rant at The Daily Howler that “liberals” do not understand the Stupak Amendment. Unfortunately, claims he makes about Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and their guests do not apply to Laurie Rubner. At the Health Affairs blog, Ms. Rubner is direct and to the point: From the very beginning, […]

Anerica’s Finest News Source Explains Glenn Beck Viewers

Passionate defenders, gather ye round: “Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: ‘one nation under God,’” said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. “Well, there’s a reason they put that right at the […]

Changing the look…heads up!

Rdan I will be switching the template this week. The key is function this week…Let me know if everything works from comments to links. Next week come refinements.

Health Care Reform and Caregivers Refusing Medicare Patients

Robert goes out on a limb and guesses that Lori Montgomery fell for (or is pushing) Republican spin in this article in the Washington PostReport: Bill would reduce senior careMedicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the […]

unemployment

Rdan After having received e-mails regarding Mark Thoma’s post on types of unemployment about who was included and excluded from the per centages, I thought a note on the relevance of the employment to population ratio to be worth repeating from comments on that post. Lifted from comments by run 75441 regarding “unemployment”here: …[D]id everyone […]

The Best Health Care System in the World

For the record, both my daughters were vaccinated today, under government supervision at no cost to us, in a procedure that took less than 10 minutes—including getting a five-year-old to take her coat off and, post shot, put it on again. Via Felix Salmon’s Twitter feed, without further comment. (cross-posted from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo)