As if we did not have enough issues with the commercial healthcare insurance industry attempting to supplant single payer Medicare (minus setting hospital budgets, doctor fees, and pharmaceutical costs to the consumer) and the VA with commercial healthcare insurance and/or Medicare Advantage and ACOs? Commercial Healthcare Insurance and Medicare Advantage are “not” the equivalent of […]

Coronavirus dashboard for July 21: brace yourself for the surge in deaths I have been warning since late June that the situation would likely look very different by the end of July. By 2 weeks ago, I wrote: “In the near future, there appears to be bad news and *relatively* “good” news for the US. The […]

How the oligarchs stole our democracy So … . What was the House Un-American Activities Committee (1945-1975, with a few interesting precursors) really all about? Looking back through the lens of history, it was much about distracting the Nation’s attention from the racist atrocities being committed in southern states. Still today, all a red state […]

The Vaccination/Infection/Political Divergence Where I Am  In Virginia, cities and counties are separate, not one containing the other as in most of the US. So I live in the City of Harrisonburg, population about 53,000, which is surrounded by Rockingham County, population about 82,000, both in the Shenandoah Valley about 120 miles southwest of Washington. […]

Coronavirus dashboard for July 19: The UK as Delta wave trailblazer for the US An initial note: I am on vacation this week, so posting is likely to be sporadic. I’ll still hit the important data.Now that the Delta wave is well and truly here in the US, let’s compare it with the UK experience, […]

Coronavirus dashboard for July 12: the completely preventable “delta wave” is here The completely unnecessary and preventable “delta wave” of COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths is now in force – all three metrics are now rising nationwide. Here are the 7 day average of confirmed cases (thin line) and deaths (thick): Cases have gone up […]

This was always the plan? The plan did not include forcing people out of traditional Medicare and into Medicare Advantage. No mistake on the date on this Copied and Pasted Angry Bear post from almost two years ago. Nancy Alt, Andrew Sprung, and Angry Bear were sounding the alarm in 2019 about trump’s move to […]

Trend in new jobless claims flattens: the virus remains in control in the unvaccinated States New jobless claims are the most important weekly economic datapoint with regard to the effects of vaccination progress. Four weeks ago I wrote, “I think we are going to see two tracks going forward from here, as near-normalcy does return to […]

Coronavirus dashboard for July 6: bad news and *relatively* “good” news about the Delta Wave  In the near future, there appears to be bad news and *relatively* “good” news for the US. The bad news is that the “delta wave” is spreading, and we should expect a real outbreak on the order of last summer’s […]

This lengthy post deserves an introduction so I thought I would do one. We have been through several constitutional tests on the legitimacy of the PPACA. In each case and also in a congressional vote, the Republicans have failed to disenfranchise US citizens on healthcare. The next issue being brought to the forefront is just […]