http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/07/16842490-therapists-change-in-medical-coding-threatens-mental-health-care?lite

Like many quick and dirty “bumper sticker” arguments, Laszewski’s assertion sounds logical — as long as you don’t think about it for more than the minute it takes to read it. After all, someone is going to have to pay for all of those pills and devices, won’t they? Actually, not really. The truth is […]

About two weeks ago, Dan emailed me with a link to a New York Times article titled “A Flood of Suits Fights Coverage of Birth Control,” by Times reporter Ethan Bronner, published that day. The article began: In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health […]

http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/08/20/the-age-rating-game-will-older-americans-pay-more-under-health-reforma/   The Affordable Care Act leaves it to the states to decide whether they want to let insurers charge older Americans more for coverage. If a state takes no action, a 64-year-old buying his own insurance in the individual market will pay up to three times more than an 18-year-old. In the small-group market […]

Open letter to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan:  The only legislation that can realistically end gun violence in Oakland – and Chicago – is a labor law: doubling the minimum wage to $30,000/yr. The Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald. Crackpot? More than doubling the federal minimum wage from $7.25/hr […]

David Zetland at Aguanomics points us to the way the US ‘too deep to use’ water aquifers for waste water from fracking, and the example of Mexico City drilling deep as a way to handle water shortages: This article raises an interesting point: the US EPA allows companies to pollute aquifers that it assumes are […]

Peter Dorman at Econospeak speaks to the current selling of big idea models of the world (re-posted with permission from the author): There’s a review on the Dissent website by Steve Randy Waldman of Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America by Jonathan Levy. The book sounds interesting, but it […]

Krugman’s Explicit Endorsement “Time to Kick the Can” Shows True Colors He Denies in “Despicable Me” from Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis Angry Bear’s column How To Debate Paul Krugman in response to my January 26 column How to Debate Paul Krugman: “Ask Questions Like a Child” was rather humorous for what it did not […]

… but I’m really grateful that so many friends and acquaintances, including Dan C., have let me know.  (My favorite, from my friend “A”: “Beverly, someone is sending spam around in your name!”) I’m luckier than the Bush family, though.  At least whoever hacked my account just wanted to use my email identity to try […]

First attempt at putting the NW Plan 2012 into viewable form. This graphic compresses the original spreadsheet in both axes. I will be putting links to the full spreadsheet in comments because I am not sure this one will share correctly (I am bouncing between Google Accts) link. In any event the key columns are […]