Simply put, the best thing I've seen in a while...

Internet video producer John Green is currently in Ethiopia and provides this short video on the state of pediatric NICU's in Addis Ababa.

Take a moment and watch...pretty cool...

Green does consistently excellent work...

You can and should follow him at vlogbrothers on You Tube...

I didn't vote for this, you did. Remember?

This crap makes me want to scream.

Every few days or so, I have a conversation with people who seem absolutely bewildered by the things going on in our government. People who have voted for deficit hawks who can't believe their favorite social program has had budget cuts. People blaming President Obama for budget cuts the Governor of Ohio has made. People who blame Nancy Pulosi for budget cuts the Governor of Pennsylvania have made. People who blame the Veterans Administration for budget cuts the Pentagon or DOD have made.

It blows my mind that people who fancy themselves, at least to some degree, politically astute, can vote against their self-interest over and over again.

I think its what happens when a person decides talk radio is a "good enough" source for information. Obviously, its a horrific source for information and only a marginally good place for entertainment, which is usually all it is. The vast majority of talk radio is pushing an agenda. One side is "good", the other is "bad." The greater the urgency and proximity of the impending disaster should the wrong side prevail directly correlates to the success of the host. A host who tries to straddle the political fence won't be around very long in most markets.

Too many people confuse this "entertainment" with news and journalism.

There is a price tag to be paid for voting ignorantly. A person works in a healthcare environment yet likes the idea of the Tea Party, so they vote for them whenever possible. Now they're just shocked that public health departments are seeing budgets cut, services cut, etc. What the hell did you think was going to happen?

Across the country, many other programs such as school lunch programs, Meals on Wheels programs and heat assistance programs have been cut back due to a reduction in Federal funding. To be clear, this isn't an agenda the Democrats are pursuing. It is exactly what the GOP said it would do in recent elections.

I didn't vote for that, you did. Remember? I warned you what would happen and you said I was delusional. Now you're frustrated, pissed off and want to blame the President for things he really had very little, if anything to do with. Its convenient to attack our POTUS over his bi-racial status, his heritage, his faith, his "agenda" , etc. Is it Barack Obama's fault too that some voters made poor choices?

I'll wait here while you look for your bootstraps, ok? Stop your whining and crying and step up. Next election, maybe do some reading, eh?

Don't Mess With Texas...

 I leave this morning bound for Dallas, Texas via Charlotte, NC to hook up with my older brother and drive him back to Ohio, where we will attempt to live together for the first time in a long time.

A very long time...

Blogging is still light as the mid-term elections are still a ways off and real life continues to be in the way. Things will pick up, I predict before too long. The Republicans will prevail in the House, they have a good chance to capture the Senate and the Democrats look poised to pick up a few Governor seats across the country. I have some pieces in the pipeline I hope to have out shortly after my return to our compound here in Troy. One looks at the correlation of the growth of partisanship in Congress with the growth of talk radio. The other looks at the recent Pew Poll that looked at opinions about how we look at ourselves and each other politically.

I'll try not to offend anyone while I'm in the Lone Star State. I probably won't discuss politics or health care reform with a single soul. I won't bring up the number of uninsured, public education, etc. while I'm passing through.

Hopefully, none of the guns I hear about around here will be involved in anything unfortunate.

Do Texans have a sense of humor? Hmmm, should I find out?

Uh, probably not.

Cheers!

Newsmax Editor-in-Chief: Don't Blame Obama For Iraq - The National Memo

A very interesting and fair-minded op-ed from the Editor in Chief of Newsmax.

That's not a typo. Christopher Ruddy, Editor in Chief of the anti-Obama website Newsmax.com, writes:

(In this column, reprinted with permission from Newsmax, Christopher Ruddy, the conservative publication’s CEO and editor-in-chief, dissents from Republican rhetoric blaming President Obama for the deteriorating situation in Iraq and accusing the White House of bad faith in the prisoner swap that freed Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — while reserving his disagreements with the Obama administration on other issues.) 

Oh, the foreign policy woes of a president in his second term.

“Blame Obama” seems to be the mantra of the day, especially from the Republican side of the aisle, whether it be the Bergdahl-Taliban swap or the new crisis in Iraq.

Think for a moment about an American president who deals with the supporters of Islamic terrorism, a rogue organization dead set on killing Americans… with a history of having murdered hundreds of American servicemen.

That same American president decides he wants to open up a dialogue with them, and also actually sell them American arms!

Even though they have held American hostages, he sends emissaries to do a deal and doesn’t even bother informing Congress. No, this wasn’t Barack Obama, and it wasn’t the recent deal with the Taliban to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. This was the story of President Ronald Reagan and his behind-the-scenes deal with Iran in the mid-1980s.

Read the full column here:  Newsmax Editor-in-Chief: Don't Blame Obama For Iraq - The National Memo:

Best Healthcare in the World, My Ass....

The Commonwealth Fund has released its latest report on how the healthcare system in the United States compares to other industrialized countries. It's not good. In fact, its terrible.

Executive Summary

The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last or near last on dimensions of access, efficiency, and equity. In this edition of Mirror, Mirror, the United Kingdom ranks first, followed closely by Switzerland (Exhibit ES-1).

Expanding from the seven countries included in 2010, the 2014 edition includes data from 11 countries. It incorporates patients’ and physicians’ survey results on care experiences and ratings on various dimensions of care. It includes information from the most recent three Commonwealth Fund international surveys of patients and primary care physicians about medical practices and views of their countries’ health systems (2011–2013). It also includes information on health care outcomes featured in The Commonwealth Fund’s most recent (2011) national health system scorecard, and from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

It's hard to fathom just how poorly our system works, especially given the sky-high price we all pay for less than full access and questionable results. Ranking worst out of the eleven countries reviewed in 6 of the 12 categories considered. (Cost-related issues re: access, efficiency, equity, healthy lives, health expenditures per capita and  overall ranking.)

In the other categories, (quality care: effective care, safe care, patient centered care and access: timeliness of care) we ranked in the middle somewhere.

In no category did the US rank in the top two.

Who came in first?

The NHS from the United Kingdom, which is socialized medicine.

Conservatives in America will likely point to the report as reason to move toward a more "free market/less government involvement" style of health care delivery. While such a response has far more to do with politics than it does with sound, evidence based delivery of health care, it also defies common sense.

The US system is a blend of free market private and/or employer based health insurance combined with a social safety net combination of medicare for people 65 and older and medicaid for the disabled, children, pregnant women and the very, very poor.

None of the countries in the report has as small an amount of government involvement as the US does. Put another way, all of the countries in the report - who all fared batter than the US does - have a higher level of government interaction in their HC delivery than we do.

The answer to our health care issues is not less government involvement. We need more.The rest of the world has figured this out. Except us.

Before anyone accuses me of being a socialist or anti-american, we should be copying our friends in Europe and Asia who have devised an effective system of a strong, comprehensive government provided or administered system that covers all citizens for basic health care needs. Complimenting that foundation is a robust private market that competes for consumer dollars by offering supplemental and additional levels of insurance and benefits.

As the report indicates, the data used for this study do not yet take the effect of the Affordable Care Act into consideration. Going forward, its expected the United States will perform better in areas like access.

Unless, of course, a Republican President and Republican controlled Congress would repeal it.

Other coverage of the Commonwealth Fund's report can be found here, here, here and here...

NOTE #1: I attempted to provide a link to Fox News.com's coverage of this story and none was to be found on their homepage, on their "health" page or the "US News" page. Likewise, I found nothing on the Newsmax.com website either.

NOTE #2: Our talented friends over at the Incidental Economist have a related column up on their website. Its worth a visit. You can find it here: Zombie arguments defending the US healthcare system....


Source:

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror#/disqus_thread


http://medcitynews.com/2014/06/report-u-s-healthcare-ranking-consistently-at-bottom-for-industrialized-countries/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uks-healthcare-ranked-the-best-out-of-11-western-countries-with-us-coming-last-9542833.html

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/zombie-arguments-defending-the-us-healthcare-system/