Bookworm Room

People are rightly protesting on religious grounds the fact that Obama has mandated that health care plans must cover birth control and morning after pills: Most healthcare plans will be required to cover birth control without charging co-pays or deductibles starting Aug. 1, the Obama administration announced Friday. The final regulation retains the approach federal [...]

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I’m surprised that there’s so little news about an upcoming nurses’ strike in Northern and Central California.  This story should be a big deal, in large part because the nurses who are going on strike in thirty-four Northern and Central California hospitals actually have no complaint.  Instead, they’re putting thousands of patients at risk because [...]

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I spent four hours at my Mom’s yesterday trying to organize her medicines.  I am more gray now than I was before.  My son, who was with me, kept saying “This is insane.  This is insane.” The insanity operated at a lot of levels.  Some of the insanity comes about because my mother likes her [...]

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My daughter is trying to compare medical treatments and outcomes during the Civil War and during the current wars.  Broadly speaking, that’s quite easy, ’cause all you really need to know are antibiotics and sterile techniques.  Everything else is a subset (and yes, I know I’m grossly over-simplifying). The problem for her is the level [...]

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ObamaCare represents an effort to bring America in line with European and other socialized health care systems.  The sales pitch is now, and has always been, that “studies” show that the other, socialized, systems are “better” than the American system.  The crown jewel of these “studies” is a 2000 World Health Organization analysis ranking systems.  [...]

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I’m not actually sure what to make of this.  Is it a smart way to prevent life-changing impulse surgeries or is it another socialist medicine throwaway for the cause of the day? Hat tip:  Sadie

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My mother is very old.  This means that she no longer actively contributes to society.  Her working and child-rearing days are over.  She lives off of her diminishing savings, a small pension and her social security checks.  In a utilitarian world, she has no value.  Because — thankfully — we haven’t yet reached that moral [...]

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From the moment Gov. Walker squared off against the public sector unions in Wisconsin, conservatives noticed something interesting:  The mainstream media, which was all aflutter about politician safety after a paranoid schizophrenic aimed a gun at a Democratic Senator, wounding her and killing a heroic Republican judge), showed remarkable restraint in reporting about threats against [...]

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In the old days, medical treatment was more likely to kill than to cure.  For example, one can make a good argument that George Washington died because his physicians bled him to death. It’s scarcely strange, then, that homeopathy was such a hit when it first appeared on the scene.  The principle, as I understand [...]

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When we met the Blues, one of the people we met was the team’s flight surgeon, who struck me as a lovely young woman:  warm, dedicated and intelligent.  I’m sure Neptunus Lex wasn’t talking about her when he wrote this hysterically funny post a few years ago.  (And no, I didn’t go hunting that post [...]

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This is a matched set of stories from the London Times, both about British dental care, and both warning of the travails when the government both controls much (not all, but much) of the market.  The first story involves the horrible teeth British children enjoy under national dental care.  You’ll note that the culprits aren’t [...]

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Karl Rove nicely articulates the bottom line facts driving Obama’s fear-mongering game to force through immediate and irrevocable changes to America’s health care system: Mr. Obama’s problem is that nine out of 10 Americans would likely get worse health care if ObamaCare goes through. Of those who do not have insurance—and who therefore might be [...]

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Faced with an epidemic, England is already planning on rationing: Thousands of patients could be denied NHS treatment and left to die under ‘worst-case’ emergency plans for a swine-flu epidemic. The blueprint would force doctors to ‘play God’ and prioritise intensive-care treatment for those most likely to benefit  -  ruling out patients with problems such [...]

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Don Parker nails both the costs and hypocrisy behind the mandate in the new health care bill that seniors be gently steered towards a cheap death. UPDATE:  Thanks to Old Flyer for reminding me of this, which fits in so perfectly with the new plan: UPDATE II:  A story from my dad’s old joke book. [...]

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Another chapter in the “lies, damn lies and statistics” is the repeated claim from proponents of European-style socialized medicine that the US has the highest infant mortality rate of any first world country.  This is a scathing indictment, implicating American poverty, racism, prenatal and post-natal care.  The only problem is that it’s completely false, and [...]

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Here is absolutely everything you need to know about the proposed Obama/Democratic health care plan: The president is barnstorming the nation, urging swift approval of legislation that is taking shape in Congress. This legislation — the Affordable Health Choices Act that’s being drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions [...]

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Okay, it’s actually called the Kennedy bill, but it’s the realization of Obama’s insistence on the federal government forcing and funding mandatory health insurance.  Keith Hennessey, in addition to giving links for you to read the bill yourself, explains the substantive parts of the bill, as well as the probable practical and economic effects the [...]

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October 2008:  McCain finally looks poised to lead in the polls, the market collapses and cool, calm, collected, Ivy League educated Obama vaults forward to victory.  April 2009:  It starts to look as if both the American public and Congress may be getting leery about Obama’s proposal to nationalize healthcare (i.e., have the government take [...]

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When I was growing up, my father was a teacher with a lousy salary and lousy benefits.  The only good thing he had was his dental plan.  It was a wonderful dental plan.  Provided that we got our teeth cleaned and checked twice a year, it would pay the total cost of any dental work [...]

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For three years, a single British hospital that was obsessed with following government health care mandates to the letter, succeeded only in killing 1,200 patients unnecessarily: Twelve NHS trusts are being investigated following a damning report which today slammed ‘appalling’ care at a single hospital. Hundreds of patients may have died after bosses at Staffordshire [...]

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For reasons too complicated to explain, I have more than a passing knowledge about medical informatics — or, in simple terms, the trend to put all patient records in computerized systems.  That’s why, at a soccer game, a young woman who is clearly an Obama supporter asked me what I thought of the move to [...]

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Again, Britain reminds us of the possible consequences of allowing the government to control health care.  (See here and here.) As always, what amazes me about the Left is it’s never ending optimism about the government.  Its members will cheerfully concede that the government pretty much bungles most of the things on which it gets [...]

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I carpooled to a soccer game today.  The driver, who is someone I don’t know very well, is a very charming man who is quite obviously a potential Obama voter.  He wasn’t quite sure about me and, since he was a very civil individual, he never came out and either insulted McCain or lauded Obama.  [...]

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From Genesis 3:16 (after the expulsion from Eden): To the woman He [God] said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. I’m feeling Biblical after having read a story about another one of the “miracles” of universal healthcare, as in effect in Britain: Hundreds of women [...]

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Fertility treatment is big money, so there are gazillions of treatment centers in most communities.  One such center in San Diego County may well have been put out business, though, by a California Supreme Court ruling mandating that physicians have to provide treatment to lesbians and other unmarried women, even though doing so goes against [...]

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