This Old House

Flickr Photo.

I thought this dilapidated old house was sad. This run-down monstrosity is located in Dann Corner, NY.

The Country Bush Inherited versus The Country He Has Created

The House Democratic Caucus has put together a table of key indicators of America’s strength financially and economically, as well as how America is viewed by the rest of the world. Some examples:

• Gas cost $1.39 when Bush took office versus $3.07 today
• Private sector jobs grew at a rate of 1.76 million jobs per year over the 8 years before Bush took office; under Bush, it has grown at a rate of 0.37 million jobs per year
• Median household income was $49,163 when Bush took office; today it is $48,023
• Median household income had increased $6,600 over the 6 years before Bush took office; it has decreased $1,100 since Bush took office

The table has a lot more of these important indicators. Are you better off under Bush?

Whole Foods To Eliminate Plastic Bags

I have never shopped at Whole Foods, because there are none in my area, however I have always heard good things about them. In fact, they have been a relatively influential firm in the world of grocery stores, according to this article.

Whole Foods has announced that they will eliminate the use of plastic bags, because they are environmentally unsound. The logo on their website says “Bring Your Own Bag, Save The Planet”. These plastic bags consume oil to make, and never break down in a landfill. (The country of China has also banned these plastic bags.) So I applaud Whole Foods, and I call on local Supermarkets (Wegmans, Tops) to follow suit.

The $1 Image Stabilizer for any Camera

Here is a pair of pictures I took, one handheld and one using the $1 Image Stabilizer. Pretty dramatic improvement! No need to lug a tripod around!

Bye Bye, Barack; I Support John Edwards

I won’t be considering voting for Barack Obama any further in the Democratic primary. He has raised far too many red flags, sounding like a conservative, for me to consider him any more. It started when he began talking about the social security crisis (there is no crisis, Senator) and it just kept on going and going and going, like the Energizer Bunny powering a tape recording of Rethuglican talking points. The last straw was Obama’s praise of Ronald Reagan, who has done more to destroy liberal and progressive values in this country than anyone else. Lambert chronicles them all of Barack Obama’s right-wing talking points, and explains why they matter (although Lambert seems to miss Obama’s health plan which does not include a mandate for everyone to be covered — not only is it not acceptable to me to have a country where people can remain without health care coverage, but this also allows those currently healthy to withdraw from the system and not pay into the system, pushing costs up for everyone.)
Update (1/19/08): Digby has more, including how to talk about Reagan to advance progressive goals, and how Obama failed that test.
Update (1/20/08): Paul Rosenberg also gives examples of what Obama could have said that would split conservatives, instead of what Obama actually said, which has had the effect of dividing progressives.

Avedon Carol says: “I want a candidate who has the proper disgust for Ronald Reagan” and points us to a candidate that I currently support, John Edwards. In fact, here is what Edwards has to say about Ronald Reagan: “He was openly — openly — intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment ... eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment. I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.”

All of Obama’s talk about change and hope is fine, and even inspiring to some, but change can go in many directions, and it seems that the direction Obama appears to be going is not the direction I want to go. John Edwards for President.

Here's What GOP Policies Have Done To This Country

Blue Texan at Firedoglake:

• Consumer prices rose in 2007 at the fastest pace in 17 years as motorists paid a lot more for gasoline and grocery shoppers paid higher food bills.
• Both energy and food prices jumped by the largest amount since 1990.
• Prices were also up sharply for health care, housing and education.
• Workers’ wages failed to keep up with the higher inflation. Average weekly earnings, after adjusting for inflation, dropped by 0.9 percent in 2007, the fourth decline in the past five years.
• Unemployment jumped from 4.7 percent in November to 5 percent in December, the biggest one-month increase since the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
• The 4.1 percent increase in overall prices last year was the biggest since a 6.1 percent jump in prices in 1990.
• Overall energy costs rose by 17.4 percent this past year while food costs rose by 4.9 percent. Both were the biggest increases since 1990.
• Gasoline prices were up 29.6 percent, the biggest increase since they soared by 30.1 percent in 1999.

“UnFair Tax” is actually doubly unfair

I wrote about why the so-called “Fair Tax” proposed by several Conservative presidential candidates is actually unfair. But wait — it’s even more unfair than that! If the so-called “Fair Tax” is enacted, your savings are worth 30% less than before the “Fair Tax”. (via Eschaton)

The “UnFair Tax”

A proposal floated by some conservative candidates called “Fair Tax” turns out to be anything but fair. Analysis shows that if you’re quite poor, you will pay less tax than before. But if you are like most people, earning between $30K/yr and $200K/yr, you will pay more than under current tax law. And surprise, since conservatives are promoting this plan, who would have ever predicted that the rich and super-rich (anyone making over $200K/yr) would pay substantially less in taxes than they do now.

How about that? A Conservative plan that benefits the rich at the expense of almost everyone else. I am shocked (not)! The rule of thumb when dealing with Conservatives is: if they call something “Fair”, it most certainly is just the opposite.

Didn’t See That Coming!

What are you doing here? — man asks wife at brothel:

WARSAW (Reuters) — A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

“I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

Moral Implications of Our Health Care System

Ian Welsh discusses an issue that I have broached before: what kind of society do we want to have with regards to health care, and what are the moral implications of our choice.

Health care is a moral issue and a pragmatic one. Those who support the current system support a profoundly immoral system which is causing people to die and suffer needlessly and costs more than the completely obvious alternative. They almost certainly do it out of some misguided belief that a bad result from the private sector is morally preferable to a good result from the public sector – or perhaps they do it because they’re at the trough and benefiting.

But it is a moral issue and being against single payer healthcare says something about the person with that belief. And it isn’t anything good (and certainly isn’t anything Christian, but I’ll leave that to those Christians who remember that Jesus cared for the poor to remind people of.)

So choose whether you support single payer health care. But remember that in making that choice you are making a profound statement about what you consider important – free market ideology or saving lives and pain – and that single payor healthcare has been proven to actually be cheaper than the current system. Immoral and impractical — all in one.

Just How Bad Is The USA Health Care System?

Ezra Klein distills a recent study:

The researchers examined amenable mortality — “deaths from certain causes that should not occur in the presence of timely and effective health care” — in a variety of OECD countries. In English, it assessed how effective health systems are at reaching the sick. The conditions under examination are lethal if not treated, but the afflicted can be saved, and even healed, if given timely care.

The researchers examined this same group of conditions in 1998. Then, we performed poorly, but not catastrophically so. Our amenable mortality rates were about 8 percent above the average, and 50 percent above the French, but we were not the worst. Comparatively speaking, we were 15th out of 19 assessed countries.

Four years later, we were 19th out of 19. Every other country posted significant progress in reducing amenable mortality. Save for us. In 2002-03, for both males and females aged under 75, America had the highest rate of amenable mortality — which is to say, preventable deaths — in the OECD. That means we were behind Canada, behind the United Kingdom (whom we’d beaten in 1998), behind France, behind Ireland. And not by a little — France’s preventable death rate was only 58 percent what ours was. Had we achieved the average gains — not their rates, but simply the improvements — posted by the other countries, we would have saved 75,000 lives. Had we achieved the gains of the top performers, we would have saved 101,000 lives.

More On The Social Safety Net

From Paul Krugman:

What European countries definitely haven’t done is dismantle their strong social safety nets. Universal health care is a given. So are a variety of programs that support families in trouble, helping protect Europeans from the extreme poverty all too common in this country. All of this costs money — even though European countries spend far less on health care than we do — and European taxes are very high by U.S. standards.

In short, Europe continues to be a big-government sort of place. And that’s why it’s important to get the real story of the European economy out there.

According to the anti-government ideology that dominates much U.S. political discussion, low taxes and a weak social safety net are essential to prosperity. Try to make the lives of Americans even slightly more secure, we’re told, and the economy will shrivel up — the same way it supposedly has in Europe.

But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe’s economy is actually doing O.K. these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.

Back Surgery and Health Care In America

I haven’t been blogging because just before Thanksgiving, I suffered a herniated disk in my lower back. This is a very painful malady and naturally, I haven’t felt like blogging. However, last week I had surgery and things now, seven days later, I feel so much better I can’t even believe it.

While I was suffering and incapacitated, I had a lot of time to think about my situation and how other Americans might fare in this situation, particularly if they didn’t have health insurance, or if they didn’t have an enlightened employer that provides you with short term disability insurance, guaranteeing your salary for up to three months if you face a medical emergency that prevents you from working. I realized that if you find yourself in that situation with a herniated disk, you would be facing a severe financial (as well as medical) crisis. To my way of thinking, America ought to be better than that — we can be better than that, we can enact enlightened policies that take care of people with medical emergencies, so that it doesn’t become a financial emergency as well.

So let me describe the entire sequence of events, and how it might have affected someone without health insurance and/or without short term disability coverage from his employer.

One night, just before Thanksgiving, I awoke in the middle of the night because of pain in my left leg, which I would later learn was due to a herniated disk in my lower back. I managed to limp and struggle through the next few days, but eventually I realized it wasn’t going to go away by itself. I made an appointment to receive cortisone shots in my lower back from a doctor I had seen before. Fortunately, he was able to schedule me the next day, and on that day, I had so much pain I couldn’t even walk from the parking lot to my office at work. The doctor gave me the shot, which helped a little, but not enough to make me mobile. I called in sick to work the next day, and then stayed at home a few more days the next week.

Right here, someone with no health insurance is in big trouble. I doubt there is anything you could do other than go to the emergency room (and of course, you will be billed for that — beginning of financial difficulties). If you work for an employer that limits your sick leave to a fixed number of days per year and who doesn’t provide disability coverage, you are in further financial trouble. New York State (where I live) mandates that every employer provide some disability coverage through a statewide pool, but in a previous job, I learned that this amounts to $170 per week beginning with your 8th day of absence, hardly enough to replace whatever salary you are no longer receiving.

When the cortisone shot had only limited effect, and I still couldn’t walk around my house without extreme pain, I made an appointment with the back surgeon. Fortunately, I complained and whined enough that they got me an appointment two days after my phone call, although it would not be uncommon to wait weeks to see a back surgeon. He sent me to get an MRI, which I had anticipated. I was quite worried about this because our local health insurance carriers had begun a “slow-down” on approving these types of diagnostic procedures. The doctor complained to me about this, he said the insurance companies are trying to play doctor, and I complained right back saying I’m paying money to the insurance companies for health care coverage, and what right did they have to deny me coverage I actually needed and which they were contractually obligated to provide? We all know why the insurance companies are doing this — they make more money by denying health care to certain people (who have paid for health care) and what is important to the insurance companies is the bottom line and nothing else. But then the doctor asked where I worked, I told him, and he said, “Oh, they never deny approvals for employees of your company”. (If anyone knows why this is, please let me know.) So I was quickly approved for the MRI and went that evening.

As before, without health insurance, I most likely would have never gotten to see the back surgeon, and I would have had the choice of not working, or going to work in extreme pain. If my job involved standing, I doubt I could have done the work at all. My actual job requires me to sit at a computer most of the day, and I suppose I could have suffered through, but it would have been very unpleasant. Fortunately, the back surgeon provided my company with the diagnosis that I was medically incapacitated, and the company’s short term disability policy kicked in, covering my salary for up to three months. Basically, without these two insurances (health insurance and disability insurance), I would have the choice of hurting financially or physically (or both) for a very long time.

Three weeks later, I returned to the back surgeon for his diagnosis. Why three weeks? I presume he was busy, but I didn’t like the way this was handled. I was told by his assistant that if the MRI showed anything, they would contact me immediately and the doctor would see me quickly. That didn’t happen even though the MRI clearly showed the problem, and in fact, I might have waited longer than three weeks if I hadn’t called to obtain written documentation of my condition as required by my employer. The doctor told me I would need surgery, and because this was the week before Christmas, they would try and schedule me for immediately after New Year’s day. Although I was ready for surgery the next day, this seemed reasonable, and I had my surgery early in 2008.

The hospital stay lasted about 24 hours total. I don’t know if there is a medical difference between the operation I had this time (a diskectomy) and the operation I had last time (a laminectomy), but last time the doctor told me my stay would be 2–3 days. Was this another example of the insurance company chopping the length of hospital stays to make more money? I was quite nervous about going home the next day. Nevertheless, I was able to move around slowly on my return home the next day and minimally take care of myself.

Now, one week later, the pain is mostly (but not completely) gone. I was able to walk around Wegmans yesterday without pain (for the previous six weeks, I had to ride the cart around at Wegmans). I expect that upon my return to the doctor for a follow-up visit, he will approve me to return to work.

The bottom line: I will most likely lose 8 weeks of work, I needed a shot of cortisone in my back, an MRI, surgery and a one-night hospital stay, plus numerous prescriptions, to return to health. Without health insurance, I would estimate conservatively that I would owe $15,000 for the medical treatments (if I could even receive the treatments at all). In addition, without disability coverage from my employer, I would have lost 15% of my annual income, something most people can hardly afford.

Naturally, this experience reinforces my belief that America needs universal health care coverage. When you need health care, you receive it. Anything less than this is simply unacceptable, and I have written to my politicians urging them to support this. I have also urged them to move towards a model called “single payer” where the insurance companies (and their profit motive) are removed from the system. Other industrialized nations have systems similar to this, and it is less costly than our own system.

This experience also increases my outrage at conservatives in our country, who have systematically dismantled the social safety net, and fought tooth and nail against expanding any type of social safety net (even for children). Conservatives represent such a mean-spirited point of view where every person has to fend for himself — their policies are that you get the health insurance and disability insurance you can afford, and after that, too bad. What, you don’t have $15K laying around for a back operation? Well that’s your problem, not mine, say the Conservatives. Too bad, next time save your money.

I much prefer a society where we all take care of each other. I hope that our politicians will see the benefits of this point of view. The experience in other industrialized nations shows that this type of universal coverage with “single payer” actually costs less, and the country as a whole benefits. That’s the type of country I envision America becoming some day, Conservatives be damned.