On the failures of Obamacare

I'm reading a lot about the recent problems with Obamacare. For everyone complaining about this new program, however, I would ask "You say Obamacare is bad, but compared to what?" I'm on COBRA, having left a job a few months ago. I shopped around on the open market PRE-Obamacare. The prices were already high, even for high-deductible coverage. My wife, who walks briskly every day and who is in very good health was deemed uninsurable because of four separate reasons, all of which were total bullshit (one was that she broke her ankle last year, and it had substantially healed by the time we applied for coverage). The for-profit insurance companies have been out there cherry-picking and leaving families in desperate straights. I know of one family that has been paying almost $40,000/ year because two children are fighting depression and the husband has some physical injuries (though he is working). This is all PRE-Obamacare. For all of those people who want to blame Obamacare I would like to remind them that things were terrible before Obamacare. Coverage was shrinking and prices sky-rocketing BEFORE Obamacare. Not that I'm a big fan of Obamacare--we need Medicare for all--some reasonable level of care for all Americans, combined with many of the strategies offered by "Bitter Pill," the blockbuster Time Magazine article published a few months ago. We were lucky to get anything at all accomplished in Congress given the abject corruption. There are many aspects of the so-called health care system that need immense rehab, and Congress is not up to the task. Half of Congress wants to destroy Obamacare and replace it with "Fend for yourself, and good luck not getting fleeced by huge profit-driven companies, including all of those huge "non-profit" hospitals who are gobbling up your favorite doctor's medical practices." I fear for many people out there. Too bad ordinary folks can't afford lobbyists. If they did, we could bring some sanity to the prices charged by many providers and Big Pharma. Finally, as Dylan Ratigan has written, we also need to reconceptualize health care as "Help me, my family and friends live long and prosper" instead of "Don't let me or anyone I know die." We need to have courage to face our deaths with dignity in order to reset our priorities in a meaningful way, but there is no sign that this is likely.

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Thinking laterally, or maybe giving up

Fascinating video lecture by Dylan Ratigan. I'm in the process of reading his recent book, Greedy Bastards: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry. It's an extremely well written book that succinctly explains many of the problems faced by Americans (including chapters on Wall Street and Health Care). In this video from October, 2013, however, Ratigan suggests that writing the book was a waste of time, although it might serve as a useful inventory of issues. I have a hard time believing that Ratigan believes that. Seeing him deliver his talk, and receiving several impassioned email blasts from him, it sure seems that he is still putting up a good fight, though it is a fight that will be extremely difficult to win, and maybe he is exhausted from the fight. Dylan writes (in a mass-emailing that I received today) that he wanted to tell "stories of those using distributed power to solve old problems in new ways." I'm all for grass roots action and organizing, and I do believe in the power of reframing. But to win back the country, we will also need people like the author of Greedy Bastards to identify particular issues, lay out the history and propose workable solutions. Occasionally David beats Goliath, but it's a great story because it only rarely happens. I'm wondering whether Ratigan was demoralized by the long battle, has taken refuge away from the battle, and is gearing up to get back into the game. that is my hope.

Continue ReadingThinking laterally, or maybe giving up

Capitalism vs. Free Enterprise

According to Thom Hartman, these two concepts are often confused. In fact, he urges that we ditch capitalism and embrace free enterprise:

If you ask someone like Rand Paul, he'd say somebody participating in this sort of system is a "capitalist." But the cleanest definition of a capitalist is someone who uses their money – their capital – to make more money. Some capitalists do this by investing their capital in the stock market; others do it by investing in other people's start-up businesses: they are called venture capitalists. These kinds of capitalists do play their part in our society. Sometimes, they help small businesses get off their feet. But here's what you won't hear on Fox Business or CNBC: capitalists aren't that productive and they aren't actually necessary. Many are just like Paris Hilton: they sit around on their butts by the pool all day waiting for their dividend checks to come in. They make money while contributing absolutely nothing to the rest of society. And here's the thing: free enterprise works just as well without capitalists, capitalism, or even venture capitalists. Worker-owned cooperatives are just as successful as any business backed by a massive Wall Street loan. . . . Too much capitalism is actually dangerous. All the major economic crises of the past 200 years were caused by capitalists on Wall Street trying to use their money to make more money.

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Russell Brand schools Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman

Here's the scenario: Jeremy Paxman continually tells Russell Brand that he has not right to be heard because he doesn't bother to vote. Brand explains to Paxman that voting is a farce that makes voters complicit in the rampant political/corporate corruption. Invigorating discussion that is well worth your time.

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The beginnings of multi-cellularity

Fascinating story told by Carl Zimmer, illustrated by yeast studies.

Scientists suspect that the first step towards a complex multicellular body like ours is for cells to evolve to live in primitive clumps. There may be a lot of advantages to living this way. It may be harder for a predator to eat you, for example. At the University of Minnesota, a team of scientists led by William Ratcliff and Michael Travisano figured out a way to create this kind of natural selection in a lab. As I reported last year in the New York Times, they were able to get yeast–which normally lives as single cells–to turn into simple multicellular clumps in a few weeks.

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