The roads today are full of hazards: Runaway Toyotas, teen drivers texting, commuters using the rearview mirror to check their hair while juggling cups of scalding coffee. Nonetheless, the number of people dying on the highway is the lowest since the 1950s.
The Transportation Department said Thursday that its projections show total traffic deaths declined nearly 9 percent in 2009 — to 33,963. That's the lowest toll since 1954. In 2008, an estimated 37,261 people died on the roadways.
The newest numbers fit into a trend of steady decreases since 2005, when an estimated 43,510 people were killed.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says there are still too many deaths but credits the decline to more people wearing seat belts, programs to discourage drunken driving, and cars built with better safety features.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
500 massacred in Nigeria
Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria sharply increased the count of the dead after a weekend of vicious ethnic violence, saying Monday that as many as 500 people — many of them women and children — may have been killed near the city of Jos, long a center of tensions between Christians and Muslims.
The dead were Christians and members of an ethnic group that had been feuding with the Hausa-Fulani, Muslim herders whom witnesses and police officials identified as the attackers. Officials said the attack was in reprisal for violence in January, when dozens of Muslims were slaughtered in and around Jos, including more than 150 in one village.
Early Sunday, the attackers set upon the villagers with machetes, killing women and children in their homes and ensnaring the men who tried to flee in fishnets and animal traps, then massacring them, according to a Nigerian rights group whose investigators went to the area. Some homes were set on fire.
The latest attacks were “a sort of vengeance from the Hausa-Fulani,” said the Rev. Emmanuel Joel, of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Jos. After the January attacks, “the military watched over the city, and neglected the villages,” he said.
The attackers “began to massacre as early as 4 a.m.,” Mr. Joel said. “They began to slaughter the people like animals.”
The dead were Christians and members of an ethnic group that had been feuding with the Hausa-Fulani, Muslim herders whom witnesses and police officials identified as the attackers. Officials said the attack was in reprisal for violence in January, when dozens of Muslims were slaughtered in and around Jos, including more than 150 in one village.
Early Sunday, the attackers set upon the villagers with machetes, killing women and children in their homes and ensnaring the men who tried to flee in fishnets and animal traps, then massacring them, according to a Nigerian rights group whose investigators went to the area. Some homes were set on fire.
The latest attacks were “a sort of vengeance from the Hausa-Fulani,” said the Rev. Emmanuel Joel, of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Jos. After the January attacks, “the military watched over the city, and neglected the villages,” he said.
The attackers “began to massacre as early as 4 a.m.,” Mr. Joel said. “They began to slaughter the people like animals.”
Monday, March 22, 2010
House passes health care legislation
Ending the Democrats' decades-long quest to create a healthcare safety net to match Social Security, the House of Representatives on Sunday night approved sweeping legislation to guarantee Americans access to medical care for the first time, delivering President Obama the biggest victory of his young presidency.
The bill, which passed 219 to 212 without a single Republican vote, would make a nearly $1-trillion commitment in taxpayer money over the next decade to help an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans get health coverage.
On the House floor, Democrats erupted into cheers of "Yes, we can!" at 10:45 p.m. Eastern time as the decisive 216th "yes" vote was recorded, capping a tortuous campaign that several senior lawmakers linked to the historic battle for civil rights two generations earlier.
"This is the Civil Rights Act of the 21st century," said Democratic Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the top-ranking black member of the House.
Thirty-four Democrats, most from Republican-leaning districts, voted against the main legislation approving the blueprint for healthcare.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R- Texas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, promised that GOP candidates would turn the 2010 midterm elections into a referendum on healthcare. "We will run on a promise of repeal," he said.
Many Republicans say the overhaul will drive the nation deeper into debt at a time when it is still struggling to recover from recession.
But after a final flurry of negotiating defused an intraparty dispute over abortion and locked down the last votes, Democratic lawmakers, some of whom have spent decades in Congress pushing for universal health coverage, were celebrating the payoff of a monumental gamble.
Obama and his congressional allies succeeded in pushing through the most sweeping piece of social legislation since the 1965 Medicare bill, despite a crippling recession and an increasingly angry electorate.
Now, Democrats must steer a package of fixes to the healthcare bill through the Senate by using the arcane budget reconciliation process.
The maneuver allows Senate Democrats to skirt a GOP filibuster and pass the package with only 51 votes rather than 60. But if Republicans succeed in making any changes to the package on the Senate floor -- as Democratic officials acknowledge is possible -- the House would have to take another healthcare vote.
***
"This will be one of those events that every textbook writer is going to have to put in his books," said presidential scholar William Leuchtenburg, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
After more than a year of debate, including heated summer town-hall meetings and an icy winter summit between Obama and Republicans, Democrats had to go it alone.
"It's not the desirable way to enact major social policy, but it might be the only way," said Robert Reischauer, president of the nonpartisan Urban Institute and a former Congressional Budget Office director.
Polls continue to show Americans split down the middle on the issue, and both sides claim momentum.
Nearly lost in Sunday's focus on protests, process and politics was the stunning array of new federal policies included in the legislation. Dingell, 83, who succeeded his father in the House 55 years ago, called it a natural successor to Medicare.
"We were solving an enormous problem, the health concerns of the elderly in this country," he said of that vote 45 years ago. "Today, we are doing what we intended to be the second step, and that is addressing the health concerns and the health problems of all of the people. Unfortunately, it's been a very slow national progression."
The package of changes would provide coverage to 32 million people through Medicaid, subsidies to families and tax credits to small businesses that can't afford to cover their workers. It would pay for the expansion with the Medicare cuts, new taxes on upper-income workers and expensive insurance plans, and fees on the manufacturers of prescription drugs and medical devices.
It also would prohibit insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, dropping people when they get sick and limiting lifetime benefits. Children could be covered on their parents' policies up to age 26, and seniors would receive improved coverage for Medicare prescription drugs. Most individuals would be required to have insurance, and businesses with 50 or more employees would have to provide it or pay a fee.
Faced with all those provisions and more, Washington's lobbying industry has weighed in with full force. The number of corporations, trade associations and other organizations that disclosed their efforts on health care grew from 398 during the first months of 2009 to 1,541 by the end of the year. Health professionals and health insurers spent more than $576 million on lobbying, up from $515 million in 2008 and $210 million a decade ago.
In the end, most stakeholders endorsed Obama's plan, including major trade groups representing doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and the AARP, the nation's largest seniors' organization. Two groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and America's Health Insurance Plans — opposed it with multimillion dollar ad campaigns.
***
Not everyone was cheering the new law.
Attorneys general from 13 states filed suit to stop the overhaul just minutes after the bill signing, contending the law is unconstitutional. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum took the lead in the lawsuit, joined by colleagues from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado. Other GOP attorneys general may join the lawsuit later or sue separately.
In Washington, Republicans remained firm in their opposition to the giant remake of the nation's health system, declaring it much too costly and unlikely to produce the results that Obama claims. The Republicans pledged to see Democrats punished in this fall's elections for approving the legislation over deep public skepticism.
"By signing this bill, President Obama is abandoning our founding principle that government governs best when it governs closest to the people," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Never before has such a monumental change to our government been carried out without the support of both parties. This debate has fostered unprecedented division at a time when this nation needs to come together and address the serious challenges we face."
With that in mind, and with many of the law's most sweeping changes not to take effect for years, Obama emphasized the overhaul's most immediate impacts, including the ability of young adults to remain on their parents' health plans and a ban on insurers denying coverage to sick children.
"We have now just enshrined the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health," the president said.
The bill, which passed 219 to 212 without a single Republican vote, would make a nearly $1-trillion commitment in taxpayer money over the next decade to help an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans get health coverage.
On the House floor, Democrats erupted into cheers of "Yes, we can!" at 10:45 p.m. Eastern time as the decisive 216th "yes" vote was recorded, capping a tortuous campaign that several senior lawmakers linked to the historic battle for civil rights two generations earlier.
"This is the Civil Rights Act of the 21st century," said Democratic Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the top-ranking black member of the House.
Thirty-four Democrats, most from Republican-leaning districts, voted against the main legislation approving the blueprint for healthcare.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R- Texas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, promised that GOP candidates would turn the 2010 midterm elections into a referendum on healthcare. "We will run on a promise of repeal," he said.
Many Republicans say the overhaul will drive the nation deeper into debt at a time when it is still struggling to recover from recession.
But after a final flurry of negotiating defused an intraparty dispute over abortion and locked down the last votes, Democratic lawmakers, some of whom have spent decades in Congress pushing for universal health coverage, were celebrating the payoff of a monumental gamble.
Obama and his congressional allies succeeded in pushing through the most sweeping piece of social legislation since the 1965 Medicare bill, despite a crippling recession and an increasingly angry electorate.
Now, Democrats must steer a package of fixes to the healthcare bill through the Senate by using the arcane budget reconciliation process.
The maneuver allows Senate Democrats to skirt a GOP filibuster and pass the package with only 51 votes rather than 60. But if Republicans succeed in making any changes to the package on the Senate floor -- as Democratic officials acknowledge is possible -- the House would have to take another healthcare vote.
***
"This will be one of those events that every textbook writer is going to have to put in his books," said presidential scholar William Leuchtenburg, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
After more than a year of debate, including heated summer town-hall meetings and an icy winter summit between Obama and Republicans, Democrats had to go it alone.
"It's not the desirable way to enact major social policy, but it might be the only way," said Robert Reischauer, president of the nonpartisan Urban Institute and a former Congressional Budget Office director.
Polls continue to show Americans split down the middle on the issue, and both sides claim momentum.
Nearly lost in Sunday's focus on protests, process and politics was the stunning array of new federal policies included in the legislation. Dingell, 83, who succeeded his father in the House 55 years ago, called it a natural successor to Medicare.
"We were solving an enormous problem, the health concerns of the elderly in this country," he said of that vote 45 years ago. "Today, we are doing what we intended to be the second step, and that is addressing the health concerns and the health problems of all of the people. Unfortunately, it's been a very slow national progression."
The package of changes would provide coverage to 32 million people through Medicaid, subsidies to families and tax credits to small businesses that can't afford to cover their workers. It would pay for the expansion with the Medicare cuts, new taxes on upper-income workers and expensive insurance plans, and fees on the manufacturers of prescription drugs and medical devices.
It also would prohibit insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, dropping people when they get sick and limiting lifetime benefits. Children could be covered on their parents' policies up to age 26, and seniors would receive improved coverage for Medicare prescription drugs. Most individuals would be required to have insurance, and businesses with 50 or more employees would have to provide it or pay a fee.
Faced with all those provisions and more, Washington's lobbying industry has weighed in with full force. The number of corporations, trade associations and other organizations that disclosed their efforts on health care grew from 398 during the first months of 2009 to 1,541 by the end of the year. Health professionals and health insurers spent more than $576 million on lobbying, up from $515 million in 2008 and $210 million a decade ago.
In the end, most stakeholders endorsed Obama's plan, including major trade groups representing doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and the AARP, the nation's largest seniors' organization. Two groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and America's Health Insurance Plans — opposed it with multimillion dollar ad campaigns.
***
Not everyone was cheering the new law.
Attorneys general from 13 states filed suit to stop the overhaul just minutes after the bill signing, contending the law is unconstitutional. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum took the lead in the lawsuit, joined by colleagues from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado. Other GOP attorneys general may join the lawsuit later or sue separately.
In Washington, Republicans remained firm in their opposition to the giant remake of the nation's health system, declaring it much too costly and unlikely to produce the results that Obama claims. The Republicans pledged to see Democrats punished in this fall's elections for approving the legislation over deep public skepticism.
"By signing this bill, President Obama is abandoning our founding principle that government governs best when it governs closest to the people," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Never before has such a monumental change to our government been carried out without the support of both parties. This debate has fostered unprecedented division at a time when this nation needs to come together and address the serious challenges we face."
With that in mind, and with many of the law's most sweeping changes not to take effect for years, Obama emphasized the overhaul's most immediate impacts, including the ability of young adults to remain on their parents' health plans and a ban on insurers denying coverage to sick children.
"We have now just enshrined the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health," the president said.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
tsunami watch
Tourists lined the lanais of high-rise hotels and sightseers clustered along Hawaii's cliffside highways to take in the spectacle of a potentially destructive tsunami that turned out to be more like an undulating tide.
Roused by sirens at 6 a.m. yesterday, people across the state scrambled for supplies and cleared out of evacuation zones before the 11:20 a.m. arrival of the tsunami, triggered by a 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile.
Most people outside the inundation zones heeded warnings and stayed home after a rush to buy supplies. By late morning, urban streets were deserted and the sands and surf of Waikiki Beach returned to their natural splendor, without tourists or beach umbrellas.
Most people took in the event from their living rooms, watching live television footage of the ocean rising and falling in places like Hilo Bay, where it churned back and forth several times.
"We clearly had a tsunami in the water and we had to evacuate," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach. "I think we dodged a bullet."
The center issued a tsunami warning at 12:46 a.m. Five hours later, it forecast the first waves would reach Hilo at 11:19 a.m. and Honolulu at 11:52 a.m. At 10 a.m., the center predicted Hilo could be hit by the largest waves, as high as 8 feet.
The tsunami arrived on time, reaching Hawaii at 11:20 a.m. but it proved much smaller than expected. Wave heights rose 2 feet 10 inches in Hilo Bay and 3 feet 1 inch in Kahului, the highest surge in the state. In Honolulu, the water rose 10 inches at 12:20 p.m.
Roused by sirens at 6 a.m. yesterday, people across the state scrambled for supplies and cleared out of evacuation zones before the 11:20 a.m. arrival of the tsunami, triggered by a 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile.
Most people outside the inundation zones heeded warnings and stayed home after a rush to buy supplies. By late morning, urban streets were deserted and the sands and surf of Waikiki Beach returned to their natural splendor, without tourists or beach umbrellas.
Most people took in the event from their living rooms, watching live television footage of the ocean rising and falling in places like Hilo Bay, where it churned back and forth several times.
"We clearly had a tsunami in the water and we had to evacuate," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach. "I think we dodged a bullet."
The center issued a tsunami warning at 12:46 a.m. Five hours later, it forecast the first waves would reach Hilo at 11:19 a.m. and Honolulu at 11:52 a.m. At 10 a.m., the center predicted Hilo could be hit by the largest waves, as high as 8 feet.
The tsunami arrived on time, reaching Hawaii at 11:20 a.m. but it proved much smaller than expected. Wave heights rose 2 feet 10 inches in Hilo Bay and 3 feet 1 inch in Kahului, the highest surge in the state. In Honolulu, the water rose 10 inches at 12:20 p.m.
(George Will on) Krugman on Republicans on health care reform
If we’re lucky, Thursday’s summit will turn out to have been the last act in the great health reform debate, the prologue to passage of an imperfect but nonetheless history-making bill. If so, the debate will have ended as it began: with Democrats offering moderate plans that draw heavily on past Republican ideas, and Republicans responding with slander and misdirection.
It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”
Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise — and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.
***
George Will Sunday gave New York Times columnist Paul Krugman a much-needed lesson on what happens if ObamaCare is passed.
Krugman wrote a piece Friday accusing Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) of lying at Thursday's healthcare summit about premiums going up if the Democrats' plan is enacted.
During the Roundtable segment of Sunday's "This Week," Will pointed out, "You said in the next sentence in your column, "I guess you could say he wasn't technically lying because the Congressional Budget Office says that's true."
Krugman responded by explaining that even though "the average payments go up," many people will receive better coverage.
To this inanity, Will marvelously asked Krugman if the government forced him to buy a more expensive car, but told him it's not really more expensive because it's a better car, "Wouldn't you tell them to get off your land?"
***
For more than 60 years, our elected leaders have ignored the destructive profiteering by the health care and insurance industry. Nationally, more than 45,000 Americans die every year and thousands more go bankrupt due to these out-of-control health care costs.
The Health Reform Bill, which is now before Congress, is a good start to reversing this trend. The prescription drug "donut hole" that corporate lobbyists inserted into Medicare Part D will be reduced and eventually eliminated. No one should have to choose between food or medicine. Benefits will include cancer screenings at no cost and seniors can keep their doctors.
Small businesses will no longer face sudden, arbitrary rate hikes and the national disgrace of seriously ill people being thrown off the insurance rolls will end.
There are many excellent reform measures in this bill, with preventive care being key to its success. Much more needs to be done, but we must encourage our leaders to pass health care reform now so we can get on with our lives.
Elaine Hornal
Waialua
***
The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.
Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.
***
The Star-Bulletin should spend a little more time on fact-checking statements in news articles and letters to editors. For example:
Statement: 45,000 die yearly because they have no medical insurance. False: Results from a 2005 Harvard study were widely discredited by peer review and were proven to be statistically invalid.
Statement: The U.S. health care system is rated seventh in the world. False: Study by the U.N. World Health Organization was skewed by false data and multiple subjective valuations that had nothing to do with health care quality while ignoring many favorable factors where U.S. health care is superior, i.e. cancer survivor rates, doctor/patient ratios, treatment availability.
Statement: Government regulations have resulted in shorter careers for physicians and shorter work weeks. True: Since the early 1980s the Department of Labor has reported the U.S. government changes to medical school admission requirements have directly resulted in a decline in the number of years physicians spend in practice and the hours worked per week.
Ken Welch
Mililani
It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”
Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise — and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.
***
George Will Sunday gave New York Times columnist Paul Krugman a much-needed lesson on what happens if ObamaCare is passed.
Krugman wrote a piece Friday accusing Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) of lying at Thursday's healthcare summit about premiums going up if the Democrats' plan is enacted.
During the Roundtable segment of Sunday's "This Week," Will pointed out, "You said in the next sentence in your column, "I guess you could say he wasn't technically lying because the Congressional Budget Office says that's true."
Krugman responded by explaining that even though "the average payments go up," many people will receive better coverage.
To this inanity, Will marvelously asked Krugman if the government forced him to buy a more expensive car, but told him it's not really more expensive because it's a better car, "Wouldn't you tell them to get off your land?"
***
For more than 60 years, our elected leaders have ignored the destructive profiteering by the health care and insurance industry. Nationally, more than 45,000 Americans die every year and thousands more go bankrupt due to these out-of-control health care costs.
The Health Reform Bill, which is now before Congress, is a good start to reversing this trend. The prescription drug "donut hole" that corporate lobbyists inserted into Medicare Part D will be reduced and eventually eliminated. No one should have to choose between food or medicine. Benefits will include cancer screenings at no cost and seniors can keep their doctors.
Small businesses will no longer face sudden, arbitrary rate hikes and the national disgrace of seriously ill people being thrown off the insurance rolls will end.
There are many excellent reform measures in this bill, with preventive care being key to its success. Much more needs to be done, but we must encourage our leaders to pass health care reform now so we can get on with our lives.
Elaine Hornal
Waialua
***
The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.
Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.
***
The Star-Bulletin should spend a little more time on fact-checking statements in news articles and letters to editors. For example:
Statement: 45,000 die yearly because they have no medical insurance. False: Results from a 2005 Harvard study were widely discredited by peer review and were proven to be statistically invalid.
Statement: The U.S. health care system is rated seventh in the world. False: Study by the U.N. World Health Organization was skewed by false data and multiple subjective valuations that had nothing to do with health care quality while ignoring many favorable factors where U.S. health care is superior, i.e. cancer survivor rates, doctor/patient ratios, treatment availability.
Statement: Government regulations have resulted in shorter careers for physicians and shorter work weeks. True: Since the early 1980s the Department of Labor has reported the U.S. government changes to medical school admission requirements have directly resulted in a decline in the number of years physicians spend in practice and the hours worked per week.
Ken Welch
Mililani
Saturday, March 13, 2010
seven to one?
This Furlough Fridays nonsense is really tragic. The dirty little secret is that of about 82,000 Department of Education employees, only about 12,000 are in class -- seven employees for every classroom teacher.
Some of these are janitorial, cafeteria, maintenance and security people. But there is an unseen army of tens of thousands of administrators. We could double classroom teachers' pay by eliminating the nonproductive 50 percent of positions.
Meanwhile, the teachers union's entitlement attitude is shameful. For others professions, "preparation days" are called "evenings and weekends."
This mess is the result of a union stranglehold: Public servants become public masters. We beg and plead while their demands rise and the children fail.
Typical of government unions is that front-line people -- police, teachers, librarians -- are used as pawns in demands for never-ending budget increases. Higher taxes are always proposed to solve the resulting public frustration, rather than even considering reduction of the number of thousands of paper-pushers behind the scenes.
We simply have far more government than we can afford, and no one seems to have the fortitude to fix it.
John Corboy
Mililani
Some of these are janitorial, cafeteria, maintenance and security people. But there is an unseen army of tens of thousands of administrators. We could double classroom teachers' pay by eliminating the nonproductive 50 percent of positions.
Meanwhile, the teachers union's entitlement attitude is shameful. For others professions, "preparation days" are called "evenings and weekends."
This mess is the result of a union stranglehold: Public servants become public masters. We beg and plead while their demands rise and the children fail.
Typical of government unions is that front-line people -- police, teachers, librarians -- are used as pawns in demands for never-ending budget increases. Higher taxes are always proposed to solve the resulting public frustration, rather than even considering reduction of the number of thousands of paper-pushers behind the scenes.
We simply have far more government than we can afford, and no one seems to have the fortitude to fix it.
John Corboy
Mililani
Sunday, March 07, 2010
liberals, conservatives wired differently?
We all know that liberals and conservatives are far apart on health care. But in the way their brains work? Even in automatic reflexes, like blinking? Or the way their glands secrete moisture?
That’s the suggestion of some recent research. It hints that the roots of political judgments may lie partly in fundamental personality types and even in the hard-wiring of our brains.
Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.
That makes intuitive sense: If you are more acutely sensitive to risks and more fearful of attack, you also may be more aggressive in arming yourself and more wary of foreigners.
That’s the suggestion of some recent research. It hints that the roots of political judgments may lie partly in fundamental personality types and even in the hard-wiring of our brains.
Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.
That makes intuitive sense: If you are more acutely sensitive to risks and more fearful of attack, you also may be more aggressive in arming yourself and more wary of foreigners.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Obama's last stand for health care reform
After a year of several blown self-imposed deadlines, unexpected setbacks and incremental victories, the president is taking his final stand to get a health care bill passed -- a push likely to last for the next few weeks.
When President Obama first began his push for health care reform a year ago, he was full of optimism and brimming with bipartisan brio.
Now, after a year of several blown self-imposed deadlines, unexpected setbacks and incremental victories, the president is taking his final stand to get a health care bill passed -- a push likely to last for the next few weeks.
A senior White official described the latest push to Fox News as a one-shot deal -- and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Obama underscored that he's stepping up his efforts with an eye to the finish line.
"I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform," he said Wednesday.
But Republicans remain united in their opposition despite Obama's bipartisan overtures.
...
"It's most likely the end of bipartisanship on health care," said Matt Dallek, a historian and visiting scholar with the Bipartisan Policy Centre, a think-tank created by moderate former lawmakers in Washington. Dallek said a mix of political calculations and ideology had doomed the chances of passing a bill with broad support.
Supporters argued it was about time - Republicans were never going to be brought on board. Critics warned Democrats will rue the day come mid-term congressional elections in November, when one-third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives is up for grabs.
"History is clear: Big legislation always requires big majorities," Mitch McConnell, the Senate's top Republican, said Wednesday. "And this latest scheme to lure Democrats into switching their votes ... will be met with outrage."
Obama said he had done his best to meet Republicans half-way, but there clearly remained irreconcilable differences between the two parties. He challenged Republicans to vote against his reform proposals as he sounded the final battle cry on Wednesday.
"I urge every American who wants this reform to make their voice heard," Obama said. "Every family, every business, every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every physician's assistant. Make your voice heard."
Both sides recognize a problem with the current health care system, which gobbles up about 17 per cent of the US economy and yet leaves more than 30 million Americans without any form of health insurance coverage.
Yet the divide over solutions is as large as ever. Obama's reforms would for the first time require all Americans to purchase basic insurance coverage, expand subsidies for those who can't afford the cost, impose new regulations on insurance industry practices and create state insurance exchanges to help lower premiums for families.
Republicans have fiercely opposed most of Obama's initiatives as too costly and too much government infringement on a largely private health sector. They argued for a much stronger focus on boosting private competition and less regulation of the insurance industry.
When President Obama first began his push for health care reform a year ago, he was full of optimism and brimming with bipartisan brio.
Now, after a year of several blown self-imposed deadlines, unexpected setbacks and incremental victories, the president is taking his final stand to get a health care bill passed -- a push likely to last for the next few weeks.
A senior White official described the latest push to Fox News as a one-shot deal -- and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Obama underscored that he's stepping up his efforts with an eye to the finish line.
"I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform," he said Wednesday.
But Republicans remain united in their opposition despite Obama's bipartisan overtures.
...
"It's most likely the end of bipartisanship on health care," said Matt Dallek, a historian and visiting scholar with the Bipartisan Policy Centre, a think-tank created by moderate former lawmakers in Washington. Dallek said a mix of political calculations and ideology had doomed the chances of passing a bill with broad support.
Supporters argued it was about time - Republicans were never going to be brought on board. Critics warned Democrats will rue the day come mid-term congressional elections in November, when one-third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives is up for grabs.
"History is clear: Big legislation always requires big majorities," Mitch McConnell, the Senate's top Republican, said Wednesday. "And this latest scheme to lure Democrats into switching their votes ... will be met with outrage."
Obama said he had done his best to meet Republicans half-way, but there clearly remained irreconcilable differences between the two parties. He challenged Republicans to vote against his reform proposals as he sounded the final battle cry on Wednesday.
"I urge every American who wants this reform to make their voice heard," Obama said. "Every family, every business, every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every physician's assistant. Make your voice heard."
Both sides recognize a problem with the current health care system, which gobbles up about 17 per cent of the US economy and yet leaves more than 30 million Americans without any form of health insurance coverage.
Yet the divide over solutions is as large as ever. Obama's reforms would for the first time require all Americans to purchase basic insurance coverage, expand subsidies for those who can't afford the cost, impose new regulations on insurance industry practices and create state insurance exchanges to help lower premiums for families.
Republicans have fiercely opposed most of Obama's initiatives as too costly and too much government infringement on a largely private health sector. They argued for a much stronger focus on boosting private competition and less regulation of the insurance industry.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Star-Bulletin on health care reform
Both of Hawaii's principal health insurance providers experienced financial losses in the past year as layoffs caused by the recession reduced the pool of employer-based health plans. The shortfall is a strong indication of the need for universal health care.
Hawaii Medical Service Association reported a $64.4 million loss last year in asking the state insurance commission for an average 7.8 percent increase of premiums for employees of small businesses — those with fewer than 200 employees.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan experienced a $7 million loss in last year's fourth quarter.
The miserable economy has resulted in layoffs that have left many residents without health insurance. Most often they are young and were at the bottom of seniority rolls, enrolling in the government-sponsored Quest program or figuring they are healthy enough to do without health insurance until the economy improves.
"We experienced reduced revenues as more of our members lost employer-sponsored coverage and enrolled in Quest," said Thomas Risse, Kaiser's chief financial officer.
Quest reimburses Kaiser or HMSA at a lower cost, causing them to absorb unpaid costs.
HMSA says it will pursue reduced costs by changing its provider reimbursement "fee for service" policy to a "quality outcome and efficiency model," known also as a "pay for performance" program. Under the latter system, health insurance companies reward health care providers according to performance results, not for the number of procedures they perform.
Hawaii will continue to have among the lowest health insurance premiums in the country, with nonprofit insurers operating under an employer-mandated care system. Universal health care would serve to expand coverage to all Americans and, in doing so, bring premium prices under better control.
[posted 3/22]
Hawaii Medical Service Association reported a $64.4 million loss last year in asking the state insurance commission for an average 7.8 percent increase of premiums for employees of small businesses — those with fewer than 200 employees.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan experienced a $7 million loss in last year's fourth quarter.
The miserable economy has resulted in layoffs that have left many residents without health insurance. Most often they are young and were at the bottom of seniority rolls, enrolling in the government-sponsored Quest program or figuring they are healthy enough to do without health insurance until the economy improves.
"We experienced reduced revenues as more of our members lost employer-sponsored coverage and enrolled in Quest," said Thomas Risse, Kaiser's chief financial officer.
Quest reimburses Kaiser or HMSA at a lower cost, causing them to absorb unpaid costs.
HMSA says it will pursue reduced costs by changing its provider reimbursement "fee for service" policy to a "quality outcome and efficiency model," known also as a "pay for performance" program. Under the latter system, health insurance companies reward health care providers according to performance results, not for the number of procedures they perform.
Hawaii will continue to have among the lowest health insurance premiums in the country, with nonprofit insurers operating under an employer-mandated care system. Universal health care would serve to expand coverage to all Americans and, in doing so, bring premium prices under better control.
[posted 3/22]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)