Medical Cost

We were all outraged about irrationally high medical cost as was explain in the "Bitter Pill" article in March 4 issue of Time magazine. Oddly, the author Steven Brill, does not have any medical background, but is known as the founder of CourtTV and the American Lawyer magazine. Apparently, the information was available to anyone who cared to look.

There is also a new book,  Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father—and How We Can Fix It, which is critical of the cost of health care in this country. The author, David Goldhill, is also involved with TV as the CEO of the Game Show Network. The book is based on his Atlantic magazine article,  How American Health Care Killed My Father.

So how come it took two TV executives to bring attention to high healthcare cost? Where were the healthcare professionals? It turns out that the call for healthcare reform has a long history, but was mostly ignored by the mainstream media. A prominent critic was Donald Berwick, who Obama wanted to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Republican opposition prevented his permanent appointment. This should have been a big news story, but received little attention. Maybe the importance of your issues are not enough, you need to know how media works to get attention.

There is now talk that Berwick will run for Massachusetts governor. If he wins the Democratic nomination his mostly Republican opponent would be Scott Brown, who was beaten by Elizabeth Warren in the last Senate race. That Senate race brought much needed attention to financial reform. So maybe the next Governor race will bring equal attention to healthcare reform.

How Good is You Internet?

We talked about Chinese hackers stealing our industrial secrets over the internet. Well, at least we still have secrets worth stealing. We are currently way behind other countries in affordable internet access, the key to information exchange which stimulates creativity in all fields. We may soon have to steal secrets from the Chinese and other countries which have invested in their information infrastructure.

In last week's Bill Moyers & Company, Susan Crawford reveals that other countries pay far less for much better internet service, and that our future industrial base may suffer. This is a long known problem, but does not have high priority on our political agenda. I guess we need to complain more about how bad our internet service has become. Or you can sign this petition on the White House website.

New Group Synopsis

This Friday we will be submitting a synopsis of the new discussion group that we are proposing. After that they will try to find a time slot for us.

Here is a first draft of the synopsis. Your comments are welcome.

Group Name: Zoom-In

Join a friendly discussion about a predetermined topic of interest. Topics may come from current events but are sufficiently complex to merit a more in-depth discussion. Participants will select the topics for future meetings, giving them the option to come prepared or just drop in to enjoy the discussion. Group members will help each other learn how and where to find the best sources for information.

Some ideas for topics:

• Climate Change 
• Heathy Living
• Modern Medicine
• Gun Control
• Drones and other robots
• Pleases suggest others

Gun Control

We spent over half the session talking about gun control. This was on the day after a Superbowl win by the local team. Who would have guessed that there was so much interest.

Bill Ramsey sent in this comment about States with Gun Laws:

You may remember the last discussion when I made the assertion (without any data) that Texas had a higher gun death rate than northern states.  I ran above search on Google and the first hit was http://www.statemaster.com/red/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-per-100-000&b_printable=1.

This list is full of paradoxes.  The worst (#1) is D.C. with 31.2 deaths per year per thousand people followed by #2 Alaska with 20.0.  Maryland is #22 with 11.5; Texas is #26 with 11.0; and all the “Northern” states follow Texas.  The lowest is Hawaii #51 with 2.8.

D.C. (worst) and Hawaii (best) have strict gun laws, as well as New York #46 with 5.1 (very good) as well as Maryland (mediocre).  Alaska (second worse) and Texas (slightly better than Maryland) have virtually no gun laws.  Draw conclusions from this, if you can.

 

It seems that those who favor stronger gun laws are careful to show that they are not against guns. Here is he photo released by the White House. Was this really necessary?