What do Augustus of Rome, Alexander the Great and Carly Fiorina have in common?
"Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Sign his petition for single payer health care. Iran is in the news, so Thom looked up their health care system. Their constitution entitles all Iranians to basic heath care, there are many clinics, and they are carrying out research into stem cells. We could bankrupt them by imposing the American health care system. Bernie's on the Health and Education committee. If you are serious about addressing the real crisis, it is that so many uninsured or underinsured people yet the US is spending far more than other countries. Single payer is the real system, but a public option would do some good because it would bring competition, and if there were a level playing field it would be cheaper. Two committees in the Senate and two in the House are looking at it, the president has not yet weighed in heavily. Two of the largest for profits hospitals had substantial fines for ripping off Medicare. Stories of people, doctors having to spend a lot of time arguing with insurers. There has been a 25 times greater increase in bureaucrats than physicians. Rescission hearings.
Health care, put in the bill that each state's citizens vote on a public option? Campaign finance. Voluntary public financing won't work? The health care debate is heavily influenced by health donations. Statistics on lobbying. Tom Daschle, wife lobbyist. Pet insurance compared to human insurance, health care costs. Where the waste is. People billing. Poor primary health care. Disease prevention. Expand Medicare to make it become the public option? As more take it on, the cost to the Federal government is higher?
People being sent home the day after major surgery. People going bankrupt because of health care costs. Tying health to jobs is involuntary servitude. France spends half as much on health care. Right wing states try to cut services. Can any meaningful changes come up as amendments? Obama, etc. want to move quickly, but it has to be a good strong product, universal, affordable. Bernie would rather take the time it needs. Clunkers.
Bumper Music: Jai Ho Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack.
Bumper Music: Magick, Ryan Adams (video).
Over at thomhartmann.com we have a free live video stream, a free live audio stream, message boards, our blog for the day, all kinds of cool stuff, all free.
Article: Conservatives Are Wrong About Free Market Health Care, Ab Irato.
"A free market isn’t just a market lacking government regulation. Here is the ACTUAL definition: A “free market” is a market in which sellers, under no undue pressure to sell, proffer their goods/services to buyers who are under no compulsion to buy. This is critical; change any element of this formula and you are no longer talking about free market.
Health care is not (and cannot become) a free market for two reasons:
1) Supply is artificially restricted by the government and the AMA. The scarcity of medical care drives up the cost. This is completely artificial. You might say “Well, they have to! You can’t have just anyone practicing medicine!” Fine, I agree, but that means that health care CANNOT EVER be a free market, because of the artificial restriction of supply.
2) Not only is supply artificially low, but buyers are under EXTREME compulsion to buy. What, that thought never occurred to you!?!? If you need lifesaving medical care, you either get it or you die! End of story.
No free market exists in health care.
"
Health care, water companies, power companies, where it is not possible to have a free market, and it involves the commons, it is necessary that we the people collectively provide it through government.
"I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'." Ronald W. Reagan.
Article: World Bank raises China's growth forecast due to effects of stimulus, Jamil Anderlini.
'Anything Goes' Friday...
If you cannot really afford heath care, and it does not cover what you really need at the moment, why not drop health care?
Health insurance in France does work. There are always abuses when something is run by the state. The French pay more income taxes. When Thom did the show from Denmark, Danish conservative guests were for health care, education. Not even Le Penn would dismantle the French system. Thom has used the German and British systems.
Medical malpractice/negligence. Some states have insurance pools for people whom insurers don't cover. Tort reform means trying to get rid of malpractice suits. Texas has a limit of a quarter of a million dollars.
Bumper Music: The Revolution Starts Now, Steve Earle (video).
Book: "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell.
Guest: Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona. He is an Associate Professor with Argosy University, Department of Psychology in Honolulu, Hawaii; the clinical assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, adjunct professor in anthropology with Johnson State College, Vermont and the Training Director of Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation in South Burlington, Vermont. He previously worked in Canada as a professor of psychiatry and a psychiatrist. He used to work down in Arizona with Dr. Andrew Weil with the program in Integrative Medicine there at the University of Arizona Medical School. He's been an emergency room physician, has a Ph.D. in psychology, and an MD, so he is a psychiatrist as well. The author of numerous books, including "Narrative Medicine". The upcoming “Narrative Psychiatry", Coyote Medicine", "Coyote Healing", "Coyote Wisdom" — a Native American person who has transcended and bridged those two worlds – of Native American Medicine, traditional medicine and Western Medicine. His forthcoming book is "Coyote Psychiatry".
Psychiatry has become short visits then prescriptions as it makes most money. A recent Ottawa study looked at depression, had to use the Freedom of Information Act as drug makers don't have to publish studies which show that their drugs don't work. There is no difference between the drugs and placebos. They looked at all the recent drugs. All the school shooters seem to have been on SSRIs, Thom thinks they disconnect people from emotions. Lewis tried Zoloft for one week, and found himself not caring about anything, it was totally frightening. You should take what you prescribe, first, although maybe not antibiotics. People in the study were 10% from normal practice, the rest too extreme. Social networks, relationships are most important, our brains are molded by them as kids. The new field of epigenetics, how genes are modified by life experience. Experience can change DNA, which gets into sperm, so affects the offspring. It lasts at least 3 or 4 generations. Behaviors like war, the kind of society, we are changing our own genes.
Terry Deacon found that evolution causes genetic degradation instead of making it more complex. It makes it more simple because as you get to be bigger brained, you rely much more on social control, not genetics. So we're really degraded chimpanzees.
Narrative Medicine. Looking at the brain as a story-making organ; we naturally make stories to make sense of the world. For example, if you are abused as a kid, you have a story that there is something you cannot talk about, something about you, that affects all your relationships. Change the story; there is nothing wrong about you, find a different story where you are a good person. Victim stories. The story that you have to be born with talent and genius. In "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell says you just need a little talent and you have to put in 10,000 hours. Edison said it was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. John Lennon said the Beatles became so famous because of the gigs they did in Hamburg where they had to play 13 hours a day for 100 consecutive days.
Thom's mom who recently died had Alzheimer's. They decided not to give her the drugs, it was not worth the side effects. A new drug is being marketed. The UK got hold of the unpublished data, and decided not to pay for it. Even the published study doesn't say anything about clinical outcomes, just an improvement of performance a little on scale, hardly noticeable. The only thing that works is to have human beings involved. Thom's family kept bringing her back. Having someone available for emergencies means an year can be spent at home.
A caller knew somebody so manic she did not sleep for days, they gave her a sleeping pill so that she could sleep, and then the caller could sleep too. Sleep can break the cycle. Whatever works to get you to sleep.
Toxic effects of Aspartame, the artificial sweetener, which is also a drug, which Don Rumsfeld got approved. All drugs have side effects and some of them are dangerous and some of them can kill you. How people can change their own stories. Group of friends. Healing circles. People can point our assumptions, stories that need changing.
Khomeini is taking a hard line, cracking down. Kissinger backs Obama. Google has added a Farsi translation tool.
Guest: Steve Forbes, chairman, CEO and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and an internationally recognized and respected authority in the worlds of finance and corporate leadership. He campaigned twice for the Republican nomination for the Presidency and among his previous books are "The Flat Tax Revolution: Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS" and "A New Birth of Freedom". His new book, "Power Ambition Glory: The Stunning Parallels between Great Leaders of the Ancient World and Today . . . and the Lessons You Can Learn".
Cyrus the Great and Jack Welsh, one created an empire, the other GE, both lasted. Jack Welsh invented outsourcing. Jack Welsh created productivity, jobs. Alexander the Great and Dennis Kozlowski. Carly Fiorina rescued HP by outsourcing. Churn vs stagnation. China, imports. Alexander Hamilton. He said the current problems are due to the Fed printing lots of money 5 years ago, Fannie and Freddie, and 'mark to market'. The Glass Steagall Act. Lincoln fired those who were not performing, Obama should fire Bernanke, etc.
Daschle is now saying he never opposed the public option.
HMOs. PPOs. Health care rationing is worse. HMOs used to be good, annual physicals, prescriptions.
Didn't Fidel Castro start HMOs? They have socialized medicine. There are no limits to the numbers of doctors there. Flies. Maggots have a role. George Bush senior and junior, adding to endangered species. Maggots are being used for wounds.
Why can't we vote on single payer? There is no national referendum. Representatives.
Bumper Music: Shake It Up, The Cars.
Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
Article: Man unwittingly follows would-be victim to police.
Article: Denver police officer accused of pulling gun at McDonald's window.
The distinction between jobs and American jobs.
World shaped by culture. Jewish experience of anti-Semitism, holocaust handed down in genes? We need to create violence-free culture, so no death penalty wars, no prison for lesser offences. Jews and banking. Math skills genetic?
Twittering, Iran, interference in foreign state? The State Department asked Twitter to postpone maintenance. Mike Pence getting a resolution on Iran through. We need to stay out of it, listen to Kissinger this time. Democracy is awakening in Iran, and it usually does win.
Are Republicans trying to get health care through before Al Franken is seated? Democrats should not ask for what they want, but more, then negotiate? They should use reconciliation, which Reagan used to cut welfare and food stamps in 1981 and 1982, to cur federal pay and retirement benefits in 1983, a mandatory insurance program (COBRA) in 1985, the omnibus budget reconciliation of 1990 (PayGo), Clinton raised taxes in 1993, Clinton's Welfare Reform Bill in 1996, W's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
Bumper Music: What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. Thanks.
Article: Frist On Using Reconciliation Process To Pass Health Care Reform: ‘It’s Legal, It’s Ethical’.
Member of the day is Al who wins a copy of "Screwed" for the following:
A modest proposal 2009: If single payer health care is off the table and we also can’t get a public option how about a lottery system for health care. Those without health care can spin the wheel at the hospital or doctor’s office to see if they’ll be one of the lucky ones to get care that day.
Victoria Jones of Talk Radio News. Harry Reid hit back at Republicans: "As the debate escalates over the best way to ease the crushing burden of health care, it is easy to become sidetracked by misrepresentations, distracted by minor details or tempted to point fingers. When we do those things, we lose sight of what is at the heart of this effort, this debate and this reform. ... Hard-working Americans are too often the casualties of our broken health care system. We can't afford another year in which almost 50 million of us have to choose between basic necessities and lining the pockets of big insurance companies just to stay healthy". Press briefing, Iran, Gibbs, division between Obama and Congress? The language in the resolution is consistent. There are people in Iran who would want Obama to be more inflammatory. Ahmadinejad's predecessor was more moderate, then Bush stirred things up. Obama at Hispanic prayer, immigration reform. There is an immigration meeting Thursday at the White House. Headed off the rails? Not. Ken Starr endorsed Sotomayor, interesting. Very senior Pentagon officials are going to China to talk about North Korea, the highest level since 2007. They are tracking a ship from North Korea that could be carrying weapons or nuclear materials, a destroyer is planning to intercept. China could end it by cutting exports to North Korea.
Coming up on Monday:
- How does the "old girls club" stack up against the "old boys club?" Thom will challenge Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum...are females at the top doing better than their male counterparts?
- actor/activist/author Mike Farrell will be here to tell us about his new book "Of Mule and Man"
- JoAnn Volk of the AFL-CIO stops by for our weekly labor segment to talk about the fight for health care reform
- the best of the rest of the news, and your calls
