Officiallly a genius

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I love the work of cartoonist/author Alison Bechdel, and I’m thrilled that she won a MacArthur genius grant. I’ve been following her since the 1980s. But even more, I love the Bechdel Test, which is pretty simple. It’s a system that rates movies like this:

(1) it has to have at least two women in it, who
(2) who talk to each other, about
(3) something besides a man.

It’s depressing, how few movies meet even that minimal standard.

Senate control

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Personally, I’d be very, very surprised if the Republicans win control. Just not feeling it. What are you hearing from the people where you live?

Wang is flatly predicting that the probability of Democratic control of the Senate at 93 percent as of today, and 70 percent on Election Day. He summarizes his six core principles of his model at the Princeton Election Consortium. Wang disagrees in his model with the number one election forecasting guru, Nate Silver.

 

I don’t think this is news

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

To anyone who’s been paying attention:

A new study led by Michael B. Rothberg of the Cleveland Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association aimed to measure how much defensive medicine there is, really, and how much it costs. The researchers’ conclusion is that defensive medicine accounts for about 2.9% of healthcare spending. In other words, out of the estimated $2.7-trillion U.S. healthcare bill, defensive medicine accounts for $78 billion.

As Aaron Carroll observes at the AcademyHealth blog, $78 billion is “not chump change … but it’s still a very small component of overall health care spending.” Any “tort reform” stringent enough to make that go away would likely create other costs, such as a rise in medical mistakes generated by the elimination of the oversight exercised by the court system.

The prevalence of defensive medicine may be overestimated by doctors themselves, Rothberg and his colleagues found, because many procedures are ordered in part defensively, but partially or mostly for legitimate diagnostic or therapeutic reasons. “Tort reform” would only eliminate orders made purely because of fear of litigation — that is, 100% defensively — and that’s a tiny percentage of the total.

Tort reform has seldom been about reducing healthcare spending. For Republicans, it’s about de-funding a bloc of reliable Democratic Party supporters — trial lawyers.

That’s why the suppression of malpractice lawsuits has remained part of Republican and conservative orthodoxy despite the evidence that its impact on healthcare spending would be minimal. Even in conservative healthcare pundit Avik Roy’s supposedly objective proposed alternative to the Affordable Care Act (which we examined here), malpractice “reform” retains its pride of place.

Three-tour veteran commits suicide

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Via Truthdig, some sad news:

U.S. veteran communities are reportedly grieving at news of the suicide of Jacob George, a three-tour veteran of America’s last decade-plus of war, after he failed to find relief from physical and mental injuries he sustained in battle. In a clip from a veterans event last year, he spoke of his experience with various types of therapy and performed his original song, “Soldier’s Heart.”

George’s suicide occurred after President Obama announced new war plans against the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

In his presentation, which is viewable below, George spoke of the limitations of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which he said “isn’t designed to address the depths of the wounds we have.” The VA doesn’t “really look at the soul and how the soul has been injured in war.”

George regarded antiwar work as the most important part of his recovery. “I marched with my brothers and sisters to the NATO summit and I threw my medals back. And the act of throwing released something inside of me. I don’t know what it is. I’m still trying to figure it out. But it played a role in healing my soul.”

His therapist noted that “the VA could never endorse something like that. Because it’s so politically loaded. … The VA couldn’t say ‘Hey, look, you need to organize a protest. You need to march to the Pentagon with 100,000 veterans.’ ”

George responded: “Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re telling me that you can’t offer me the actual healing rituals and ceremonies that I need, that an entire generation of people needs in order to heal their soul.”