The most atrocious crime in all of history
The next point on the bullet list is " Human flourishing requires fossil fuels. " I ' m not going to spend time arguing about the science, which is absolutely settled and has been for decades. In fact the pace and consequences of climate change have been at the upper bound of previous estimates. The disaster is already upon us, which is obvious to anyone. And no, all those dead and homeless people aren ' t flourishing. Fortunately, the cost of sustainable energy is already lower than the cost of fossil fuels. We do need to make major investments in energy distribution and storage, and electrification. Inste...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sex, sexuality and gender
The second bullet point is " There are two genders. " In the vernacular, people may use gender and sex (in the sense of whether an entity is male or female) interchangeably, but in scientific language they do not mean the same thing. Sex is a biological term, gender a sociological term.* Biologically, most metazoans mostly come in two sexes, designated male and female, distinguished by their role in reproduction. They both contribute half the genetic material to offspring, but the gamete -- the cell that combines the genes of the two parents and then divides and redivides to produce the new animal -- remains with the ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
God bothering
I thought our commenter ' s list of reasons, via Vivek Ramaswany, why people would want to vote Republican was interesting, and possibly largely correct -- or at least it reflects the surface of how Republican candidates and pundits talk, although I think it probably doesn ' t represent all of the underlying reasons. Anyway, it gives me an agenda, so I ' m going to take the assertions one by one, starting with this one:God is real. While there is no doubt that religion, or professed religion, is a motivator for Republican voters, there obviously has to be a lot more to it than just the assertion that God is real. Joe Biden...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 24, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The comfort keeps getting colder
Eliphaz continues to yammer on, now at great length riffing on how God is all powerful, and recommending prayer. The way I read this is basically " Beg for succor, and you might get it. " Of course that doesn ' t explain anything - - the whole premise is that God (here called The Almighty) is capricious.5 “Call if you will, but who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?2 Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.3 I myself have seen a fool taking root, but suddenly his house was cursed.4 His children are f...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 23, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
A promise I won't make
Running for First Selectman makes me think about some issues a bit differently. Our town has fiscal problems, because we have a very small commercial tax base, and few kids in school which means our per pupil cost is high. (We still need a principal and a custodian and a building, and class sizes are small.) I might be able to do something about that. At least I have ideas and I ' ll campaign on them.But one of the biggest complaints people have is that the power goes out very frequently, and it usually takes a long time to get it restored. I finally broke down and got a standby generator, but they ' re expensive and this ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 22, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
A couple of thoughts
I presume my Friday post was put behind the wall of protection because it contained a naughty word, but I must say I ' ve used naughty words before without that happening. This seems to be a sign of the times. Previously I had mused about the cult of Trumpism, and I got a comment to the effect that people turned to Trump because they had lost faith in government after being lied to repeatedly over the years. Since Trump never says a single word that isn ' t a lie, that seemed like a strange argument so I asked for examples and the ones I got were so ridiculous I couldn ' t publish them. They even included examples of ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 20, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Cold Comfort
I don ' t publish comments that are ridiculous. It ' s that simple. I ' m trying to keep the discourse here at least reasonably reality based.Now we hear from the three comforters. In the play J.B., MacLeish makes Eliphaz a psychiatrist, Zophar a priest, and Bildad a communist. In other words he translates the comforters into contemporary discourse, but just as in the original, their attempts at comforting Job are pretty much gibberish and no help at all. Here in the original Eliphaz basically says that all people are miserable sinners, no-one is innocent, Job must have done something to earn his fate. Obviously this makes...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 20, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Five alarms
The U.S. corporate media have extensively covered the Maui wildfire, they have mentioned the fires in the Northwest Territories and particularly Yellowknife, but there are immense fires burning all around the northern hemisphere that they barely mention. That they areignoring the fires in British Columbia seems particularly strange, since the province borders the U.S. and areas of large population are threatened. There is also amassive fire on Tenerife, andfires on the Spanish mainland.The earth has changed, and the change is building on itself and accelerating. We can ' t stop it but we absolutely must slow it down,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 18, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
THCB 20th Birthday classics: A Brief History of Price Controls by Annoyed Republican Administrations
By UWE REINHARDT
One of the greatest pleasures of running THCB has been to get to know and host the writings of some of my health policy heroes. This week I have already published work from Jeff Goldsmith, and Ian Morrison & Michael Millenson among others will be featured next week (as the party won’t quite stop). Perhaps one of the most amazing things was that the doyen of health economists, Uwe Reinhardt, offered to write some original pieces for THCB…prodded by former editor John Irvine. This is one of my favorites, riffing on a talk I heard him give in (I think) 1993 about how HCFA was like the Kreml...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 18, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Price controls Uwe Reinhardt Source Type: blogs
Academics Weigh In On How To Bring Down Trump
By MIKE MAGEE
This week, as a fourth indictment came due, a tragic Donald Trump headed back to social media, digging himself into a hole that will eventually lead to some personal hell. But before Donald Trump, there was William Frederick Kohler.
He made his appearance on the American stage on February 28, 1995, an historian who had just completed his “Great Work” – The Guilt and Innocence of Hitler’s Germany. He was odd and dark and duplicitous. His life’s work was ready to go. All that was left was to write the introduction to his book. Instead his attention was diverted, as he followed his impulse to...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 18, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Mike Magee Trump Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: A poetic interlude
Ch. 3 is a poem, in which Job laments his existence, and wishes for the succor of extinction. At the same time, he invokes the ubiquity of suffering and the despair countless others have felt. It refers to injustice and oppression, as well as simple misfortune such as his own. This is the first serious reflection on the human condition we have encountered in the Tanakh, and by far the most sophisticated literary creation. Again, we aren ' t sure whether the book has a single authorship, or whether this poem was inserted into the larger work by an editor. In any case, its existence implies that there must have been a substa...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
THCB 20th Birthday Classic: As I’ve always suspected, Health Care = Communism + Frappuccinos
By MATTHEW HOLT
Our 20th birthday continues with a few classics coming out. Back in 2005 I was really cutting a lyrical rug, and would never miss a chance to get that Cambridge training in Marxism into use. This essay about whether health care should be a public or private good has always been one of my favorites, even if I’m not sure Starbucks is still making Frappuccinos. And 18 years later the basic point of this essay remains true, even if many of you will not have a clue who Vioxx or Haliburton were or why they mattered back then!
Those of you who think I’m an unreconstructed commie will correctly suspec...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 15, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Communism Frappuccinos Source Type: blogs
Journalistic norms
Here ' s Paul Campos commenting on a Peter Baker view from nowhere piece in the NYT. Key Baker quote: " Yet most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors likeFani T. Willis orJack Smith weighed in, polls have shown.He
is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being
brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on
keeping him out of office. " I do have a few reflections of my own on the very weird place in which we find ourselves. First, given the presumption of innocence that is fundamental to the criminal justice system, journalists and the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 15, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Vertical Integration Doesn ’t Work in Healthcare: Time to Move On
Conclusion
Healthcare providers of all stripes must leave the industrial world behind. The value chains in health services are not physical, but rather comprised of human relationships, sustained by trust. Virtual care, the advent of AI in healthcare and consumer demand will require a flexible, 24/7 and care anywhere business model. Those who build the best modern clinical mousetrap will end up with a committed clinical staff and loyal patients. Healthcare isn’t about the building, or the brand, or scale. Surviving and thriving in the future will require engaged clinicians who foster trust on the part o...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 14, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Hospitals Jeff Goldsmith Physicians Vertical integration Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Frenemies
The character of Satan as a partial solution to the problem of evil creates many problems. It means, first of all, that Judaism and Christianity are not in fact monotheistic. Christianity isn ' t anyway, because of the Trinity, the goddess Mary, and innumerable demigod saints. But Satan clearly has the full status of a rival God. His existence implies that Yahweh is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Satan knows things that Yahweh does not, and exercises powers of his own. You can ' t have it both ways.The relationship between the two seems rivalrous, but also cordial if not rather chummy. What we see here is much like the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 13, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
