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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009About Those Reinforcements
Monday, October 26th, 2009
It turns out that it took a lot longer than expected to produce the H1N1 vaccine; the virus doesn’t grow as fast the seasonal flu virus, so the expected tens of millions of doses are trickling in. So far, it’s been no deadlier than the seasonal flu, but the experts fear that it might mutate into something far more dangerous. It appears that it’s tapering off in young children, but it hasn’t hit young adults, who may be the most susceptible population, in great numbers–yet. Let’s hope we win this race.
Obamacare Explained
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009These days it’s hard to be more outrageous than the news. Given the increasingly hysterical attacks on the proposed health care reform, this piece, which I wrote a few weeks ago, may not be enough of an exaggeration to pass muster as satire. My fear is that the opposition will pick it up and run it verbatim as an ad.–Ed Stein
OBAMACARE EXPLAINED
Health care experts from the insurance and drug industries, talk radio and the Republican National Committee answer your questions about health care reform.
What is the general outline of the proposed reform?
The details of the various bills being considered in Congress vary, but all of them share a few common elements: a government takeover of your health care leading us inexorably down the path to despotic government, an end to personal freedom and a nightmare totalitarian state.
I like my insurance plan. Will I be able to keep it?
The socialized, anti-capitalist public option, unfairly underwritten by the government, will be so much cheaper that it will put all the private insurers out of business, leaving you with no other option. Worse, you will end up paying higher taxes to pay for insurance for millions of illegal immigrants, shiftless minorities and unemployed former insurance company employees.
Will I still be able to keep my own doctor?
Once the private insurers go broke, government run insurance will be the only option, and government bureaucrats will decide which doctors you can see. And because the pay doctors will get will be so low, the best ones will leave the profession to go into banking, leaving your health care in the hands of incompetent losers.
I heard that In Canada you have to wait forever to get treatment. Will that happen here?
Absolutely. In Canada, thanks to the kind of socialized medicine that Obama wants you to have, hundreds of thousands of people die every year because they have to wait so long to see a doctor. That’s why three out of every four people in American waiting rooms are actually desperate Canadians who came here for health care.
What happens if I have a pre-existing condition?
You will no longer be denied coverage if you have a pre-existing condition. But if you do, you will have to face a death panel to determine if you deserve to be treated or should be forced to die.
What’s a death panel?
If you are 65 or older, you will be examined by a panel of government Medicare doctors to determine if you are suffering from a chronic or terminal illness. Because Medicare funds will be raided to pay for reform, only the healthy will be allowed to go on living. The rest of you will be given a choice of death by starvation or lethal injection (hanging or firing squad in Utah).
What will this reform cost me?
The Obama administration estimates that reform will cost the taxpayers $800 million over ten years, but we all know about government estimates. It will end up costing far more, paid for by your taxes. The non-partisan health care lobby estimates that each family of four will see your taxes go up by $400 million to pay for pay for health care for all the deadbeats who aren’t insured now, most of whom are minorities, gays and illegal immigrants.
What happens if I lose my job?
Right now, you’ll lose your employer-paid health insurance. That’s just part of the natural process of creative destruction in a capitalist society. It’s unfortunate, but you’ll be doing your part to keep our economy vibrant. Under Obamacare, you’ll be forced by the government to buy insurance, and you’ll probably only be able to afford a government plan, one that competes unfairly with a more expensive private plan. You’ll end up being a pawn in his plot to destroy our capitalist system and replace it with a socialist dictatorship.
I’m perfectly healthy. Will I be forced to buy insurance?
Yes. Even though you know what to do with your money better than some government bureaucrat, you will be forced to buy insurance. The health care reform being proposed is nothing more than a brazen attack on your right to make personal decisions.
What if I can’t afford to buy insurance?
The government nanny state will pay for it, removing yet one more incentive for Americans to take personal responsibility for their own well-being, weakening us as a nation and making us easy prey for our enemies at home and abroad.
But don’t we need reform?
Yes. Everyone agrees we need reform, but reform that will change the best health care system in the world in any way is the wrong way to go.
Just How Crazy We Really Are
Saturday, October 10th, 2009The Census Bureau has just released a study that shows that you are more likely not to have health insurance if you live in a state that generally votes Republican. These states (Texas is the worst, surprise, surprise) send people to Congress who oppose health care reform, and their legislatures are stingier in providing child health coverage and Medicaid. None of this should come as a surprise, given the overheated rhetoric we’ve been treated to recently. Still, I’ve often wondered why we Americans are so easily persuaded to vote against our own best interests. How is it that we continue to elect people who make policies that harm us? We put people in power whose true constituency is not the voters in their districts, but the lobbyists for big business and Wall Street. If the Roberts Court, as seems inevitable, grants corporations even more rights, this trend will only worsen.
In an unrelated matter, the head of the California Supreme Court recently noted that his state’s government is totally dysfunction, not because of the partisan divide, but because the referendum process has gotten so out of hand that the state’s constitution is now a mass of impossibly conflicting mandates. Colorado is not far behind, and supporters of our horribly destructive TABOR amendment, which has done such a good job of crippling our budget, continue to push it elsewhere as a model for tax reform. I suppose the citizens of most nations think their countries are nuts, but I’m beginning to think that we’re the craziest of all.
Government-run Health Care
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009For those of you who oppose the public plan on the grounds that it smacks of socialism, or for the philosophic reason that government shouldn’t compete in the marketplace, I suggest you read this article about how the insurance exchanges being promoted as part of health care reform actually performed in the states they were tried.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06mcgarr.html
Without giving away too much of the punch line, it turns out that any way you do it, government intervention is an unavoidable ingredient. Private for-profit insurance companies will never create the level playing field required for universal health care without being forced to by law–in other words, by the government.
Chicago Tribune Hires Scott Stantis
Sunday, September 6th, 2009My buddy Scott Stantis, one of the few conservative cartoonists whose work I genuinely admire– for its originality and intelligence and for Scott’s refusal to blindly follow the Republican talking points–has been hired by the Chicago Tribune. He follows a long line of brilliant editorial cartoonists who have penned for the Trib. It’s taken the newspaper more than nine years to fill the vacancy left by the death of the great Jeff MacNelly, an inexplicable lapse for a newspaper famed for its great cartooning. At least they finally hired the right guy.
This is wonderful news for my profession, the ranks of which have been steadily shrinking as the newspaper industry implodes. The Birmingham News, the paper Scott worked at for the last 13 years, says it will hire a cartoonist, which means that, at least for a little while, the bleeding has stopped. Hooray!
A link to Scott’s work can be found on the lower right side of this page.
The Future of Newspapers?
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Today is the six-month anniversary of the last edition of the Rocky Mountain News. I was asked to contribute my thoughts on the future of my profession to a blog series. there will be a live chat today at 3 pm at http://www.savethenews.org/Denverchat . You might want to log on and hear what other former Rocky folks have to say.
When I was a student at the University of Denver, Chancellor Maurice Mitchell shared with me his theory of the evolution of media. He believed that the more intimate medium would inevitably supplant the less. Thus, the extremely portable 35 mm camera led to large format magazines like Life and Look, which replaced the text-based magazines like Colliers. Television, in turn, ruined the large format mags. That conversation took place more than 40 years ago, but I’m convinced Mitchell was right. It took a while, but 24-hour cable news and the internet have taken their toll on newspapers.
Those of us whose careers have been cut short by the demise of the Rocky and the cutbacks at other papers have been justifiably critical of newspaper management for not responding aggressively to the reshaping of the media landscape, but I wonder if we haven’t been a little too harsh. Buggy whip manufacturers may well have seen the end coming when the automobile arrived, but it’s hard to know how they could have saved their industry. The truth is, there’s no way for newspapers to recover the ad revenue lost to other venues, or to reclaim their power with readers who have access to so many other choices.
I find myself wondering how the health care debate would play out if newspapers were still the dominant news source, and equally, whether this country ever would have passed Social Security or Medicare if the shouting heads of cable tv and the insidious disinformation of the internet had been in play then.
The sad truth is that, even if newspapers, with budget cuts, restructuring, and more aggressive use of social networking tools and video, find a way to remain profitable, they have lost forever their pre-eminent position as public persuaders. I’ve seen this coming in my own journalistic niche. When I first joined the Association of Editorial Cartoonists, our annual meetings were attended by senators and congressmen eager to have out ears. We routinely were invited to the White House when we convened in Washington. The men and women in power feared our pens. Now they fear Jon Stewart.
I don’t know what the future holds for our profession. Perhaps the printed word will rise again in triumph. Or maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post or some unexpected player will create a new, hybrid multimedia form of journalism that will have the power newspapers used to wield. And maybe in that mythical medium my caricatures will again make the movers and shakers quake. They’d better hurry. I’m not getting any younger.
More on the Health Care Debate
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009Many readers of this blog have expressed strong opinions about health care reform. Some of you seem reasonably well informed, but many are woefully ignorant either of what reform really means or of how the rest of the world handles their systems. I think it’s time you read what someone who actually knows what he’s talking about has to say. T.R. Reid, long-time foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, has been around the world studying how different countries manage their health care systems, and his findings will surprise many of you. I encourage you to read his story in today’s Washington Post at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html.
The article is really a condensed version of his excellent book, The Healing of America, which I also encourage you to read. In clear, coherent language, he clears up many of the myths surrounding health care reform, and shows the many ways other countries have made affordable health care accessible to their citizens. He doesn’t advocate any specific approach, and he also shows the downsides of the systems other countries have developed. It’s a must-read book for anyone concerned about this nation’s health care.
The Speech I Want Obama To Give
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009My fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you today from the Oval Office on a subject of great importance to all of us. The past few weeks have seen the debate over health care reform turn into an ugly, angry, divisive shouting match. Senators and Congressmen have been shouted down, insulted, even threatened at town hall meeting all across the country, meetings designed to help inform the people of this country about the complex issues confronting us. I am ashamed and embarrassed by the behavior of Americans who should know better.
I confess that I am angry, too. Angry at the lies that have been spread, the distortions of the truth so extreme and so vile I find it hard to fathom that anyone believes them. And some of the rhetoric has crossed into an area that I find personally obscene. To invoke the visions of Hitler’s Germany in the fanatical opposition to health care reform is beyond , to call the good, hard-working men and women who are trying to create a new health care system for this country Nazis is despicable, and I will not stand for it.
I call upon the American people to stop the shouting, to restrain your anger, and to engage instead in a respectful conversation. I ask my colleagues in the Republican Party, the television and radio commentators and others who have spread the lies, stoked the anger and the fear and encouraged the mob mentality that has taken over this debate to help restore of a civil dialogue.
So much misinformation has been disseminated, so much fear has been spread, it’s time to start the conversation over.
The real health care debate is about what kind of country we want to live in. I ask every Americans to ask yourself these fundamental questions. Do you want to live in a country where almost 50 million of your fellow Americans are without health insurance? Do you want to live in a country where 22,000 people a year die of preventable or curable illnesses because the don’t have access to adequate health care? Do you want to live in a country where 2 million people a year go bankrupt because of medical costs, where 1.5 million homes are foreclosed because people have run out of money paying for medical care, where if you lose your job you lose your health insurance, a country where you can be denied health insurance because you have a pre-existing medical condition? A country where a sudden illness can destroy your economic future, even if you have a job and health insurance?
If you find those conditions acceptable, then we need do nothing, because that’s the country you live in now. Alone in the industrialized world, America, the wealthiest nation on earth, is the only country which allows these things to happen. Our current system of health care is broken, fatally broken, and when I took the job as President, I made it my first priority to fix it. I do not, I cannot believe, that Americans want the status quo to continue.
Now ask yourselves another question. What do the shouting mobs who are drowning out the debate offer in place of what we are proposing? What do the angry opponents, opponents who spread lies and fear, want? Do they have a plan for solving the problems? They offer you nothing but opposition to fixing what is broken. Some for political reasons; they simply want to hand my administration a defeat. Some because they fear that any change will affect their corporate bottom line. Those who have accumulated fabulous wealth from a system that impoverishes millions want to keep the money flowing. Some oppose change because they are ideologically opposed to anything that government might propose. Some because they fear any change. No wonder they are shouting. They cannot offer you a genuine solution to our broken health care system, so they drown out the voices of hope and change instead.
My fellow Americans, we are better than this. We are a nation that has always found a way to solve our most vexing problems. Even when the issues were the most divisive, we have pulled together in the darkest of hours and forged solutions to the most difficult of issues. Today I call upon all Americans to lower our voices, to listen to each other, to speak calmly and respectfully, and to work together to build a health care system that will provide excellent, affordable medical care to every citizen of this great country.
Thank you, and may God bless America
The Perfect Burger Search
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009Park Burger, 1890 South Pearl, Denver
I grew up flipping burgers in the hamburger stand owned by my Dad and my Uncle Jack. The Health Camp, on the Circle in Waco, Texas, may not have been particularly well named–nothing on the menu of burgers and dogs, onion rings, fries and shakes, was even remotely good for the arteries or the waistline–but the burgers were to die for, especially the Super HealthBurger, two 1/6 pound patties on a three-layer bun dripping with special sauce.
I’ve spent a good portion of my life searching for its match. Two weeks ago, while picking up the Aronson Award in New York, Lisa and I read an article in the Times about the search by a dedicated group of New Yorkers for the best burger in Manhattan. One of their favorites was the burger joint in Le Parker Meridien Hotel on West 56th. We passed on the $16 glass of merlot in the lobby and ducked behind the large red velvet curtain separating the well-heeled lobby patrons from the decidedly scruffy burger joint. The seven buck greaseburgers were okay, I guess, but not up to HealthBurger standards. If that’s the best New York has to offer, I’ll stay in Denver for the burgers, where I can find a dozen or more places with better fare.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s posting. Lisa and I lunched today at Park Burger, opened less than three weeks ago by Jean-Philippe Failyau, Frank Bonanno’s compadre at Larimer Square’s Osteria Marco. I’ll skip a description of the nicely minimalist room at the corner of South Pearl and Jewell, and get to the nicely minimalist menu, which features nothing but burgers and the appropriate sides (They do serve wine and beer). There are some dressed-up specialty sandwiches, but when judging a burger joint, it’s always best to go with the simplest first. All the add-ons can mask the taste of the meat and bun. We both ordered the Park Burger, your basic 1/3 pounder on a bun with lettuce, tomato and onion, along with a sampling of both the french fries and the sweet potato fries.
How was it? As close to a HealthBurger as anything I’ve ever had in Denver. The meat was juicy but not dripping, perfectly grilled with just a hint of pink still showing, the lettuce was crisp and the tomato ripe, and the bun toasted to perfection. I forgot to ask what the special sauce was, but it needed neither ketchup nor mustard to complete. The burgers are reasonably priced, from $5.75 for the Park Burger to $8.25 for The New Yorker, which is what I intend to try next time I’m there. I’m betting it’s a lot better than the one I had in the Big Apple.
If you go, and I recommend that you do, let them know I sent you.
