Dan Savage: Was Obama a One-Night Stand?

What's particularly interesting about Dan's piece is how the concerns the gay community has with the White House could now just as easily come from the mouths of health care reform advocates. Read the rest of this post...

I got punk'd by Bosch today

Things like this make me very cranky.

In March, I got a new Bosch dishwasher. My old GE model, at 23, had run its course.

On Sunday, the new Bosch dishwasher stopped draining. After a review of the manual, a check of Bosch's website and a couple calls to the Bosch 800 number, I was told I needed service. But, no worries, it was covered by the warranty.

Today, the service guy came. Turns out, the drain was clogged. Took him about 30 seconds to fix it. And, guess what? It was my fault, not theirs. $169 please. (Note to Bosch: A 30-second video on your website would save a lot of time, hassle and money.)

So, after the service guy left, I called Bosch to complain. I was told the warranty only covered "functional" issues. This was human error. Huh? If the filter isn't functioning, how can that not be a functional issue? The woman at Bosch service was adamant that this was not their fault. It was apparently my fault that the drain on my new dishwasher was clogged because the filters in my new dishwasher didn't work. My old 23-year old dishwasher never clogged the drain. But, this newfangled machine from Bosch, well, simple tasks seem to clog it up.

I really feel punk'd. I hope Bosch is happy. I'd never buy one of their products again. The service guy told me stuff like this happens all the time. I don't blame him. I blame Bosch -- and, for the record, Bosch did pick the service company, not me. There were several calls this week to discuss and arrange the service call. Never was it mentioned that the failure of Bosch's product to function was my fault, until today.

I swear, dealing with Bosch was like dealing with my health insurance company. And, I can't think of a worse comparison. Read the rest of this post...

SEIU is a target of the crazies -- and (hint, hint) they've got guns

It's getting crazier -- and scarier -- by the day out there. And, GOP leader Rush is doing his part to stoke the flames:



This is madness. Read the rest of this post...

GOP plan would provide more for pet coverage than human coverage

Huh?:

GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter has introduced the HAPPY Act to provide a $3,500 tax credit for pet and veterinary care. Terrific! The only problem? Republican plans for human health care reform only offer $2,500 tax credits. This is further evidence that the modern day Republican Party is out of touch with the needs of everyday American families.

Okay, I love my Petey, just as I loved Boomer before him. I'm more of a hypochondriac about my animals than I am about myself. When Boomer was sick, I felt like he had better access to health care than I did. So, would I welcome a tax credit? Of course. Can I envision a situation where the tax credit for pets would be higher than a tax credit for humans. No. And, I'm not sure how anyone else could either. Read the rest of this post...

Footage of fake GOP protesters disrupting health care rallies

Gee, what a surprise. The GOP and the health care industry is playing dirty. While our guys negotiate secret backroom sweetheart deals with Big Pharma and then expect them to play nice. Where are our hardball players? Hello? Read the rest of this post...

Ezra: Job loss numbers are actually good news this time

From Ezra Klein:

July saw a real slowing of job losses. In June, non-farm payrolls -- jobs, in other words -- dropped by 467,000. July saw a drop of 247,000. That's not only less than June, but less than June by more than economists had expected. It's weird to celebrate the loss of 247,000 jobs, but it's really a good sign, as you can see on the graph at right. Moreover, this is the sort of news that can help convince businesses that the economy is rebounding and thus they should begin increasing their spending, which in turn actually helps the economy rebound. It's not just good news, in other words, but news with the possibility to do good.

Read the rest of this post...

Max Baucus' Number One Goal Is A Bill That Just Looks Pretty

From the Walker Report:

A new article in The Hill about Medicaid expansion speaks volumes about why Baucus is the wrong person to write health care reform. He is quoted as saying:

“We can’t foot the entire bill for the states. We just can’t do that,” Baucus said. “We can’t let U.S. taxpayers pay the full state bill” for the expansion.

This claim is stupidity in its purist form, and I know Baucus is not stupid. It is not like states' revenue comes from magical pots of gold. Whether through state taxes or federal taxes, the U.S. taxpayer will be paying the bill either way. People don't care if their higher taxes are the result a new federal tax or just a federal mandate the causes an increase in their states' taxes.

What Baucus is really saying is that it is more important that his bill looks good instead of being good. Looking at his top priorities it is clear his number one goal is that the he writes a bill that looks pretty. He wants it to be “bipartisan.” He wants it to come in below the random (but pretty) round number of a $1 trillion. He wants his bill to be “paid for.”

The problem is that Baucus achieves his goal of a pretty bill in the worst ways possible. Instead of looking for real reforms to drive down cost, he uses short cuts, loopholes, budget tricks, and cost shifts.

Read the rest of this post...

Wash. Post columnist: Attacks by GOP leaders on heath care reform have been "misleading" and "disingenuous" and "flat-out lies"

This is a very harsh commentary about Republicans and health care from Steven Pearlstein at the Washington Post. He writes a regular business column, which usually has, not surprisingly a pro-business slant. But, today, Pearlstein goes off on the GOP:

As a columnist who regularly dishes out sharp criticism, I try not to question the motives of people with whom I don't agree. Today, I'm going to step over that line.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation.

Rarely do we see traditional media types use the word "lies," let alone "flat-out lies."

This column should be a wake up call to others at the Washington Post who merely regurgitate the flat-out lies of GOP leaders without challenging or exposing them. Read the rest of this post...

A day in the life of socialized medicine, Part III

Sometimes it's best to start a long story at the very end. In the case of my emergency eye problems in France, it's the part of the story where the French medical system keeps refusing to let me pay for my $3000 surgery.

It was around 1030 last Saturday morning. A little more than twelve hours before, I'd had a scleral buckle sewn on to my right eyeball - it's a piece of silicone sewn on to the outside of the white part of my right eye, in order to stop the further advancement, and help heal, a torn and detaching retina that, if nothing was done soon, would lead to permanent blindness.

Other than the urge to vomit since about 2am, a swollen shut eye, and the vestigial remnants of a searing headache on the side of my head still numb from the local anesthesia, I was ready to get the hell out of Paris' Centre Hospitalier National d’Ophtalmologie des Quinze-Vingts.

The nurse came in, handed me a few papers - my EKG, an appointment slip for a check up in a week - told me I could leave whenever I wanted, then she turned around to walk out the door.

"Um, should I pay when I head out downstairs," I asked.

"Oh no," she said, "the caisse (cashier) is closed. It's Saturday."

Silly me.

She got up to leave. So I tried again, as politely as I could.

"Um, so, should I pay for the surgery when I come back next week for my check-up?", I tried again, not wanting to offend her with my apparent insolence.

"Yes, I guess that would work - if you like."

Getting a French hospital to accept payment for surgery is a lot like getting an American insurance company to reimburse you.

_____________________

Now back to the beginning. I landed in France a few weeks ago to do my annual house-sitting for my co-blogger Chris and his wife Joelle. Every August, the French migrate, en masse, to a vacation spot of their choosing, leaving Paris a virtual ghost land. But the city is not without its charms, even empty. It's still Paris. So every August, I dutifully hop on a plane, and move the AMERICAblog headquarters 3,000 miles to the east for a month or so, to relive my junior year abroad some twenty five years ago, until the Planche-Ryan family returns from their annual walkabout.

I landed in Paris and something was bothering me. I'd noticed a rather large, new floater in my right eye. If you have floaters, you know what I mean, if you don't, you're lucky - they're fuzzy, or stringy, or even solid dark things in your eye that float around and occasionally get in the way of your vision. I'd suddenly noticed a rather large new one that was getting in the way of my vision, and I also started to feel something in the bottom right corner of my right eye - not pain or anything, just a slight fuzzy pressure or something. I'd had small-scale retina problems a few years ago, and my sister had a full retinal detachment, so I knew that a sudden increase in floaters was sometimes a sign that all was not well with your eye.

I asked Chris' wife, a Frenchwoman, to ask around for a good retina doctor in town, and she said to go to the Hopital Quinze-Vingts.

The Quinze-Vingts - literally 15-20 - has been around since the year 1260, since Saint Louis, (King Louis IX of France), established the hospital to take care of Paris' blind population. The name Quinze-Vingts comes from the number of beds the original hospital had - 300 - or "quinze-vingts," the word for 300 in older French (15 times 20 = 300), just like "quatre-vingt" (4-20) means 80 in modern French.

Now, I'm not going to lie about it. The hospital has a decidedly 1950s General Hospital look to it. But appearances aside, it's roundly considered one of the best hospitals in France, if not Europe - especially for eye problems.



As many of you are already aware, since I wrote about it two weeks ago, my due diligence call to my insurer back in the states, CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, didn't go so well. I called CareFirst the night before going to the hospital to get my eye checked, thinking that perhaps my plan required such a call (you never know), and more importantly, I wanted to know if they had any doctors they could recommend that were perhaps covered by their plan (it happens sometimes).

Not to revisit my previous blog posts, but in a nutshell, CareFirst's employees don't know their croissant from a hole in the ground.

Blue Cross employee number one: Yes, you are so definitely covered, regardless of what doctor you visit or where you go - get to a doctor now.

Blue Cross employee number two: No, you are only covered if your treatment takes place inside an emergency room. If you even step one foot outside the emergency room (possibly to pee, it's not clear) you lose your coverage.

Blue Cross employee number three: Obviously this is an emergency and would be covered.

Blue Cross employee number two then cuts off Blue Cross employee number three on the same call: "I just read you the sentence: Only in an emergency room."

Yes, my insurance is so confusing that Blue Cross itself has no idea what my plan covers, so they just make shit up on the telephone to their customers facing emergency health crises abroad.

Again, you can read about my first French hospital visit in the previous post, but suffice it to say that they found a large tear in my retina and the beginnings of a full-blown retinal detachment, both of which demanded immediate emergency laser surgery to cauterize them and stop them from most certainly, and quickly, making me permanently blind. I also started to notice, I think the night before, a slight black shadow or something in the bottom right corner of my eye - exactly where the doctor would discover the tear and detachment the next morning. (As an aside, the doctor will tell you that the laser surgery doesn't hurt. It does. Which is kind of funny, because who'd have ever imagined that burning the back of your eyeball with a laser coming through the front of your eyeball, for nearly an hour, would actually hurt?)

I was told that it would take 7 to 10 days for the surgery to either work, or not work, and that I should come back in a week to find out. I went back to the hospital, they took a look, and said the surgery didn't take, the detachment was spreading, and I needed more complicated emergency surgery as soon as possible - or else, again, the detachment was going to spread and I was going to soon lose my vision. It's hard to know what exactly made me freak out this time around versus the last, when I was really quite calm about it. But something in that moment made me lose it. Maybe it was being in a foreign hospital, thousands of miles away from home and family. Or speaking about health emergencies in a foreign language I was super-fluent in, generally, but suddenly found myself way over my head discussing parts of the eye in French I'd never even heard of in English. Or maybe it was simply the estimated cost of the procedure, 2000 euros, as compared to the paltry 100 euros I owed for the previous laser surgery. If this round of emergency surgery was going to cost me $3000 bucks in the land of socialized medicine - a place where a normal visit to the hospital emergency room should only cost $32 - then my condition must really be serious.

So, surgery it was.

My doctor, who ended up being a real sweetheart, told me I had to stay in the hospital overnight. Why, I asked? Because it's the way we do things in France, she said - emergency patients spend the night. I laughed. That's funny, I told her, in the states emergency patients are pretty much kicked out the door in a few hours. In any case, she had to check my eye the following the morning to make sure it was all right.

But, she warned me, don't expect a four-star hotel. Then I entered my room.



It was a single room. There was a God, and he was French. (That's my friend Marcus in the corner. He came to hold my hand, and switched off with Joelle's sister Marielle, who stayed for my surgery. Things you don't think about until they happen - but if you're alone in a place and need surgery, who's there for the doctors to talk to if something bad happens while you're asleep on the table?)

As I was a bit stunned by having my own room - knowing how in the states you'd pay an arm and a leg for such royal treatment - the nurse assured me that it's the same cost to you if you get a double or a single, the patient pays the same.

The nurse handed me a dark blue gown and told me to go shower in a special room they had. Apparently all patients have to shower before their surgery, or this kind of surgery. A bit odd, but what the hell. I went in to the shower room and found the soap the nurse asked me to use - it was a variant of iodine. Hoping I'd understand her correctly, and wasn't about to make a fool of myself staining my entire body with bright red iodine, I lathered up, slipped on my horrendously dehumanizing man-gown, and scurried back to my 4 star suite.

A few hours before surgery, the nurse arrived and told me to take a pill. What is it, I asked her? It will help you relax, she told me. I still have no idea what she gave me.

Little did I know that this exchange would be the leitmotif of most of my stay with the French health care system: They talk, you listen. And please don't ask questions. It will get you nowhere.

Marcus, who's been here I think 11 years now, or more, says it all goes back to the French education system. In American schools, universities especially, you're taught to question. In Europe, you're taught to shut up and take notes. I exaggerate, but only just. The French medical system is ranked, in some surveys, as the best in the world. And when you're the best, no one asks you questions. Apparently.

Even my surgery. I only just, today, found out what they actually did to me last week. My doctor called. I had been Googling "scleral buckle." Well, let me step back for a second and recount a conversation I had with three people: Joe, a friend of mine from Italy who I hadn't seen in years, and my friend Matt. Each of the conversations went exactly like this:

"So what are they doing to you?," friend asks.

"The doctor is putting a scleral buckle on my eye," I say.

Sound of friend typing.

"There's a video," friend suddenly says.

Silence.

"Oh." Silence again. "You really don't want to see this video."

I noticed that there seemed to be a few different techniques. I also noticed there seemed to be some major cutting of tissue in the eye (I'd though I'd been told the surgery was non-invasive, i.e., not going inside the eye). So I finally asked doc about it today and yes, there was some cutting of the eye. And I found out that I got an individual buckle, not a wraparound the eye kind of buckle, for those in the know.

Another example. Right before surgery, my allergies started to bother me, bad. We think it was some perfume the hospital puts in their floor-disinfecting solution.

John to nurse: Madame, I'm having an allergy attack. It's starting to make my throat close up. Since I'm about to go into surgery and be put asleep, that's probably not a god thing. Can you ask the doctor if I can take one of my allergy pills?

Nurse to John: Allergies? Allergies to what?

John: Well, lots of things, like flowers, for instance.

Nurse: Monsieur, there are no flowers in this room.

And that was the end of that.

As my allergic reaction grew worse, and I more agitated, we asked a second nurse if he could ask if it was safe for me to pop a pill. He asked what I was allergic to. The conversation went downhill from there.

My doctor says that she thinks the difference between the French and American system is that the French trust their doctors, so they don't ask questions. Perhaps. But I told her I think that Americans trust their doctors too, but we insist on being a part of the process. We want to know the facts, every step of the way.

I'm running out of wind here. And only just got over last night's migraine headache brought on by yesterday's check up of my eye. But overall, I got excellent treatment at a ridiculously low cost. The doctors were absurdly nice. To the point of absurdity. My doctor/surgeon gave me her cell phone number in case I had questions. Yes, the nurses are a bit Nurse Ratched (or for you young-ins, think the Joker in the latest Batman movie when he's blowing up the hospital). Like the nurse who refused to believe that my my eye was in searing pain in middle of the night after surgery, and didn't believe that my stomach was flipping from nausea, until she finally did believe it, and directed another nurse to walk me down to the emergency room, as she now thought perhaps something was wrong with me.

Yes, they tried to walk me.

I made it halfway down the hall, at 2 am mind you, with one eye, and even that eye had my glasses at the tip of my nose because of my bandage on the other eye, so I could only see about 10% of the good eye's entire field of possible vision, with a full-blown bout of nausea, walking my IV tube beside me, before I told the nurse I couldn't do it. They said they'd get some orderlies to come up and bring me down to the ER. I guess they ultimately forgot.

So yeah, all was not roses during my hospital stay. But it was pretty damn good. Pretty damn personal. (Adorable Doctor Julien, the guy who treated me the first time I went to the hospital's emergency room - aka Dr. This Won't Hurt - stopped by my bed, as I was waiting to go into surgery, simply to say hi and wish me well.) And it's also pretty damn cheap.

And best of all, I can see.

And the entire experience has still only cost me about 100 bucks out of pocket because the hospital just hasn't gotten around to asking me to pay yet. When I went back for my check up this week, they still didn't want me to pay for the laser surgery or the scleral buckle. I did pay, however, 28 euros for the check up. Maybe they'll get around to asking me for the $3000 I owe them when I come back for my check up next month (yes, next month - it's still not clear when my doctors will permit me back into a plane again - mom is exploring transatlantic boats, seriously). I'll let you know. Read the rest of this post...

SLDN explains where we are on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Kevin Nix from SLDN wrote a post for gay.AMERICAblog.com on the current status of the legislative efforts to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It's good and worth definitely worth a read. I was struck by two key points:

Part of the problem is how DADT is perceived inside the Beltway.

In many way, especially on LGBT issues, it's still 1993 inside the beltway. And:

For legislation to move through both the House and Senate in a timely fashion (the next 6-12 months), the commander in chief must be an active participant in the legislative process.

Repealing DADT is a promise Obama has made many, many, many times. He needs to step up. Read the rest of this post...

CNN: Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez resigned

CNN just reported that Senator Mel Martinez R-FL), who wasn't running for reelection next year, "has actually resigned his seat." Governor Charlie Crist, who is already running for the seat, get to appoint a replacement.
Read the rest of this post...

Confirmed: Pakistan's Taliban leader killed by US missile

Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a US missile strike this week. This guy was a very big target:

The U.S. government made killing or capturing Mr. Mehsud one of its top priorities this year. Believed to be in his late 30’s, he ranked as Pakistan’s enemy No. 1. “Taking Mehsud off the battlefield would be a major victory,” an American counterterrorism official said Thursday. “The world, and certainly Pakistan, would be a safer place without him.”

The Taliban are having a meeting to pick a new leader. Do they vote? Read the rest of this post...

Definitely green shoots: Unemployment dropped, yes dropped. Job losses "far less than expected"

This is good economic news (when was the last time we were able to write that?):

U.S. employers cut 247,000 jobs in July, far less than expected and the least in any month since last August, according to a government report on Friday that provided the clearest evidence yet that the economy was turning around.

With fewer workers being laid off, the unemployment rate eased to 9.4 percent in July from 9.5 percent the prior month, the Labor Department said, the first time the jobless rate had fallen since April 2008.

The government revised job losses for May and June to show 43,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Analysts had expected non-farm payrolls to drop 320,000 in July and the unemployment rate to rise to 9.6 percent. The forecast was made earlier this week before other jobs data prompted some economists to lower their estimates for job losses.

Heading in the right direction, for sure. The damage Bush and the GOP did to the economy is slowly being undone. Read the rest of this post...

Anger, vitriol and violence at Town Hall in Tampa

Insane.
Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

What an insane week. These protests at Town Hall meetings are just bizarre. The anger and vitriol are so over the top. And, in every video I've seen, many of the people are older, meaning they're probably in Medicare -- a government run program. I'd love to know what health insurance these protesters all have, because they all love it so much that they're willing to literally fight for it. What kind of health insurance inspires that kind of loyalty. Clearly, none of them have any pre-existing conditions or chronic problems at putting them at risk of hitting their caps. None could work for themselves. They must all have very good jobs with excellent benefits, like Congress has. They must have the only responsive insurers who never deny claims. Because if those protesters are that obsessed with keeping health care the way it is, they've got insurance the rest of us should get. It's either that or they just really hate Obama and anything he does. That would also explain the anger and vitriol.

Rachel Maddow did a great report on the faux outrage last night:



Let's get this day started... Read the rest of this post...

John Hughes, dead at 59

The man who gave us Bueller is dead:

John Hughes, the once-prolific filmmaker whose sweet and sassy comedies like “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” plumbed the lives of teenagers in the 1980s, died Thursday on a morning walk while visiting Manhattan. He was 59.

The cause was a heart attack, according to a statement from the publicists Paul Bloch and Michelle Bega.

Mr. Hughes turned out a series of hits that captured audiences and touched popular culture — and then flummoxed both Hollywood and his fans by suddenly fading from the scene in the early 1990s. He surfaced sometimes as a writer, occasionally under his pen name, Edmond Dantès, the real name of the Dumas hero in “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

I just rewatched "16 Candles" for the umpteenth time. It's got some classic lines, or maybe I think they're classic because I've seen that movie so many times. Read the rest of this post...