“Is it important to give people a choice of a public option.”

The fact that in the same poll, 48% are “for” a public option and 42% are “against” a public option is a testament to…something. But maybe we won’t go there right now.

Either way, the writing is on the wall: The people want a public option with the health care insurance reform that is about to happen.

They also want the reform to be real, to not be watered down by the insurance companies, and they want it now.

What I’m working on is my list of candidates to force into retirement over the next few years. Olympia Snow has acted abominably. She as wasted our time and energy beyond belief. She has indicated that she has a very, very narrow range of what she will accept and it is clear that she is at odds with not only her own constituents but also the entire nation. According to Chuck Todd (via Facebook, as I write this), Lieberman is going to vote with the GOP to filibuster the bill that is currently moving towards the Senate floor because, again, he has a very, very narrow range of details that he will accept. Senator Max Baucus voted against a bill much like the one we are ending up with shortly because he had a very, very narrow range of acceptable combinations of who would vote for what before he would grow the balls necessary to say, “Yes,” with most of the Democrats instead of, “No,” with all of the Republicans.

These three politicians…Snow, Leiberman, and Baucus…are on my list. I will blog against them; I will raise money for whomever opposes them. They have hijacked our system and now they will have to pay.

I know that my own efforts, by themselves, will be irrelevant. This will be like spitting in the ocean. But here’s the thing: In a year, or three, or five, the fact that these three (and a few others as yet to be sorted out) decided that their own stupid-ass details and attention-getting whinging were more important than health care reform will be forgotten.

Unless a handful of us make sure that does not happen. Fellow bloggers, help me out on this.

Here’s Rachel:

Seventy-three percent of Americans support this statement:

“Is it important to give people a choice of a public option.”

Why are we even talking about this?

This particular piece by Rachel Maddow does a good job of summarizing the political situation at this particular historic juncture using a fanciful running sports metaphor.

Delay, define, and derail. Indeed.

One of the issues being discussed is allowing a public option in the bill, but then allowing individual states…the stupid states like Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, I assume…to not partake in that. I’m all for doing that as long as we also sign two agreements: 1) Nobody from the stupid states can move to a smart state, ever, and 2) Real election reform has to happen in the stupid states so the people who tend to not be represented in the elections, but who will be screwed by an opt-out option, get to partake in electing their representatives next time around.

In the end, the politicians who are going to decide what this bill will look like, and exactly how to crack the heads that will be cracked to make it happen, know that the public option is popular. Everyone wants it. Like Keith says:

My theory is that the negotiators have been claiming that the public option is in play because they have some kind of secret strategy that will guarantee us a public option. We will only understand what this plan is with historical hindsight.

The backup plan by the Republicans: They will repeal the bill. Here is the plan from the guy who, sadly, could probably pull this off if we keep pandering to the right in this country:

One may well ask, why are Republicans like New Gingrich, who are not presently in office, telling us that the main thing they want to see happen is a rollback of reforms that have not even happened yet, when what we really should be doing is asking very different questions. Like this.

Approximately one half of this country wants health care insurance reform because they realize that the health care insurance industry has become a parasite on one sixth of our economy to the detriment of our ability to provide for ourselves as a people and to stand with moral equivalence in the ranks of industrialized nations. The other half of this country is senselessly screaming, in the shrillest voice possible, to oppose health care reform because they see any reform of any program by a black president to be a form of contamination of our white society.

It would not matter if the major issue of the day was health care insurance reform, banking reform, restructuring of the military, civil rights reform, detente, reengagement with some isolated foreign policy, peace in the Mideast, or whether to have peas with your mash potatoes. Obama is the Antichrist, he is working for the lizard people, and anything he does or says is wrong. And he’s a black guy.

In observing the vitriolic, over-the-top fight to NOT have heath care insurance reform, organized by the status quo but carried out by the working class slobs who have been enamored with the Republican Party since Rush Limbaugh became its titular head a couple of decades back, you are observing the single most powerful act of spite ever carried out by any group of humans in all of history.

Please call your representative in the House and Senate today. Remember, you have two senators and one representative in the House. Three phone calls. It’s kinda now or never.

Betty McCollum was a school teacher in North St. Paul before she entered politics, and she still runs her events with full command and control of the situation. She owns her events and, without raising her voice, makes it clear that unacceptable behavior is, well, unacceptable.

In my post regarding Michele Bachmann’s event in Lake Elmo’s Oakland Junior High School auditorium, I hadn’t said that the Washington County Sheriff’s Department was heavily present. They were there to signal that no unruliness would be tolerated. McCollum didn’t need any cops. She had her own control and command. She also had the foresight to hold her Town Hall in a chapel. Even though the Weyerhauser Chapel at Macalaster College in St. Paul is a nondenominational chapel, it is still a chapel, and people tend to think of chapels as being places of quiet respect and contemplation. Believe it or not, even I, as an ex-Catholic Atheist, have a reverence for buildings with altars.

The organizers added one additional tool to keep the discussion civil. They handed out tickets in advance to people who chose to have input at the meeting. They were the double ticket sort, numbered and separated by perforations. Those who wished to have three minutes at the microphone were to put one half of their double ticket in a basket. During the show, they would pull three tickets at a time and the holders of the matching numbered ticket were to be ready to talk. This way, there would be no jostling lines at the mics as has happened in other town halls.

McCollum’s constituents signed in at one table and the auslanders signed in at another. Each sign-in sheet had space for comment, for those who weren’t to get a chance to speak. I filled out the box with this message for the Congresswoman:

The current bill, HR 3200, is too large and unwieldy and should be scrapped. In its place, Congress should authorize block grants to states which would then be required to develop Universal Coverage plans as testing grounds. Minnesota should be one of these states, and should follow the model that Senator John Marty has developed.

I do think that the current debate has gone far afield from anything that will solve the problem of millions of underinsured and uninsured Americans. I think that even a “reform” of the insurance system with a public option is doomed to fail, because it is going to be drawn favorably for the pharmaceutical giants and the insurance companies that have settled in on K Street to “negotiate” with the Democrats. The result so far, has been an agreement that in exchange for dropping the “preexisting conditions” and practices of rescission, they would only need to be responsible for 65% of the costs of their customer’s care. They didn’t concede anything towards controlling the cost of premiums. They promised eighty billion dollars towards closing the “doughnut holes” of prescription costs, in exchange for not allowing negotiation on drug prices.

The current bill is loaded in favor of those who are footing the bill to fight it, and whether that is to make them look good by “giving in” to something they want when this is all over and done, I can’t say. I think it is something is guaranteed to fail in solving the coverage crisis. It’s time to start from scratch and make it simple.

This is what I wanted to tell Betty McCollum. I hoped that my number would be drawn, but considering the turnout and my own history with winning any sort of drawings, expected that reality would prevent me from having my say to the whole group.

I found the next line, the one for entering the event when the doors opened. I was standing between two groups. One group was a pair of seniors, Republican women, friendly women actually, who were there to protect their Medicare. They were worried about the deficit and raising taxes. I talked to them about how our current system is damaging our manufacturers’ competitiveness on the international market. I told them the one about how Toyotas built in Japan cost less in terms of overall labor cost, because insurance is covered by the center-right government of Japan, than GM cars built in the United States. Picking up the tab is expensive for those of our factory owners who cover their employees’ premiums.

The group behind me were nurses, they were health care practitioners who have seen the effects of bureaucrats coming between doctors and patients. One of the group behind me said she was glad I am on their side, because, as she put it, I am “articulate.” I almost made a remark about how our president, too, is articulate, but then thought better of myself.

The reporter from FOX9 news found one of the few conservatives in the crowd, who took the opportunity to say, “I think that we really need to stand up and prevent this indoctrination and socialism.” I chortled, but I am sure that it was edited out. I don’t watch FOX9 news, so I am not sure what they played and what they left out. There was also a crowd of protesters who were holding up signs, including one that said, “The Nanny State is Dangerous To Your Health.” I shook my head. Nanny state? Another held up a sign that was a Photoshopped image of Obama as “The Joker” from The Dark Knight. The caption read “Socialist,” which I thought of as odd, because in The Dark Knight, the Joker claimed to represent anarchy, while Batman took on the role of the authoritarian. I wondered whether the person who held the sign had actually seen the movie. The proper caption for the picture as originally published is “Why So Socialist?” That one makes more sense in the context of the movie.

The person who had this sign was allowed to take it inside to the event. Now, those of you familiar with the Joker as played by Heath Ledger can understand why it may upset some people. It looks a bit like “blackface” theatrical makeup, only in negative. It looks as if Obama is a black person trying to be white. I knew that this was not the sign carrier’s intent, but others in the chapel objected and asked him to remove the sign. I found myself in the odd position of siding with conservatives on this one. Part of it was due to the fact that I saw more offensive signs, and those weren’t raising ire. Another part is that I am not for promoting censorship. I calmed what was about to turn into a heated argument by explaining to a few people that I was an Obama supporter and I didn’t find the sign offensive. It’s not like the caption was “We Need a Great White Hope.”

I was sitting next to a conservative, who buffered me during the conversation from a redneck who, during the rising argument over the sign, managed to croak out the words, “I am offended that liberals exist,” in response to someone else being offended by the sign. I wonder whether he thinks abortion should be prohibited only for conservatives, but that those of us born destined to be liberals should be thwarted by D & C at birth. I think that he meant to say is, “I am offended that liberalism exists,” but I can’t be sure.

Now, on to the event itself. Betty came out and talked about the problems that have led to a crisis of health care coverage and outlined what she believes to be the solution. She is in support of the monstrosity that is HR 3200, but pointed out that it is not yet a complete document and that in September it is likely to see major changes. She reiterated that Senators and Congressional Reps are in their districts to hear what their constituents have to say about it, so that they can take that back with them. And then the drawings began to find out who would get to have their say.

Mr. “Offended That Liberals Exist” was one of the first three to speak, and told the heartbreaking tale that he had switched jobs and had to change insurance and that one of his kids had a preexisting condition and that he and his wife struggled to pay all the bills, but dammit, this is America! and he didn’t expect anyone else to be responsible for his problems and he doesn’t expect anyone to be responsible for them now and they need to fix health insurance but not make it socialist! “Good points,” Betty responded.

Other people said they didn’t want any of their money going towards killing babies. Make sure that there are no payments for abortions (but continue funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where, yes, children are getting killed, which is okay because they are collateral damage in the War against Terrorism). “There are no provisions in the bill for funding abortions,” Betty told the questioner.

Lots of questions from conservatives afraid that the bill would take away their freedoms to choose their doctors, their insurance company, their deductible. Some people wanted à la carte insurance because they didn’t think they would need coverage for pregnancy and childbirth (which sounds like people who think they shouldn’t have to pay for education in their property taxes if they don’t have any children in school).

Democrats. No need to hide. We won in 2008!

Betty McCollum did a lot of assuring and comforting of conservatives in the crowd–that the bill would not damage them in any way, that there would be no “death panels,” that the special needs patients wouldn’t have to beg a panel for care, that they would be able to stay with their current plan, that Medicare would be fixed so that Minnesota hospitals are no longer punished for being efficient. She didn’t say anything to show those of us who had campaigned and doorknocked and phone-banked to help Democrats get elected in November that we were going to be heard this September. She didn’t say anything about fighting for a public option, let alone the one fix that would actually take care of the problems, single-payer health care, such as the type that our top competitors on the world market offer.

Single-payer was not even discussed, nor was the language part of the bill in Congress. It is a topic shunned out of fear by the Democrats, because…well, because…because…I just don’t know. It is an untouchable topic in Congress and the Senate, and it is what the people who worked so hard in November want. But maybe we were just the mice who had chosen the Black Cats over the White Cats.

I’m really frustrated with the Democrats.

When I was standing in the line for Fourth District constituents to sign in, an older gentleman was complaining that Obama is the most socialist president we have ever had. I laughed at him, and asked him whether he was serious, and he said he was. I told him that he really should ask progressives and liberals what we think of that. He was clueless as to what I mean.

We have been shut out, not by the conservatives, but by the Democrats. We have one Senator who is shy of leading the charge even for public option reforms, instead opting to wait until the final bill before she will commit to voting for it. We need to remind them that they can’t take us for granted, and they had better do what we elected them to do.

We need leadership, and if the Congressional Democrats are going to forego it, then Stephanie has the way to lead, and not follow, in this debate.

One of the sources said White House officials are “deep in conversations” with Snowe on a much smaller health care bill than Obama originally envisioned.

The modified proposal would include insurance reforms, such as preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, according to the source.

The potential deal would give insurance companies a defined period to make such changes in order to help cover more people and drive down long-term costs. But if those changes failed to occur within the defined period, a so-called “trigger” would provide for creating a public option to force change on the insurance companies, the source said.

Snowe is pivotal to the debate because she may be Obama’s last possibility for getting a Republican senator to support his push for a health care overhaul.

This isn’t what I voted for. I did not vote for a man who allows his administration to solicit opportunities to water down the initiatives he promised. I did not vote for a man who reaches across the aisle to find a place to sit. I did not vote for a few more years. I did not vote for “Well, we could.”

Oh, I can’t say it nearly as well as Anne Lamott already did.

We did not know exactly how you would proceed to restore our beloved Constitution. It seemed beyond redemption, like my kitchen floor did briefly last week after my dog, Bodhi, accidentally ate 24 corn bread muffins. You said you would push back your sleeves and begin, that it would take all of us working harder than we ever had before, but that you would lead. While acknowledging the financial and moral devastation of the last eight years, you said you would start by giving your people healthcare. You would do battle with the conservatives and insurance companies. You said in your beautiful way many times that this was the overarching moral and spiritual issue of our times, and we understood this to mean that you took this to be your Selma, your Little Rock.

I hate to sound like a betrayed 7-year-old, but you said. And we believed you. Now you seem to have abandoned the dream. That is why moderates and liberals and progressives like myself all seem a little tense this summer. It is time to call your spirit back. We will be here to help when you get back from vacation. We want to help you get over the disappointment of Mr. Grassley’s cold shoulder, of Mr. Enzi blowing you off, even that nice Olympia Snowe standing you up. We can and will take to the streets again, march and hold peaceful rallies, go door to door, donate to any causes that will help get out the truth of what a public option would mean. But we need you to shake off the dust of the journey and remember the promises of Dr. King, and we need you to lead us toward what is no longer so distant a shore.

And on the subject of wanting bipartisanship:

Of the total votes cast that long-ago November day, I’m guessing that about 1,575 people wanted you to try to reconcile the toxic bipartisanship that culminated in those Sarah Palin rallies.

The other 66,880,655 of us wanted universal healthcare.

We still do. In very durable results, more than three-quarters of the U.S. wants at least a public option, including more than 60% of Republicans polled. This means that if the Senate were stocked with the Republicans who were asked for their opinions, they would have the necessary supermajority to shut down debate and just vote in a public option.

In fact, there are only three groups that don’t seem to be in favor of a public option: insurance companies, corporate media and our elected representatives.

And it only takes a few minutes of cable news viewing to arrive at the assumption that the “centrist” position on healthcare reform, according to Brooks and other establishment people, is a bill without a public option. The health insurance lobby in collusion with both the corrupt and spineless Blue Dogs and the lying hacks who control the cartoonish Republican Party have successfully convinced large chunks of Washington that the public option is some sort of ultra-left concoction manufactured inside the secret underground Wellstone Memorial Lib-ratory located beneath Howard Dean’s cavernous walk-in Birkenstock closet.

The reality, however, is that a healthcare reform bill with a robust public option is both extraordinarily popular and fiscally responsible, while, on the other hand, the kind of “centrist” bill that David Brooks wants is actually more expensive and generally more corrupt. In other words, a bill without the public option can hardly be called “centrist” by any definition of the term.

If Brooks wants “fiscal restraint,” as he writes in his column, he’d endorse the public option. What I’m about to write is old news, but with the apparent prevalence of breaking news stories on cable news about bears wandering into suburban swimming pools, I suppose it’s easy for people to forget. Nevertheless, here it is. You may recall that the CBO scored the Kennedy HELP bill as costing around $1 trillion over ten years. But that was an early version of the bill without a public option included. What did the bill cost with the public option inserted into the mix?

$400 billion less.

Less!

Why don’t the politicians support a public option? They’re isolated. They’re surrounded by people who thought “Yes, we can” was a brilliant stroke of marketing, period, and the energy around the election was an unsustainable fluke. They’re hounded by (and identify with) people who lead industries that don’t bear nearly the same risk we do in health care costs and for whom a doubling of health care costs in a decade is a mere annoyance. They’re used to laughing at the idealists, because for the last eight years, they really couldn’t get anything done.

And, maybe, we’re talking too much to each other and not enough to them. We need to puncture that isolation. Don’t assume your representatives know where you stand. Complain to your local media when they insist on covering the controversy instead of the groundswell. Sign MoveOn’s petition. The text is very simple.

“President Obama, we’re counting on you to fight for bold change on health care–including a strong public health insurance option. It’s the key to breaking the stranglehold that private insurers have over our health care system.”

Donate to help them advertise. And don’t forget to tell your health insurance story and your child’s and your parents’. Stories are important. They bind us together in this. They carry a weight that even our numbers can’t always convey and penetrate where we can’t always go. The health insurance industry may have the money. They have the media. They may even have the politicians. But they don’t have the stories, and they can’t control ours except by making things better.

That’s exactly what we want done, and we’re not about to compromise.

Update: Someone in the comments mentioned hope. Not to pick on her, but hope isn’t going to cut it. In the words of the immortal Shel Silverstein:

Well it wasn’t too very long ago you know some folks walked with a hi-dee-ho
And other folks walked around kind of low
Sayin’ Yowzah and Sho nuff and Yassuh boss
It was ashes to ashes and dust to dust and they didn’t believe in makin’ a fuss
So they quietly moved to the back of the bus
They just say Yowzah and Sho nuff and Yassuh boss
And when things got rough they did a little prayin’
Little arm wavin’ and a little bit of swayin’
Didn’t do no good they kept right on a sayin’
Sayin’ Yowzah and Sho nuff and Yassuh boss
So they all went out and did a little standin’ little less askin’ and a lot more demandin’
Little less liftin’ and a little less totin’ a lot more thinkin’ and a lot more votin’
A lot less hopin’ a lot less waitin’
A whole lot more demonstratin’a lot less pearly gate’n’
A lot more fightin’ and a lot more walkin’ until finally no one at all was talkin’
Like Yowzah and Sho nuff and Yassuh boss
The end of this story is plain to see they finally achieved equality
And now like you and me they can stand up strong and free
And say Yes sir and Of course sir and Anything you say JB

Clearly, there is more work to be done.

She was saying this in sight of a nurse giving out free flu shots. Which was funny, because she also said that she would never get a flu shot because all you need to do to not die from the flu is to “eat healthy” and take lots of vitamins. If you eat healthy and take lots of vitamins and get the flu, your lymph nodes will swell up a little but that’s all.

I think I get it.

People who are sick did something wrong to get sick. Maybe they didn’t eat right or take enough vitamins. Or maybe they were just poor, and that’s why they got sick, but it is still their fault because they are probably poor because of some decisions they made along the way. It is not society’s responsibility to fix them or to pay for fixing them. If each person takes care of themselves, they won’t get sick and everything will be fine. If each person takes care of the land they live on, there is no need for an Environmental Protection Agency, and if each person is moderately well armed, and can thus take are of any suspicious behavior that happens in their vicinity, there is no need for a police force. If each person does not do anything stupid with matches, there is really no need for a fire department. If your house burns down, it is pretty much your own fault. Why should anyone else be paying for your protection from your own stupidity?

Those people who live in California, whose houses are burning down in the brush fires, moved to those hills knowing full well what would happen. The rest of us should not have our insurance rates go up just because they are stupid.

Addicts totally made their own decision to become addicted and then become thieves because they needed a fix. If I have to exercise my constitutional rights and shoot this addict breaking into my home, then so be it. That is not my problem.

Whenever everyone gets together and organizes some kind of thing…a service or facility or whatever, like a community center with a pool or a fire department or a homeless shelter or even a grocery store…they screw it up. Organized = corrupted. Nothing should be organized, and any kind of variation that exists between people in something they have or something they need is the result of people’s personal decisions and personal activities, and should be left the way it is.

That applies to so-called pre-existing conditions, too. If you are sick, it is pretty much your own fault, so why should an insurance company take on your problems? Do you think that is their job? Hardly.

I’m tired of people always insisting that other people should help them. By helping another person, you are always hurting them, and yourself. Halfway through helping them, they will just take the rest of your stuff and stab you in the back. Then you will have to shoot them, and then there is all that hassle when that happens. That’s what happens when you help someone. You end up having to shoot them.

Of course, there may be more than one way to look at this sort of thing …

Get the background on this video here.

P.S. The libertarian right wing logic…it slithers so easily off the tongue once you start, don’t it?

Last Thursday, I took a field trip to Lake Elmo’s Oakland Junior High in order to see democracy in action. If Michele Bachmann was courageous enough to enter Washington County, which she lost to Elwyn Tinklenburg by 3,000 votes in 2006 and which McCain lost to Obama by 13,000 votes, I could certainly pluck up the courage to wade into an auditorium populated largely with conservatives. I was even prepared for there to be people who would hate me merely for the fact that I’m a liberal.

I had joked at work and on Facebook that I might even take a squirt gun with me, to protest the impending loss of my 2½ Amendment rights.  I considered mocking the teabaggers and wingnuts who were showing up at the town halls of Democratic congresspeople and senators bearing signs reading the “Tree of Liberty Must Be Watered” and other such platitudes from people who have no clue as to what tyranny really is.  The president we have now is certainly more engaged democratically than the previous one; it was only three years ago that as a minority party in the House, the Democrats were excluded from committee meetings, which were not announced so the Republicans could call quorum and debate bills.

I decided not to take the water pistol because while the joke would be cute for a minute or two, I was more interested in trying to speak with one of the lockstep Republicans.  I wanted to find out how they had arrived at their conclusion that if some sort of health care reform is passed, the very foundations of American Freedom would crumble.  I wanted to find out whether they were truly caught up in teabaggism.  I would leave the mocking to other people.

I met up early with a group of Democrats who had been invited to the event through Organizing for America.  OFA is a continuation of the Obama presidential campaign focused on drumming up support for a reform of the health insurance system in the United States.  We came prepared with signs.  Some signs said, “People, not Profits,”  “Health Care for All,” and,  “We Want the Same Coverage That The Congresswoman and Her Staff Enjoy.”

I was expecting a big crowd of people chanting back and forth at each other, but found a small group of like-minded Democrats gathering together to plan our attack on the Representative’s presentation.  We planned to laugh at her misstatements and her anticipated stupidities until I pointed out that I just didn’t think that I would be able to laugh for an entire two hours.  We decided to sit close to microphones so that we would be ready for the Q&A.

I went inside the school and signed in.  One of my co-conspirators demanded to know why we were having to sign in, as though he were going to be tracked and his movements followed by the Bachmann Brownshirts, but I assured him it was okay to put his name on the list of attendees.  I pointed out that we were not being excluded as we would have been from a Bush Social Security privatization event four years ago.

The line inside the building was rather long, and there was a heavy turnout.  We waited for 30 minutes for entry into the auditorium.  Conservatives mixed with liberals. There were no fistfights and no threats.  We were polite to each other, moving out of the way if someone needed to access either bathroom.  We eavesdropped on each other’s conversations.  There was some back and forth between people, and some anger was hidden below the surface as people disagreed on what socialism is and is not.  It remained below the surface, as people waited for anticipated fireworks inside the show hall.

Finally, we were admitted and the auditorium filled up.  I sat next to a couple I had just met, a pair of liberals.  Their son was outside holding up signs to greet the people who were still filing in.  No signs were being allowed inside the building, but a brave crew had held back and dared confrontation with placards that demanded, “Health Coverage for All,” “People not Profits,” “Health Care for Children,” and so forth.

I went outside. I was feeling a bit too crowded and wasn’t really all that interested in what Bachman was going to say. I have heard it all before and didn’t see much opportunity to ask a question. I held up a sign that said I want for everyone the same care the Representative has, and in truth was yelling slogans as people filed in. I asked people whether the roads they drove on to get to the event were toll roads or examples of socialism, whether the school was a socialist school, whether fire departments are socialism.

A pair of older ladies walked by with little signs that simply said, “Enough.” I asked them, because I sincerely didn’t know what the signs meant, “Enough what?” They just looked at me and walked on by. Later, I saw that the signs had the web address of Glennbeck.com printed at the bottom. Later another woman walked towards the entrance with two children in a stroller. She furrowed her brow when she read our signs and yelled out “You are stealing our money!” I asked her how, in a Republic, we were stealing? She gave us a thumbs down and walked in, frightened to engage with liberal, socialist thieves.

The crowd had mostly moved inside, and I decided to remain outside. It was a very nice day, and I really couldn’t see the value on a warm, sunny day of being trapped inside a crowded auditorium having to listen to Michele Bachmann. There were other people to do that. I wanted to try to engage outside with some of her supporters to find out how and why they had come to the conclusion that a democratically elected president, one who had been trying to wrangle support from the opposition in order to pass a health care reform bill, can be compared to a Nazi dictator.

No one, unfortunately, was willing to engage me in a discussion. Sure, I talked to several people with whom I was in agreement. While self-affirming, it wasn’t satisfying for me on this particular occasion. One of the problems that I ran into was that when I had started to engage in a discussion with someone, people from my own side interrupted my conversation.

I saw a man who was holding up a sign that said, “Don’t Take Away My Freedom to Choose.” I went up to talk to him about choice, and how important his freedom is to him when he was also supporting a congresswoman who has made her name trying to prevent gays from having the choice to marry who they wish to marry. I wanted to ask him how much freedom matters to him when he knows that there are millions of people who have no choice in what doctors they go to because they can’t afford insurance under the current system. I wanted to ask him how much he valued the freedom to choose, knowing that the congresswoman he supports doesn’t allow women to choose how to manage their own bodies.

But I was interrupted by someone who saw a target for their own arguments. “Erv,” I said, “I was talking to him.” Erv put up a finger to signify he would only be a moment. So, I politely waited while he finished his point. Then as he walked away, I started to talk to the other man again. Erv again interrupted me. I finally walked away, disappointed at Erv’s rudeness.

I was boiling by the time I got to my car. Not at Bachmann’s supporters, though. I had expected rudeness from them. I was disappointed in my own co-conspirators against insurance company hegemony. I had been on several occasions cut off in conversation, and I got in my car and shifted into gear and was ready to pull out of my parking spot to go home.

Erv came up to me car and knocked on the window. He said “There are times when ageism’s claims about the elderly are justified. I was rude to you, and I sincerely apologize. I shouldn’t have been interrupting you.” I thanked him for apologizing and we shook hands. I left, not quite so angry, but still a bit frustrated that I hadn’t had a chance to engage with someone at the event.

I still think that there is an awful lot of dysfunction in American politics in this debate over what to do about health insurance reform. I can say that nothing was resolved at this particular town hall. I don’t think that people are hearing the problems that arise from the way we handle care right now, instead wrapping themselves in an American Flag to protect their current situation and what they see as The Greatest Health Care System The World Has Ever Known.

Their view ranges from “I am not responsible for my neighbor’s problems” to “The deficit is just too big to add on to it with a national health care system.” They aren’t seeing that they are just one pink slip away from losing their health insurance, or one claim away from finding that a knee surgery they had five years ago will be justification used to deny their claim for coverage of their newly discovered melanoma.

We’re trying to tell them they are placing false trust in large corporations whose purpose is more to make money than cover their customers’ needs. But they like their American Way. Anyone who seeks to change that with a public option, or the now “off the table” single payer plan is a thief trying to steal their money. My life as a thief consists of asking them why they are so willing to entrust their health and financial future with companies that are charging full price for premiums, but providing discount service in exchange.

On Monday, August 31st, I went to a Town Hall Meeting run by Betty McCollum who is in fact my representative. That went a bit differently, but will need to be continued in a separate post.

I actually did watch a bit of TV when I was a kid, but we were only limited to a few channels because I was growing up “B.C.”  Before Cable, the isolated areas of the country were lucky to receive waves from one broadcaster.  In Hallock we were in reach of CBS and CTV from Winnipeg, NBC from Grand Forks and, when the weather conditions were welcoming, we would pull in ABC and CBS from Fargo.  We viewed our reruns of other networks thanks to KCND from an independent in Pembina.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, a superstation from Atlanta bought its way onto the cable outlets, and WTBS broadened even further our access to reruns of 1950s and 1960s shows I hadn’t seen as a kid.  I honestly don’t remember the original run of Leave it to Beaver. In fairness, I was way too young to remember it, being only two years old when its final episode aired.  My recall of the show is based on reruns.

We all have the reruns to thank for some of the cultural icons that have arisen from the show, and the character of Eddie Haskell is one of its major contributions to our society.  Eddie was the Beav’s burden.  Eddie’s mischief often caused the young and vulnerable Beaver Cleaver (an IRC sex channel “handle” if ever there was one) to get into gobs of trouble.   Each time Beaver would explain that he had fallen for one of Eddie’s tricks, Haskell would suck up to Mrs. Cleaver with an innocent face and, with modesty oozing from his voice, utter a sweet, “I would never do anything like that, Mrs. Cleaver.”

In the wake of the most egregious examples of attacks on Democrats and the President at town hall meetings on the presumed subject of health care and the bill before Congress, at which events people have shown up with guns, have drawn Hitler mustaches on pictures of Obama, have hung in effigy the President and other Democratic representatives, have shouted down in concert anyone who asks a serious question about the bill and turned the town hall process into a mockery, the right are now responding to the media glare with the Eddie Haskell approach.  “I would never do anything like that, America.”  We are now to believe that those whose missions were to disrupt the meetings and prevent any sort of discussion of the bill were just ordinary citizens exercising their right to speak out.  They’re just ordinary people.

There is no question that the first disruptions were encouraged by insurance lobbyists and pharmacy lobbysists, as “AstroTurf” activists bused around from state to state create the impression that a grassroots movement against Obama is sweeping the country.  They are the last defenders in a Red Dawn against the foreign-born, secretly Muslim, fascist-socialist, anti-white racist usurper in the White House.  If they don’t stop him and his lackeys now, it won’t be long before they are rounded up into a new gulag of internment camps. (Yes, Jason, there are Canadian Wingnuts, too.)

The AstroTurf is getting less expensive now, as the message has gotten through to people who only pay partial attention.  They take Betsy McCaughey’s word when she says that an advanced care directive will lead to doctors getting more favorable ratings and thus higher fees if they encourage patients to forego heroic measures, which is more simply stated as, “Obama wants to kill special-needs kids and Grandma!”  So, their strategy has worked, and as they now disavow any connection to the disruptors, they are turning themselves loose on the Representatives who are dismissive of the kooks at the mike.  “That Barney Frank, he was so rude to a constituent.  Who The Hell does he think he is?!”  Never mind that the constituent was holding up a picture of the president with a Hitler mustache and had asked why Frank supported fascism?  I think Frank insulted dining room tables in this incident.

The events are now being populated by people who have bought into the distorted analyses of HR 32oo, and are genuinely confused at to what the bill includes and what it doesn’t include.  They are now being populated by people genuinely concerned about the deficit (but one wonders where they were when George Bush was out there cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising spending to create the mess we are in).  They are people who are now against a bill that would, in fact, help them, because they have heard the noise and the noise frightens them.

So, as a liberal who has been watching the conservatives and the insurance industry lobbyists play chess against the progressives in Congress using the public as pawns, I wonder what to do next.  I know that many liberals want to continue walking the high road and to patiently review the bill with people who don’t really get it but are accepting the easy answers.

On Thursday, August 27th, 2009 there will be a town hall meeting in Lake Elmo.  The Representative who will be taking the questions?  Why, none other than our dear friend from the 6th District.

Michele Bachmann Town Hall (Health Care Organizing Event)

It is so important for us to have a good showing at this event. The event will discuss health care. Bachmann is bringing Congressman Burgess from Texas. Burgess is a Republican and has been a doctor for over 21 years. Please be there at 1pm at the northeast corner of the parking lot. The doors open at 1:30, and we are hoping to fill in the front rows. Also please wear Obama, Franken etc. attire. Please have a question already formulated in case you get called on.

Time:	Thursday, August 27 from 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Host:	Gail Harless
Location:	Oak-Land Junior High School (Lake Elmo, MN) 820 Manning Avenue North Lake Elmo, MN 55042 Maps: Google Maps MapQuest Yahoo! Maps
Directions:	Manning exit off of 94, north on Manning http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Lake+Elmo&state=MN&address=820+Manning+Avenue+North&zipcode=55042
Associated Groups:	Face to Face for Change – Twin Cities, Feminist Advisory Board for Obama, Obama Works Twin Cities, Shoreview (Northeast suburbs), MN for Barack Obama, USA.CAN

One could think that this would be a good time to go and disrupt the disruptors. I plan on showing up early, but I may stay outside during the event. I will confront any crazies (but not one of the ones who may be brandishing a gun at me). I would like to egg some of them on, to draw out their insanity. But I don’t plan on interrupting or causing a ruckus during the actual meeting itself. I would like to be able to vent my frustrations at the people who have turned a provision for advanced care directives into a plan to have death panels making decisions for people.

No, the disruption and the shouting belong outside, in the parking lot before the event. Those “Eddie Haskells,” who are just exercising their rights to voice their concerns over threats that don’t exist, need to be ridiculed. They need to be taken to task for spreading fear, lest observers think that they have actual points to make.

The election of November 2008 was not the end of the political process for progressives. Yes, our guy got in. Yes, the Democrats held a majority. But not all Democrats are liberal, not all Democrats are clear on the relationship between campaign donations and their responsibilities towards the citizenry as a whole. They say that in order to get a deal with the Republicans, both single-payer and public option plans must be off the table, and cost-containment must be the key issue that will solve the crisis.

Those in our party who seek to obstruct the President’s plan in order to work out a compromise, to get some sort of reform through this fall, need to see rallies in support of a true reform of health insurance and one that includes a way for the great unwashed to have affordable access to health care. We need also to shout down those who make invalid claims about the systems in Canada, Britain, Japan, Germany and Austria, and most especially the French system.

Here’s a little story to remind you why this is an issue:

Yesterday, I went to get my haircut, and I was eavesdropping on the conversation between the operator and the customer in the next stall. “Destinee” was telling her customer that on a Friday night a week ago she and her boyfriend were at a bonfire party. He fell into the fire, and and an ambulance was called to take him in. The EMTs dressed his wounds, and in the emergency room, they were recleaned and bandaged. The ER doctor estimated that he would need at least two weeks in hospital.

Abruptly, things changed when the administrative staff discovered he wasn’t covered by any insurance. The nurses came into his room and told him that he was being sent home. Destinee asked for some instructions on how to clean and rebandage the wound, but apparently that would be a billable service, so they simply told her that she needed to change the dressing twice a day. He went home.

By Monday last week, the pain from the burns was so intense that he had to go back to the ER. This time they had no choice but to admit him, because his wounds had become massively infected. They admitted him to the ICU, and because of the danger he is in, visitors must be super-scrubbed clean in order to see him. Could this have been prevented had he been admitted right off? Perhaps not, but more likely he would have been closely monitored by trained professionals and not left to luck at the untrained hands of a 23-year-old hairdresser.

He just didn’t have coverage, and they couldn’t find a verifiable source of payment for the expensive care he needed, so they sent him home and now they have a much larger problem. The Republican reaction is to say “Boo hoo hoo. It’s not my problem, it’s his. Tough luck, kid!” The Republican reaction is to brandish guns and accuse the president, who is actually using the legislative system as it was intended, of being a Nazi. (Wait, she was a Democrat plant sent there to make the Republicans look bad. Because, you know, the Republicans are the reasoned ones and would never call a Jew a “Nazi!”)

My reaction is to first mock the crazies. I may take a water gun or a toy pistol to the rally before the event. But if I go inside to the rally, I will be respectful, and if I get the opportunity to ask the Rep or the doctor a question, I will ask about the wisdom of leaving stand a broken system that sends a young man home to get severe infections because he couldn’t pay his bill.

I think even Eddie Haskell would have to agree with Mrs. Cleaver that this needs to have a sensible solution. No more “Who me?”

This doesn’t even work for Republicans, who move in much greater lock step. I mean, where is that anti-abortion Constitutional amendment anyway?

Waiting and wanting isn’t enough when what we want conflicts with the desires of lobbyists, who don’t take a break after an election. To give you a sense of the power opposing health care reform, four of the Fortune 100 (the largest 100 companies in the U.S.) are health insurance companies, with a combined 2008 revenue over 200 billion dollars.

It certainly isn’t enough when other forces remain organized and funded and are willing to use all the fear and hatred they can find to support their cause. It isn’t enough when the press repeatedly lies and distorts to tell our elected representatives that we don’t want health care reform.

This is actually a tougher fight than the election was. Corporations far and away recognized that four more years of rule by the monster that the Republican Party had become would be as disastrous for them as it would be for all of us. They were pragmatic in their understand that business cannot flourish anywhere the government doesn’t meet at least its minimal obligations in law and the maintenance of infrastructure, so they supported Obama.

They are not supporting health care reform, which means we need to do more. Their disproportionate influence isn’t all arrayed against us, but neither is it on our side. We’re much more alone this time.

That doesn’t matter, though. We have enough. Remember back to the last days before the election. Remember, if you were calling or door-knocking, how many times the people you talked to had just talked to someone else? If you weren’t volunteering, remember the flood of people nudging you toward the polls? We were annoying, but we got this done.

We have the resources to push through health care reform, too. We have a sitting president and a large-enough majority in Congress. No grassroots activists suddenly decided that the status quo was good enough. We are all the same people and in a considerably better situation. All we have to do is find the passion again to do what must be done.

And what is that? Well, it’s not as hard as you might think.

Start with your congresscritters, senators and representatives. They’re easy to find and contact. Do the same for the President. Tell them you vote and that this issue is important to you. Tell them you want single-payer health care, but you’re willing to compromise with a public option if they’ll move quickly. If they’re Democrats, tell them the success of the party rides on them being able to come together on a big issue like this. If they’re Republicans, tell them they’ll be held responsible for the lies and intimidation if they do nothing to fight them.

Then ask what else you can do. If you have a health care nightmare story, offer to share it. (My representative, Keith Ellison, is collecting stories.) Find out whether there are events or calls you should participate in. Crowds matter in convincing the people who won’t do the research needed to make up their minds on issues.

Speaking of crowds, talk to the people around you. Chances are good that they’re unsure about the bad information they’re getting, grandpa doesn’t know his health care is single-payer or your neighbor is unaware that people in Britain are very happy with their health care. Share the truth with them, both the common arguments and those targeted at specific populations.

Tell other people that you’ve contacted people in the government to remind them that they represent you on this matter. Tell people what you told your representatives and encourage them to do the same. Tell them when you’re going to rally or ask questions at an open forum or make calls to raise support and awareness. Remind them that democracy isn’t something that happens every two, four or six years.

Most of all, remind yourself that. Health care reform is a huge issue, but it isn’t the only one we face right now. It isn’t the only reason we worked so hard to elect Obama. One of those reasons is that he wasn’t afraid to call us to service.

Now it’s time to answer. What are you doing?

Ella is about to become a senior in high school, and it is hard for me to believe because it seems like just yesterday I was cutting the umbilical chord and holding her for the first time.  In looking back at her life so far, she has been through a great deal and come out of it well.

When Ella was three years old, she began exhibiting strange behaviors and for several days we had no clue as to their meaning.  She was having difficulty with her toilet training, and we guessed that the stress was manifesting itself in what we shortly learned were partial-complex seizures.  The expressions varied in the first few days, so when we attempted to describe them to the primary care physician, he was prone to agree with our assessment but asked us to come back in if the behaviors continued.

With increasing frequency, Ella’s hands would tap on her knees and she would start making strange vocalizations like she was trying to get words out while the muscles in her face and jaws weren’t synchronized with her vocal chords.  Her expression was vacant.  She would look directly at the person next to her and had a strange smile resembling Jack Nicholson’s “Joker” character in Batman more than a smile.  The episodes lasted no longer than 10 to 15 seconds each, but their frequency grew steadily from one per hour on the first day they appeared to a separation of 20 minutes by the third day.

Her mother took her to the doctor for them to observe the episodes, and they sat with a nurse practitioner for nearly 30 minutes, waiting for the NP to be able to observe to see whether she could identify what was going on.  Poor Ella had no clue as to why we were concerned, because she had no awareness during her seizures and no memory of the events coming out of them.  She only knew that all of a sudden, her parents were very concerned about her.  During the observation period with the NP, she didn’t exhibit the behavior.  The NP gave Elaine instructions to carefully time and observe the episodes and to talk to Ella while she was experiencing them, to say a word and ask Ella to repeat it when she came out.

On the way out of the clinic, Ella had an episode and the NP recognized the symptoms.  Ella had developed epilepsy with partial-complex seizures.  I was completely surprised when her mother called me, because my only experience with epilepsy had been to observe a coworker who fell to tonic-clonic seizures.  Tonic-clonic seizures are the type most often referred to as “grand mal” seizures.  Ella didn’t fall and writhe uncontrollably, and she wasn’t in danger of biting her tongue. She recovered completely from each seizure, so it didn’t fit in with my limited experience of what epilepsy is like.

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After a week in the epilepsy ward at United Hospital (a long week of few answers), the neurologists settled on a combination of Tegretol and Lamictal to control the seizures.  We had some counseling and training on dose administration and how to handle situations in which she might miss a dose.  We were given instructions on how to administer Valium suppositories should the anti-seizure drugs suddenly lose their effectiveness.  The neurologist carefully explained that we were always to insist on the brand name version of the drug when refilling at the pharmacies and not to let the insurance company try to steer us towards generics.

The explanation that he gave us was that the controls used in manufacturing anti-seizure medications were far too variable to be safe.  According to the instructions, there could be a 25% variation in the level of the control agent in the generic version. This is important for two reasons:

1. The body has a narrow band of tolerance for the active ingredient in Lamotrigine.  If the level of active ingredient in the blood is below the band, it is ineffective.  If the level is above a certain threshold, it can have dangerous side effects, including a neurological rash.  This became a serious issue when Ella started menstruating.
2. Lamictal is very expensive.  If I had not had prescription drug coverage during this period, we would have been looking at a bill of $550 per month at the dosages prescribed.  In 1995 when this all began, my insurance company allowed Lamictal in its formulary so that we only had a $25 copay for each refill.

When Ella was twelve, the prescriptions became increasingly hard for the neurologist to calculate because she began to menstruate, and the variability in her own blood affected the levels of Lamictal.  In one day she went from no seizures to over forty, and then after three days back to none.  She was once again admitted to United Hospital for evaluation.  At this time, the neurologist had better tools to diagnose and find the locus of the seizures and was able to map out a section of her temporal lobe for rescission.

No, the section of her brain that was responsible for seizures is no longer there, and one would expect that she no longer needs the meds.  What we learned, though, is that Lamictal creates a dependency.  If she ever stops taking it, she will go into seizures and Lamictal will never again be effective at preventing them.  She will be taking anti-seizure meds for the rest of her life.

Over the years, we have had many battles with the various insurance companies over the formulary.  The copay had risen to $75 by 2007, and then after switching to a new employer and a new health plan, I discovered the “Doughnut Hole.”  This is the gap between per-person maximum prescription payments at $1,000 to where coverage again picks up at $2,500.  The idea is that in order to cut down on the over-medication problem, consumers are supposed to question their doctors for necessity each time a scrip is written.  We are to become educated consumers and help control costs as health care costs eat the economy.

I agree in some respects. We are all aware of the tendency of many doctors to just give their patients something, especially antibiotics for flu.  The doctors know better, but they write anyway just to get their patients to think they are “doing something.”  It’s a practice that is leading to some dangerous germs, as they are evolving rapidly to resist our best antibiotics.

But that isn’t the issue with Lamictal.  It’s a proven medication, and it has the desired effect of reducing the incidence of seizures, and it has no evolutionary consequences because it fights an effect rather than a germ.  It’s not a “cure” for a syndrome, it is an effect mitigator.

For three months in 2007, I had to use my credit card in order to pay for Ella’s prescriptions.  I am still paying down that balance as well as I can.  The insurance company kept on telling me that generic Lamotrigine is an approved substitute for Lamictal, but the doctors continued to say, “No, it must be Lamictal.”

This year, we ran into the same problem again, but when Ella’s mother went back to the neurologist, they finally relented and said to try the generic to see what happened.  The refill is now $10 per month and, to our great surprise, the effects of using the generic have been the same as they were using the brand name version.  Blood tests have borne this out and the expected variability has not been an issue.

I am torn between relief that we have an affordable option, and anger at the neurologist for being so insistent for so many years.  I am suspicious that he was so insistent because he has been relying on Glaxo-Smith-Kline’s information, but I hesitate to make that accusation because he is a professional.  It does seem to me, however, that we faced an incredible economic problem because of such insistence and the warnings of dire consequences if we failed to heed his advice.

Enter the Dragon

Robert Bate is by all accounts a charming, personable and informative gentleman who engages in issues related to science and culture.  He’s not a trained scientist but has been effective behind the scenes at framing science for the masses, especially regarding DDT and malaria in Africa.  When I use the term “framing,” I am using it more in the meaning of “falsely accusing” than in the Matthew Nisbet sense of making science more appealing to religious people by telling atheists to sit down and shut up.

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s book Unscientific America devotes a chapter to pointing out that the connection between atheism and science should be de-emphasized, because said connection is a roadblock for many people in accepting science.  I think that this is a mistake and is based on a false premise.  People are interested in science, but they are confused by the many misdirections and are not sure whose science to trust.  Carbon industries fund scientific “journals” to publish what look to be genuine peer-reviewed literature, which throws doubt into to the established connections between carbon dioxide levels and its effects on the climate.

Climate change deniers refer to themselves as “skeptics,” which grants them an air of legitimacy. They are actually fed misleading data and pass it along as if it disproves the science of the leftist environmentalists who hate capitalism. If not disproving the real science of Anthrogenic Global Warming, it is enough to cast doubt and forestall meaningful action until all the facts are in and the “sound science” is followed.

You may have heard of “sound science.”  It is a propagandistic trick, to make it seem as though there are two competing sides to issues in science and the differences are based more on opinion among scientists than they are on hypothesis testing.  Robert Bate has been effective at moving the phrase “sound science” into a doubt-casting phrase to be used by conservative think tanks.

He is also responsible for the public perception that a DDT ban was not only not warranted because its evil effects have not been sufficiently proven, but that millions have died of malaria in Africa thanks to a worldwide ban on DDT.  It’s not true, any of it, but it sounds true enough that people buy into it and Rachel Carson has become a villainess (Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub) for publishing her work Silent Spring and pushing for a ban on DDT.

Bate is apparently bored with the issue of malaria and DDT now.  He is planning to move into the field of generic drugs and create a new frame that in the new health care policy to be hammered out, we can’t allow the government to force us to accept inferior quality generics to replace the brand name drugs developed and marketed and sold by American pharmaceutical companies.

In a new article at Stories That Matter (Public Education Center), “Bate and Switch:  How a Free-market magician manipulated two decades of environmental science,” Adam Sarvana explains how Bate is going to assist the pharmaceutical companies in maintaining their market share against the manufacturers of generics:

The switch in terminology from “generic” drugs to “counterfeit” drugs is typical, neatly suggesting that the problem is not affordability but quality. For his part, Bate says his interest in the issue came from an experience in Africa. “I spoke to doctors in field (Zimbabwe, [South Africa], India) who were coming across fake drugs,” he wrote in an e-mail response to questions following our meeting. “Realized it was important topic, and main focus was on fake Viagra, rather than fake anti-malarial drugs, which kill 100,000s.” The corollary to this newfound interest is his prediction that the Obama administration will import more generic drugs as part of health care reform, which he says would be misguided. “If they were true copies of the well-produced drugs,” he told me, “then you’re just dealing with an economic argument: Should you support the brand originator, those who developed the drugs in the first place? I would argue probably yes, but that’s an economic argument” – hardly the terrain on which he’s preferred to engage in the past. So, instead: “The assumption they make that all these drugs are equal is going to have to be fought, because it’s not true. That’s where I think I’m going to have my biggest battles over the next year, is on how good are generic drugs.”

Bate will be creating a “He said/She said” narrative on the issue.  In my experience, the issue of generic drug prescription has produced doubt on the claim that generic drugs are not safe in most circumstances and shouldn’t be used.

The problem is that in order to be able to fully understand the issue and to be able to read the literature and understand the facts, I would probably need to be a trained pharmacologist.  I can read and understand some levels of professional journals and keep PLoS in my bookmarks.  Largely, though, the methodologies and terminologies are intended for at least post-graduate level reading, and I rely on abstracts and summaries for the conclusions of peer-reviewed papers.  I simply don’t have the training to be able to read the papers with confidence that I understand the effects being described.

Those of us most affected by the debate between generics and trade names, that is health care consumers, are going to have to place a great deal of trust on the issue in experts.  The problem is that it is getting harder and harder to know who the experts are, and who they represent.  Are the reports based on true, unbiased science, or are they commissioned and executed according to the needs of vested interest?

In 1993 the Superconducting Supercollider funding for a Hole in Texas was halted because Congress pulled the funding.  As physicists decried the halt, a new and emerging libertarian meme that industry and not government should be funding science was voiced in the call “If there is so much profit to be made from such huge and expensive projects, then industry should fund it.”

Conservatives like to cite the “Invisible Hand” of economics as described by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations (Wikipedia cite):

Many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

The idea is that government should get out of the way and let industry take care of us. Their profit is in our long-term good. I am not sure of that, given the number of (anecdotal) counterexamples. Here’s what to watch for in the coming debate over the efficacy of generics in cutting health care costs: Who will be funding the “studies”?  This is where financial disclosure becomes important.  If studies funded by pharmaceutical companies suddenly make their way into the press to indicate that generics, or counterfeits are “dangerous,” then that becomes a factor in deciding whether or not the studies are “sound science.” In the tennis match that has characterized public perception of “He said/She said” science regarding evolution, global warming and DDT, the goal has been achieved. People don’t know what to think about the issues and throw up our hands while the battle over related public policy is waged.

Here is one more interesting aspect. In Bate’s new push, a government entity will become the “friendly.” The FDA will be the arbiter of safety and efficacy. In his prior drives, government entities were the “enemy,” and most notably the EPA.

Final note to Chris and Sheril: PZ Myers is not the enemy in the problem of an Unscientific America. Robert Bate is.

Daniel Hauser has what doctors consider one of the most curable types of cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

But the 13-year-old from Sleepy Eye, Minn. and his parents don’t want him to have chemotherapy and radiation, the standard treatments. For the past three months, they have ignored the advice of his cancer specialists and turned to natural therapies, such as herbs and vitamins, instead.

Yes, it’s partly appalling because a child will probably die if no one can intervene. Danny’s parents are demonstrating one of the great dangers of belief in medical woo–the abandonment of proven, effective, life-saving treatments. I’d say more about it, but unlike some people who get more eloquent in the face of this kind of outrage, I mostly sputter. I’ll leave that part to the experts.

Aside from the criminal stupidity of the parents, it’s also appalling that the paper was reporting on the child’s wishes as though they matter in this situation.

Daniel, one of eight children, has asserted that treatment would violate his religious beliefs. The teenager filed an affidavit saying that he is a medicine man and church elder in the Nemenhah, an American Indian religious organization that his parents joined 18 years ago (though they don’t claim to be Indians).

“I am opposed to chemotherapy because it is self-destructive and poisonous,” he told the court. “I want to live a virtuous life, in the eyes of my creator, not just a long life.” He also filed a “spiritual path declaration” that said: “I am a medicine man. Some times we teach, and some times we perform. Now, I am doing both. I will lead by example.”

Right. May I remind you that he’s thirteen? This is the point in life when kids tell you they want to grow up to be professional wrestlers, when their best friends are determined by age and physical proximity instead of any real affinity, when they may or may not be old enough to be left alone for long stretches without a babysitter. We don’t let thirteen-year-olds drink, vote or drive. We don’t even let them set their own bedtime on school nights.

Why is anyone asking this child his opinion of decisions that will affect his health, much less his life expectancy?

For that matter, where is the news in the fact that Danny agrees with his parents? They’re his parents. Stereotypes of rebellious teenagers aside, Danny is at an age where kids are just starting to develop opinions separate from their parents’ on any topic of greater importance than eating vegetables.

Even realizing that denying proper medical care to one’s children is child abuse (which it is), there’s no reason to expect that Daniel would disagree with his parents. If part of the abuse involves keeping the child isolated (which it typically does), kids don’t want to upset the stability of any part of their tiny worlds. Plus, it’s bad enough being abused; kids don’t want anyone else to know that someone treats them that badly.

For that matter, kids are notorious for indulging in magical thinking. They will deny anything, even their own hands caught in the cookie jar, if they don’t like the implications. Admitting abuse, even to themselves, makes it more real.

And with magical thinking, we come to the question of Daniel’s religious beliefs. Our society does habitually treat kids his age as being competent to choose their own religion. It’s the age of confirmation, taking one’s parents’ religion as one’s own. But should it be?

I remember being thirteen, when most of my friends were taking their confirmation classes, and being appalled. I didn’t grow up religious, so the traditions and expectations were alien to me, but I understood that people took religion very seriously. Consequently, I was horrified that people my age were being asked to make a decision that momentous, with implications for the rest of their lives. We were just kids. No class was going to prepare us for that!

Now, of course, I understand that part of the point is to have that commitment made before abstract thinking and reasoning really kick in, but that only underscores the irrelevance of Danny’s religion. Is he old enough to understand the implications of the fact that the Nemenhah website talks almost exclusively about donations and freedom from government interference? Can he comprehend why there might be something odd in a group that embraces “Native American” spirituality and “traditional healing” but whose members appear to be almost exclusively of European descent? Is he in a position to evaluate the critiques of the group?

No, he’s not. He’s not even old enough to endure the testimony about his chances of survival with and without treatment.

I’m sorry, Danny, but that’s why what you want matters not at all right now. This isn’t your decision to make. You’ll be old enough to understand that someday, assuming someone steps up and makes sure you live that long.