The NHS: “…here for all of us but personal to each of us…”

As part of this blog’s ongoing effort to provide information to Americans about the British NHS, and to be open and fair about the health care debate in the U.S., this following is worth noting.

The wife got an email yesterday from a cousin in London.  40ish, she had been diagnosed earlier this year with a cancer.  Her health cover is that which most British have: it is the NHS.  She has never been so ill before, but in a routine sense the NHS had served her reasonably well all her life.

And it did also at the start of her battle.  She was not left outside on a rusting gurney in the car park for 6 months, on a waiting list — despite the base propaganda one sees in U.S. anti-health reform TV ads, and emanating from certain bloggers and columnists.  Immediately upon diagnosis, she began standard treatments for the disease.

And that is much more than non-Medicaid, non-Medicare Americans (meaning most) would have ever gotten from the non-existent U.S. health service, bear in mind.  However, the NHS proved unwilling to shoulder extra costs for an experimental treatment that may offer her improved prospects.

In the end, after a lot of wrangling, that newish treatment is going forward.  But she wrote my wife that she had been compelled to raise private money from family and friends to cover its extra cost.

And who is actually paying for most of it?  She had negotiated with the NHS that the overwhelming bulk of the cost would be covered by . . . the French health authorities.  The NHS’s involvement will be minimal — extending only to hosting the treatment at a British cancer hospital.  So, to get it mostly for “free,” she agreed to be, essentially, a “guinea pig”.

“Saved by the French!?” yours truly rhetorically exclaimed to the wife.  ‘Funny, this Government never had trouble taking taxes from her, to help “support” the NHS; but now that she really needs it, where is it?  Disgusting that the NHS isn’t actually paying a penny.’ she responded.

“…healthcare is not a privilege to be purchased but a moral right secured for all…”

– Prime Minister Gordon Brown, January, 2008.

Indeed, Mr Brown must be so pleased at how “NHS renewal” is proceeding.

MLS: My, what Lousy Soccer

ESPN:

David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy were denied a Major League Soccer title as Real Salt Lake took the MLS Cup on penalty kicks at Qwest Field.

With the game deadlocked at 1-1 after extra time, Beckham converted the first spot-kick of the shoot-out in front of 46,011 fans but as it went into sudden death, a miss from striker Edson Buddle left Salt Lake defender Robbie Russell to convert and give the club their first title in only their fourth season as an MLS team…

This blog would like to offer a rare sports commentary.  Put whatever gloss on it one tries, David Beckham cannot play 11 positions.  The MLS Cup last night — the MLS showpiece, we are led to believe — was (for the four of you who may have endured it to the end, as we inexplicably did), frankly, atrocious.  Neither team deserved to win.

A decade ago, Americans didn’t know much about soccer, and the league was trailblazing.  But that was then.  One suspects most viewers during the match last night at 11 PM were not especially interested — as ESPN was — in jumping to Sportscenter updates for the result of the Lions v. the Browns.  And the fans in the stands were dressed up, singing and generally behaving as soccer fans do everywhere.  All were there — whether in front of the TV or in the stadium — for the soccer.

The reason for that is simple: they now see lots of soccer elsewhere, and enjoy it.  They have learned what it is about, and understand the likes of the Offside rule.  They have been helped along in their “education” in recent years by ESPN, which carries the English Premiership, as well as other channels like Fox and Setanta USA, which also have coverage of excellent teams the world over.

In comparison, the MLS appears stuck in an NHL mode.  The business model seems built around the notion to run it like any other minor American sports league.  It emphasizes endless, useless statistics you see nowhere else.  (Soccer outside the U.S. has no stat for an “assist”; that’s for basketball and hockey.)  Its playoff format rewards incredible mediocrity.

Even worse than the NHL or any other U.S. league is the allowing of teams to be named after products — like the NY Red Bulls.  Would they be called the NY Cheerios?  Over at Stamford Bridge, it isn’t Chelsea Smirnoff.  Naming a stadium after a product is fine; and having a product on the team shirt is fine; but a team needs its own, fundamental, separate corporate identity.  Otherwise it is an infomercial.

Even the ESPN announcers still need to learn a few things.  A soccer game does not go into “overtime.”  It is “extra time.”  Why they don’t know that by now is decidedly unclear when one suspects most 16 year olds watching, who also love Man U., certainly know that.

When we enjoy the World Series, we get very good teams playing at their best.  It is rare a Super Bowl is NOT a real showcase of good teams.  Last night, those were not the American versions of Arsenal or Chelsea or Liverpool or even Everton on the soccer field in Seattle.  Not even close.

Actually, Portsmouth could probably have thumped either of them.  In fact, Bournemouth probably could have.  True, no one expects Galaxy to be Man U.   Still, the MLS is approaching crunch time: the fan base is there, but the on field product is stalled, and increasingly becoming obvious in its woefully lacking quality.

How much longer fans are going to put up with third-rate MLS soccer is anyone’s guess.  The constant crowding around the ball, like kids on a school playground, is astounding.  The heading endlessly end to end is pathetic.  The inability to build up and attack with any skill is laughable.   The ineptitude when it comes to getting a shot on goal when in the box is almost too much to stomach.  It is, all too often, painful to watch.

Goals don’t come from a good move, but because someone fell down, or the defense went to sleep.  The generalized sloppiness is astonishing.  It is not entertaining.  A “beautiful game” the MLS definitely is not.

Good soccer is.   David Beckham’s corners over the year have not often been converted into goals, as announcers helpfully told us at least twice?  That is because, ladies and gentlemen, his teammates can’t direct a header at a goal or even kick straight.  And no matter how much he is paid, David Beckham can’t corner kick to himself.

One solution might be to try to attract more Europeans, Africans, Brazilians and Argentinians to play in the league.  It would also help improve U.S. players’ game.  That would, by default, also raise the quality level.

Which is why David Beckham has to rush to AC Milan when the MLS is not in action.  If he didn’t?  If he played only in the MLS?  Were he to do that, with so few other players of any skills around him, his own skills would erode faster than Landon Donovan — supposedly MLS’s Most Valuable Player — could slice a penalty over the net.

Not Worth A Dawes

Well, as you probably know, they were at it last night.  The health care bill will be debated in the Senate.  The New York Times:

…“Although I don’t agree with everything in this bill, I believe it is more important that we begin debate on how to improve the health care system for all Americans,” said Mrs. Lincoln, who was the last uncommitted Democrat, and whose speech, at about 2:30 p.m. Saturday, lifted a cloud of suspense that had hovered around the Capitol.

She added: “But let me be perfectly clear. I am opposed to a new government-administered health care plan as a part of comprehensive health insurance reform, and I will not vote in favor of the proposal that has been introduced by leader Reid as it is written.” But Senator Lieberman, who voted to take up the health care bill, said he was still staunchly opposed to a government-run plan. It is “a terrible idea,” he said…

As is typical, however, neither point out precisely why they believe that it is “a terrible idea.”  Although given the amount of contributions Sen Lieberman apparently gets from insurance companies in Connecticut, one suspects one reason.

That said, though, utter inconsistency doesn’t apparently bother them.  Or many like them — especially Republicans.  For how, given that stance, can they also stand up and straight-faced defend Medicare (which already competes with private insurance), or, for that matter, public education (which “competes” with private education) or even public libraries (which, one might say, “compete” with bookstores)?

* * *

Overall, the debate framed on those terms is almost laughable.  In particular, amidst it, Republicans are also attempting to style themselves as the defense of Medicare brigade?:

…In his closing argument, just ahead of the vote, Mr. McConnell implored at least a single Democrat to vote no. “If we don’t stop this bill tonight,” he said, “the only debate we’ll be having is about higher premiums, not savings for the American people, higher taxes instead of lower costs, and cuts to Medicare rather than improving seniors’ care.”...

…Mr. McConnell warned of the political consequences for senators who voted to move ahead. “Senators who support this bill have a lot of explaining to do,” he said. “Americans know that a vote to proceed on this bill, to get on this bill, is a vote for higher premiums, higher taxes and massive cuts to Medicare.”…

Yet bear in mind that if you are an American and now have Medicare coverage, if it had been up to Sen McConnell’s Republicans back in 1964-65, you wouldn’t have it.  We owe Medicare almost entirely to Democrats.  While this generation of Democrats may not know much about American national defense, or how to deal with enemy fighters captured abroad (a major reason this former Democrat considers himself more Republican now), the notion that Democrats are going to “mess up” Medicare is almost inconceivable.

Interestingly, if you are a Republican, as Sen McConnell demonstrates, suddenly the “public option” that is Medicare must be defended to the utmost.  But addressing how the private coverage that we are being told will absolutely vanish if a public option for non-Medicare (and non-Medicaid) Americans appears, and yet private coverage available for seniors alongside Medicare has grown exponentially since Medicare’s inception in 1965?  That factoid somehow never makes into the Republican hymn sheet.

And even when trying to be droll, Republicans manage to miss the mark:

…Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who revealed her position shortly before Mrs. Lincoln did, was considered safely in the Democratic fold, particularly after $100 million in added Medicaid money for her state was included in the measure. Republicans have nicknamed that provision the Louisiana Purchase…

For in that profound witticism they forget that the real Louisiana Purchase made possible the existence of many of the states they now represent.  Indeed, our America from “sea to shining sea” could not have happened without it.  That is another factoid most Americans, today — including most Republicans, one might guess — would probably consider to have been more than worth the purchase price.

So if a “public option” ends up in law and turns out even partly as successful as has been the real Louisiana Purchase?  Republicans seem likely to find themselves in serious electoral trouble for the next generation.  Because Democrats will get almost all the electoral credit for another major (and popular) social reform.

Like Social Security.  And like Medicare.  Yet again.

* * *

But perhaps great minds can head that possibility off?

We’ll see.  What we also can see is that a certain Glenn Beck is on tour pushing a book entitled, “Arguing with Idiots.”  This writer will not raise the issue here as to whether Mr Beck composed his surely trenchant tome entirely himself.  (Evidently just recently having learned how to read, it is perhaps unsurprising he did not.)  Clearly, such is of no consequence anyway once one learns that, according to Amazon, within its weighty text you are going to be treated to insights like these:

…The next time your Idiot Friends tell you how gun control prevents gun violence, you’ll tell them all about England’s handgun ban (see page 53). When they tell you that we should copy the UK’s health-care system, you’ll recount the horrifying facts you read on page 244…

However, at least when it came to his title?  Little did Mr Beck realize how he could not have summed up matters so well.  Although presumably he didn’t have the current crop of Republicans in mind.

UK health care having been a regular topic on this blog since 2007, this idiot suspects he knows rather more about its system than does this Mr Beck.  Gun control, true, has not been covered to that same extent, but yours truly still has an inkling he is decidedly more familiar with that situation in Britain, compared to this Mr Beck.

Thus it is probably worth noting here regarding whatever it is Mr Beck (and the actual writer) has concocted as to how “England’s” handgun ban does not “prevent gun violence,” certain matters are indisputable.  These especially.

In Britain, while knives are disturbingly common on criminals, that is almost certainly because guns are not as easily obtainable.  Yes, even for criminals.  So if a thug demands your wallet or breaks into your house, you are far less likely than in the U.S. to be staring at the barrel of a gun.

You are also far less likely to see the murder-suicide of spouses and children via handgun.  Or any suicide by handgun.  You are far less likely to hear of poorly stored, loaded handguns discovered in closets, or under beds, by small children, who then use them on themselves and/or their friends or family.

You are also far less likely to have your own children picked off in a school cafeteria, or in a classroom, or outside a school, by the nutcase classmate.  We unfortunately well recognize the horror.  He was the one fascinated by Hitler and couldn’t get a date for the prom, but recently stumbled upon Grandpa’s garage-hidden cache of necessary heavy weaponry — kept for that day when he will surely have to hold off 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, dispatched to seize his guns by Obama — and decided that the entire world must know of, and suffer for, his teen angst.

By Mr Beck’s (dim) lights only an idiot would consider those matters relatively life important.  Frankly, yours truly admits being perpetually baffled by Mr Beck’s appeal to some.  Why would any conservative want to spend any of his limited time on this planet (and hard-earned money) perusing a book by him (or even a Sarah Palin), when there are bookstores and public libraries out there full of actually serious literature by conservatives?:

….His nickname, «Hell and Maria» Dawes, came from some words uttered before a congressional committee investigating charges of waste and extravagance in the conduct of World War I. When a member of the committee asked Dawes if it was true that excessive prices were paid for mules in France, he shouted «Helen Maria, I’d have paid horse prices for sheep if the sheep could have pulled artillery to the front!»

You know, those who actually knew a few things?

A “Vague” Europe

CNN:

European Union leaders named Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as the first “president of Europe” Thursday, edging out former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a still-vaguely defined job…

…The EU leaders also named Catherine Ashton, a British trade commissioner and member of the House of Lords, as the union’s High Commissioner — its equivalent of a foreign minister…

“Vaguely defined” could not be a more apt description.  A Belgian, who leads a “vaguely defined” state that itself now barely politically exists?  The EU considers him perfect for the role of a “president” of a “European Union” that also barely politically exists.

Moreover “Europe” gets an appointed “foreign minister” no one has ever heard of.  But that also could not be more apt, as she is another never elected to anything Labourite who has to date been “elevated”  from job to job, and became a member of the House of Lords evidently owing to her dramatic success as chair of a county health authority.  She will supposedly well-represent the continent on the world stage, opposite the likes of a Hillary Clinton.

Britain, it seems, need not worry excessively about a “federal Europe” at this point undermining Britain’s sovereignty further.  These two make Prime Minister Gordon Brown look like Winston Churchill.  The EU has just made certain the EU “presidency” and its “foreign minister” will be yet more “vague” EU bureaucrat roles only few pay scant attention to.

The Craters That Are The U.S. Political Landscape

Seeing the U.S. again up close for the longest period yours truly has in a decade, has been both a head spinner and an eye opener.

And not always in a good way.  As the debates over health care, the (Post) War on Terror, the economy and immigration intensify, it is increasingly clear this is not really anything approaching an actual (or even approximate) “two party” country. Americans like to think the U.S. is “50/50″ or thereabouts, and “Red” states v. “Blue” states, and so on, but the appearance on the scene (especially since 2006) of what have been termed “Blue Dog” Democrats (meaning Democrats representing conservative districts) well-demonstrates all is not so clear.

America is Democrats v. Republicans only in the most general of terms. More accurately, the U.S. is better described as closer to a “four-five party” country. It is merely “functioning” under a facade of the two “big tents.”

Those tents may be broken down, at least in part, along lines including the following groups. There are others, of course. Still, allowing for — sometimes — a generous dose of the “tongue-in-cheek,” happen to recognize anyone? If you do in whole, it is likely they require professional help.

In any event, let’s have some fun. Heaven knows, we could use it. Sadly, as a country we appear all too willing to laugh at others, but seem to have become hyper-sensitive and are losing the ability to laugh at ourselves:

The “Trial(s)” Ahead

One regular justification we are being treated to defending yesterday’s announcement of the holding of the “9/11″ trial in Manhattan, is how federal civilian courts routinely handle “high-profile terrorism” cases.  Like the 1993 WTC bombing trial.  And the trial for the 1998 destruction of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

In other words, ho, hum?  As if one can compare them all as like for like?

But that stance blatantly fails to take into account how those attacks, while horrific, simply did not lead to the national trauma and Global War on Terror that September 11 did.  Since then we have been in two major wars, and thousands of US soldiers have been killed; and daily, more continue to be. There have been numerous other jihadi attacks in some of the world’s major cities (Madrid, London, Mumbai and the list could go on); and those attacks take place unexpectedly, but yet also with alarming regularity.

In addition, currently, under President Obama, we are also sending drones flying off regularly –- far more than President Bush ever authorized –- to blow up Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Sometimes we hit Al Qaeda. Sometimes we seem to blow up “wedding parties.”

It simply isn’t 1993 anymore. We are well beyond half-nervously laughing (because we had to find some wry humor as a defense mechanism) at the terrorist “moron” who goes back to New Jersey to try to claim his truck rental deposit after he had just blown the truck up in the WTC parking garage. The world is much the uglier today.

So the positioning of this coming trial as if it were another “1993 WTC bombing” trial, or that for the destruction of the embassies, in fact demonstrates a scary complacency that all can be as it was before.  It evokes a disturbing in the extreme policy outlook reminiscent of the world of September 10, 2001, because it fails to take into account how times and attitudes have dramatically shifted.

Moreover the “Muslim world,” we are also lectured endlessly, supposedly utterly loathes us far more now than ever before.  Given that, it might seem just as reasonable (if we truly claim to want a “new beginning” with that “world”) and make more sense just to let these jihadis go — somewhere (anywhere) outside of the U.S.  Merely pretend they had “served” their time, and look away.  Look away.

Like the release of the Lockerbie mass killer.  So the decision to hold a 9/11 civilian trial in an extremely “disclosed location” in lower Manhattan clearly was made by those who inhabit a time-space vacuum. What is likely to come from this “trial” is a circus beyond comprehension, and a greater media focus than any previously, and therefore greater danger to those involved than was the case with “small fries” post-September 11 like Moussaoui or Richard Reid. It will bear no resemblance to terror trials of the past.

Ironically, it comes also courtesy of an administration that is obsessed with the past (especially apologizing for it), but in this case here takes zero account of how our world has changed over the last 16 years.  One might as well think and behave as if the Battle of Okinawa was, in normative terms, exactly the same as the Battle of Trenton.  Indeed, a trial such as this — unlike a Moussaoui and Reid, who were arrested more “conventionally” — is not unlike putting captured Pearl Harbor Japanese pilots on trial in Honolulu while American forces are still fighting on Guadalcanal.

For starters, presumably none of these “defendants” were ever even “read” their Miranda rights. As if they had held up a gas station. One might think that is a joke, but wait ’till this all gets to civilian court.

For this is either going to be a civilian trial, or it is not. There is no “in-between.” And we can’t even secure a major army base in central Texas from “the unexpected”, but a federal courthouse in Manhattan will undoubtedly be safer?

The NYT pompously proclaims the decision as constituting a “return to American justice.” That’s about what one would expect from that paper. And one hopes they also have their emergency staff evacuation plan firmly up to date, too.

And if we do get through this, and if they are convicted, and if a death sentence is handed down . . . we’ll see if the anti-death penalty NYT still feels quite the same way?

So We Will Put SS Captured in Czechoslovakia, On Trial In Manhattan

CNN:

Several members of Congress ripped Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision Friday to try five suspected 9/11 terrorists in civilian court.

Holder was accused of risking Americans’ security by treating the suspects like “common criminals” with a right to greater constitutional protections than they would receive in a military trial.

Five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the September 11, 2001, attacks — including confessed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — will be tried in civilian court in New York, Holder announced Friday…

Interesting this, which CNN doesn’t mention in that piece, and one wonders also if the Attorney General (and the ACLU) has also considered it?

In what is sure to be by far the lengthiest, most complicated and most watched jihadist circus trial to date, just who are Federal authorities going to get willing to serve on the civilian jury?

A military tribunal is composed of vastly different people than a civilian jury.  They are tough men and women, prepared to face death.  Are ordinary people summoned possibly to serve, despite all the likely private bluster to themselves about their not being concerned, privately however going to be nursing great fears of being empaneled?

And then, if they are, are they throughout the trial going to be frightened of going to the courthouse daily (which could be a target, of course)?

And will they worry for themselves and especially perhaps for their families’ personal safety, if (when?) any of their identities are publicly revealed?

On the latter, four words come to mind: Danish cartoonists in hiding.

11 November 2009

Pictures are, as we all know, often worth thousands of words. And we also know today is about ALL veterans, of course.  Still, it is always worth bearing in mind where today “began”: PicApp has an excellent, varied collection of photos of the American army of the First World War:

Naturally if one wasn’t then living, one cannot “remember.” Yet we are also informed that “young people” today barely know anything about WWII. If that’s accurate, what does that mean for WWI?

Yet one hardly had to have been living then to know something about then. And them. One only has to make some effort.

They are worth it, and shouldn’t be allowed to be “forgotten.”

__________

UPDATE:  When media does something right they deserve praise.  Just after the “11th hour,” President Obama laid the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington. Just then, CNN-TV abruptly removed its bottom of the screen “newscrawler”. 

Suddenly, we were all only at Arlington, and not being distracted from this contemplative instant by scrolling blurbs flashing about the likes of how Rihanna and Chris Brown “videos premiere on the same day”, that dieters are happier on low-cal than low-carb, or how the AIG chief “threatens to walk.”

And it worked.  For once, in a setting that definitely demanded it, viewers were permitted to be in one place.  Even if for only a few moments.

“What a country we are!”

The Boston Globe, on “independent” Sen Joe Lieberman’s “threat”:

…His vow to support a Republican filibuster of health care legislation if it contains a public health insurance option makes him a pivotal player and, he says, a spokesman for a silent minority-within-the-majority…

Sen Liebermann presumably is, however, heartily vocally in favor of “public options” such as Social Security and Medicare.

Separately, ABC News:

Abortion Rights Activists Say Stupak-Pitts Amendment Would Hurt Women’s Rights

Conservatives who never have supported moves to close the gaping holes in the U.S. health care net are now rounding on abortion as a major reason they don’t?  As if they would have supported moving to do so if abortion were NOT funded?  So no shock there.

But now we also have to endure unctuous liberals, who before the last few days seemed to spend their lives extolling the desperate need for health reform, suddenly voicing second thoughts because of a lack of federal funding for abortion under a public option.

* * *

Does your head hurt yet?  One hopes not.  Moreover if you don’t have insurance, you had probably better hope it doesn’t — or if it does, it is not serious.

And as for all the millions who will never have an abortion and cannot get affordable insurance?  Apparently they can just take a back seat.  Evidence thus how even the NYT’s Roger Cohen makes more than a few good points; and he is hardly the first:

“What a country we are! … Do you know that I have a petition about a mile long asking me not to move supplies on Sunday!”

Thus an exasperated Secretary of War Baker exclaimed to AEF intelligence officer Walter Lippmann in France, amidst the U.S. Army’s growing supply crisis at the height of U.S. involvement in WWI in September 1918.

While Baker was facing that “no war on Sundays” demand, nearly 2 million American (often drafted) husbands, sons, fathers and brothers, were simultaneously increasingly going without.  That in the midst of the worst war ever fought.  And why?  Because there were not enough ships, trains, automobiles, horses and days in the week already to get all that those men desperately needed for survival into their “business end” possession.

Ironically tomorrow is November 11 — what had been WWI’s Armistice Day, and is now Veterans Day.  And as that 91 year old comment from the then Secretary reminds us, we have also always been a country possessing a large number holding a self-centered, startlingly self-righteous streak.  Some are always all too willing to dispense with the noses of others — at least as long as those some also feel, correctly or not, that their own noses are just fine.

* * *

The U.S. does do many things “best,” but it also bears repeating that health care delivery is not really one of them.  The U.S. simply does NOT have “the best health care system” in the world.  And no matter how many times that mantra is chanted on (especially conservative) talk radio, or offered up from conservative politicians, or comes down to us from the health care experts on “Fox and Friends“, that does not make it any the truer.

Proclaiming such rather more demonstrates an unwillingness to look at hard, comparative realities for most people.  But not always, of course.  For if some do try to make the effort, unfortunately they often appear not even to understand what they are comparing.

For openers, the U.S. does not have a health care “system”.  Rather it is a chaotic mess, in which health care is fundamentally viewed not as a social responsibility in the manner of K-12 education, but is seen primarily as a business.

As a consequence the U.S. certainly has the most expensive health care in the world.  In it, yes, our (heavily subsidized by public finds, let us remember) teaching hospitals introduce remarkable new procedures.  And (heavily subsidized by public funds, let us also remember) pharmaceutical companies duly produce an endless array of new drugs.  (Some of which, before seeing them advertised, few of us had ever before even imagined we had “needed”; one result being this country also seems beset by an epidemic of constipation, if side-effects’ warnings in those same ads also are any indication.)

So if you have enough insurance willing to pay for it, and require cutting-edge, experimental treatment, there is usually (but, let’s remember also, not always) no better place than the U.S.  Thus looking up from behind the talk radio microphone out the window towards that shiny hospital on the hill, most appears rosy.  But down at the waiting room coal face of routine daily delivery for the masses, Americans are able to afford less and less of it.

Which is why we are here now.  This hasn’t happened overnight.  It has taken decades to get to this inept point.

We inhabit a perverse environment in which many Americans appear to accept as gospel that it is the legitimate role of their employer to provide their health cover.  (Yet do they expect that same employer to provide their child’s K-12 education?)

In a workplace in which coverage is daily curtailed or even dropped, unions, rather than demand coverage be separated from one’s job, spend their time instead lobbying to try to see to it that their members’ employer plans are protected.  (As for the uncovered rest of the workforce?)

And if U.S. Chamber of Commerce TV ads are to be believed, employers, rather than agitating to have government take ever-increasingly more expensive health care concerns off their hands, appear determined weirdly instead to desire to keep it there.  All while also incessantly bemoaning the growing costs.  (In order presumably to be able to drop it from their company, if and when they see fit?)

As with everything else in life, no health care delivery system is perfect.  But if the U.S. “system” really is “the best in the world” as it now functions (if that is the right word?), we would not be having this debate in the first place.  Certainly not while most of the rest of the developed world looks on it in half-stunned bemusement.

“Times” Of Confusion

Today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the division between East and West Germany, and with that eventually the end of the communism in eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union.  News media is rightly all over this; and the New York Times, unsurprisingly, has a lot to say.  From one perspective, it has gone a bit wrong:

20 Years of Collapse

From another, no problem: we won:

Life After the End of History

From still another, the debate continues:

The Legacy of 1989 Is Still Up for Debate

All that in just the one newspaper.

Separately, in that NYT we are reminded today also how an icon has previously admitted to hunting and fishing, and even drinking directly from a cow:

…“It was in the fields,” … “that I learned how to knock birds out of the sky with a slingshot, to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink warm, sweet milk from the udder of a cow, to swim in the clear, cold streams, and to catch fish with twine and sharpened bits of wire.”

We may likely assume safely that NYT subscribers aren’t rushing to cancel.  Despite that admission coming not from Sarah Palin, but from Nelson Mandela. And, presumably, Gloria Steinem is aware already.