About six months ago we published this little gem. It outlined what happens after an Obamacare passage? Today no doubt there is talk of repeal. This is good, we think. But, absent that, what was the plan? Lets have a look….

If one were to dive deep and try to understand why our system is this good one would enter a world that is so very familiar to us, but so very foreign to most average people. That world, the world of medical practice, is one that through all of its trials and efforts, through the many successes and many failures, through all of our learning, and hours spent away from our families and friends, all of THAT, each day we get better and better at doing things that were unthinkable even a few years ago and are still largely unthinkable in other highly industrialized countries like our cousins in England.

“Let’s remove all doubt,” she added. “We will have health care one way or another.”

Sometimes journalists get it right and capture a detail that is worthy of attention.

Thank the lord for the AMA in times such as these.

Early on in this whole HCR mess (seems like an eternity ago), we posted a number of pieces about how the stress and the strain on our politicians was leading to some clear public cracks and were offering a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes world of how the Wizard really controls Oz. For the better part of the summer and fall however, the politics have been visible. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and most conspicuously Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) have all had …

For those who do not obsess over HCR, you may have missed a little ditty by Nick Kristof that appeared in the NYT last week. Titled, “Are We Going to Let John Die?”, this twice over Pulitzer Prize winning reporter delivers a piece so ludicrous, so absurd that we can only stand back in horror wondering how desperate those on the far left must be right now. We generally do not label people in this manner– but we take the stance that most rational people would: those on the far …

What has our world come to? I scream and I holler and I complain how I cannot afford healthcare– to my buddy who I am talking with on my new 4G smartphone before we get set up later to watch the newest release of Tarzan on Blue Ray (we got both at Costco) and then turn up the music on our new Zune-Pod while we fall asleep to the crisp images of Earth on our new 1080p,i,x,y,z flatscreen we just had mounted on the bedroom wall.

Edward Gibbon was not a historian. He was just fascinated by history and wanted to chronicle what happens when great city-states fail. Perhaps another Gibbon awaits us and he will use this kind of non-sense as evidence of our fall– long before we knew it was happening. God help us all.

Off-Year Election night 2009. It’s mayhem right now. Every cable channel and talk show is alive with analysis and chatter and babble about what it all means. We loathe this type of banter– as it is largely devoid of information and even when informative, offers no depth of understanding. We at TBM of course have our take on the day and importantly, what it means for HCR. You may be surprised by our response to it by the way. To Summarize the events of the night:
1. In New Jersey, the …

If our government cannot get a vaccine delivered for a disease it knew was coming and had time to prepare and had time to muster its vast resources and bottomless intellect to deal with…if THAT government cannot get a vaccine to us for the damn flu, HOW ON GOD’S EARTH ARE THEY GOING TO COORDINATE A $2 TRILLION DOLLAR ANNUAL HEALTHCARE COLLOSSUS THAT IS OUR MEDICAL SYSTEM?

Here is the lesson I learned on that flight today as I cared for that lady and yet again gave up more of my time and my life for someone else who I will never even see again. I know that I could have cared less who she was, how much money she may have had, whether she was an illegal immigrant or the Queen of England. I know that she was someone who needed help and I was privileged to be able to help in some way. I also knew this: Those fools in Washington will never get this

That any fraction of the general population has been successfully led to believe the HCR nonsense is a sign of a SNAFU. If this reform gets passed, we will have a FUBAR. Once this happens, nothing good will come of it.

It is a bit of a shock to us that we are actually praising a piece by Alain Enthoven in a recent Kaiser Health News column. Mr. Enthoven is a distinguished academic in the area of health policy and has much to say over the years regarding HCR and his ideas. We have not always seen eye-to-eye with him and his views, but he is thoughtful and cogent and that counts for alot in our book.
His piece is titled Please Don’t Call It Health Reform and in it …

How easy! Why didn’t anyone think of that before? We’ll simply pay the doctors $1,000 to talk to us about weight and only $500 for cutting off a foot and we’ll end up with skinnier people, fewer detached feet, smaller health care costs and a lower federal deficit.

We are skirting the Frist Line here but, please, go get checked out by a good doctor, there may be something very wrong and we can help.

Every now and then we find a post that we do not think we can anything to. In fact, in so doing, we take away some of its magic and luster. So we repost here a really great piecefrom The New Majority that gets one thinking, which is of course always the goal. Think more, babble and blow smoke less. Words to live by (preventative advice perhaps– maybe we can charge for it?)
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Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance. Extending coverage to them has been a core goal of …

So, this little project of ours got us a bit of local notoriety. This evening at 7pm, the two TBM founders participated in a Town-Hall style health care forum with 2 other local physicians, two insurance agents, one lawyer and one hospital administrator. It was held at the Fess-Parker Doubletree Resort, was sponsored by the Santa Barbara Tea Party and Culpepper Society and had about 450 people in attendance. It was an amazing experience and we cannot thank our hosts enough for the tremendous effort that went into organizing and …

It really is a challenge for us to scream and yell that ‘we are important!! we keep people safe!! we matter!!’ when in fact, our great success at our trade has made those arguments difficult for the average person to believe, let alone understand. So, that this author in the WSJ was able to get that message across without sounding shrill or cocksure is impressive.

The Explainer just cannot explain all of this. If he did, his HCR efforts would be stillborn. So instead, we get to start this blog and spend our free time dissecting out what he really means when he speaks.

Every time young people ride a bus they’re going to glower at old people knowing what a fat hunk of their paychecks it takes to keep granny around breathing their air.

We came across this story over 24 hours ago. It was so absurd, so ridiculous, so crazy that we sat on for a bit and tried to get a better sense over both its veracity and what it could possibly mean.
So in this video:

We see a questioner at a Town Hall meeting for Rep. Sheila Jackson (D-Texas) asking a question and stating pretty clearly that she is also a doctor. Now it is true that many people today can call themselves ‘doctor’ and not actually be what most people …

He is clearly getting sloppy, upping the ante with his old-style Chicago type politics and talking points that we see coming out of the White House. This $50,000 for an amputation thing is just so far out there we cannot really explain it.

Blogs that aim to explain, rather than simply comment, seem to be in demand by many people at present.

Billy Tauzin has made Mr. Obama look duplicitous, sneaky and dishonest all at the same time. Never a good thing to do to a President, especially one who is struggling to regain his footing.

Kudos to one of our very own for being ahead of the curve.

The mutability in the public councils arising from a rapid succession of new members, however qualified they may be, points out, in the strongest manner, the necessity of some stable institution in the government. Thank heavens for Little ‘Jemmie Madison!

Insurance is designed to cover risks but politicians are in the business of distributing largesse. Nothing is easier for politicians than to mandate things that insurance companies must cover, without the slightest regard for how such additional coverage will raise the cost of insurance.

The ABC piece is illuminating, troubling, sad and really should be watched by every person that has an interest in HCR. Period.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year.