This Week: News of the Weird

 

News of the Weird I: "The Health Care Riddle"

News of the Weird II: "The Magic of the Market"

News of the Weird III: Afghans Both "Surprisingly Confident" and "Losing Faith"

News of the Weird IV: Just Say No To Sex (If You Want Money)

 

Greetings,

I imagine many of you have seen the widely-syndicated column "News of the Weird." I never read it, since I consider it sort of voyeuristic and snobbishly arrogant, and the targets he chooses are too easy.

So I thought I'd publish my own "News of the Weird," focusing on news items that I suspect don't seem "weird" to most people. Or, maybe they do. They should, in any case. So, here are a few of my picks, which I selected from a very long list of candidates.

Several of you have asked me to comment on last week's elections, but I don't have room this week. I'm not even sure I have much to say, but I take your feedback seriously, and will try to say something next week. No room for a "Quote" of the Week this week, either. Oh, well...

Speaking of feedback, I LOVE it! Please, if you read anything that stimulates you in any way, I invite you to send your comments, questions, criticisms, or whatever to me at this email. I answer them all, and they always help me to do my job better. Write me as often as you want!

I'm all ears,

Nygaard

News of the Weird I: "The Health Care Riddle"

One of the things that happens during an election campaign in the U.S. is that the corporate media sometimes takes on the role of "issue explainer." My local paper, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) had a little series during the just-completed campaign season in which they would take a full page now and then to provide some basic background on the various issues that they thought needed explaining. On October 6th the issue was "Approaches to Health Care." In that article, the Star Trib began by stating the obvious: "Few politicians are proposing a comprehensive overhaul of American health care." Then it got weird.

According to the article, "Three basic approaches exist to solving the health-care riddle, each with problems." The Star Trib then proceeded to list and explain each of the three, in the form of a brief explanation followed by a paragraph or two on the "Problems" that go along with it.

Here are the three approaches that were offered: 1. "Managed care;" 2. "Manage-it-yourself care" and; 3. "Level the playing field."

1. "Manage-it-yourself care" is described as "Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) " which "allow consumers to combine special, tax-free savings accounts with high-deductible policies that are cheaper than comprehensive plans." Problems? People who can't afford insurance can't afford HSAs. Duh.

2. "Level the playing field" amounts to "Eliminating the tax exemption" that employers get for providing their workers with health insurance. The sole "expert" they talk to about this says that "newly cost-sensitive consumers would be free to choose either managed care or HSAs depending on their needs." Problems? The Star Trib says no one will go for a tax increase; I say "cost-sensitive" consumers will go without needed care.

3. When the article talked about "managed care," things got weirder yet. "The idea behind managed care," the Star Trib tells us, "was to control costs by having HMOs negotiate deep discounts with providers and drug companies while also controlling patient usage of the system." Then, bizarrely, under the heading "Problems" we read these words: "The most sweeping of all reforms, a single-payer system that covers everyone, would be the ultimate managed-care plan. It would have the advantage, proponents say, of major savings in administrative costs once only one insurer was in the system." That's all it says; why this appeared under "Problems" of "managed care" is a complete mystery.

And, by the way, single-payer health care is not a "managed-care plan," ultimate or otherwise. How bizarre to say so! Somebody should tell the Star Tribune that the real "health care riddle" is "Why is single-payer health care reported in this country as if it were Plan 9 From Outer Space?" And it's not even the most radical idea. A fully-socialized system might be the best option, but it's unthinkable, as evidenced by it's absence from the Star Trib's list of "basic approaches."

For a real explanation of a national, single-payer health system, you could go back and read Nygaard Notes #241 "National Health Insurance: The Nuts and Bolts." #241 is all about single-payer, especially the money part of it. If that isn't enough for you, all the answers you could ever want can be found at the website of Physicians for a National Health Program at http://www.pnhp.org/ See their "Frequently Asked Questions."

News of the Weird II: "The Magic of the Market"

An article in the November 13th New York Times, headlined "Administration Opposes Democrats' Plan for Negotiating Medicare Drug Prices," had me laughing out loud at some of the things said by the Bush administration's secretary of health and human services, Michael O. Leavitt. I'll just share a couple of them.

The issue here, briefly, is that the Medicare Modernization Act, which authorized Medicare's new drug benefit, forbids the federal government from negotiating directly with drug manufacturers to obtain lower drug prices for seniors and for the Medicare program. Instead, each Medicare prescription drug plan participating in the program negotiates separately with drug manufacturers to obtain price concessions.

Allowing the government to negotiate directly with Big Pharma is one of the stated priorities of the newly-elected Democratic majority in Congress. The Times article points out, the Bush administration plans to "strenuously oppose" such an idea, adding that Leavitt said in an interview that "he saw no prospect of compromise on the issue."

Leavitt says, "Democrats say they want the government to negotiate prices. What they really want is government-run health care." (I wish!) Then, according to the Times, "Secretary Leavitt said he did not want the power to negotiate drug prices. ‘I don't believe I can do a better job than an efficient market,' he said."

He didn't stop there. "We are seeing large-scale negotiations with drug manufacturers, but they are conducted by private drug plans, not by the government,"said the delusional Secretary. "A robust marketplace with a lot of competitors has driven down prices. It's the magic of the market. To assume that the government, in our genius, could improve on this belies the reality of a complex task." [Ed. note: I'm not making this up.]

As if worried that the Secretary's remarks might not be convincing, the Times also cited Dan Bartlett, counselor to the "President," who supposedly said on "Fox News Sunday" that "competing private plans had already brought down costs more than government price controls would have."

Meanwhile, in the real world, actual studies have been done on the subject, and guess what? They all find that the government could save lots of money—LOTS of money—if it were allowed to negotiate directly. When I say "a lot" of money, I'm talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $332 billion to $563 billion over the next eight years, according to a January study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. (Read it yourself at http://www.cepr.net/publications/efficient_medicare_2006_01.pdf )

Another study looked at in terms of it's impact on the costs to a hypothetical patient taking the five drugs most frequently prescribed to seniors. The group, Families USA, compared that patient's drug costs under the current Medicare plan to the costs under the current Department of Veterans Affairs plan and found that their patient "would save between $1,077.81 and $2,561.46 in annual out-of-pocket costs if these plans negotiated prices as effectively as the VA."

About a year ago the Minority (i.e. Democratic) staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform did a study at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman. When they compared the drug prices offered by ten leading Medicare drug plans with some other options, they found that the drug prices offered by the Medicare drug plans were: 1. Over 80% higher than the prices negotiated by the federal government; 2. Over 60% higher than the prices available to consumers in Canada; 3. Over 3% higher than the prices available on Drugstore.com; and 4. Almost 3% higher than the prices available at Costco.

The Waxman report closed by saying that these higher prices "make it doubtful that the complicated design of Medicare Part D provides any tangible benefit to anyone but drug manufacturers and insurers."

And that, dear readers, is the REAL "magic of the market" that is behind the Bush administration's Medicare plan.

News of the Weird III: Afghans Both "Surprisingly Confident" and "Losing Faith"

It's almost five years since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, so the U.S. media has already started running stories on the state of affairs in that country five years later. At least one large U.S. non-profit, the Asia Foundation, has done a couple of polls of the Afghan people themselves. What did we learn from the most recent poll, conducted this past summer? If you read the newspapers in the United States, you learn that the Afghan people have confidence in their country's direction and security. AND, you also learn that they are losing faith in the nation's path.

Really!?

I'm not hallucinating, I'm just looking at two different newspapers from November 9th. On page 6 of the New York Times the headline read "Afghans Losing Faith in Nation's Path, Poll Shows." The lead paragraph in that story says "Afghans have lost a considerable amount of confidence in the direction of their country over the past two years."

On the same day, USA Today's headline (page 4), read: "Poll: Afghans Express Confidence in Country's Direction, Security." This article tells us that "The poll...suggests that Afghans are surprisingly confident about the direction of their country..."

The odd thing is, both spins are "true," at least in part. Both articles agree that, according to the poll, "44 percent of Afghans interviewed said the country was headed in the right direction," while only "Twenty-one percent said the country was headed in the wrong direction." So there's your factual basis for the "Afghans Express Confidence" headline.

On the other hand, also according to both articles, a similar poll taken two years ago (also by the Asia Foundation) showed that 64 percent at that time thought the country was headed in the right direction, which is quite a drop compared with today's 44 percent. And the Times notes that the number of Afghans thinking that things were going in the wrong direction in 2004 was only 11 percent, and now it's 21 percent. So, there's your factual basis for the "losing faith" headline.

The reason I call this "News of the Weird" is that I think a lot of people believe that the job of the media is to be "objective." For those who believe that, this little Tale of Two Headlines most likely seems very weird. But what is really weird is that people still believe in the Myth of Objectivity in the face of numerous examples like this one.

News of the Weird IV: Just Say No To Sex (If You Want Money)

On October 31st the front page of USA Today had this highly-intriguing headline on a subject that no other news outlet, to my knowledge, has covered: "Abstinence Message Goes Beyond Teens; Millions in Federal Money Targeting Adults up to 29."

The article leads off by saying that "The federal government's ‘no sex without marriage' message isn't just for kids anymore. Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs..." What's happening is that the federal government is tightening the rules that states must follow in order to get funds to teach "abstinence-only" sex education. We're talking $50 million in funding here.

The article was a good one, as it not only laid out the facts of the latest "marriage-promotion" lunacy from the Bush administration, but also made a point to talk to some people who were willing to say that it IS lunacy. In the third paragraph, USAT quotes James Wagoner, president of a group called Advocates for Youth, who said of the Bush-ites: "They've stepped over the line of common sense. To be preaching abstinence when 90 percent of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health." (He's literally correct: Well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse. I'm personally acquainted with some of them.)

The assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services is a man named Wade Horn, whom USAT quotes as laying out the administration's justification for this nonsense. Horn says, "The message is ‘It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children. The only 100 percent effective way of getting there is abstinence."

Another way to "get there" would be to stick solely with sex partners of the same sex, of course, but USA Today didn't bother to point that out. I'm guessing that Mr. Horn didn't mention it, either. You think? (I've talked about Mr. Horn before, in Nygaard Notes #160: "Moral and Cost Efficient.")

The reality-based Guttmacher Institute had a piece on this new interpretation of federal law in their latest "Policy Review." They point out, for example, that this latest restriction on funding occurs in the context of the 1996 welfare law's "infamous eight-point definition of what constitutes a fundable abstinence program." One of the definition's eight planks, for example, decrees that "a mutually faithful monogamous marriage is the expected standard of human sexual behavior." That comment sent me to the Internet, where a Google search for "Republicans" and "sex scandals" returns 300,000 citations. It's 295,000 for Democrats.

And, speaking of losing touch with reality, the Guttmacher article adds that the Bush administration also requires states to provide assurances that they are taking measures to ensure that funded programs and curricula "do not promote contraception and/or condom use."

Federal officials have justified the new emphasis on promoting abstinence among people in their 20s by saying that "contrary to popular opinion, the highest rates of out-of-wedlock births occur among women in their twenties, not among teens." Of course, the highest rates of ALL births—including "out-of-wedlock" births—occur among women in their twenties, and have for many years.

I classify this story as "Weird" rather than outrageous for the same reasons that family sociologist Stephanie Coontz does. Writing on the TomPaine.com website on November 6th about the Bush plan to send sex counselors out into the hinterlands, Coontz said, "My own reaction is, in the words of our president, ‘Bring 'em on.' Here's why I welcome the attempt to target older men and women with the abstinence-only message: It's so ludicrous it's almost harmless."

Weird, but harmless. Hopefully we will be able to say that about many more federal initiatives over the next two Bush years, and beyond.