Health and Medicine

Two More Pieces of Evidence Supporting a Mandatory Retirement Age and Term Limits in Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I. Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), 79, was being wheeled into the House by a staffer when Politico photographer Francis Chung took his picture. Punchbowl News reports that the Congressman screamed, “Who gave you the right to take my picture, asshole?” Nice! The First Amendment gives him the right. Scott was in full public view, and has no expectation of privacy. He doesn’t know that? Why is anyone in Congress who doesn’t understand Bill of Rights 101? Scott has served as the U.S. representative of Georgia’s 13th congressional district since 2003. How can he not know this after 20 years in Congress? Did he once know it and somehow forgot? That seems plausible. Scott has chaired the House Agriculture Committee since January 2021, but colleagues in the House have expressed, all anonymously, of course, concerns about his fading mental abilities. They say he often reads from a script and has “trouble” discussing finer points of policy. Scott also frequently leaves Agriculture Committee meetings and does not return, even though he’s the chairman.

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Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

[Source: Health System Tracker]

In his useful Comment of the Day on the recent essay about “wanted” posters going up around New York City to target health industry executives, Chris Marschner examines some of the factors underlying the high cost of staying alive in the U.S.

I worked on health care costs and the various schemes to keep them down in the 1980s at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Then, the big panacea was going to be HMOs. The cruel reality was that they were over-sold: HMO’s were great if you had something very simple or something very serious: in between, the care just wasn’t any good, as I found out when I first started suffering from chronic gout. Unless there is some incentive for the health care consumer to minimize costs, insurance helps make health care more expensive. Personally, I blame Franklin Roosevelt’s socialist theory that Americans should be guaranteed “Freedom from Want,” meaning guaranteed housing , jobs, a “living wage,” and cradle to grave health care. If people are not sufficiently motivated to avoid unnecessary trips to the doctor or emergency rooms because they won’t have to pay for the consequences of their life choices, medical costs will keep going up. Thus Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” was even less effective at keeping health care affordable than Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was at reducing inflation.

Here is Chris Marschner’s Comment of the Day on “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:”….

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These posters would be, in my humble opinion, incitement to violence and immediate threats to the individuals identified. As such, claims of free speech cannot be defended.

I read an interesting article on the history of health insurance from PubMed A (Brief) History of Health Policy in the United States – PMC. While it outlined the historical development it fails miserably with respect to why health care costs have risen so dramatically. The primary reason for health care inflation is that insurance decouples the patient from the provider when it comes to making choices. If health care providers were not compensated based on a fee for service model it stands to reason that the number of services would fall which would allow greater access to health care when actually needed. Having your primary care physician have you make an appointment every 3-6 months just to evaluate you is an appointment that cannot go to someone in need resulting in long wait times.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The New York Post reports that wanted posters targeting CEOs of insurance and other health care companies are appearing in Manhattan. Some say “HEALTH CARE CEOS SHOULD NOT FEEL SAFE” and include the words “DENY,” “DEFEND,” and “DEPOSE,” which are the same words that the cute assassin who shot UnitedHealthcare’s CEO wrote on his bullets. The posters also feature each executive’s salary, and some have appeared with the photos of CEOs of non-health care companies, like Goldman Sachs. ABC reports some posters say “UnitedHealthcare killed everyday people for the sake of profit. As a result Brian Thompson was denied his claim to life. Who will be denied next?”

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On Pete Hegseth’s Strange Drinking Pledge

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host and Army veteran told Megyn Kelly on her Sirius/XM radio show that he would stop drinking alcohol completely if confirmed as Doanld Trump’s Secretary of Defense. He referenced “general order number 1,” which prohibits military personnel from consuming alcohol during deployment, saying, “This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.” He continued, “That’s how I view this role as Secretary of Defense is, I’m not going to have a drink, at all. And it’s not hard for me because it’s not a problem for me.”

This is an issue because along with allegations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct in the past and the uncovered email in which his mother accused him of abusing women, CBS News has reported that when Hegseth accepted a six-figure severance payment and signed a non-disclosure agreement in his 2016 exit from Concerned Veterans of America, there had been reports (from unnamed sources, of course) that he was intoxicated on the job more than once.

I find Hegseth’s pledge more than a little strange. It is like a man being accused of beating his wife saying, “I have never beaten my wife and if you give me this job, I promise that I will never beat her again.”

“A drinking problem” typically suggests alcoholism, though there are non-alcoholic alcohol abusers. The latter can, in fact, just decide not to drink any more and do so successfully. Alcoholics, in contrast, have metabolic and psychological disorders that make sobriety a lifetime battle that they are likely to occasionally lose.

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Paging Moral Luck! Paging Moral Luck!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Judge S. Kato Crews, a progressive appointee by President Biden to the U.S. District Court in Colorado, refused to allow an injunction against the San Jose State women’s volleyball team from including a biologically male “transwoman” (above) to compete with the team in a women’s volleyball conference tournament this week. He ruled that appellate and Supreme Court precedents clearly establish that the protections of Title IX and the 14th Amendment apply to transgender individuals.

A key factor in the decision seems to be that the plaintiffs, which are the other colleges in San Jose State’s conference, a current co-captain of the San Jose team, other former players and the recently-suspended assistant coach, should have filed the suit earlier. The conference’s transgender participation policy has been in effect since 2022 and four conference opponents and one non-conference opponent forfeited games against San Jose State beginning in September.

“The rush to litigate these complex issues now over a mandatory injunction,” Crews ruled, “places too a heavy burden on the defendants”—the Mountain West Conference and its commissioner, two administrators at San Jose State, the school’s head volleyball coach and the board of trustees of the California State University System. That’s a reasonable judicial call under most circumstances, but the judge and the entire pro-trans movement in the U.S. is now at the mercy of moral luck. That is the annoying life reality that random occurrences out of the control of decision-makers have a way of retroactively defining a decision as either prudent and wise or reckless and wrong. Crews’ decision neatly tees up the perfect conditions for moral luck to settle the trans athletes in women’s sports controversy

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Ethics Verdict: The Trump-Deranged Harris Voters Are The Most Infantile Losers In US. Political History

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

There’s really no contest. EA has discussed the whining celebrities like Ellen DeGeneris who have abandoned their native country and the most remarkable democracy in world history because their favorite candidate—a spectacularly poor one—lost. We have discussed Rob Reiner, committing himself to a rest home because he can’t handle a competitive political process. We have talked about the social media hysteria and the progressives isolating themselves at BlueSky, a platform that censors conservatives. I have written about the people who are announcing on Facebook that if you voted for Trump, you are a racist and a fascist and not worthy of their friendship any more. But there is more…

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Ethics Quiz: Smoking Daddy

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In the YouTube video posted by “web influencer” Rosanna Pansino (over 14 million YouTube subscribers—I’m all the way up to around 230 followers in my recent return to Twitter/X!—the 39-year-old baking star smokes her dead father’s ashes in accordance with his dying wish. She says her father, dying of leukemia, wanted her to grow a marijuana plant with his ashes and then smoke him. So five years after he died, with his pot plant flourishing, Pansino lit a joint that had particles of her father in it and smoked it for the entertainment of her YouTube audience.

Classy. So tasteful.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day…

“Is this unethical, or just icky?”

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It’s Time To Accept Reality: We Can’t Trust Science Writers, So We Can’t Trust What We Read About Science

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The ethics rot of “Scientific American” came to a climax last week with the firing of longtime editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth after she went on a social media tirade against Trump voters and tried to blame it on the demon Pazuzu (well, not explicitly, but that was what her “apology” amounted to). During her tenure she had politicized the once respected science magazine, using it to advance her own social justice agenda which dovetailed nicely with that of the extreme progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Weaponizing science for political advantage is more totalitarianism on the hoof, and one might think that Helmuth’s demise might slow down or even begin to terminate this dangerous trend, once rampant on the Reactionary Right, now characteristic of the Doctrinaire Left. Nope.

Based on the latest from esteemed (not by me, but still…) science writer John Horgan, who modestly calls himself “The Science Writer”—he’s a science writer—the political roots of the field’s ethics rot is already embedded too deeply to extract. Horgan has strong credentials, as he’d be the first to tell you. He’s been writing for Scientific American since 1986 with an eight year break in the middle, and also authors pieces on science issues for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Washington Post, Time and Newsweek. He has written several books; he’s has been interviewed on PBS, MSNBC, NPR, AP, BBC, and other broadcast media. He’s  lectured at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, McGill and the London School of Economics, among other institutions.

Yet Horgan still thinks that scientists are correct to be driven by political bias and to let it affect their work. His recent essay in the wake of Hormuth’s oh-so-well-deserved demise is a flashing neon warning that science, as an objective, fact-driven, intellectual pursuit for the good of mankind (aka “a profession”) is as dead as Darwin, or mighty close to it. Horgan’s website piece is titled, “Scientific American Loses Its Bold Leader.” “Bold” is a terrific ambiguous cover word. In the case of Hormuth, it means courageous and reckless to the point of subverting her duties. From there, The Science Writer argues,

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Squirrel Ethics: The P’Nut Saga [Corrected and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

State government officials this week seized and ultimately destroyed P’Nut, a pet squirrel with a popular Instagram page, in Pine City, New York. Somehow, conservatives have decided to make this incident some kind of watershed for state abuse of personal liberties , not to mention pet squirrels. Thus P’Nut has become an election issue; Hey, why not, everything else is from McDonald’s to Liz Cheney. First pet squirrels, next guns and free enterprise. “First, they came for P’Nut, and I said nothing…”

Give me a break.

Mark Longo adopted P’Nut seven years ago in New York City as an orphaned baby squirrel that crawled up his leg after his mommy was squished by a car. The squirrel ended up with his own room, and when Longo and his wife were at home the furry friend wandered wherever he wanted in their house. Longo described P’Nut as “the most charismatic, sassy animal.”

P’Nut also was a profitable animal. The rodent became the face and name of P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit Longo and his wife started in April. The Longos contribute half of the organization’s roughly $20,000-a-month expenses to run the sanctuary and donors supply the other half, with most of those donations raised largely through cute P’Nut videos posted on Instagram. “We have rescued over 300 animals in our sanctuary already,” Longo said. “Cats, dogs, horses, goats, sheep, donkeys and pigs.”

Ah! The ends justify the means! Here is the problem: it is illegal to keep wildlife like squirrels as pets, in New York as well as many other states. The full list is here. (Pointer: jeffguinn) According to that source, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming all allow people to own pet squirrels. [Note: This is a correction from the original post, in which I assumed that all states would have prohibited P’Nut.]

None of which is relevant to the law in New York and it’s enforcement.

“Following multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets, D.E.C. conducted an investigation,” the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement after P’Nut was seized. “Investigation” is a bit sanitized: the operation has been described as a raid, and sure sounds like one. Before the officers left with P’Nut (and a raccoon, which nobody seems to care about), they “ransacked my entire house,” Longo said. “They made me sit outside for five hours.”

Presumably they were making sure that the house didn’t contain any other illegal residents. “We have had P’nut for seven years without a single complaint,” Longo said. “Now it’s suddenly an issue? It’s not like we were hiding him.”

Well, yes. That’s the problem. Longo and his wife were openly violating a law, and the argument for letting P’Nut keep hiding his nuts under their rugs is simple: the law is the law, there is no exception for cute law-breaking or profitable law-breaking. Regardless of the squirrel’s popularity and use in fundraising for a worthy cause, a law that isn’t enforced when it is broken for reasons some people think are justifications isn’t a law at all.

This isn’t just one slippery slope, it is several. Today it’s P’Nut the Squirrels, then it’s whenever that raccoon was, and tomorrow it’s Chewy the Wolverine.

“To the people who filed complaints, thank you for taking away the best part of me, thank you for taking away my best friend,” Longo whined online.

Conservatives have to stop flipping their values any time they see a chance for political point-scoring. This is called lacking integrity. Taking away P’Nut is based on the same principle that says “good illegal immigrants” should still be deported, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t get away with mishandling classified materials, and that if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling documents, Joe Biden should be as well.

The King’s Pass is a rationalization even if the king is a squirrel.

A grace note: P’Nut had to be euthanized after he bit one of the officers as they removed him from his happy home, so they had to see if the squirrel had rabies. Good for P’Nut: he didn’t go down without a fight. We can’t blame him for not knowing the law.

Comment of the Day: “Just So There Is Accountability and We Don’t Forget, Here’s a List of The Lying Media Propagandists Who Claimed Trump Said He Wanted Liz Cheney Shot…”

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Time for a Trump Derangement report Comment of the Day. This admirable job by AM Golden fills the bill nicely, especially since I had almost the exact same conversation with my own “not unintelligent” relative who has been a raging, drooling, Trump Derangement victim getting progressively (double meaning, there) worse (Stage 1, 2, 3, 4, now 5, and I suspect Stage 6 is terminal) for almost a decade. There is a viral social media tale with video about a woman who interrupted a conversation between two black Trump supporters to start screaming about how he was a criminal who wants Liz Cheney to be put in front of a 9-person “firing squad.” This lunatic also claimed to be well-informed, though she must only frequent MSNBC and other propaganda outlets that haven’t thoroughly debunked this most recent desperate lie. (All you have to do is read what Trump said.) There may be a new one by now; I haven’t checked.

I am going to depart from the usual format with COTDs here and follow AM’s post with some supplemental analysis of my own.

In the meantime, here is AM Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Just So There Is Accountability and We Don’t Forget, Here’s a List of The Lying Media Propagandists Who Claimed Trump Said He Wanted Liz Cheney Shot…,” which is a follow-up to this earlier post regarding the unforgivable “Trump threatened Cheney” AXIS hit.

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Trying to convince people that what Trump said is being misrepresented, and deliberately so, by the Democrats and their media advocates is like pulling teeth.

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