Category: Health care

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

A Health Care Plan More Impressive Than Perfection: Something That Might Pass

[digg-reddit-me]Ezra Klein – as expected – has the best summary of what Obama accomplished last night. After voicing a few critiques of the policies promoted by the speech and some of the rhetoric on wonkish grounds, Klein concludes:

But if Obama hasn’t created the perfect plan, he’s created something arguably more impressive: a plan that actually might pass. That plan might not do enough to change the system, and it may not spend enough to protect everybody, but there is plenty in the proposal that will better the lives, health coverage, and financial security for millions of real people. It will insure around 30 million Americans and protect tens of millions more from insurer discrimination, medical bankruptcy and rescission. It will bring more evidence to medicine and more competition to the insurance market. That may not be perfection, but it is improvement. And it is achievable.

Klein also helpfully links to the plan posted by the White House and posted the transcript of the full speech (though I’ve included the New York Times link.) For those who missed it, this interactive video from the Times is useful as well. Andrew Sullivan meanwhile provided his useful reax (and a part ii) from notables around the blogosphere.

It is certainly too soon to declare victory – but last night’s speech accomplished what Obama needed – to give the media a peg to turn around their coverage. Through August the sizzle and dazzle came from the opponents of reform who finally were able to take on Obama and knock him down a few pegs. They were the sexy new story after months of that post-election glow. The White House fought back – but stayed largely above the fray. They continued to push reform behind closed doors. They searched for a deal that could pass. And they took punches. A lot of them. Andrew Sullivan dubbed this Obama’s rope-a-dope strategy (and here) back during the campaign – and it has emerged as a theme. Bill Clinton was the “Comeback Kid” who would get himself into some awful jam, but them miraculously pull himself out – often with the help of the overreach of his enemies. It was entertaining. But Obama’s approach is different. He lets his opponents attack him for a long time – enough to bring down his numbers and to make his agenda unpopular – and they get to the point where they sense victory, all the while positioning himself for where he wants to be at the decisive moment. And then he hits back. This has happened before: during the scandal over Reverend Wright; during the long summer of the 2008 campaign; when Sarah Palin was nominated; during the fight over the stimulus; and now, on health care. The game plan is the same – as I wrote earlier about the stimulus fight:

Sun-Tzu advised to “accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle.” This seems to have been Obama’s strategy – to allow his campaign to take hits and play defense, sticking to an overall strategy that would gain him a final decisive victory rather than exhausting his staff fighting every daily flair-up. Sometimes, this led to awful weeks – such as the long lack of a complete response to the Rev. Wright fiasco. But Obama ended up winning because, though he lost a thousand daily battles over Rev. Wright, he took the long view and gave a subtle, personal speech about race. He won that war not by fighting back charge after charge but by changing it from a war into a reflective national moment. It’s hard to describe how extraordinary that is – how rarely that has happened in history, and how difficult it was to imagine this was even possible, especially in the frenetic media environment that has existed since 1992.

Clinton’s strategy allowed him to survive personally, but was a disaster for the Democratic Party as a whole. Obama’s strategy seems to offer something better – a chance to win policy battles. (Of course, the zeitgeist of the times also plays a role in the fate of Democratic policies under Clinton versus Obama as well.)

It’s too soon to count the health care fight as won – but the administration is well-positioned to achieve what Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton all set out to achieve (and even what George W. Bush set out to achieve on tort reform.) And it is so positioned because of Obama’s clear strategic vision.

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Barack Obama Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

The Lessons of 1993/1994 (cont.)

[digg-reddit-me]Usually I try to contextualize a writer – for example by saying what publication they write for. Other times, I presume the name conveys enough. But I don’t know Sean Trende from Adam. However, he has an interesting column published in Real Clear Politics about what he calls the “myth circulating in the blogosphere and the punditry.” (He gives Steve Benen, Mark Kleiman, Matt Yglesias, and Senator Jim DeMint as examples; I also made this point.) He says this myth is “threatening the Democrats’ majorities.” He describes it:

It goes like this: In 1994, Democrats failed to pass a healthcare bill, and they lost their majorities. Ergo, if Democrats fail to pass a healthcare bill in 2009, they will be at serious risk of losing their majorities in 2010, so to save their majorities, they should make certain above all else to get something passed.

He parses through the data – read his column for the figures – and concludes:

In other words, the problem for Democrats in 1994 was not that they didn’t support Clinton’s agenda enough. It was that they got too far out in front of their conservative-leaning districts and supported the President too much.

Overall, I found his piece rather persuasive – as Trende styles himself a poor man’s Nate Silver – at least on the narrow question of whether or not a Democrat in a right-leaning district would be hurt by rejecting any controversial measure pushed by Obama. But what he doesn’t deal with is the counterfactual – as there isn’t the data available in the set he is looking for to take this on. (Reading a bit more of Trende, it also seems he isn’t that sympathetic to health care reform or the Democrats – making his adopted pose of concern that a “myth” is “threatening” the Democrats’ power in Washington a bit grating.)  While it’s true that Democrats in right-leaning districts might save their seats by opposing cap-and-trade legislation, the stimulus, and health care reform, the party as a whole will undoubtedly suffer from their failure to advance the issues they were most passionate campaigning on.

Kevin Drum – in a post which is overall worth reading about why he is optimistic about reform – makes this persuasive counterpoint:

[I]f they [the Democrats] cave in to the loons and demonstrate that their convictions were weak all along — they’re probably doomed next year.  Their only hope is to pass a bill and look like winners who get things done.

This is exactly the counterfactual that Trende doesn’t address – and it was the fear of Bill Kristol and many other Republicans in 1994 that this is exactly what would happen if the Democrats passed a successful health care reform. It clearly seems to be the fear many Republican leaders are feeling now – as they seem determined to resist any pressure to work towards a bill they can accept in favor of simply continuing with the unsustainable status quo.

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Health care Politics

Health Care Lie #494: Health Insurance Companies and Their Allies Are Blocking Reform

[digg-reddit-me]I’ve come to see it as a sign of dishonesty – of political manipulation – to portray the insurance companies as the primary villains in the problems with health care. As for example in this editorial in the Washington Post from the weekend:

[T]he campaign must focus attention on the insurance companies that are primarily responsible for the health-care mess. This means organizing public events across the country that can articulate Americans’ frustrations with the current health insurance system and polarize public opinion against the insurance companies and their allies. [my emphasis]

Of course – as those paying attention to the fight over reform know – the insurance companies stand to benefit from many of the provisions in the plan – if not from others such as the public option – and they seem to have realized in advance that they needed to get behind reform so they could shape it. Perhaps behind the scenes, they are trying to block it – but I haven’t actually seen any indication of it. (And neither has Ezra Klein who has been following this more closely and for much longer than I have.)

Health insurance companies are such an easy target though – as they seem to add little real value. Their secondary purpose – aside from spreading the impact of health risks – is to restrain costs – and in this they have failed miserably. Their aggressive culling from their rolls of all those who actually need the service they provide have undermined their primary purpose. They have adopted horrendous practices and seem to treat their customers in bad faith as a matter of course. They are such easy targets that they knew they needed to get behind reform early – and remain behind it though they are being made the public villain by the reformers. In a lot of ways, they should be: they are profiting from a faulty system that is hurting many Americans and is unsustainable; as prices skyrocket, their profits do as well. Statistics such as the medical loss ratio demonstrate that these companies are trying to do everything possible to avoid providing the service they are in business to provide. But I’m not sure you can make the case that spiraling health care costs are the fault of health insurance companies (though they have contributed in various ways.) And health insurance companies aren’t behind the various lies – from the allegations of a government takeover of the economy to death panels. They may be trying to scuttle the public option, but they stand to benefit from much of the plan – and it’s better for them to reduce the uncertainty and deal with legislation passed than to continue with an unsustainable system.

In other words, in this reform effort – which is mostly about health insurance reform – health insurers aren’t the primary obstacle.

[Image by Steve Rhodes licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

Health Care Lie #493: Rationing

[digg-reddit-me]Ezra Klein does a pretty good job taking down the rhetorical slights of hand Republicans are using on this issue. His approach might not be the most effective politically – but it has the virtue of being honest. Rather than proclaiming there will be no rationing – he points out that we already do ration.

We prioritize botox for the rich over cancer treatments for the poor. This is the status quo that we have that is so incredibly expensive. The debate over health care should be focusing on two questions:

  1. How much of our national wealth are we going to choose to spend on health care?
  2. How do we want to allocate our limited health care technology and services?

We can agree to spend a lot of our national wealth on health care. After all, we need to spend it on something. The rate of growth is too much now – but we don’t need to reduce our levels of health care spending to that of Great Britain. (They spend 41 cents on the dollar that we spend for better overall results as measured by life expectancy, infant mortality, as well as overall patient satisfaction.)

Then – to the second question – how do we allocate access? Right now, we provide emergency treatment to everyone; those with the most money get any treatment they like without significant waits; the rest of us wait, but at least are treated if we have insurance coverage. There’s a reason why rich people from around the world travel to America – and it’s not just because we have great doctors. It’s because they get to cut the line and get treated ahead of those with less financial status because our system rations by money.

For the rest of us, the health care reforms being discussed now won’t reverse this privileged position for the rich. What Obama is proposing is not anything so radical. But rather he seeks to accomplish several things, to moderately improve our current system:

  • it will eliminate the fear that your insurance company will drop your coverage once you get sick – putting you on the fast road to being poor and at the bottom rung of our society and in our health care system at the same time;
  • it will – through incentives, tax breaks, and mandates – ensure that everyone has a base level of coverage;
  • for the many who already do have coverage, it will provide a sense of security – a peace of mind – that even if you lose your job, you will still be able to get affordable health insurance; and
  • finally, for a small number of Americans to start, and then perhaps for a larger portion if the program is successful, it will provide a choice of health insurance plans in a functioning and transparent market for individuals which our current mish-mash of Wall Street-run health insurance companies and hodge-podge of regulations isn’t able to provide.

This moderate plan bears little resemblance to the “government takeover of health care” that critics are directing their fire at. It isn’t about “rationing.” In fact, what it seeks to do is address the rationing our system already does. In this way, the attacks on the plan are Rovian in the most diabolical sense – they take the strength of the plan, and try to turn it into a weakness.

[Image by Aaron Edwards licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Criticism Health care Politics The Opinionsphere Videos

John McCain’s Cowardly Politics

[digg-reddit-me]Senator John McCain established his reputation as a “maverick” in a large part for the bold positions he staked out in the 2000 campaign on long-term problems affecting our nation. That was his trademarked, “Straight Talk.” He was one of the few politicians out there who would tell you how much trouble Social Security and Medicare were in. But under the Obama administration and to a lesser extent throughout his career, McCain has gained great credibility and popularity by taking very strong, responsible positions on long-term issues – while finding some minor excuse to oppose any attempts at reform that cost him politically.

But the Obama administration apparently still continues to hope to meet the McCain who was often invoked, though rarely seen, in the 2008 campaign – the “maverick” with an interest in “bipartisanship” who “puts country first.”*

McCain’s 11th Sunday morning talk show appearance this year occurred this Sunday, as he  appeared on This Week With George Stephanopoulos. Chris Cilizza of theWashington Post said he expected the interview to be “Must Watch TV” – and in fact, it was – as McCain demonstrated a phenomenon I call “the politics of irresponsible responsibility.”

In his interview with Stephanopoulos, McCain talked like a moderate on domestic policy issues – but managed to find a single or dual objection that allowed him to obstruct Obama’s agenda on every issue. The two-step would go like this: “Yes, [fill-in-the-blank] is a serious issue. I am in favor of reform. We need to do something right away. But Obama’s plan is missing [fill-in-another-blank] so I will fight to stop this effort at reform.”

  • On Guantanamo Bay, McCain agrees that the prison should be closed – and soon – but opposes the Obama administration’s attempts to do so because he doesn’t think they “have an overall policy developed.”
  • On the stimulus package, he does not deny that there was a need for government spending to stimulate the economy, but nevertheless opposed it because there was pork spending in it.
  • On cap and trade, he agrees that climate change is real and serious and the government must act – but opposes every action proposed because they don’t include support for nuclear energy (and beyond that, he presumes that the bill must contain large amounts of pork spending).
  • And then on health care, he supports reform – and knows we need it – but he opposes every reform on the table because of the public option.
  • He believes we need to “reform Medicare” to cut trillions in costs, but he demagogues Obama’s proposal to create a board that studies the effectiveness of treatments as a common-sense measure to restrain spending as “not quote death panels” exactly – but certainly something scary.

As George Stephanopoulos pointed out, John McCain – despite his rhetoric – has hewed more closely to partisan positions this year than at any point in his career – even after he called on his supporters to support Obama in his concession speech:

McCain had an explanation for his increasingly partisan record: “It’s been some of the issues.” Though he claims to see the need for reform and take the issues seriously, he’s not willing to pay the political cost of getting serious. In this McCain represents – perhaps better than any politician – the politics of irresponsible responsibility. Like another “respected,” “serious,” “moderate” Republican, Senator Chuck Grassley, McCain will work to get his ideas into legislation, but will demagogue and oppose even a bill he agrees with if he believes if will cost him support among the Republican base.  He talks about serious issues affecting our nation – and boldly states the problems in stark terms. But his boldness evaporates when he is asked to take an immediate position. Guantanamo should be closed, he agrees; but take a step towards doing so, and his long-term conviction does not restrain him from attacking what is being done to close it. Climate change is real and serious – on this he agrees with the Obama administration; but he will oppose any steps towards reform if they don’t include his pet ideas of nuclear energy and pork barrel spending. It’s a low cost way to kneecap reform while maintaining the mantle of a reformer.

This is not a courageous position. And it demonstrates the inadequacy of our current political conversation. When the most powerful people in the Republican Party blatantly lie about issues – and those who are “responsible” and “moderate” find any excuse to avoid dealing with the issues they say are essential, any attempts to deal with the systematic problems facing our nation will falter. And we face no shortage of problems – built up over decades of avoiding them – climate change; economic growth dependent on bubbles; our deteriorating health insurance and transportation  systems; our long-term deficit and the looming entitlement crisis; our economic imbalance with Japan and China – the list goes on.

A courageous politician, a maverick would take a stand in favor of responsible reform – and not seek to obstruct every effort as Senator McCain has done. His actions are not that of a maverick or reformer – but of a coward.

*On one set of issues, McCain has lived up to his reputation. Like most public officials are, McCain is treated as an expert on any policy matter before the Senate – but his interviews and various statements in the past demonstrate that McCain is no expert on foreign policy or domestic policy issues. The area where McCain has shown expertise is the military components of national security. On everything else, he seems a bit lost – jumping from one talking point to another – like a more seasoned version of Sarah Palin.

[Image by marcn licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

“Fixing” The National Conversation

Obama with correspondence

[digg-reddit-me]Ezra Klein gives his dispiriting prognosis of the health care reform debate:

[E]ven if…the media has made some admirable efforts to combat specific lies, they — we — have allowed lies and chaos to emerge as the subject of the health-care reform debate.

He writes this while pointing out that more than half of polled Americans believe that the plans at issue now would amount to a “government takeover of health care” and would give coverage to illegals – despite the fact that both are untrue. Large percentages of Americans likewise believe that it would lead to government-financed abortions and the government “pulling the plug on grandma.”

What this suggests is that our national conversation truly is broken – that once you go negative enough, and negative consistently – you will have won. This obviously creates rather perverse incentives and leads to a system in which only changes that can be passed quickly – and without opposition from entrenched forces – will be effected. It would be a system in which only those regulations and reforms and changes that have concentrated benefits for a minority and disperse costs on the majority will pass. That’s basically the system we have now – as people from most ideologies can recognize.

But there are a few glimmers of hope. Barack Obama was the object of such a campaign of lies – but he still won a majority. And it must be true that the same tactics used repeatedly have a diminished effect.

I would argue though that the best way to “fix” the national conversation at this point would be for the Democrats to pass a health care bill with every demagogued position, make sure it would benefit a large majority of Americans in clear ways, make the implementation transparent, and let the lies meet the truth of the legislation passed. Once our politics takes this into account – that lies can be proven false by action and transparency – this particular tactic will no longer be effective.

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Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

Governor Rick Perry Lies to Voters As He Prepares for a National Race

Emily Asfahini Smith interviewed Governor Rick Perry of Texas for the Wall Street Journal editorial board over the weekend. Governor Perry made very clear in the interview – by his positioning – that he’s planning on making a jump to the national stage. He’s probably the candidate most motivated to bring libertarians back into the Republican fold – referencing Hayek here and blaming the Republicans’ problems on not remaining true to their values – of which he says fiscal conservatism is the core:

They spent too much money. They acted like Democrats.

It’s a funny thing to say, if typical. The freest spending presidencies in recent memory have been George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. The most fiscally responsible have been Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush (who lost the Republican base for responsibly raising taxes), and Jimmy Carter. It’s not so much fiscal conservatism that is the heart of the Republican party as deficit politics – the game the Baby Boomers have played regarding spending and taxing.

There’s a great moment in the interview though that is so typical of the absolute asininity of the Republican positioning on health care. He “explains” the bill’s position on end of life issues as this:

You’re a little too old to be spending money on, so we’re just going to put you over here in the ‘gonna die’ category. ‘Bye.’ That’s pretty gruesome and scary to people that are my mom and dad’s age.

But his next line is about how:

To talk about health-care reform and not talk about tort reform is like whistling past the cemetery…

So, his message is: Obama’s going to put my mom and dad in the “gonna die” category – and on top of that, there’s no tort reform in the bill! Imagine the insane mental leap required for a man to go directly from one of these subjects to another. Clearly, the charges of forced euthanasia aren’t meant to be taken seriously – even by those promoting them like Governor Perry. Of course, this isn’t news. But it’s worth calling out by name each lie I come across, so when it is time for voters to evaluate them again, they remember the many lies they were told.

[Image by Bonzo McGrue licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

Shame on You, Mr. Hentoff

[digg-reddit-me]Mr. Hentoff,

I have been following you for years – ever since my father suggested I read your column because you were honest and independent-minded and liberal. I have admired your steadfast positions, including on abortion and right to life issues. But your last column was truly shameful.

Given your career and the reputation you have built and maintained, you should be embarrassed to have such poorly sourced journalism attributed to your name. It reads like something an overeager Cato intern might have thrown together – with the sloppy reference to Pelosi condemning the “furor” as “un-American” and the casual defamation of Ezekial Emanuel. It’s hard to tell if you made these points out of laziness – not taking the time to investigate the standard right wing talking points on health care – or if you chose to use your stature to lie.

If you had chosen to read the op-ed published by Speaker Pelosi and Representative Steny Hoyer (conveniently linked to here) you would have noticed that they never called the protestors or the furor “un-American” as many right wingers have claimed. Instead, they made a statement which you doubtless agree with:

Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.

Which means your statement – misidentifying the co-author of the piece as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – calling them “blind to truly participatory democracy” began with a faulty premise.

Regarding your next point: If you had chosen to read the article you quote by Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (among others) instead of simply quoting the Washington Times editorial quoting the article – or if you had even done some sort of search beyond that single right wing editorial – you would have found that Dr. Emanual was not describing how he believes medical resources should be allocated – but considering what should be done in times or situations of extreme scarcity, such as during a pandemic or with extremely scarce resources such as organs to be donated. The article describes 8 systems for distributing extremely scare resources/services – and recommends 6 of them be incorporated into any decision-making process. The quote you push here is cribbed from the description of one system. It is a blatant falsehood to claim it represents Dr. Emanuel’s overall thought on the subject. And I know you are an old man, but would you seriously put forward the moral proposition that if your kidney is failing – and so is a 12-year old girl’s – you should get priority to that kidney?

To state that this quote means that Dr. Emanuel is in favor of medical rationing is a lie. To state that it means Dr. Emanuel is in favor of euthanasia is a lie. (In fact, one of the articles you link to clearly states that Dr. Emanual is and has been opposed to euthanasia.). To  insinuate that the plans currently under consideration are pushing such rationing or euthanasia or death panels is finally a lie too far.

You clearly know little about the bills under consideration – as you conflate the subsidies for voluntary end of life counseling and the Independent Medicare Advisory Board – as Sarah Palin in her ignorance did – into a “life-decider” panel that decides whether you merit “government-controlled funds to keep you alive.” You also make this ominous point:

The members of that ultimate federal board will themselves not have examined or seen the patient in question.

Of course, it is unclear what panel it is you are trying to describe here. As mentioned above, it seems a conflation of one panel in the proposed legislation – and a provision to subsidize end of life counseling – with both fearfully conflated and confused into one panel that has a quite different purpose. The closest thing to what you’re describing in the bill would be the Independent Medicare Advisory Board – which is an amended version of the current MedPAC which sets Medicare reimbursement rates. It would be checked by Congress and the President – either of whom would be able to reject any untoward recommendations by the board. In addition, either the IMAC or another advisory board would collect and distribute research on “best practices” in medicine – comparing the comparative effectiveness of different treatments for the same or similar diseases.

Of course, none of these boards would be making decision about individual patients – as you claim. But clearly, you didn’t take the time to look into any of this.

Shame on you, Nat Hentoff. This was a poor piece of journalism that only succeeds in spreading lies about health reform even further.

If you value your journalistic integrity, you should issue a retraction and apologize to Dr. Emanuel – or double down and explain what primary sources you have for your rather frightening conclusions. Until then, your opinion must clearly be dismissed as the shoddy piece of right wing talking points that it has become.

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Barack Obama Economics Financial Crisis Health care Life Morality Politics Reflections The Opinionsphere The Web and Technology

Weekly Must-Reads: Disappearing, the Super-Rich, Harry Potter, the Public Option, Craziness, and Abortion

[digg-reddit-me]A low-key blogging day today. Further events complicated my normal week-night blog writing, as my brother was hospitalized yesterday. He’s doing fine. But to some extent, it impressed upon me the reality of some small portion of this health care debate. To get to my brother’s room, I had to walk through the hospital – through security measures in the pediatric section, and then further security measures in the Intensive Care Unit of the pediatric section – and then to his room where I saw him, looking wan, but apparently much better than in the morning, with maybe a half-dozen tubes giving him drugs and liquid and food and another half-dozen wires monitoring his oxygen levels and heart beat and who knows what else. The nurses had to do tests on him every hour. And as I visited in the evening, I didn’t see the doctors who are figuring out what’s wrong and directing the treatment. The whole set-up must be outrageously expensive. And with my brother lying there, getting better, every cent is worth it. As a society, we have made a choice to spend some large portion of our wealth on protecting our families, ourselves – on following our natural human instinct to care for those who are not well. We have made a choice to maximize life at the expense of wealth.

But we must acknowledge that our system has limits. If my father didn’t have a generous health insurance plan, he could never have afforded for my brother to be treated this way. The hospital would treat him anyway – and then they would go after my father for everything he had. About a third of all Americans would be in this position – on the verge of bankruptcy – if an emergency required serious medical attention. And while hospitals have an ethical obligation to treat anyone who needs treatment, studies have shown that those without sufficient insurance get significantly worse treatment. When people argue that health care is not a right, they must do so in the face of those who need treatment. And if you consider health care to be a right, then health insurance must be a necessary responsibility for each citizen.

We do need to reign in increasing health care costs; we also need to preserve our system’s willingness to spend. But what we need most of all is a reasoned debate about what type of system we have and what type of system we want – and it doesn’t seem that America is capable of that. To that, I don’t know the solution.

Without further ado, here are the must-reads of the week:

1. Disappearing. Evan Ratcliff explains in Wired the difficulty of disappearing in our modern world – and how even the smallest slip-up can bring the authorities to your door. It’s an interesting look at the desire to start over – and how technology today makes it both easier and harder.

2. The Super-Rich. David Leonhardt and Geraldine Fabrikant examine the implications of the current recession on the super-rich – including John McAfee of McAfee Anti-Virus fame, whose net worth went from $100 million to $4 million in the downturn. Not that anyone should feel bad for the guy. The piece looks at the historical implications of our recent massive inequality and what this downturn’s implications are for such inequality in the long-term. The prognosis: the super-rich will stay richer than they were in the 1950s and 1960s, but their relative wealth will decline a bit.

3. Harry Potter and theological libraries. Michael Paulson in the Boston Globe explains how Harry Potter is becoming a serious subject of theological debate:

[S]cholars of religion have begun developing a more nuanced take on the Potter phenomenon, with some arguing that the wildly popular series of books and films contains positive ethical messages and a narrative arc that is worthy of serious scholarly examination and even theological reflection. The scholars are primarily interested in what the books have to say about the two big issues that always preoccupy people of faith – morality and mortality – but some are also interested in what the series has to say about tolerance (Harry and friends are notably open to people and creatures who differ from them) and bullying, the nature and presence of evil in society, and the existence of the supernatural.

Scholarly interest in the Harry Potter books began long before the series was finished, and shows no signs of slowing. There have been several academic books, with titles such as “The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon” and “Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives.” The American Academy of Religion last fall offered a panel at its annual convention titled “The Potterian Way of Death: J. K. Rowling’s Conception of Mortality.” And there is a raft of articles in religion journals with titles including “Looking for God in Harry Potter” and “Engaging with the spirituality of Harry Potter,” as well as the more complex, “Harry Potter and the baptism of the imagination,” “Harry Potter and the problem of evil,” and the crowd-pleasing “Harry Potter and theological libraries.”

4. Fighting for the Public Option. Ezra Klein makes a persuasive argument against simply giving up on the public option, but he still comes down on the side of those willing to give it up:

For all that, it’s one thing to fight for an uncertain, but promising, policy experiment. It’s another thing to sacrifice health-care reform on its altar. In July, Families USA released a paper explaining “10 Reasons to Support Heath-Care Reform.” The public plan is one of the reasons. But only one of them. And it’s not even the most convincing.

5. Crazy is a Preexisting Condition. Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, has an editorial in the Washington Post examining the “crazy” that he sees as an essentially American part of the political process. Read the whole piece:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers — these are “either” the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president — too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters’ signs — too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don’t understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can’t understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

6. Watching an Abortion. Sarah Kliff for Newsweek, who is pro-choice, watched her first abortion and reported on her feelings. Rather moving and honest. A welcome inclusion into our fraught debate.

[Image by me.]

Categories
Health care Politics

Quote of the Day

From the daily bit of news for the “thinking man,” a profound point about the health care reform debate:

Old folks haven’t been this impassioned since Matlock went off the air and Sizzler posted “No sharing” signs on their salad bar.

On a side note: Sorry for the light posting today. I was out late last night and didn’t get to put together my usual queue of posts. But on a related note, you should see In the Loop, and if you’re going to sit down for an extended period of time, this isn’t the best location.