A presidential comment on New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham concerns:
Grisham: “We’re seeing incredible spikes in the Navajo Nation, and this is going to be an issue where we’re going to have to figure that out and think about maybe testing and surveillance opportunities,
The rate of infection, at least on the New Mexico side — although we’ve got several Arizona residents in our hospitals — we’re seeing a much higher hospital rate, a much younger hospital rate, a much quicker go-right-to-the-vent rate for this population. And we’re seeing doubling in every day-and-a-half.
it could wipe out those tribal nations.”
Trump: “We’re gonna get you that hospital as quickly as we can,” while directing others in the Situation Room to look into the problem and rush

[embedded content]Relax a Little Bit

Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Org. has a petition supporting the cancellation of Student Loan Debt.
If we can bail out corporations again, why not bailing out people with excessive student loan debt?
The student loan justice.org is counting on you and needs your help with “President Trump: Cancel Student Loans NOW.”  Join student loan justice.org and the 116,064 signers of the petition calling for President Trump to cancel student loan debt.
President Trump is currently enacting economic stimulus measures in face of impending recession. He has no great options. The Fed Funds Rate is already close to zero. Taxes on corporations and the wealthy have already been cut to the bone. Suspending interest on student loans won’t hurt the economy, but

This came up on the radar this morning.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is questioning the constitutionality of Gov. Gina Raimondo’s directive allowing state police to stop vehicles with New York license plates to collect information from drivers and passengers in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The Democratic governor on Thursday called the measure extreme but pointed out that the New York City area is the epicenter of the disease in the U.S.
While Raimondo has the authority to suspend some state laws and regulations to address a medical emergency, she cannot suspend the Constitution, ACLU of Rhode Island Executive Director Steven Brown said in a statement late Thursday.
“Under the Fourth

Massive Scandal or a Massive Misunderstanding of Regs and Laws for Orphan Drugs
Most of you know, I have been writing on healthcare for a long time and much of it has been negative about healthcare and the costs. I am not defending Gilead’s marketing of Remdesivir; but, a few articles (Common Dreams, The Intercept, etc.) written and the pundits amongst us appear to have misunderstood the issue for Remdesivir’s status.
I can understand why people would become excited and upset with the actions by the FDA to “designate” Remdesivir an orphan drug “candidate (note the quote notation).” In the past, I have found myself to be distracted by headlines (Intercept) which lead me to believe something bad was to come about only to find out it was not as serious as

I am sure by now many of you have read what the gov is and is not doing for us. The later is more prevalent as can be witnessed in the stimuli being offered. I am going to ask you to pay attention to the last item on ACA Healthcare Insurance. Whether you qualified or not in the past, you may be eligible for assistance now. I have broken this out into 4-points of which many of us might find ourselves. If you questions, PLEASE ASK, I will try to answer.
The Rundown
Goldman Sachs projects that after a 30% spike in jobless claims last week, to 281,000, new claims will hit 2.25 million this week — an unprecedented surge.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned Republican senators Tuesday morning that without action the coronavirus pandemic could drive up US

It is a start, maybe. Remdesivir is being touted as a potentially more effective drug.
The Chinese had reported there were several pharmaceuticals which appeared to work also and in particular drugs for malaria, Chloroquine and HydoxyChloroquine. I had mentioned this earlier in the week in a post and then again in two separate comments.
One small clinical test (preliminary trial with 24 -36 patients) in France had positive results recently as reported March 17, 2020. HydoxyChloroquine Would Be Effective According to Professor Roault of the IHU in Marseille,” after the first limited Test as reported by EN24 on March 17, 2020. With the use of the antibiotic Azithromycin to treat pneumonia a bacterial infection resulting from the virus infection, the test

By Dale Coberly; CORONA VIRUS AND SOCIAL SECURITY, ANOTHER GRAND BARGAIN?
Republicans are showing what they are made of. After claiming that the Corona Virus was not serious, or was well contained, or was Democrat fake news; they are now admitting it is serious and calling it a Chinese virus.
Fox News explained to a reporter they don’t expect “turning the ship around” to cause any problem with their viewers. They did not say that is because their viewers will believe anything they tell them to believe. Nor did they tell the reason for their turnaround of their seeing how to make money out of the pandemic. Even more so, they have seen how to use it to destroy Social Security.
These guys are akin to inviting your boss to dinner and noticing he couldn’t take

This is a copy and paste of Dahlia and Mark’s excellent critique of what is happening at SCOTUS and the Federal Court System under Justice Chief Justice John Roberts’ tutelage, McConnell loading the courts with patronage, and Trump’s whatever. I have seen some condemn the verbiage of Senator Schumer calling out Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch as threatening and yet at the same time ignoring the courts’ partisan behavior which will have an impact for years to come. The very same people will be decrying the court’s political decisions going forward.
No doubt, McConnell led Republicans are packing the courts with partisans who are more interested in politics rather than administering the law while Chief Justice John Roberts looks the other way. McConnell has

Welt am Sonntag is reporting our honorable President is attempting to bribe lure a German company CureVac to develop a vaccine  to be used only in the US.
Germany’s Health Ministry confirmed a report in the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”, which said President Donald Trump had offered bribes funds to lure the German company CureVac to the United States, and the German government was making counter-offers to tempt it to stay.
Welt am Sonntag quoted an unidentified German government source as saying Trump was trying to secure the scientists’ work exclusively, and would do anything to get a vaccine for the United States, “but only for the United States.”
CureVac’s chief production officer and co-founder Florian von der Muelbe told Reuters the company had started

On the topic of Coronavirus and the travel ban, Trump’s travel ban sidesteps his own European resorts.
The President’s newly implemented European travel restrictions to the US conveniently side step a ban on nations where three Trump-owned golf resorts are located. No politics there, just plain greed.
Trump has been under fire for visiting his properties in both countries as president and using taxpayer money to fund his trips to and from while at his own firms. Numerous investigations have been launched and lawsuits filed  throughout his term alleging he is and has been violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause by using taxpayer money to is benefit while in office other than his salary to fund his personal trips.
The newly implemented U.S.

This is coming from MEDPAGE TODAY, “Track the U.S. COVID-19 Outbreak in Real Time,” Comments Section (3 comments), March 11, 2020 with regard to  COVID-19
“The mechanism of seasonal effect for seasonal respiratory virus spread is believed to be humidity, not temperature. In New York state which has 220 cases, fomites lose moisture where indoor humidity is low, allowing the lighter particles to stay longer in the aerosol. In Florida and Arizona, with 38 cases, fomites gain moisture and weight from the humid air and fall to the floor faster. Northern Italy, where people wear winter coats in the media reports has dry, heated indoor air, while Southern Italy has humid indoor air.
Humidifying indoor air in schools, stores, churches, etc. may reduce seasonal

When I was commenting at Slate’s  Moneybox and Best of the Fray sites at least a decade or so ago, Dahlia Lithwick had taken over Jurisprudence. She always gave a sound and fair analysis of court decisions, the impacts of those decisions, and the resulting politics coming out of them. Fast forward   .  .  .  I was reading Schumer’s “reap the whirlwind” comments wondering why he would make such and then wondering why Chief Justice Roberts had not winced sooner on remarks being made about judges and justices while occupying his pulpit chair looking down at the rest of us. Schumer’s remarks are a replay akin to what Justice Brett angrily said to the Senate Judiciary Committee. It has not gone unnoticed that Republicans white wash their ilk, Democrats eat

Hey, I am stealing one (or at least a partial) from another blog. It is on target as I would say and it will provoke comments or at least some thinking about the issue.
Dying of Whiteness, How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland
Lawyers, Guns, & Money, Erik Loomis (Blog writer and Reviewer)
I have not read this book; but it appears to be interesting enough to read. A couple of paragraphs in the review caught my attention and are worth repeating. The commentary (below) is right on the money
Erik Loom: “Donald Trump is absolutely incapable of managing any crisis. We all know this. But a lot of people are wondering whether this will finally be the disaster undermining his support among the base. Reading Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of

The latest news is of Trump again claiming Biden is unfit for office. One can hardly imagine the pot calling the kettle black in this instance. Biden has his issues which were on display early on in his campaign. I am hoping Biden has found his groove and can put the real unfit person out-of-office.
August 2019, Trump tweets
Joe Biden just said, ‘We believe in facts, not truth.’ Does anybody really believe he is mentally fit to be president? We are ‘playing’ in a very big and complicated world. Joe doesn’t have a clue!
Max Boot asks the question,
Is this really the debate that Trump wants to have? Does he really want to have an argument about who is “mentally fit to be president” and who has a “clue” about what’s happening in the world? Because his own

Newcastle ban handshakes at training ground: “There’s a ritual here that everybody shakes hands with everybody as soon as we see each other every morning,” said Bruce as he prepared for Saturday’s game against Burnley at St James’ Park. “But we’ve stopped that on the advice of our club doctor. Thankfully, we’ve got a superb doctor here and he will keep us informed of what we have to do. We’re like everybody else, we’re glued to the TV for where it’s going to go next and let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse in this country.”
Dettol sales surge as markets fall again The disinfectant is seen as providing protection against the spread of the disease, although its effectiveness has not yet been scientifically proven.
Dettol owner Reckitt Benckiser said in its

The Incompetency of this man comes to light in a potentially catastrophic period. He instills fear rather than confidence.
“White House Moves To Screen Scientists’ Statements On Coronavirus
As fears grow of a politicized White House response to the coronavirus outbreak, the White House has placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of messaging about the virus, the New York Times reported Thursday.”
“Pence, who Trump said Wednesday night would be the White House point person on the outbreak, will clear public health officials’ statements on the virus, the Times reported citing several unnamed people familiar with the matter.”
Not to worry, The Reverend Henry Kane from Indiana takes charge.
“White House Reportedly Ordered Infectious Disease Chief ‘Not to

VA-Like Negotiations on Insulin Prices Could Save Medicare Billions, MedPage Today, Zeena Nackerdien, February 21, 2020
I am going to dispense with the reasoning dissing the increased pricing of Insulin and go straight to a pricing strategy. Suffice it to say, the various versions developed of Insulin do not justify the pricing increases seen today.
Recently, Philip Longman (“Best Care Anywhere”) was advocating for Medicare pricing for everyone using commercial healthcare insurance. The only problem with this approach is we are not getting to the root cause of increasing prices for pharma, hospital supplies, and hospitals. Kocher and Berwick breached the same topic with their plan to transition from today’s Commercial Healthcare Insurance to Single Payer

Katherine Johnson, a “‘hidden figure’ at NASA during 1960s space race, dies at 101,” Washington Post, Harrison Smith, February 24, 2020
This is one of those “Oh Wow” moments to note the passing of an important person amongst us. This Physicist – Mathematician, this African-American woman was never recognized or given the honor for the very visible work she did in calculating the trajectories for early space flights manned by Shepard and Glenn, rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Modules and command module on flights to the Moon, and the Space Shuttle Path. Her paper (co-authored by Ted Skopinski) “‘Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position,’ marked the first time a woman wrote a technical report in

Alan Collinge of StudentLoanJustice.Org” and I go back a long ways. I have sponsored his posts at Angry Bear. Other sites have done the same. The point to all of his words in unfair practices by nonprofit and for profit higher education schools with regards to student loans before and after college. There is no escape from Student Loans. Thank you Joe Biden.
The Wall Street Journal editors recently published an editorial, The Great Student Loan Write-Down, in which they cite a recent Congressional Budget Office report claiming the government is going to be forgiving over $200 Billion in student loan debt over the next decade. They also cites another CBO report which uses so-called “fair value” accounting to claim the government will be losing $11 Billion

KFF Health Tracking Poll – February 2020: Health Care in the 2020 Election
As SCOTUS decides (this last Friday) whether it will take up he ACA and its constitutionality in Texas v. United States challenging the constitutionality of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), theattitude of the public towards it has changed since the 2016 election. The February 2020 KFF Health Tracking Poll finds attitudes towards the ACA hit its highest favorability rating since KFF began tracking opinions ~ ten years ago. The poll finds a clear majority of the public viewing the law favorably (55%), while slightly more than one-third (37%) of the public hold unfavorable views. In my own opinion, much of this change in attitude is the result of the rising patient costs of

Click on the link and scroll down to the beginning
“Roger Stone Is Sentenced”
“Tierney Sneed is at the federal courthouse in DC.” Live Blogging
I believe Judge Amy Berman Jackson is getting close to Sentencing Stone.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson is back and starts off: “Unsurprisingly, I have a lot to say,”
Judge Berman Jackson signals that she is also not going to go with Stone’s proposal for only probation.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson has sentenced Trump ally Roger Stone to 40 months in prison.
Updated developments during the Hearing beyond the Leap

Judge Amy Berman Jackson questioning Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb.
(Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb seemed to endorse the same, technical logic prosecutors had used in generating their recommendation in

Andrew Sprung writes about the ACA. I read him quite often as his posts are expert analysis of the ACA and healthcare.  Mostly recently this commentary was posted by Andrew on the benefits of getting a Bronze plan as opposed to a Gold plan if facing large out of pocket expenses (premiums + deductibles).
“XPOSTFACTOID”   Mostly about the ACA: Obamacare to Trumpcare.
Bronze plans are terrible. Bronze plans are often the best choice.
In discussion of the ACA marketplace (and health insurance generally), deductibles are often used as a stand-in for out-of-pocket costs. Now here cometh David Anderson to remind us that a plan’s maximum out-of-pocket cost (MOOP) can be just as important — and that the MOOP often does not particularly correspond to metal level.

I had wondered why the Senate (Schumer) had backed off on legislation controlling surprise billing. It turns out there is a House bill also and I am sure they are going back and forth on this. Recently, two bills have emerged in the House and one from the Senate. Medscape, “House Committees Advance Bills to Address Surprise Billing.”
Of course if Congress’s butt was on the line, a solution would have been found quickly and enacted in 2020. At the end, see which one I would back.
The House Ways and Means Committee bill passed by a voice vote bipartisan bill. It seeks to establish more use of third-party negotiators ( arbitration) for settling certain disputes about payment for out-of-network care. This bill has the support of the American Hospital

This doctor is a bit much; but, he gets a point across which I have been making also. The issue(s) Dr. ZDogg  is describing about what commercial healthcare insurance is doing, Medicare Advantage plans, hospitals, and now doctors are doing needs to be told over and over again. Schumer and the Senate have to release the portion of the House Budget bill that dealt with Surprise billing.
[embedded content] ZDoggMD reacts to ridiculous medical bills, MedPage Today, February 6, 2020

Going to her PCP located in Manhattan, a woman complains of a sore throat. Forget the Manhattan part of this as various versions (surprise billing)  of this situation are happening everywhere. The doctor swabbed the throat, sent it off to the lab, ordered some tests, and then gave

December 2012,  Robert Reich wrote about America’s children   .   .   .    Remember the Children.
“America’s children seem to be shortchanged on almost every issue we face as a society.
Not only are we failing to protect our children from deranged people wielding semi-automatic guns.
We’re not protecting them from poverty. The rate of child poverty keeps rising – even faster than the rate of adult poverty. We now have the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world.
And we’re not protecting their health. Rates of child diabetes and asthma continue to climb. America has the third-worst rate of infant mortality among 30 industrialized nations and the second-highest rate of teenage pregnancy, after Mexico.
If we go over the “fiscal cliff” without a

I hang around some pretty intelligent people who have smart friends commenting on their facebook pages. The first part of this post is from a comment on Claude Scales’s Facebook page by William R. Everdell. I think it fits with the NYT article Claude referenced. The second part of this is a shorten version of the NYT Opinion article “Why You May Never Learn the Truth About ICE,” Matthew Connelly, Professor of History, Columbia.
George Orwell in “‘1984’, Winston Smith was dropping documents into the ‘memory hole’ by his desk at the Ministry of Truth – Minitrue
‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’
The Department of the Interior and the National Archives have decided to delete files on endangered species,

If you not seen it in the news at night, online, or in a physical newspaper; there was an incident which occurred not far from my home which I believe is important. Washtenaw County is south of where I live (Livingston County) and is a blend of ethnicity, different cultures, citified spots, and rural areas. In it is Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor is a hotspot for liberal attitudes and consequently  .   .   .  Democrats. The whole area from Detroit westward to Ann Arbor and north into Livingston County is changing.  While this is not a story about Livingston County, the county residents there are afraid of the change which a proposed light rail service going into Ann Arbor from Livingston and then Detroit which could carry people to

Stolen from the comments section. Will Romney pay the price? I do not think so. He may get critiqued by the madman in the White House; but, I am not so sure if he can touch Romney.
By EMichael
Credit where credit is due. Despite the fact that he faces almost no repercussions for his vote, Romney deserves credit.
Otoh, let us hope that Collins latest reptilian act costs her the Senate.
“No, Romney set himself apart. Even if he is only concerned with the judgment of history, it has put him in a far better place than the sycophants and enablers who so befouled the old halls of the legislature during the president’s pantomime State of the Union address Tuesday night. Romney’s speech was sweeping, decisive, and hardly short on moral clarity.
In one section, he

Elizabeth Warren
Listen or read, your choice. This is presidential material for our troubled nation.

WOW. Chief Justice John Roberts just had to read aloud Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s question…about whether he loses credibility for presiding over a trial without witnesses or evidence. https://t.co/vG08pjmhZH pic.twitter.com/G79ZdRljZj
— Heather Monahan (@HeatherMonahan_) January 30, 2020

While other senators were throwing questions at opponents, Warren decided to ask whether the Chief Justice has hurt the credibility of the Supreme Court by participating in a trial with no witnesses or evidence. And Roberts had to read the question  per the rules of the Senate.
“At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that