The Angry Bear

Wednesday (October 4, 2023) found more than 75,000 union employees of Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health providers, walked off the job, marking the largest health care worker strike in US history. Kaiser Permanente unionized health care workers go on strike across dozens of locations, cnn.com, Samantha Delouya. Open Thread – NPs and PAs are Handling Primary Care Visits, Angry Bear...

I think Democrats were probably right to refuse to bail out McCarthy.  The main reason is that this will likely prolong the current shitshow being staged by the House Republicans, which will help Democrats in 2024 by reminding voters just how crazy and exhausting the Republicans are.  The Republicans can’t do this often enough. The fact that McCarthy lied is a reason to oppose him, but a less weighty reason – what is the chance that his...

If it is not Medicare Advantage plans over-charges tapping into Medicare funds designated for the care of seniors, it is the commercial healthcare companies such as pharma this time and again. The political influence these companies wield with legislators and probably SCOTUS justices (later as companies sue and quickly levitate to a SCOTUS hearing) who are willing to take advantage as untouchables to practices of ethical behavior is seen in the...

August JOLTS report: a pause in deceleration, but the trend remains intact  – by New Deal democrat Last month I concluded my post on the July JOLTS report’s sharp declines by noting that “None of these statistics move in a straight line, so it would be a mistake to project this report’s relatively big moves forward. But the trend clearly remains in place.”This month’s report for August showed that was the case, as all of the major metrics...

You know that Hungarian woman who shared this year’s Nobel in Physiology or Medicine? She struggled to get and keep an academic career. Eventually, she was pushed out of her lab at Penn.“That morning at the lab, Karikó’s old boss had come to see her off. She did not tell him what a terrible mistake he was making in letting her leave. She didn’t gloat about her future at BioNTech, a pharmaceuticals firm that millions now associate with lifesaving...

At night, I will soak a third of a cup of rolled oats, oat bran, raisins, almonds, a bunch of seeds, etc. in skim milk. Toss some crumbled walnuts in there to go along with the almonds and hazel nuts and blue berries or other fruit if I have it. The oats soak up the milk which makes them edible. Kind of a sweet taste. Maybe there is more natural food in terms of what it is? It seems to work for me. Stay away from high sodium content. The soups are...

Manufacturing and construction have the most positive reports all year  – by New Deal democrat As usual, the monthly data starts out with reports on the two most important production sectors of the economy, namely manufacturing (for September) and construction (for August). For a change, the news was mainly positive. Let’s start with manufacturing. The ISM’s diffusion index, where any value below 50 indicates contraction, came in negative...

I broke this report into two parts as it becomes harder to complete reading when each of us has other obligations. CHQPR or the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform is a national policy center facilitating improvements in healthcare payment and delivery systems. As explained earlier in Part 1, rural hospitals are facing issues remaining open due to the lack of revenue for the services provided and a lack of use of various services. The...

$42,000 per flight hour that’s 7 switchblade drones per hour. It raises the question of whether the F35 would be cost effective if we got the planes for free (not $80,000,000 each ). Currently F35s manage on average 11.2 flight hours per critical failure (I got that one partly from memory and partly from googling [f35 11.2 hours]. For one thing, that raises the question of how many will be available when they are needed. For another how many...

First sex ratio disruption is an important general topic in population biology. An allele which causes I note that I have been (ignorantly) discussing this topic for more than 10 years “A disrupted sex ratio can, in principle, drive a species extinct. Consider an abnormal genome which causes a male to produce only male sperm. This could, in principle spread through a population causing a shortage of females and reduced fitness. The key...