Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Today is the fifth anniversary of the slaughter of the innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 20 children between the ages of 6 and seven years old were shot dead as well as six adults who tried to protect them. All because this country’s politicians believes there is nothing which can be done to prevent this from happening and are in the pockets of the NRA. Not a good day in the history of the United States. And still when these preventable...

“The FCC voted 3-2 Thursday to repeal net neutrality rules, ending Obama-era regulations that prohibited Internet providers from blocking or slowing web content. Whereas all Internet traffic previously shared same ‘lane,’ it can now be split among different lanes with different speeds. Those differing speeds could hurt telemedicine since it requires a ‘pretty robust connection,’ said Mei Kwong, interim executive director and policy advisor for the Center...

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Sunday, December 03, 2017 Republicans Reject the NFL, the CIA and the FBI I forget who said she never expected that, after the national divorce, liberals would get custody of the NFL. But it’s beyond that. Now Republicans reject the CIA and the FBI too. Donald Trump sometimes sounds like a paranoid 60s hippy claiming he is being persecuted by the evil FBI (except some of them really were persecuted).So...

A Little History of the legislator who wrote the bill: Chair of the House Appropriations Committee since 2017, Rodney Frelinghuysen’s campaigns have been funded by the aerospace, defense, pharmaceutical and health care industries. On domestic issues, he opposes legalized abortion, Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities, and federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. He endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. He voted to repeal the...

I have watched Ken Houghton, Tom Bozzo, and Daniel Becker out on Facebook and have sometimes made a few not to serious remarks. Similar interests. There are some I just associate with who like to engage in politics which I usually ignore. I go out of the way not to engage with people because you would have a better conversation talking to a wall at times. This commentary defies logic, shows no understanding of what is taking place, and neither does she...

of His Constituents. Iowa Republican Senator Grassley came out publically stating he wants to eliminate the estate tax to help Iowan farmers stay on their family farms. In rebuttal, the Des Moines Register had this to say: Of the numbers of Iowans paying the estate tax, they can be quantified in the dozens each year. Out of the 1.45 million Iowans filing federal tax returns, the numbers of Iowans over the last five years paying estate taxes numbers...

Pharmacy chain CVS Health has agreed to buy health insurer Aetna for $69 billion in cash and stock, retaining its current management, the companies announced late Sunday. The deal brings together one of the largest providers of pharmacy services with the No. 3 U.S. health insurer, which together would establish a healthcare giant with more than $240 billion in annual revenue. The CVS-Aetna deal would likely give the combined company bargaining power in...

It appears almost certain that the ACA (Obamacare) mandate will be eliminated. This actually means that Obamacare will correspond to Obama’s 2008 proposal which didn’t include a mandate. Obama claimed it would work (he was lying or, to be polite, playing 11 dimensional chess). Can ACA without a mandate work at all ? Can it be modiefied so that it works better ? People who know a hell of a lot more than I do about health economics have struggled with...

AARP notes a planned reduction in Medicare funding.  I have not hear much from them as in times past. If you read through the umpteen pages of the Senate tax bill, you won’t find a clause that says it dramatically cuts Medicare spending. But the effect of the legislation being debated this week would be to slash up to $25 billion from the health program in 2018 and possibly more in the future. That’s because the tax measure would prompt the...

I have been doing my typical reading on healthcare in the US and ran across several articles which seemingly come together at various points in the dialogue and are written by different authors. I decided to tie them together into a much wider and telling story. An interesting point being was made by MedPage Today’s Dr. Milton Packer on his blog, “people suffer and die because Payors (Healthcare Insurance) is cost effective.” He starts his discussion on...