tagged w/ News and Politics and Politics
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It seems that Jerry Seinfeld has been everywhere on NBC lately. After a long hiatus on NBC, his hit show "The Marriage Ref" seems to be doing OK in the ratings and Leno is again beating Letterman at the 10:30 PM time slot. I guess the head honchos at the top have pulled out the big gun to bring NBC back from the brink after the Conan/Leno fiasco and it seems to be working. Now Jerry has just shown up on SNL lampooning Eric Massa on Weekend Update with Seth Meyers, which was actually pretty funny. I wonder what's next? A Larry David/Jerry Seinfeld variety special? Stay tuned.It seems that Jerry Seinfeld has been everywhere on NBC lately. After a long hiatus on... more
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Opponents of a plan to legalize marijuana for personal possession in California have conceded that supporters of the measure are likely to get their proposal on a statewide ballot, the New York Times revealed in a longer story about possible legalization Wednesday.
California lawmakers are taking up a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a first in the United States. Officials estimate the bill could bring in additional $1.4 billion a year, a huge sum of money in a state bedeviled by financial woes.Opponents of a plan to legalize marijuana for personal possession in California have... more
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Post-election protests continued in Tehran for the fifth day on Wednesday. In many photos, riot police wear uniforms with the English word police on them. Ambulances, too, bear the word ambulance in English. Why not use Persian words instead of their English equivalents?
Because everyone knows English. Like many capital cities, Tehran has its emergency personnel wear markings that are internationally recognizable. Street signs, too, are translated into English, and police cars are generally inscribed in both English and Persian. That makes the city more tourist-friendly without sacrificing clarity for locals. After all, the Persian word for police is the same: polise. (Persian, or Farsi, is an Indo-European language that uses an Arabic script, but people will often use Latin lettering, also known as Penglish or Fingilish, especially when typing or texting.) It's also the same word in French (police), German (polizei), Italian (polizia), Czech (policie), and many other languages. Iranian students are required to take English classes in high school. So using the English word for police actually maximizes the number of people who will understand it.Post-election protests continued in Tehran for the fifth day on Wednesday. In many... more
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In "The Cost Conundrum," his latest article for The New Yorker, staff writer Dr. Atul Gawande reports from McAllen, Texas, a border-town with the dubious distinction of spending more per person on health care than almost any other market in America.
But higher spending doesn't necessarily correlate with better care, as Gawande discovers when he compares health outcomes in McAllen with those of El Paso, Texas — a city with similar population demographics, but where Medicare spending per enrollee is half that of McAllen.
Gawande writes that his findings, based on Medicare's 25 metrics of care, indicate that: "On all but two of these [standards of care], McAllen's five largest hospitals performed worse, on average, than El Paso's. McAllen costs Medicare seven thousand dollars more per person each year than does the average city in America. But not, so far as one can tell, because it's delivering better health care."
As the national debate about health care heats up, Gawande's article has become a must-read for President Obama's staff.
Gawande is an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and at the Harvard School of Public Health. In 2006 he received the MacArthur Award for his research and writing.
Here's that article:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawandeIn "The Cost Conundrum," his latest article for The New Yorker, staff writer... more
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They admit the "profit model" of private insurance mandates the denial of care to those who need it most.
Yesterday the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations decided to investigate the practice of recission. This is when you pay your premiums for years to a healthcare insurer, then get sick, and then have your insurance cancelled. The insurance industry executives at the hearing did not exactly cover themselves with glory:They admit the "profit model" of private insurance mandates the denial of... more
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