On the Benefits of Regulation

August 8, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Frances Oldham Kelsey died this week, at the age of 101. A life well lived for so long is remarkable enough. What she did for American families in the 1960s should never be forgotten.

I remember, as a young man, the photos of Thalidomide crippled babies coming out of England and other European countries.  Ghastly then, ghastly now.  Kelsey, almost single handedly, and against the usual onslaught of pressure tactics, smear campaigns and obfuscation by the drug’s producer, the William S. Merrel Company, prevented Kevadon from entering the American market.

“She was called a fussy, stubborn, unreasonable bureaucrat.”

And I have no doubt, there was much said about her female incompetence.

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey receiving the nation’s highest federal civilian service award in 1962 from President John F. Kennedy, saying she had “prevented a major tragedy of birth deformities.”

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey receiving the nation’s highest federal civilian service award in 1962 from President John F. Kennedy, saying she had “prevented a major tragedy of birth deformities.”

For her part:

“I had the feeling,” she wrote after a meeting with company executives, “that they were at no time being wholly frank with me, and that this attitude has obtained in all our conferences, etc., regarding this drug.”

So next time an anti regulatory fanatic pounds the drums of regulation crippling the American economy, remember Frances Kelsey.  Thank her, and shout her name. Smart regulators are thin protection in a world of greed, untested new products and powerful interests.

See more at NYT 

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Pizza Lovers — Watch Out!

March 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Paul Krugman opens the eyes of the hungry today. Who would have known that there is an enormous Pizza Lobby, and it gives enormously to Republicans?

 

A recent Bloomberg report noted that major pizza companies have become intensely, aggressively partisan. Pizza Hut gives a remarkable 99 percent of its money to Republicans. Other industry players serve Democrats a somewhat larger slice of the pie (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but, over all, the politics of pizza these days resemble those of, say, coal or tobacco. And pizza partisanship tells you a lot about what is happening to American politics as a whole.

… some parts of the food industry have responded to pressure from government agencies and food activists by trying to offer healthier options, but the pizza sector has chosen instead to take a stand for the right to add extra cheese.

The rhetoric of this fight is familiar. The pizza lobby portrays itself as the defender of personal choice and personal responsibility. It’s up to the consumer, so the argument goes, to decide what he or she wants to eat, and we don’t need a nanny state telling us what to do.

… At one level, there is a clear correlation between lifestyles and partisan orientation: heavier states tend to vote Republican, and the G.O.P. lean is especially pronounced in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call the “diabetes belt” of counties, mostly in the South, that suffer most from that particular health problem. Not coincidentally, officials from that region have led the pushback against efforts to make school lunches healthier.

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“Natural” Means What, Exactly?

February 8, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Timothy Eagan brings a valuable addition to the rising discussion about vaccinations. The doubts raised about them come from a perplexing behavior in this land of boasted individualism: we often don’t think through and evaluate as best we can. We do what those around us do. In a herd mentality, the glue of which is narcissism, the first line of defense against a threatening world is people like ourselves. If people like us tell us something, with energy and certainty,  it must be true.  Those who sow doubt will lose the protection of the believers. The belief against vaccines is the flip side of the coin of belief in all manner of untested, unproven and unknown “natural” cures.  Those who entirely distrust big pharma and big government swallow claims and “dietary supplements” of equally big industries with equally big war chests and armies of lobbyists.

“If you want to know how we came to be a nation where everyone is a doctor, sound science is vilified and seemingly smart people distrust vaccinations, come to Utah — whose state flower should be St. John’s wort. Here, the nexus of quack pharma and industry-owned politicians has produced quite a windfall: nearly one in four dollars in the supplement market passes though this state.

We’re not talking drugs, or even, in many cases, food here. Drugs have to undergo rigorous testing and review by the federal government. Dietary supplements do not. Drugs have to prove to be effective. Dietary supplements do not.

These are the Frankenstein remedies — botanicals, herbs, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, dried stuff. They’re “natural.” They’re not cheap. And Americans pop them like Skittles, despite recent studies showing that nearly a third of all herbal supplements on the market may be outright frauds.”

Read all

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Marin County Makes the Daily Show!

February 5, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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Medicare Spending Gap Falls Again

August 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment

For quite some time now, the Deficit Hawks in the greater American punditocracy have waved their fear flags about Medicare and how it was going to send the nation down the slippery slope of Greekification.  Better to let each oldster and handicapped person work it out on their own, or depend on relatives or churches, or the side-walks, like the good old days!

Well the latest data shows the worry has been overwhelming their prognostication.  Not that they will stop shrieking of course.  But anyway, here it is:

You’re looking at the biggest story involving the federal budget and a crucial one for the future of the American economy. Every year for the last six years in a row, the Congressional Budget Office has reduced its estimate for how much the federal government will need to spend on Medicare in coming years. The latest reduction came in a report from the budget office on Wednesday morning.

The changes are big. The difference between the current estimate for Medicare’s 2019 budget and the estimate for the 2019 budget four years ago is about $95 billion.

…

Some of the recent reductions in Medicare spending are because of differences in estimates about the economy and demographics that affect the program.

And some are because of cuts in health care spending passed by Congress. The Affordable Care Act, in particular, made significant reductions to Medicare’s spending on hospitals and private Medicare plans, to help subsidize insurance coverage for low- and middle-income Americans. The Budget Control Act, which Congress passed in 2011, also made some across-the-board cuts to Medicare spending.

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Enter Depression, Exit…

August 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Count me as one of those who has to turn off the radio or television when news and commentary and sorrow about Robin Williams’ suicide begins.  Way too close an encounter for me, like the shadow of a shark to a snorkling diver.  I use the time to review the rules: don’t swim in certain waters, only go in with friends, and only when I’m rested, feeling buoyant.  When a shadow appears, talk to myself: talk to others.  Swim away as away from a rip-tide, across the current not straight back in. Panic doesn’t help; irony sometimes does — there you are again, swimming from shadows! Solid land is back there somewhere; I know, I’m mostly on it.  There are more.  Here’s a good article in the Guardian’s Science section.

Depression, the clinical condition, could really use a different name. At present, the word “depressed” can be applied to both people who are a bit miserable and those with a genuine debilitating mood disorder. Ergo, it seems people are often very quick to dismiss depression as a minor, trivial concern. After all, everyone gets depressed now and again, don’t they? Don’t know why these people are complaining so much.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; dismissing the concerns of a genuine depression sufferer on the grounds that you’ve been miserable and got over it is like dismissing the issues faced by someone who’s had to have their arm amputated because you once had a paper cut and it didn’t bother you. Depression is a genuine debilitating condition, and being in “a bit of a funk” isn’t. The fact that mental illness doesn’t receive the same sympathy/acknowledgement as physical illness is often referenced, and it’s a valid point. If you haven’t had it, you don’t have the right to dismiss those who have/do. You may disagree, and that’s your prerogative, but there are decades’ worth of evidence saying you’re wrong.

Guardian: Burnett

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Health Coverage Saved Lives in Massachusetts

May 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment

BOSTON — The death rate in Massachusetts dropped significantly after it adopted mandatory health care coverage in 2006, a study released Monday found, offering evidence that the country’s first experiment with universal coverage — and the model for crucial parts of President Obama’s health care law — has saved lives, health economists say.

The study tallied deaths in Massachusetts from 2001 to 2010 and found that the mortality rate — the number of deaths per 100,000 people — fell by about 3 percent in the four years after the law went into effect. The decline was steepest in counties with the highest proportions of poor and previously uninsured people. In contrast, the mortality rate in a control group of counties similar to Massachusetts in other states was largely unchanged.

NY Times

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Death by Pollution Soaring

March 26, 2014 by Leave a Comment

This ain't dusk folks, it's pollution in Guangdong Province, China (Credit Alex Lee/Reuters )

This ain’t dusk folks, it’s pollution in Guangdong Province, China (Credit Alex Lee/Reuters )

“From taxi tailpipes in Paris to dung-fired stoves in New Delhi, air pollution claimed seven million lives around the world in 2012, according to figures released Tuesday by the World Health Organization. More than one-third of those deaths, the organization said, occurred in fast-developing nations of Asia, where rates of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease have been soaring.

Around the world, one out of every eight deaths was tied to dirty air, the agency determined — twice as many as previously estimated. Its report identified air pollution as the world’s single biggest environmental health risk.

… The report found that those who are most vulnerable live in a wide arc of Asia stretching from Japan and China in the northeast to India in the south.

Exposure to smoke from cooking fires means that poor women are especially at risk, the agency said

Indoor air pollutants loomed as the largest threat, involved in 4.3 million deaths in 2012, while toxic air outdoors figured in 3.7 million deaths, the agency said. Many deaths were attributed to both.

See New York Times: Jacobs and Johnson

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Health Insurance Sign Ups Increasing

February 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment

“For the first time since the federal and state health-insurance marketplaces opened early last fall, the number of people who signed up for coverage exceeded the government’s expectations for the month in January, bringing the overall total to about 3.3 million.

Across the country, nearly 1.2 million people enrolled in health plans last month through the new insurance exchanges — more than federal officials had envisioned when they compiled monthly targets late last summer, weeks before the sign-ups began.

Washington Post

Two things occur to me: if you don’t get health insurance who is going to pay the costs should the good-health fairy-dust not fall on you? If the GOP wins enough seats in 2016 and follows up with their zeal to roll back the Federally enabled insurance markets, will there be blood in the streets as people are stripped of coverage?

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West Virginia: Safety Ignored, Disaster Answers

January 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The accidents kept coming and so did the calls for a plan to improve West Virginia’s chemical safety regulations.

Last week’s massive chemical spill into West Virginia’s Elk River was the region’s third major chemical accident in five years. It comes after two investigations by the federal Chemical Safety Board in the Kanawha Valley, also known dryly as “Chemical Valley.”

And it comes on the heels of repeated recommendations from federal regulators and a local environmental advocacy group that the state adopt rules embraced in other communities to safeguard chemicals.

All of those recommendations died a quiet death with barely any consideration by state and local lawmakers, federal regulators and local environmental groups said.

http://nyti.ms/1eDLeqf

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