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Moby Healthcare
On Friday I told David Corn that on odd days I was optimistic about the prospects for healthcare reform and on even days I was pessimistic. 
Since it was Friday the 17th when we talked, I was optimistic. The AMA is on our side! The House Tri-Committee Bill is pretty good! Hoorah! He just laughed. On Saturday, I was again pessimistic. The centrists Dems are screwing everything up! There's no way to pass a tax increase to fund it! We're doomed!
On Sunday I was going to write about this. But shortly after Tom Watson's epic meltdown at the end of the British Open, our power went out. And stayed out. It didn't come back on until 4:30 this morning. Turns out that was mostly good news, though. I did get to see all the golf, after all. And the power outage spared you all some aimless musings about the politics of healthcare. And since I had nothing else to do, I pulled Moby-Dick off the shelf and decided that dammit, I'd actually read it this time. I haven't quite done that yet, but I'm about halfway through.
As for healthcare, I don't really know what I think. It's an even day so I supposed I'm pessimistic. We landed a man on the moon 40 years ago but we can't even pass a national healthcare plan? What a screwed up country. But check back with me tomorrow for another opinon.
Health Care on the Moon
Much easier to land a man on the moon than get a workable health care system. The Apollo program didn't cost much money (per capita, anyway), the actual execution was left entirely in the hands of technical specialists who could achieve the goal, and everyone could feel good about the result. Health care, not so much.
Books Unread
So how are you liking "Moby Dick"? Next up, "Bleak House"!
Watson
It wasn't really a meltdown -- he played brilliantly. Unbelievable. Two perfect shots on 18, and an ever-so-slightly smaller bounce on the second shot, and he'd have won and we'd have been able to see one of the greatest sporting achievements ever.
Epic meltdown, Kevin?
Epic meltdown, Kevin?
Seriously, were you watching the same tournament as the rest of us? If Watson had been up by 4 with 4 to play and lost, that would have been a meltdown, perhaps an epic meltdown. But he was behind with 4 to play and came back to lead. If he had just a teeny bit of luck on the approach to 18 -- and it looked like a really good shot.... how does an 8-iron go bounding through a green like that? -- he would have breezed to a 2-putt and had an EPIC WIN. That a 59-year-old was at or near the lead for almost the entire Open -- under difficult weather conditions too -- and came so close to winning was nothing short of phenomenal.
Why We Must Ration Health Care
Everyone should take a look at Why We Must Ration Health Care.
Peter Singer argues for a Medicare for All that only provides rational care, a sort of cost effectiveness based on some rough metric like quality-adjusted life-years (QALY - see the article).
For those who want more - and can afford it - purchase private supplemental insurance.
It is well worth the read.
I hope you're enjoying the
I hope you're enjoying the novel, Kevin! Next up: Gaddis's JR.
Moby Dick
I re-read Moby Dick a few years ago and what surprised me was how much funnier it was this time through. Of course, Melville's sense of humor has much in it of the cumbersome and pawky type known as academic humor.
Fog
If you try "Bleak House" again, when you read the first page, with its delightfully over the top description of fog taking over the place, think of it as about Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd.
Reading Moby Dick
tagged as:- result
I was supposed to read Moby Dick for an English class. I found it impossible because I kept falling asleep when ever I tried. Part of my problem may have been that the only goal I had was to try to notice things I could write a paper about.
Years later out of boredom I read The Feminization of American Culture by Ann Douglas . It was rather slow going because it elaborately documented how in the 1800s American culture was taken over by middle class women and the ministers who sucked up to them, converting literature for example into largely writing saccharine poems about children who had died and then gone to heaven to become angels.
But towards the end Douglas lengthily analyzed Melville's writing and his reception as a reaction against the feminine stranglehold on literature. Immersed in her perspective, I tried reading Moby Dick again and found it a good easy read.
Meltdown????!!!
The average American 59 year old would barely be able to walk Turnberry 4 consecutive days, much less play world-class golf and come within 3 inches of winning the British open. Jean Van de Velde, now that was a meltdown. This was just golf.
Over.
Face it. Health care for all as a concept is done. People like the idea in abstract and they hate news stories about poor people dying in emergency rooms - but they aren't willing to pay for universal care for everyone. Certainly not if it involves one iota of sacrifice on their part.
And, frankly, the Obama team hasn't done much to put an appetizing plan on the table. Anything that passes is going to chock full of giveaways to the current crop of parasites...I mean for-profit health insurers and big pharma.
If the point is to cover everyone, just expand Medicaid/Medicare and be done with it. EXCEPT, that is exactly part of the problem...out of control costs, rampant fraud, underpayments to doctors and a sweeping morass of incompetence. Our elected officials won't even go after the fraud in the financial services and real estate sectors that broke the economy - what makes anyone think anything will be done about levels of fraud that will reach stratospheric proportions as more people are added to the Medicare/Medicaid rolls?
Wake up and smell the self-interest. Everyone wants health care and no one wants to pay for it. Either it dies on the vote or what passes will be next to worthless. We don't do ANYTHING in this country out of pure charity and social good - there's got to be a big fat profit for somebody who will donate to campaign funds to keep the gravy train rolling.
Why the reading flurry?
If Melville had had a decent editor, Moby Dick would have been a good book. My stand out memory is how the plot was just picking up when ALL STOP for 3 technical chapters (sheets, harpoons & oars?) on whaling. Why? just gummed up the works.
Melville's other problem was he could not create characters. Bartleby was all 1-note. Ahab lost his demonic appeal when he was carried over in a net to another boat looking like a trapped fly.
Blow past the sections that have too much technical content, and you'll enjoy the book a good deal more.
t.c.
p.s. Benito Cereno was actually his best work because it was all plot.
Contra the previous
Contra the previous commenter, it's Melville's epic digressions that I love. Though the plot is also, I think, necessary, and great.
Disagree about Melville and characters. Ishmael and Queequeg live in my head. (Saying Bartleby is one-note is hilarious! The exception that proves the rule.)
The http box is also a
The http box is also a search box, named the omnibox. so there is no plugin necessary for a search bar. just type your search in the address bar.