The neolib Ezekiel Emanuel wants to make sure that fixing Social Security is as complicated as possible. Not only will his “lifetime earnings” plan run afoul of Republicans on class warfare grounds, it will also punish people who had to quit a high-paying job well before retirement age because of illness or injury.

The paleolib solution which has been around forever is to lift the cap on withholdings. Not enough equations, I guess.

USPSTF recommended against routine use of the PSA prostate cancer test today. It will be interesting to see if this is met with the same firestorm as their last recommendation on mammograms.

It sure seems like a lot of people know someone whose prostate cancer was detected by the test, but USPSTF is saying just 1 in a 1000. I suspect that some docs inappropriately order a PSA every time they order lab tests, regardless of the patient’s risk, and that skews the numbers.

USPSTF recommended tests are exempt from cost-sharing under Obamacare.

“Why do Americans consume 80% of world’s painkiller drugs?”

For a while we were doing pretty well at de-stigmatizing use of painkillers in this country. Now the pendulum has swung back the other way. The clinic I work at will not prescribe painkillers at all, which should be illegal. My brother, who’s as tough as they come when it comes to pain, writhed for hours on a gourney from a burst appendix before the ER docs would give him something stronger than a tylenol.

A friend of mine who was a doctor in China said they will not give painkillers to women in labor. It’s just not done. If we want to be like them maybe we can reduce our use of these drugs, at least among women.

Many other countries still allow the sale of over-the-counter medicines containing codeine (although this is decreasing due to pressure from the US). The idea that access and abuse are inextricably linked is law enforcement propaganda.

”In 2011, NYPD Made More Stops Of Young Black Men Than The Total Number Of Young Black Men in New York”

What a disgrace. It fits with an older study I read that 85% of black men are arrested at least once in their lifetime.

Thanks for the roundup fatster.

RE “A 70 year-old man with US securities worth $5 billion and dating back to the 1930s”; yeah, you read it correctly and THAT is the key for this story.

Your link shows that at least a quarter of all the U.S. bearer bonds outstanding were in that briefcase. Pretty amazing.

Nice work fatster! Much appreciated.

Meanwhile, remember that U.S. drone Iran captured late last year? They claim they’ve broken the encryption codes for the thing and are building their own copy of it.

It’s progress that we have some kind of encryption on the things. I remember a year or two back we didn’t.

No surprise that the Karzai government wants a long-term U.S. military presence to protect them. The fact is that the Taliban are going to win this one. We’re just in denial about that.

I can think of people much more deserving of the Hillman prize than Coates: Glenn Greenwald and anyone from FDL. Coates has one foot in liberalism and one foot in the Democratic Party, which seems to be what Hillmann likes.

The lure of flipping houses is you don’t have to own them for very long. Owning tens of thousands of homes and renting them out would be a huge logistical task, and certainly wouldn’t deliver the profit margins flippers are accustomed to.

I don’t know where I stand on this. If you go to jail it seems like a strip search is the least of your problems. The big problem is how you’re going to get a job when you get out.

I agree with you, but I still hope that the court strikes down the law somehow. I do think we’d get to single payer faster without Obamacare. As for Ezra, Commerce Clause arguments can be used to justify anything. But using it to force people to buy the private insurance product would be a major new incursion into individual liberty.

I don’t see anything wrong with wearing glasses to try to make yourself look innocent. Wealthy defendants have jury consultants to show them how to dress and how to act.

Can’t wait to see how Obama’s plan to cut off economic ties with any country which trades with Iran works out.

This is a great opportunity for the BRICS countries to move away from a US dominated world economy.

I agree with you Jon. We’d be better off without all these hybrid social programs, Obamacare included because, as Kucinich said, they are a foundation made of sand.

Right now I’m working in a couple of CHC’s, and there’s no way they could handle the influx of millions of newly eligible Medicaid patients. Even if primary care reimbursement for these newly eligibles is brought up to parity with Medicare, I don’t see private practitioners rushing to take them on. It’s just not worth the headaches of trying to find a specialist who will see your Medicaid patient or perform a needed procedure.

Right now for example the public health goal is a colonoscopy every 10 years. I’m seeing maybe one in a hundred low income patients is getting that. It’s pathetic.

John Roberts is the voice of corporatism on the Supreme Court so I would not be surprised if he votes to uphold Obamacare.

My personal belief is that single payer is Constitutional as a matter of public health, with the option of buying private medigap insurance for additional services. Forcing people to buy private insurance that includes things like fertility treatments and ICU care for extreme preemies is fascism, which is pretty much where we’re headed anyway.

The survey of Supreme Court clerks has some important caveats. For one thing, almost a third are already wrong to have said that the Anti-Injunction Act will short-circuit the whole process.

More importantly the question of whether the mandate is severable, or partially-severable, from the rest of the ACA, is different from whether the ACA is constitutional. On the former question, the clerks are much more divided.

David, only the first year mandate penalty is $95 or 1% of income. By 2016 it rises to the greater of $695 per year up to a maximum of three times that amount ($2,085) per family or 2.5% of household income. Furthermore the penalty rises with inflation.

Medicare spending per beneficiary is always tied to recessions. Medicare is not free care, and just like everybody else seniors feel the pinch and they skimp on health spending. Furthermore there are some economies of scale, such that when the number of beneficiaries go up the overall costs go down. But there is no way to achieve sustainable cost control with a private payer system coexisting with Medicare.

What’s concerning me is that Sanders’ money for CHCs is getting whittled away. If you have Medicaid but you have no access to care, let alone specialists and procedures, you really don’t have insurance.

I was just discussing these tuition & board numbers with someone, and they told me that CSULA nursing school is $31,000 a year for tuition alone. As someone who twenty years ago paid maybe $7,000 for his whole UC undergraduate degree that’s pretty mind-boggling.

Alan Stanford eluded justice for 15 years through official favors and over ten million spent on pretrial motions. Now the former multibillionaire claims he’s indigent and so can pay no restitution. Meanwhile none of his co-conspirators have even been charged.