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Posts by Barbara O'Brien
The Real 9/12, Not Glenn Beck's
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on September 11, 2009 at 7:16 AM.
When I meet someone who says he was in lower Manhattan on September 11, I apply a little test. Yes, I was watching from an office building on West 17th Street, I say. A high-rise. We had a clear view. Where were you, exactly?
If the answer is vague — standing on a corner or watching out a window — with no specific details offered, I figure the guy is blowing smoke. He wasn’t there. People who were there launch into The Story. The Story varies, of course, but the usual details involve the precise location, such as street name or building, where they stood to watch the towers collapse; where they had just been; where they had planned to go; the people they knew who were, or might have been, in the towers; and if they were close enough, mention of the flaming objects, and people, they saw falling from the sky.
Eight years ago The Story was told urgently. Now the telling is more mechanical, as if reciting a lesson. The details are no longer raw and jumbled, but polished and fixed into place. But The Story still comes out. We still feel a need to tell it.
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Obama's Deal With Big Pharma
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on August 10, 2009 at 5:37 AM.
In one more sign that the U.S. no longer is a functioning democracy, the Obama Administration has struck a deal with Big Pharma: To win its support for health care reform, the Administration has promised that any reform legislation will ban the government from negotiating lower drug prices. So Big Pharma can charge whatever it wants for patented drugs. In return, the pharmaceuticals soon will begin a $150 million advertising campaign on behalf of reform.
All I can say is, those had better be damn good ads.
This eliminates an area in which real cost savings could have been made. The savings in the area of pharmaceuticals has been capped at $80 billion over the next ten years. Many believe the government could have used its purchasing power to bring drug prices down.
However, according to the Right, people in those "socialist" countries who pay much lower prices than in the U.S. for the same drugs are leeches. They should be grateful to us for allowing ourselves to be overcharged at the drugstore. Paying too much for our Lipitor is an American’s patriotic duty.
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Texas: Great for Business — as Long as You Don’t Have to Live There
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on July 28, 2009 at 2:31 PM.
Virginia has bumped Texas out of the number one spot in CNBC’s annual list of the best states for business. By itself that’s not a big deal. It is no bad thing to be the second best state for business, after all. But a close look at why Texas lost to Virginia ought to give Texans –and the rest of us — something to think about.
Texas still has the nation’s healthiest economy, CNBC says, as well as the best infrastructure. It is in the top ten for technology and innovation, access to investment capital, and cost of living. Where Texas is failing is in quality of life, which includes factors such as crime rate and health care. Since last year, Texas has fallen from 22nd to 32nd of the 50 states. Texas also slipped in the cost of living and cost of doing business categories.
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Iraq Veterans File Suit Against KBR
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on July 3, 2009 at 7:14 PM.
As we approach another 4th of July weekend, there are news stories about veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering terrible diseases because of exposure to “burn pits.” These burn pits are not some fiendish enemy weapon. They are the creation of contractors hired to “support the troops,” paid with American taxpayer dollars.
Massive open-air pits in Iraq and Afghanistan are used to incinerate medical waste, including human body parts; garbage, plastics; lithium batteries; unexploded ordnance; miscellaneous hardware; gas cans; entire humvees; and building rubble, including asbestos insulation. The burn pits generate black, toxic smoke breathed daily by military men and women serving in the area.
Katie Connolly reports for Newsweek that about 200 veterans have joined in a lawsuit against KBR, Inc. KBR is the former Kellogg Brown & Root, at one time a subsidiary of Halliburton, of which former Vice President Dick Cheney was once CEO. KBR employs more American private contractors and holds a larger contract with the U.S. government than does any other firm in Iraq, according to Wikipedia. By October 2003, seven months after the beginning of the military action in Iraq, KBR’s bill to taxpayers had already reached $1.6 billion. There was no readily available tally of the total value of contracts with KBR since.
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States' Rights Flipflop
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on May 31, 2009 at 6:10 PM.
If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed and seated on the Supreme Court, a hot-button issue that may confront her is that of preemption.
The Bush Administration used a doctrine of implied preemption as legal cover to shield corporations from personal injury liabilities and undermine state health, safety and environmental laws. Simply, the Bushies decided they could just enter a clause into a federal regulation, and poof! State laws they didn’t like went bye-bye.
But recently a Supreme Court decision, and more recently an executive order by President Barack Obama, have tempered this federal intrusion into state legislation. And, naturally, some fire-breathin’, states’ rights lovin’, champions-of-individual-liberty conservative think tanks are very unhappy about it.
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The Truth About Health Care and Tort Reform, Part IV
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on May 14, 2009 at 11:00 PM.
Recap: This is the fourth post in a series. Part I explains that “tort reform” — an idea being pushed by conservatives as the cure for many economic problems, including high health care costs — has never delivered the promised results, yet conservatives keep making the promises. Part II documents how a cabal of extremely wealthy individuals and family trusts has been able to manipulate public opinion to sell “tort reform” to the public. Part III looks at arguments being made in favor of tort reform and shows that they are mostly hot air.
This part of the series is about the rights and protections citizens lose because of “tort reform.”
In brief, the word “tort” generally refers to personal injury. If Sally did something that caused John to be injured, John can sue Sally for damages. Tort law is vast and complicated. Certain situations present difficult issues, such as mesothelioma resulting from decades-past asbestos exposure, that are difficult to determine fairly.
On the other hand, you can read in Part I about residents of Las Vegas who contracted hepatitis C because of a clinic’s malpractice. It is possible some plaintiffs who tested positive for the hepatitis C virus may be unable to sue because the statute of limitations ran out before they developed symptoms.
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The Truth About Health Care and Tort Reform, Part III
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on May 14, 2009 at 5:54 PM.
Recap: This is the third post in a series. Part I explains that “tort reform” — an idea being pushed by conservatives as the cure for many economic problems, including high health care costs — has never delivered the promised results, yet conservatives keep making the promises. Part II documents how a cabal of extremely wealthy individuals and family trusts has been able to manipulate public opinion to sell “tort reform” to the public.
“Tort reform” proposals include a range of changes in personal injury liability laws, such as caps on the amount of damages the injured person can be awarded in a court. In a later post I will go into more detail about the effect these caps have had on injured individuals.
I am not arguing that personal injury law in the U.S. is perfect, or that it is never abused. Further, there are a number of thorny issues that need to be resolved regarding specific types of claims, such as mesothelioma resulting from decades-past asbestos exposure, if the law is going to be fair to both complainants and defendants.
My argument, however, is that before citizens allow state and federal legislatures to reduce their rights to take grievances to court, we all need to clearly understand the arguments being made for tort reform. Some of those arguments have some validity, but many of them are just flat-out false.
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The Truth About Health Care and Tort Reform, Part II
Posted by Barbara O'Brien, AlterNet on May 6, 2009 at 9:53 AM.
(This is the second post in a series. For the first post, see “The Truth About Health Care and Tort Reform, Part I“)
In 1992, tort reform found its poster child in a product liability suit — Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, more commonly known as the McDonald’s Coffee Case. The complainant, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, spilled a cup of McDonald’s coffee on herself and suffered third-degree burns serious enough to require skin grafts.
Initially, Liebeck asked McDonald’s for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses, but McDonald’s offered only $800. Liebeck’s attorney discovered that McDonald’s required its franchises to serve coffee at a scalding hot temperature, and that other customers had received serious burns. A jury eventually awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, which was slashed to a little more than $600,000 by the judge. Liebeck eventually settled for an undisclosed amount less than $600,000 after appeals.
The Right seized upon this story as an example of greedy lawyers and litigation-crazed loonies who clog up courts with frivolous suits. The extent of Liebeck’s injuries or the facts of the case didn’t seep into the public consciousness; all most people knew is that some woman got millions of dollars for spilling hot coffee.
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The Truth About Health Care and Tort Reform, Part I
Posted by Barbara O'Brien, AlterNet on May 4, 2009 at 4:00 AM.
Preface: As the fight for health care reform heats up this year, we’re going to be hearing a lot about “tort reform.” Just as “tax cuts” are the Right’s one-size-fits-all answer to all economic problems, “tort reform” is the Right’s favorite magic bullet for fixing the health care crisis.
Very generally, tort reform refers to a range of legal measures that limit the ability of an individual to sue for damages for personal injury. For example, tort reform laws may place limitations on jury awards and attorney’s fees or raise the burden of proof needed to win a case.
This post is the first of a series looking at real-world results of tort reform in several states. I also want to investigate what impact malpractice litigation really might have on health care, either cost or quality. Other questions: What’s really making health care costs go up? What percentage of malpractice suits turn out to be frivolous? Who’s behind the “tort reform” movement?
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OSHA: It's Still Bush's Bureaucracy
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on April 7, 2009 at 1:40 PM.
During the eight long years of the Bush Administration, Washington bureaucracies were filled with political hires more interested in serving an agenda than in serving the people. The change in administration didn’t make these ideological worker bees disappear, and the results continue to vex us.
Take the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), for example. Today Kerry Hall of the Charlotte Observer reports that OSHA improperly paid more than $680,000 to a consultant and acquaintance of the then-agency’s director, Edwin Foulke Jr. Now the agency cannot show exactly what the consultant, Randy Kimlin of South Carolina, did for the money. Products? Deliverables? Nothin’.
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Unions: Still Relevant? Or Relics?
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on March 31, 2009 at 11:58 AM.
Corporate and financial institutions that once seemed as solid as Mount Everest have turned out to be sand castles. Are we seeing the Twilight of the God-Tycoons? Or just a temporary eclipse?
Either way, are the shifting fortunes of corporate America an opportunity for unions to make a comeback? And should they? Are unions still relevant to U.S. working life?
Today fewer than 8 percent of U.S. workers belong to unions. A quarter century ago 17 percent of workers were unionized, and shortly after World War II about a third of workers belonged to unions.
Yet a majority of Americans favor unions. Gallup has polling numbers going back to 1936 (available on pollingreport.com; scroll down) showing consistent public approval for unions. For many years the part of the American public with favorable ideas about unions has hovered at around 60 percent, give or take. Approval for unions is 60 percent right now. Yet actual union membership has declined.
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Heartless: Anti-Choice Fanatics and Dr. Tiller
Posted by Barbara O'Brien, AlterNet on March 24, 2009 at 9:54 AM.
For years anti-reproductive rights fanatics have been trying to take out Dr. George Tiller. His Kansas clinic was bombed in 1985. A “pro-life” fanatic shot him in both arms in 1993. Patients trying to enter his clinic are viciously harassed.
Now the state of Kansas is trying to convict Dr. Tiller for violating Kansas abortion law, and opening arguments in the trial began yesterday. Robin Abcarian writes in the Los Angeles Times, “by day’s end, it was clear that the case could hinge on such nonmedical issues as who paid for copy paper and toner, the meaning of a hug and whether selling a beat-up sedan to a colleague can constitute proof of guilt.”
Copy paper? Hugs? Indeed, yes.
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Tort Reform: How Karl Rove Isn't Done With Us Yet
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on March 21, 2009 at 3:14 AM.
This week Republicans in Congress stood up for the right of incompetent Wall Street executives to be overpaid and undertaxed. You might GOP legislators were just making fools of themselves and can be ignored. But out of the AIG limelight the GOP was moving on other fronts with faux populist plans to protect the wealth of the wealthy.
Earlier this month the Senate Republican Conference held a discussion called “Protecting Main Street from Lawsuit Abuse.” Chaired by Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the purpose of the discussion was to advance the idea that tort reform is essential to financial recovery. The idea is that frivolous lawsuits are hurting small business owners and driving up the cost of everything.
Tort reform is “a catchall phrase for legislative measures designed to make it harder for individuals to sue businesses,” wrote Daniel Fisher in Forbes. In the past several years state legislatures have passed “tort reform” measures that cap the awards juries can give plaintiffs and complicate procedures to make it more difficult for plaintiffs to file suits. These measures usually are sold to the public as being a benefit to the economy — tort reform will boost business, create jobs, and lower costs, including the costs of health care.
In practice, however, there is no clear-cut evidence that tort reform translates into lower health care costs or more jobs, and plenty of evidence suggests it doesn’t.
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Why Conservatives Are Radical on Health Care
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on March 8, 2009 at 1:00 PM.
The Obama administration wants to fix the nation's increasingly dysfunctional health care "system."
Wonks and politicians will have countless policy details to argue about. But all the details are boiling down to a contest between two basic approaches to delivering health care to Americans.
One approach is relatively incremental and might even be called "conservative." The other approach, however, would radically alter the way most Americans get their health care. It is completely untried and based on ideas that sound good on paper, but have no track record of working in the real world.
And here's the catch -- in the nation's mass media, the genuinely conservative approach is being called "radical," even "socialistic." The genuinely radical and untested approach is being offered by "conservatives."
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Free Market Fundamentalism Is Killing Us
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on May 12, 2007 at 5:00 AM.
By many tangible measures, the U.S. health care system isn't much to brag about. For example, the World Health Organization reported that in 2000 the U.S. ranked 24th in the world in "healthy life expectancy."
"Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries," said Christopher Murray (M.D., Ph.D.), Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy.
In life expectancy, infant mortality, and number of practicing physicians per capita, the U.S. long has ranked near the bottom among the 30 or so wealthiest industrialized nations. And this is in spite of the fact that we spend nearly twice as much per capita on health care as nations that get much better results than we do. We don't even have as many hospital beds per capita as most other industrialized nations.
But worry no more, children. I learned yesterday that "US Health Care Saves More Lives Than Socialized Medicine"! Keep reading to learn more!
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