starring arcade fire.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Health. CARE. First. AID.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"...The hospitals I visited all told me they devoted enormous resources – as much as half of all administrative staff, in one case – to chasing claims. Patient care in American is in this way consistently reduced to a ludicrous and irrational negotiation of two competing professional disciplines: medicine, and extracting money from insurance companies.
Patients get trapped between hospitals that overcharge for simple procedures and insurers who deny coverage for serious ones. Administrative costs and profit are two of the bigger factors explaining why Americans spend about twice as much per person or more on health care compared with other industrialized countries, but get consistently worse results.
Ideas like a single-payer system, or ending the antitrust exemption for insurance companies, would be obvious fixes. But when they came up during the Obamacare debate, they were dismissed as politically unfeasible and/or too costly. Because the United States will not do what other countries do as a matter of course – declare health care to be a universal human right and work backward from that premise – we are continually stuck with patchwork political solutions that protect insurance and pharmaceutical company profits while leaving masses of people uninsured.
...Health care is absolute human right. On a policy level we already recognized this decades ago, during the height of the Reagan era, when the Emergency Medical and Treatment Labor Act made it illegal for public and private hospitals alike to turn patients away in an emergency. There is simply no moral justification for denying aid to a sick or dying person. Any country that does so systematically is not a country at all.
Let's hope the awful Trump era awakens us to the broader issue. The sad thing is that doing the right thing is also the smart thing. As other countries have already discovered, universal coverage systems that put the right incentives back into health care greatly reduce costs and waste. Getting there isn't "unrealistic." It's necessary, morally and otherwise."
ROLLING STONE: Finally Everyone Agrees: Health Care Is a Human Right
words.
"...The hospitals I visited all told me they devoted enormous resources – as much as half of all administrative staff, in one case – to chasing claims. Patient care in American is in this way consistently reduced to a ludicrous and irrational negotiation of two competing professional disciplines: medicine, and extracting money from insurance companies.
Patients get trapped between hospitals that overcharge for simple procedures and insurers who deny coverage for serious ones. Administrative costs and profit are two of the bigger factors explaining why Americans spend about twice as much per person or more on health care compared with other industrialized countries, but get consistently worse results.
Ideas like a single-payer system, or ending the antitrust exemption for insurance companies, would be obvious fixes. But when they came up during the Obamacare debate, they were dismissed as politically unfeasible and/or too costly. Because the United States will not do what other countries do as a matter of course – declare health care to be a universal human right and work backward from that premise – we are continually stuck with patchwork political solutions that protect insurance and pharmaceutical company profits while leaving masses of people uninsured.
...Health care is absolute human right. On a policy level we already recognized this decades ago, during the height of the Reagan era, when the Emergency Medical and Treatment Labor Act made it illegal for public and private hospitals alike to turn patients away in an emergency. There is simply no moral justification for denying aid to a sick or dying person. Any country that does so systematically is not a country at all.
Let's hope the awful Trump era awakens us to the broader issue. The sad thing is that doing the right thing is also the smart thing. As other countries have already discovered, universal coverage systems that put the right incentives back into health care greatly reduce costs and waste. Getting there isn't "unrealistic." It's necessary, morally and otherwise."
ROLLING STONE: Finally Everyone Agrees: Health Care Is a Human Right
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Friday, June 23, 2017
brave for you.
the marfa demo version video.
from the xx.
PITCHFORK: The xx Share New “Brave for You (Marfa Demo)” Video: Watch
from the xx.
PITCHFORK: The xx Share New “Brave for You (Marfa Demo)” Video: Watch
a moment of clarity.
words.
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live, as Joan Didion said. We do this as a nation, as individuals, as families — even when that construct is demonstrably false. For the United States, the biggest institutional lie of the moment is that we have a government of the people, responding to majority will.
On almost every single concern, Congress — whether it’s the misnamed People’s House, or the Senate, laughably mischaracterized as the world’s greatest deliberative body — is going against what most of the country wants. And Congress is doing this because there will be no consequences.
We have a fake democracy, growing less responsive and less representative by the day.
The biggest example of this is the monstrosity of a health care bill, which a cartel of Republicans finally allowed us to peek at on Thursday. The lobbyists have seen it; of course. But for the rest us, our first look at a radical overhaul of one-sixth of the economy, something that touches every American, comes too late to make our voices heard.
...The symptoms of democratic collapse — from the opioid crises of people who long ago checked out of active citizenship to the stagnation of class mobility — cry for immediate action.
It takes the median worker twice as many hours a month to pay rent in a big city today than it did in the early years of the baby boomer era, as Edward Luce notes in his new book, “The Retreat of Western Liberalism.” Add towering increases in health care and college costs to that and you’ve got an unclimbable wall between low-income limbo and a chance at the middle class. The United States, once known for our American Dream, now has the lowest class mobility of any Western democracy, according to Luce.
What is Congress doing? Nothing on wages. Nothing on college tuition. And the health care bill will most surely force many people to choose between buying groceries and being able to visit a doctor.
...Trump is president, of course, despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million people. Almost 60 percent of the public is against him now. In a parliamentary system, he’d be thrown out in a no-confidence vote. In our system, he’s primed to change life for every citizen, against the wishes of a majority of Americans. Try calling that a democracy while keeping a straight face."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Our Fake Democracy
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
all the way up.
with snoop dogg, rick ross, and their moment i feared music video.
PITCHFORK: Snoop Dogg Appears to Mock Young Thug in New “Moment I Feared” Video: Watch
PITCHFORK: Snoop Dogg Appears to Mock Young Thug in New “Moment I Feared” Video: Watch
omnion.
starring hercules & love affair + sharon van etten.
FLAVORWIRE: Listen to Sharon Van Etten on Hercules and Love Affair’s Latest Soulfully Electronic Track
FLAVORWIRE: Listen to Sharon Van Etten on Hercules and Love Affair’s Latest Soulfully Electronic Track
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Sunday, June 11, 2017
square biz.
a playlist.
1/we belong/pat benatar
2/hair/lady gaga
3/sweet dreams (are made of this)/eurythmics
4/i can only stare/sleigh bells
5/heavy metal lover/lady gaga
6/cockiness (i love it)/rihanna
7/haven't you heard/patrice rushen
8/i feel love/donna summer
9/d2b (dick 2 bomb)/problem, bad lucc, & the homegirl
10/quit/cashmere cat & ariana grande
11/you're the one (pts. 1 & 2)/little sister
12/lose your love/joe goddard
13/home/joe goddard
Friday, June 09, 2017
Wednesday, June 07, 2017
Thursday, June 01, 2017
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