Medicynic

This YouTube is Aaron Carroll’s (Healthcare Triage) take on Medicare for all. It does not include the President’s current hidden from sight health care plan, which may or may not exist.

Medicynical Note: Of the plans Bernie Sander’s is the most grandiose and sounds frankly like the one least likely to ever come into being. It sounds like the ranting of a grandiose, unrealistic 79 year old with no understanding of legislation, our economy, or the current health care system. To put it bluntly what he is proposing sounds as unrealistic as our current President’s various rantings.

The other plans offer different ways forward with more doable and practical ideas that may be acceptable in our country.

Meanwhile our President is touting a hidden plan that promises everything without any details. He assures us that everyone will be able to get insurance but provides no details on how it will be funded and how much penalty those with pre-existing illness will pay in order to get insurance. He will likely rely on block grants to states to fund Medicaid and coverage for those with pre-existing illnesses–in the past when proposed, the block grants were inadequate to cover the population needing care. Unstated but quite likely will be a move to destroy Medicare as we know it. That of course is the republican strategy–undercut Medicare and ration care to the needy and those needing it most.

As noted here and here the laptop keyboard problem persists in the current MacBooks. It’s clear that for Apple the computer hardware business is an uninteresting burden.

Medicynical note: The IMac is still a premo machine but their laptops are stagnating with such a bizarre feature as the touch strip, their un fixed faulty keyboards since 2015, the lack of a touch screen and their ridiculously high prices. Is it just a matter of time before they start licensing their system to other computer makers–would make sense..

This explanation seems to work better than the devil made me do it trope, or that it was the Twinkies.

It’s the I’m nuts defense.

“InfoWars host Alex Jones, who is being sued by several parents of Sandy Hook victims, said in a deposition released Friday that he now believes the massacre was not a hoax. In the deposition posted on YouTube, Jones said he believes 26 people were killed in the 2012 shooting, but that “a form of psychosis” made him believe it was staged. “

Medicynical note: Another Trump “real news” media type. Speechless.

The republican plan isn’t and our President hasn’t a clue.

Boeing prepares update for 737 Max: “As part of the update, the company said Max pilots would need to receive an additional 30-minute training program on the software.”

Medicynical note: This entire fiasco has a recurrent theme. Cut corners to save money. When faced with a superior Airbus design Boeing opted to try and update the 1967 737 airframe with disastrous results–an unstable plane requiring software to keep from crashing. Two planes have crashed and almost 400 souls perished and now Boeing proposes 30 minutes of training to master a new software shim. To save money there will be no time on a simulator; no more extensive orientation; just a 30 minute training video or some sort document . It’s really too little too late.

“Schiff was having none of it. His five-minute response was blistering, with a recurring phrase said so often that it served as spikes on the road to redemption that the Republicans thought they were cruising down. Each time Schiff said, “You might think it’s okay,” he hit them and the president with specific facts that might not meet the high standard for criminal conspiracy, but they are certainly objectionable on moral, ethical and patriotic grounds.”

“The problem is that an airplane is a big, complicated network of interconnected parts. To get the engine under the 737 wing, engineers had to mount the landing gears higher and more forward on the plane. But moving the landing gears changed the aerodynamics of the plane, such that the plane did not handle properly at a high angle of attack. That, in turn, led to the creation of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). It fixed the angle-of-attack problem in most situations, but it created new problems in other situations when it made it difficult for pilots to directly control the plane without being overridden by the MCAS.”

“On Wednesday, Boeing rolled out a software patch that it says corrects the problem, and it hopes to persuade the FAA to agree.”

“But note that the underlying problem isn’t really software, it’s with the effort to use software to get around a whole host of other problems.”

Medicynical note: A poorly engineered fix for an inherently unstable plane.

Coal plants close faster than before under Trump.

“The vanishing of coal plants from the American landscape began years ago, but it has persisted under President Trump, who came into office promising to revitalize the coal industry. He has rolled back environmental regulations meant to curb pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, installed a former coal lobbyist as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and tweeted in favor of keeping certain units operating. And yet, utilities have continued to shut down plants.”

Medicynical note: Another campaign promise falls by the wayside…….maybe the Mexicans will pay.

He backed off because even republicans knew it was bad policy. And his Secretary of Education, she’s the least thoughtful, least empathetic, least competent person on earth–a half inch beyond the President.

Medicynical note: The callousness and cruelty of this policy does not come close to this administration’s efforts to undermine health care for those with illnesses, i.e those with pre-existing illnesses. As the attorney Joseph W. Welch asked during the McCarthy hearings “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Apparently not.

So no full disclosure on the Mueller report from Barr. This is the most corrupt administration in history and Schiff knows it.

“Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election spans more than 300 pages, a Justice Department official said Thursday.”

“Attorney General William P. Barr confirmed the report’s length during a Wednesday phone call with Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.”

And

“Barr also refused to commit that he would make public “an unredacted, full report with the underlying documents, evidence,” Nadler said, adding that he was “not happy about that, to put it mildly.””

And Schiff maintains:

“The report “doesn’t say they found no evidence of collusion, that’s simply not true,” said House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who has on several occasions said he believes there is serious evidence that Trump or his subordinates colluded with Russia, even if that evidence did not rise to the level of a criminal offense.”

Medicynical note: Trusting Barr’s analysis (his son-in-law is a trump legal advisor) is akin to having the fox investigate the missing henhouse chickens.