Later On

From Politifact:

I really wish the US had national single-payer healthcare that covers everyone (cf. France). Instead, we have this (as reported by Murray Waas for Reuters):

One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.

None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders — more than any other health insurance company in the United States.

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women’s specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as "rescission," for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.

But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.

The disclosures come to light after a recent investigation by Reuters showed that another health insurance company, Assurant Health, similarly targeted HIV-positive policyholders for rescission. That company was ordered by courts to pay millions of dollars in settlements.

In his push for the health care bill, President Barack Obama said the legislation would end such industry practices. Making the case for reform in a September address to Congress, Obama specifically cited the cancellation of Robin Beaton’s health insurance. Aides to the president, who requested they not be identified, told Reuters that no one in the White House knew WellPoint was systematically singling out breast cancer patients like her.

Many critics worry the new law will not lead to an end of these practices…

Continue reading. And thanks to The Eldest for the pointer.

When I blog stories like this, I always recall the commenter who said that we can simply trust businesses to do the right thing—no regulation or oversight needed.

And, of course, there are those who claim that the market will correct abuses of this sort—whereas in fact, the market supports abuses of this sort: WellPoint undoubtedly increased their profits by cancelling these policies, and without government oversight they would get away with it completely. The market loves companies that increase profits, and companies are always willing to cut corners if it will grow profits.

Via Open Culture:

Interesting post by Glenn Greenwald:

Andrew Sullivan rightly recommends this new Atlantic article by David Freed, which details how the FBI and a mindless, stenographic American media combined to destroy the life of Steven Hatfill.  Hatfill is the former U.S. Government scientist who for years was publicly depicted as the anthrax attacker and subjected to Government investigations so invasive and relentless that they forced him into almost total seclusion, paralysis and mental instability, only to have the Government years later (in 2008) acknowledge that he had nothing to do with those attacks and to pay him $5.8 million to settle the lawsuit he brought.  There are two crucial lessons that ought to be learned from this horrible — though far-from-rare — travesty:

(1) It requires an extreme level of irrationality to read what happened to Hatfill and simultaneously to have faith that the "real anthrax attacker" has now been identified as a result of the FBI’s wholly untested and uninvestigated case against Bruce Ivins.  The parallels are so overwhelming as to be self-evident.

Just as was true for the case against Hatfill, the FBI’s case against Ivins is riddled with scientific and evidentiary holes.  Much of the public case against Ivins, as was true for Hatfill, was made by subservient establishment reporters mindlessly passing on dubious claims leaked by their anonymous government sources.  So unconvincing is the case against Ivins that even the most establishment, government-trusting voices — including key members of Congress, leading scientific journals and biological weapons experts, and the editorial pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall St. Journal — have all expressed serious doubts over the FBI’s case and have called for further, independent investigations.

Yet just as was true for years with the Hatfill accusations, no independent investigations are taking place.  That’s true for three reasons.  First, the FBI drove Ivins to suicide, thus creating an unwarranted public assumption of guilt and ensuring the FBI’s case would never be subjected to the critical scrutiny of a trial — exactly what would have happened with Hatfill had he, like Ivins, succumbed to that temptation, as Freed describes: …

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Interesting article by Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman in the Washington Monthly:

If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.

Many people blame the great real estate bubble of recent years. The idea here is that once a bubble pops it can destroy more real-world business activity—and jobs—than it creates as it expands. There is some truth to this. But it doesn’t explain why, even when the real estate bubble was at its most inflated, so few jobs were created compared to the tech-stock bubble of the late ’90s. Between 2000 and 2007 American businesses created only seven million jobs, before the great recession destroyed more than that. In the ’90s prior to the dot-com bust, they created more than twenty-two million jobs.

Others point to the diffusion of new technologies that reduce the number of workers needed to produce and sell manufactured products like cars and services like airline reservations. But throughout economic history, even as new technologies like the assembly line and the personal computer destroyed large numbers of jobs, they also empowered people to create new and different ones, often in greater numbers. Yet others blame foreign competition and offshoring, and point to all the jobs lost to China, India, or Mexico. Here, too, there is some truth. But U.S. governments have been liberalizing our trade laws for decades; although this has radically changed the type of jobs available to American workers—shifting vast chunks of the U.S. manufacturing sector overseas, for instance—there is little evidence that this has resulted in any lasting decline in the number of jobs in America.

Moreover, recent Labor Department statistics show that the loss of jobs here at home, be it the result of sudden economic crashes or technological progress or trade liberalization, does not appear to be our main problem at all. Though few people realize it, the rate of job destruction in the private sector is now 20 percent lower than it was in the late ’90s, when managers at America’s corporations embraced outsourcing and downsizing with an often manic intensity. Rather, the lack of net job growth over the last decade is due mainly to the creation of fewer new jobs. As recent Labor Department statistics show, even during the peak years of the housing boom, job creation by existing businesses was 14 percent lower than it was in the late ’90s.

The problem of weak job creation certainly can’t be due to increased business taxes and regulation, since both were slashed during the Bush years. Nor can the explanation be insufficient consumer demand; throughout most of the last decade, consumers and the federal government engaged in a consumption binge of world-historical proportions.

Other, more plausible explanations have been floated for why the rate of job creation seems to have fallen. One is that the federal government made too few …

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A great breakfast: huevos rancheros at the Victorian Corner, along with much coffee and reading of books on the Kindle. In fact, while at breakfast I bought (for $0.00) a copy of Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth (a great summertime read) and downloaded it onto the Kindle.

I’ve noticed a slight change in my blogging. I am passing over a lot of political stuff. It seems obvious that the current GOP acts in bad faith (including many lies and distortions and acting in direct opposition to their claims), so it becomes less interesting to blog about them. Same with the Tea Party and Palin. I still blog politics, but fewer comments on Republican craziness.

A great lather with the Plisson Chinese Grey and Mama Bear’s Clove & Tangerine shaving soap—clove and tangerine go together very nicely.

I decided to go with the Pils again today. It’s an expensive razor, and by using it a second time, I cut the cost per use in half, a big step. I figure I can get the cost per shave of the Nils down to less than a penny a shave if I just use it for 24,500 shaves. At 6 shaves/week, that means 78.5 years of shaving. Hmm. That seems unlikely (for me), but eventually someone will have done it: this is not a razor that will wear out: no moving parts.

Once again a lovely shave. It really is a good razor. Thank God.

Three passes to perfection, a splash of Pitralon, and I think I’ll strut my shave out for breakfast at the Victorian Corner.

Take a look.

Perhaps you’ve read Sue Lowden and her “chickens for checkups” idea: bartering with your doctor over your healthcare. (See three posts by Steve Benen as he gradually becomes convinced that (a) she’s serious, and (b) she’s not backing down: first, second, third. They get progressively funnier.)

I think she’s got a great idea. I have to see my doctor on a follow-up visit in a couple of weeks, so I’ll just swing by Safeway and pick up a chicken, if he’s agreeable. Not a live chicken, that he or his wife would have to kill, clean, and butcher, but a nice whole chicken already cleaned and with the giblets in the cavity. I happen to have one at home right now: $4.66 total. I’d say that was a bargain.

I hope that I don’t have to give my gastroenterologist 100 chickens for my colonoscopy—though in fact that would be a bargain, given what I actually had to pay.

Still, the idea’s appealing: stop by the supermarket and pick up a chicken or two for the doctor before your next visit. Tell him Lowden sent you.

The previous post had an unexpectedly enlightened review of a book by a solid conservative, which gives one hope. But then one turns to what’s happening in Congress. Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

Several news outlets are reporting that Republicans are preparing to re-litigate the health care reform debate by blocking the nomination of Donald Berwick, Harvard University professor, to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As the Washington Post notes, “Democrats in the Senate said that, given Berwick’s national stature and broad-based support, he would be easily confirmed under ordinary circumstances,” but “Berwick must first clear the Senate Finance Committee, where ranking Republican Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) said that he plans to vigorously ‘explore the nominee’s preparedness for the enormous challenges that face the agency.’”

The Republican Policy Committee has already prepared a memo — which was obtained by The Wonk Room — that links Berwick to the British health care system and presents him as someone who supports rationing and a government takeover of health care (Download the full memo HERE):

Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has a history of support for government rationing of health care resources on cost grounds. He has spoken favorably about Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which denies patients access to life-saving treatments the National Health Service (NHS) deems too expensive.The American people should have their eyes open to the ramifications of NICE-style rationing in the United States as part of Democrats’ brave new health care world. … They may see a Medicare Administrator who explicitly advocates for rationing as indicative of Democrats’ government takeover of health care…

All this is to be expected, particularly since Republicans have pledged to turn the 2010 midterm elections into a referendum on health care reform. But Berwick, no matter how “radical” Republicans consider him to be, will be working within the confines of a fairly conservative law.

Republicans are deliberately misinterpreting Berwick’s comments about transforming the American health care system from one that pays for the quantity of care into one that pays for value of care. Berwick has built a reputation of finding innovative ways of squeezing value out of every health care dollar and “persuading hospital administrators and doctors to adopt his recommendations.” But his approach — which is based on the idea that “less intensive, less invasive — and less expensive — healthcare can sometimes be more effective than the most aggressive care” — is nothing like the one-size-fits all government-takeover caricature.

Instead, he understands that to find solutions to specific problems, different communities will have to experiment with different solutions. “How could Congress possibly know enough to specify for every community, the exact design for care that is safe, effective, timely, patient-centered, equitable and sustainable?” Berwick asked during a speech in December. “The legislation does contain long sections focusing on quality,” Berwick acknowledged, “and there legislators lay out possibilities. But it is up to health care communities to test, adapt and perfect these strategies in real world.” His focus on improving care quality, while lowering costs has won over some fairly influential admirers. Nancy Nielsen, the immediate past president of the American Medical Association praises Berwick’s “ability to inspire doctors and hospital administrators to work together.” “Don is so widely respected because he has worked in such a collaborative way,” she said.

That behavior seems much more typical of the GOP today.

Jim Manzi reviews Liberty and Tyranny:

Jonah notes Ross Douthat’s very interesting post, in which Ross had this to say:

Conservative domestic policy would be in better shape if conservative magazines and conservative columnists were more willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.

I thought some about this over the past few days, and took this as a direct challenge.
Here goes.

I started to read Mark Levin’s massive bestseller Liberty and Tyranny a number of months ago as debate swirled around it. I wasn’t expecting a PhD thesis (and in fact had hoped to write a post supporting the book as a well-reasoned case for certain principles that upset academics just because it didn’t employ a bunch of pseudo-intellectual tropes). But when I waded into the first couple of chapters, I found that — while I had a lot of sympathy for many of its basic points — it seemed to all but ignore the most obvious counter-arguments that could be raised to any of its assertions. This sounds to me like a pretty good plain English meaning of epistemic closure. The problem with this, of course, is that unwillingness to confront the strongest evidence or arguments contrary to our own beliefs normally means we fail to learn quickly, and therefore persist in correctable error.

I’m not expert on many topics the book addresses, so I flipped to its treatment of a subject that I’ve spent some time studying — global warming — in order to see how it treated a controversy in which I’m at least familiar with the various viewpoints and some of the technical detail.

It was awful. It was so bad that it was like the proverbial clock that chimes 13 times — not only is it obviously wrong, but it is so wrong that it leads you to question every other piece of information it has ever provided.

Levin argues that human-caused global warming is nothing to worry about, and merely an excuse for the Enviro-Statists (capitalization in the original) to seize more power. It reads like a bunch of pasted-together quotes and stories based on some quick Google searches by somebody who knows very little about the topic, and can’t be bothered to learn. After pages devoted to talking about prior global cooling fears, and some ridiculous or cynical comments by advocates for emissions restrictions (and one quote from Richard Lindzen, a very serious climate scientist who disputes the estimated magnitude of the greenhouse effect, but not its existence), he gets to the key question on page 184 (eBook edition): …

Continue reading.

If conservatives actually start taking this approach, then there’s hope.

UPDATE: But of course conservatives won’t, because people with minds open to persuasion by reason and facts are not conservatives, they’re liberals. Andrew Sullivan blogs:

Larison on Manzi’s latest and the blowback:

The other day, Ross called for other conservatives to be more critical of Republican politicians and conservative “entertainers,” and Jim Manzi made the mistake of taking up this challenge and applying intellectual rigor and honesty to a prominent conservative radio host’s book on a subject he understands fairly well. The inevitable circling-of-the-wagons that has followed illustrates perfectly the problem Manzi was trying to address in Levin’s work. Not only do Manzi’s colleagues automatically defend Levin’s sub-par arguments, but they regard it as horribly bad form to dare criticize those arguments with the vehemence that their poor quality would seem to merit. Small wonder that there are so few “magazines and conservative columnists…willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.”

Anonymous Liberal chimes in:

First, notice that neither Lopez nor McCarthy bother to address any of Manzi’s substantive points. They’re simply taking issue with the fact that he dared to use strong terms in critiquing the work of a member in good standing of the conservative media. McCarthy’s call for “civility” is particularly rich given that McCarthy himself has made a career out of posting totally off-the-wall and unhinged rants against his favorite left of center targets. The reference to Levin’s “widely-acclaimed book” is also unintentionally hilarious. The only acclamation the book received, of course, was from other members of the epistemically-closed community that Manzi’s describing, people who simply accept whatever a clown like Levin says at face value.

Lopez’ response is even more telling. In short, she says that Levin is defending the world against Tyranny and that’s all that matters. At a time when Freedom itself hangs in the balance, it makes no sense to go after one of the good guys. This kind of tribalism epitomizes everything that is wrong with the right wing approach to politics.

Steve Benen:

How Wall Street operates would seem to be of interest to the Tea Party crowd. After all, this is a matter at the core of many of their ostensible concerns — powerful elites, acting irresponsibly, ignoring the needs of the American mainstream, generating devastating consequences for everyone.

The legislative fight over reforming Wall Street, then, should be of great interest to the so-called "movement." But as Benjy Sarlin explained, Tea Partiers seem to be taking a pass on the major legislative fight of the day.

Tax Day rallies last week in Washington, D.C., were devoid of signs, slogans, and speeches on the finance bill, and influential right-leaning websites like Red State and Hot Air have all but ignored the issue this week, despite major movement on the Democrats’ legislation. There are some exceptions … but by and large there’s been no high-profile campaign to defeat the bill, and a number of conservative activists concede that the grassroots are inactive.

Dick Armey, president of Tea Party organizer FreedomWorks, acknowledged in an interview that his group has yet to make its mark on the debate.

"We haven’t had a chance to study it," Armey said.

What an interesting response. The Tea Party crowd didn’t study the health care bill, but the activists opposed it. They didn’t study tax policy, but they’re still whining incessantly about tax increases that haven’t happened. They didn’t study budget policy, but they still think Obama is responsible for huge deficits (he’s not).

But when it comes time to bring some accountability to a financial industry that pushed the global economy to the brink, Armey and his band of confused followers "haven’t had a chance to study it"? Since when does that matter?

Steve M. takes a compelling stab at explaining what’s up:

What’s really happening is that the GOP/teabag complex is having a little trouble getting the messaging on this one right. The big kahuna leaders can read a poll, and they know that, even as skepticism about affirmative government increases, Wall Street reform remains popular with the public at large. So they’re a tad reluctant to send a big ol’ tea party bus out there with anti-reform slogans — that might hurt the movement’s indie cred. They’re reluctant to urge the rank-and-file teabaggers’ Pied Pipers on Fox News to go full bore into transmitting anti-reform talking points — at least not until really solid talking points can be developed.

Chisun Lee for ProPublica:

The government is failing in more and more cases to produce evidence that the men it has imprisoned at Guantanamo belong there, according to ProPublica’s latest look at the lawsuits that some 100 captives have filed in federal court to seek their freedom. But the Obama administration continues to challenge the courts’ authority to make it release the prisoners.

In 34 out of the 47 cases that have been decided so far — over 70 percent — detainees have won judgments that the United States is subjecting them to indefinite detention as al-Qaida or Taliban enemies without proof, and that they must be released. Federal judges have been reviewing classified intelligence and interrogation reports since June 2008, when the Supreme Court recognized the detainees’ right to sue. The remaining prisoners have been held seven years or longer.

Even with the sensitive information blacked out, the judges’ opinions offer reams of detail about what the detainees were doing when they were captured, how the U.S. took custody of and interrogated them, and why the courts have rejected specific pieces of evidence as unreliable or even completely unbelievable in the vast majority of the cases. These opinions are summarized and also available in full in ProPublica’s updated database.

In ordinary criminal cases, a court order of release because of unjustified detention results in … release. But in the terrorism detention cases, it promises no more than the "possibility" of release, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Asked if the executive branch could take 10 years to release a detainee against whom there is no good evidence, he said only, "You would hope not."

The administration is expected to elaborate on its position that the courts can’t make it release unlawfully imprisoned captives at an appeals court argument this Thursday. The dispute holds implications beyond Guantanamo, because at its core it questions the meaning of the constitutional doctrine of habeas corpus — a fundamental American guarantee against unjust imprisonment — in the potentially expanding context of terrorism detention.

Despite denying its duty to do so in court, the administration has quietly been releasing many of the detainees who’ve won their lawsuits, known as habeas petitions. Twenty of the men have been transferred to other countries, while 14 remain at Guantanamo as the government appeals the judges’ decisions.

And, of course, Obama is the first American President to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner, being willing to have American citizens killed merely on his say-so. To my mind, this is very much vigilante justice and murder.

Dan Colman at Open Culture:

Google and the Russian Railways recently joined forces to create a virtual tour of the historic Trans-Siberian railroad. It’s the longest railway in the world, moving from Moscow to Vladivostok, cutting across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. Now, you can take the six-day journey from the comfort of your own home. Through a special page on Google Maps, you can watch video of the trip unfold, as if you were a passenger, and also enjoy classic Russian literature, music and photos along the way. As you roll out of Moscow, start listening to a free audio version of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (in Russian, of course) and ease into the 150 hour trip. How’s that for an epic virtual journey?

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

From a conversation on Twitter yesterday about financial reform:

Brian Beutler: Corker warns that the GOP is screwing up by lying about reg reform:http://bit.ly/d9HXyw

Matt Yglesias: Has "lie like crazy" ever failed as a political strategy?

Bizarrely enough, it looks like the answer might be yes. GOP wordmeister Frank Luntz famously advised Republicans a couple of months ago to attack any financial reform bill as a "bailout" regardless of what was actually in it,and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took that to heart and has been doing exactly that ever since.

Unfortunately for McConnell, it turns out there really is a limit to just how baldly you can lie and get away with it. The Senate reform bill quite plainly bans bailouts, and McConnell found himself under attack from all corners. President Obama called him out on this, PolitiFact labeled his statements flatly false, fellow Republican Bob Corker told reporters McConnell was wrong, and even Mark Halperin refused to dredge up some unlikely way to defend him. And guess what? It might actually be working:

After a week of attacking the pending legislation as a ticket to new taxpayer "bailouts," McConnell is striking a different tone. Monday on the Senate floor, he called for lawmakers to move beyond "personal attacks and questioning each others’ motives" to "fixing the problems in this bill."

And McConnell conceded, after being chastised by no less than President Obama in his weekly radio address, that "both parties agree on this point: no bailouts. In my view, that’s a pretty good start."

…."I’m happy to hear my counterpart, my friend, Senator McConnell talk about the need for more negotiations," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), in remarks on the floor following McConnell’s speech Tuesday. "We don’t stand in the way of that."

Granted, McConnell might just be changing tactics. And his change of heart may be motivated more by politics than the pummelling he took over this. After all, the bailout lie wasn’t really any worse than the death panel lie. The big difference is that healthcare reform was unanimously opposed by conservatives, so nobody minded the lie. Financial reform is a little different, and relentless hostility could pretty easily backfire. That makes lies a little more costly.

Still, we seem to have reached a limit of some kind, and McConnell crossed it. Maybe we should name this the McConnell Line or something so that we know when future politicians have crossed it.

David Lightman and Kevin Hall in McClatchy:

The Senate Agriculture Committee Wednesday approved by 13 to 8 tough new curbs on derivatives, the financial tools that had a big role in worsening the 2008 financial crisis — a bipartisan vote that sent a strong signal that a broader financial regulatory overhaul is within reach.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, joined the 12 committee Democrats in approving the new derivative limits, the first time a Senate Republican has joined with the Democrats in favor of key financial legislation. Other GOP members also talked in more conciliatory terms.

The derivatives vote was the final, and probably the most difficult, stop for the bill before it reaches the full Senate, perhaps as soon as Thursday. It is expected to be added to legislation that would change how financial institutions are regulated.

‘Wall Street’s interests are different from Main Street’s…Wall Street’s interest is to keep inefficient markets. This (legislation) is to provide efficient markets,” said Commodity Futures Trade Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, who worked at Wall Street financial giant Goldman Sachs for 18 years.

The committee measure would bring new transparency to a market that has thrived on private, often asymmetrical information flows that critics believe have worked to the benefit of Wall Street.

It would require that derivatives be traded through clearinghouses, where there is a referee between two private parties. Many derivatives would also have to be traded publicly on an exchange, where their buyers and sellers could be tracked.

Both the clearinghouses and exchanges would trigger far greater reporting to regulators about the trade, giving the government a greater understanding of these murky markets than now exists.

Kevin Hall reporting in McClatchy:

Angered at what it viewed as foot dragging, a special panel charged with getting to the bottom of the nation’s deep financial crisis issued a subpoena Wednesday to compel information from Moody’s Corp.

It was the first such subpoena issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and comes just days before Moody’s CEO Raymond McDaniel Jr. is scheduled to appear before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

In a statement, FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides and Vice Chairman Bill Thomas accused Moody’s of “failing to comply with a request for documents in a timely manner.”

Their subpoena follows a Monday news conference by California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown to announce court action against Moody’s to compel the company to comply with a subpoena Brown issued seven months ago.

Moody’s is under pressure on many fronts for its role in providing the investment grade ratings to complex financial deals backed by U.S. mortgages that proved to be anything but investment grade. These deals helped deepen the nation’s housing crisis, which provoked the broader financial crisis.

As a credit-rating agency, Moody’s enjoys free-speech protections since its business amounts to providing opinions about the credit worthiness of bonds and other securities. But the company is now facing class-action lawsuits, a suit by the state of Connecticut and a probe by the California attorney general because not only did it give an opinion but also consulted on the composition of complex deals it rated.

Legislation moving through Congress will impose tougher rules against this apparent conflict of interest, but the inquiry commission has until December to report back to Congress on the causes of the crisis and wants information now.

The commission had already announced …

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The Economist:

Innovators deserve to be rewarded for their labours. That basic principle underpins patent law, which offers temporary market monopolies to those who come up with useful inventions. But in the case of gene patents America has been too generous in its application of that sensible principle, according to a set of studies published this week in Genetics in Medicine.

Normally, patents are not granted for naturally occurring phenomena or laws of nature. Nonetheless the American patent office controversially allowed firms to patent diagnostics involving single genes. This has permitted firms to create genetic tests that command monopolies over testing for various diseases. The most famous of these tests involve BRCA1 and BRCA2, two genes with variants linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers.

Defenders of such exclusive gene patents remain unbowed by criticism. But chinks are appearing in their armour. In February a government-appointed committee of experts recommended that America liberalise its patent regime for genes, especially for genetic tests “for patient care purposes”. And at the end of March a federal court issued a bombshell ruling: the patents held by Myriad Genetics, a biotechnology firm, on the BRCA genes within the United States are, it said, “unsustainable as a matter of law”.

In addition, the studies published this week suggest that granting exclusive rights over genes may be doing more harm than good. At the request of the American government, a team of researchers from Duke University, led by Robert Cook-Deegan, spent two years examining the country’s markets for genetic tests for diseases ranging from colon cancer to cystic fibrosis. The chief question they sought to answer is whether the intellectual property arrangements involved helped or hindered public access to those tests.

Their conclusion? That the rules hinder access. For example, …

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Very interesting series of articles in Slate by Marie Lee. Part 1 begins:

Question: why are we giving our nine-year-old a marijuana cookie?

Answer: because he can’t figure out how to use a bong.

My son J has autism. He’s also had two serious surgeries for a spinal cord tumor and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us. He can say words, but many of them—"duck in the water, duck in the water"—don’t convey what he means. For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working. He began to bite and to smack the glasses off my face. If you were in that much pain, you’d probably want to hit someone, too.

J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting about J’s tantrums, which were affecting his ability to learn. The teachers were wearing tae kwon do arm pads to protect themselves against his biting. Their solution was to hand us a list of child psychiatrists. Since autistic children like J can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal—Thorazine for kids.

Last year, Risperdal was prescribed for more than 389,000 children—240,000 of them under the age of 12—for bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and other disorders. Yet the drug has never been tested for long-term safety in children and carries a severe warning of side effects. From 2000 to 2004, 45 pediatric deaths were attributed to Risperdal and five other popular drugs also classified as “atypical antipsychotics,” according to a review of FDA data by USA Today. When I canvassed parents of autistic children who take Risperdal, I didn’t hear a single story of an improvement that seemed worth the risks. A 2002 study specifically looking at the use of Risperdal for autism, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed moderate improvements in “autistic irritation”—but if you read more closely, the study followed only 49 children over eight weeks, which, researchers admitted, “limits inferences about adverse effects.”

We met with J’s doctor, who’d read the studies and agreed: No Risperdal or its kin.

The school called us in again. What were we going to do, they asked. As a sometimes health writer and blogger, I was intrigued when a homeopath suggested medical marijuana. Cannabis has long-documented effects as an analgesic and an anxiety modulator. Best of all, it is safe. The homeopath referred me to a publication by the Autism Research Institute describing cases of reduced aggression, with no permanent side effects. Rats given 40 times the psychoactive level merely fall sleep. Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has been researching cannabis for 40 years, says he has yet to encounter a case of marijuana causing a death, even from lung cancer.

A prescription drug called Marinol, which contains a synthetic cannabinoid, seemed mainstream enough to bring up with J’s doctor. I cannot say that with a few little pills, everything turned around. But after about a week of playing around with the dosage, J began garnering a few glowing school reports: “J was a pleasure have in speech class,” instead of “J had 300 aggressions today.”

But J tends to build tolerance to synthetics, and in a few months, we could see the aggressive behavior coming back. One night, I went to the meeting of a medical marijuana patient advocacy group on the campus of the college where I teach. The patients told me that Marinol couldn’t compare to marijuana, the plant, which has at least 60 cannabinoids to Marinol’s one…

Continue reading.

Part 2

Part 3

Check out HealthReform.gov. Lots of good information.