HorsesAss.Org

One of the common refrains from those opposing health care reform is that they don’t want a government bureaucrat getting between them and their doctor, but what do an overwhelming majority of physicians prescribe for fixing our nation’s broken health care system…?

Among all the players in the health care debate, doctors may be the least understood about where they stand on some of the key issues around changing the health care system. Now, a new survey finds some surprising results: A large majority of doctors say there should be a public option.

[…]  Most doctors — 63 percent — say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. That’s the position of President Obama and of many congressional Democrats. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they’d like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.

That’s right, nearly three-quarters of doctors support a public option in one form or another, because more than their patients, they know how thoroughly broken the current system is. Support for a public option was “broad and widespread,” occurring at rough equal levels amongst all categories of doctors, and in rural and urban areas alike.

“Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country,” says Keyhani, “we found that physicians, regardless — whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived — the support for the public option was broad and widespread.”

Support was widespread even amongst rank and file members of the AMA, which as an organization has lobbied against a public option. And what explains this surprising consensus?

Keyhani says doctors already have experience with government-run health care, with Medicare. And she says the survey shows that, overall, they like it. “We’ve heard a lot about how the government is standing in between patients and their physician,” Keyhani says. “And what we can see is that physicians support Medicare. So I think physicians have sort of signaled that a public option that’s similar in design to Medicare would be a good way of ensuring patients get the care that they need.”

We trust our doctors to make life and death decisions… to cut us open and reach inside our own bodies to mend or remove our parts. But will we trust our doctors to recommend the best health care reform alternatives?

NOTE:
You can listen to the NPR report below:

[audio:http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2009/09/20090914_atc_10.mp3]

You don’t need to squint too hard between the lines of yesterday’s Alki Foundation endorsement of Dow Constantine to read a pretty damn stinging rebuke of Republican Susan Hutchison, and her qualifications for King County Executive… or rather, lack thereof:

Alki Chairman Michael Luis said the county exec’s race was a difficult one for the group. But Luis said it boiled down to this: “Susan Hutchison remains sort of a political unknown and just never made people totally comfortable that she was ready to take the reins of a complicated government.”

As a result, Constantine, a liberal Democrat, got the nod over Hutchison, a self-described “moderate nonpartisan” who says Constantine is responsible for the county’s financial problems and beholden to special interests.

Constantine is not perceived as a “business-type candidate,” Luis acknowledged. But he is “well known” and could walk into the exec’s job “knowing how the place works.” The general sense among the Alki group was that Hutchison “hadn’t made the case she could do the job,” Luis said.

Ouch. And that’s putting it lightly.

The exec endorsement was indeed a difficult one for Alki, the political arm of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, but not in the sense that the final vote was all that close. This was a group strongly inclined to embrace Hutchison on ideological grounds, and she reportedly entered the process with a contingent of supporters at the Chamber. But after flubbing her interviews, she just couldn’t shake the impression that she was both uninformed and unqualified… and by a long shot.

Luis describes Hutchison as a “political unknown,” but then so is Joe Mallahan, and yet that didn’t stop the pro-business Chamber from endorsing the most pro-business of the two mayoral finalists. But when forced to pick between the liberal Constantine—who recently led the fight against Glacier Northwest’s Maury Island gravel mine—and the Cato-spouting, Discovery-Institute-board-sitting ex-newsreader Hutchison, pragmatism trumped ideology, and Alki members felt they had no choice but to endorse the only candidate who is professionally prepared to actually do the job.

Kinda ironic for Hutchison to lose the Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement when a central theme of her campaign has been her promise to declare the county “open for business.”

Hutchison has also pitched herself as the only candidate able to bring all parties to the table, yet it’s Constantine who is managing to put together a coalition of business, labor and environmental supporters, while Hutchison has largely distinguished herself through her union-baiting. If Hutchison does have any consensus building skills, they’ve mostly been utilized building a consensus for her opponent.

The Columbian editorial board just goes off on the BIAW Clark County Commission for delaying implementation of new stormwater rules for fat cat political donor/developers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtiQkRbBkUw[/youtube]

Peace in the Valley and thank you to all the members of the armed forces, especially those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation in Afghanistan is particularly worrisome, and our thoughts are with you.

It looks like this is going to be a busy week for me. There are a number of drug war related stories happening across the state that I want to follow, but I definitely want to address this editorial that appeared on the Tacoma News-Tribune editorial page last week. Specifically this part:

California was already becoming notorious for effectively legalizing recreational dope-smoking through its extremely lax medical marijuana law. Washingtonians were offered their own loophole-riddled marijuana initiative in 1997, and they resoundingly rejected it.

The one they did pass the next year, Initiative 692, was explicitly designed to forbid the California-style dispensaries that operate like commercial marijuana shops. Its sponsors touted its safeguards, including a provision that let a “primary caregiver” provide limited amounts of marijuana to a patient under conditions that precluded drug-dealing.

The key language required a caregiver to “possess no more marijuana that is necessary for the patient’s personal, medical use” and “be the primary caregiver to only one patient at any one time.”

The meaning seems crystal clear: No multi-customer operations. But McCrea and other dispensary advocates have seized on those last four words. In their view, it sounds like, “any one time” means any time a buyer walks through the door.

Accept that logic, and Washington takes a long step toward the wide-open drug-dealing now rampant in California, where some compliant doctors hang out their shingles near dispensaries and pass out marijuana cards to anyone with a vaguely plausible physical complaint.

There’s one point I can’t argue. Marijuana is essentially legal in California right now. The list of qualifying conditions that a person can obtain it for in that state is long enough that any recreational user can become a medical user. Depression, insomnia, whatever, there are doctors throughout the state that will – for a fee, of course! – certify you as a medical marijuana patient. And just about anyone who has used marijuana recreationally discovers that it has some side medical benefits as well, so it’s not hard to tell a doctor, “Yeah, it helps me sleep”, or “Man, it really gets rid of my stomach aches”.

People can complain all they want that this full-scale legalization happened under the guise of ensuring that sick people can have access to a medicinal plant that they find extremely valuable, but that’s irrelevant now. What we see now is that nothing really changed. All of the reasons that were given for not simply legalizing it for recreational use in the first place weren’t valid. Marijuana is legal there, and it has made no difference in how that state functions (or malfunctions). We haven’t seen any huge spikes in use, and in fact the percentages of teenagers who use marijuana in California have been dropping sharply since the medical marijuana laws were put in place.

That point aside, the major flaw with the News-Tribune editorial is that it just assumes that implementing a dispensary system in Washington will turn us into California. There’s no basis for that observation. Washington has a far more limited set of ailments that allow a person to become an authorized patient. I could easily become a medical marijuana cardholder in California, but would not be able to here. Without that long list of accepted ailments, recreational users in Washington would still have to obtain marijuana from criminal organizations. And for reasons that make absolutely no sense to anyone, this appears to be the way that the idiots at the Tacoma News-Tribune want it.

In all of the arguing over the law and hyperbole about what’s happening in California, it’s the folks who use medical marijuana for truly serious ailments who are once again forgotten. Today, I spoke on the phone with the woman at the center of the Grant County case, Rosa Dossett. Living in a very rural part of the state, obtaining supplies of marijuana is not a trivial task, so she relied on her son to grow for her. Her son, David Hagar (who Dossett says does not even use marijuana himself), has been raided twice by Grant County police (he’s also accused of theft). Grant County police also allegedly told Dossett that even with her authorization, she’s still not allowed to use marijuana. If that happened as she said, the police simply lied to her.

Dossett is a cancer survivor and suffers from osteo-arthritis. Her main medical use for the drug now is to manage the constant pain from osteo-arthritis. Unlike a lot of other drugs, the effectiveness of a pain reliever is pretty clear to people. If a pain reliever doesn’t work, you know damn well that it doesn’t work. That’s why I’m always amazed when I see people questioning the efficacy of this drug. Dossett has found that she prefers marijuana to drugs like Hydrocodone because it’s natural, more effective, less chemically addictive, and it can be grown for far less money than what prescription pharmaceuticals cost. Unfortunately, the language of the medical marijuana law allows a judge to decide whether pain patients can use marijuana instead of a pharmaceutical alternative.

It shouldn’t be up to judges or the police to decide which medicines we choose to use. That should be left up to doctors and patients. Some of the leading researchers when it comes to using marijuana for medicinal purposes are based right here at the University of Washington. Here’s a recent study from the Journal of Opioid Management by six UW researchers on the numerous studies showing the efficacy of marijuana. The question of whether or not people in this state with a legitimate medical need should have access to this plant for medical uses has been settled in the minds of the electorate for over ten years. It’s the responsibility of both the Legislature and the Governor to finally translate that legitimacy into a system that works.

UPDATE: It appears that SeattleJew decided to check in from his land of merry make-believe in an attempt to discredit the authors of the Journal of Opioid Management report linked above. One of the researchers, Dr. Sunil Aggarwal has responded with a comment here listing out references to 33 separate clinical trials that have demonstrated the value of marijuana as medicine.

UPDATE 2: Attorney Douglas Hiatt emails me to say that the law does not allow a judge to substitute their medical opinion for a doctor’s, and he expects the court ruling I linked to above to be overturned.

Last week, Central Washington University professor, conservative writer and state Republican executive board member Mathew Manweller had a guest editorial published in the The Seattle Times in which he argued that Republicans should not target Blue Dogs in the 2010 election. It hardly seemed like a controversial idea, since Blue Dogs support the Republicans so much anyhow.

And at any rate, Manweller’s piece was a Republican strategery/tactical debate, so I didn’t pay much attention. Whatever, they’ll do what they’ll do.

But it seems that some on the right have um, taken offense. Like some dude posting at Red State named Martin Knight, who thinks that Manweller might be a Democratic plant.

He’s also an idiot, notwithstanding his obvious self-regard as some sort of intellectual. Or a Democratic plant. I don’t believe there is any other explanation for what he’s proposing that the Republican Party do to itself in 2010.

Notice the “some kind of intellectual” dig. Nice! Now they’re even turning on conservative professors. Funny how anti-intellectualism gets out of hand, isn’t it, Professor Manweller? The title even calls Manweller a “sleeper agent.”

Considering some of Manwellers embarrassing right wing antics, like the time he called supporters of the minimum wage “dumber than a post,” it’s pretty darn funny that there’s a little internecine warfare going on at the WSRP.

Why do I think it’s internecine conflict? Because the attacks against Manweller are being cheered by fellow WSRP executive board member Nansen Malin of Pacific County, who at last sighting was relentlessly attacking Brian Baird because he wouldn’t have a town hall in her living room.

Malin is the “Queen of the Twitterverse,” you know. Professor Manweller better get himself a Twitter account pronto, if he doesn’t already have one, and start tweeting back immediately, because Malin has over 100,000 followers, and the ones that aren’t spambots seem pretty pissed. Sure, it’s hard to make an intellectual argument using 140 characters, and once you use up the obligatory five characters required to type in “ACORN” you’re down to 135, but you can always link to stuff. I’m looking forward to the debate.

PS: I’ll be sitting on the patio.

Seriously, I have proof that I am sitting on the patio.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TsaHmtgfA[/youtube]

See, this is what Republicans are protecting when they oppose healthcare reform.

Speaking of which, more than 400 caregivers of seniors and people with disabilities will be rallying this afternoon outside Cigna’s downtown Seattle office, demanding that Cigna end its opposition to a public option.  Demonstrators will meet at City Hall Plaza, 600 4th AVE, and then march to Cigna’s offices at 700 5th AVE.

With the news media’s credibility at an all time low, either the press needs to do a better job of reporting, or it needs a little PR of its own:

Just 29 percent of the 1,506 adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press between July 22-26 said news organizations generally get the facts straight.

Sixty-three percent said news stories are often inaccurate, up from 34 percent in a 1985 study, Pew said.

Whatever the reason for this growing credibility gap, I’m guessing the best solution isn’t to cut back newsrooms even further. But then, I’m just some dumb blogger, so what do I know?

Back in June, I wrote about Change – a medical marijuana dispensary operating in Spokane. Last week they were busted and the dispensary was shut down. A group called the Spokane Regional Dispensary Coalition is planning a protest at the Spokane County Courthouse this morning.

The situation in Spokane is just another exhibit in the case of how our legislature dropped the ball when they had a chance to put together a set of regulations that allowed for qualifying patients to obtain medical marijuana. Patients in Spokane once again have to rely on street dealers.

The dispensary owners are challenging the part of the law that states that a caregiver can only have one patient at a time. I don’t see them succeeding on this point in court. It’s the law that needs to change.

I have the power to make stupid people say stupid things.

Sometime last night vandals spray painted swastikas on the sides of two Seward Park synagogues, on the driveway of one, and on the sidewalk in front of several neighboring houses. Seattle Police are investigating the graffiti as an act of malicious harassment and property damage, and encourages anybody with information to call their Bias Crimes Unit at 206-233-3898.

I live about a block from both synagogues, Sephardic Bikur Holim and Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath, and while I don’t remember another incident quite like this in the 12 years I’ve been in the neighborhood, as my own comment threads regularly demonstrate, anti-semitism is alive and well around these parts. Still, this attack seems oddly random, with nothing obvious in the news at the moment to serve as an immediate motivation.

That said, since history has shown that folks don’t need any particular reason to hate Jews, I guess it doesn’t take any particular motivation for these same folks to express their hatred.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Bucharest, Romania. Wes also found this Wikipedia page for the pictured monastery.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

I know a lot of folks around here are pretty excited about the Huskies’ big win over Idaho yesterday, and plenty more are looking forward to the Seahawks’ opening game this afternoon. But for me, the big sporting event of the week was the opening of my daughter’s soccer season, where she and her teammates walloped their opponents 9-0.

Go Supremes!

Watching a bunch of little girls play soccer (well, at 12 to 13, they’re not all that little anymore) is one of the unexpected pleasures of parenthood, but it’s also one of the rarely considered amenities of city life. My daughter’s team practices twice a week at the grass field atop I-90’s approach to the Mt. Baker tunnel, and plays their home games on the neatly turfed and lighted field at Genesee. And during the course of the season they’ll play at half a dozen other fields around the city… all of them built and maintained with our tax dollars.

The anti-tax/anti-government crowd loves to complain about elected officials stealing their money, but in pushing forth their bathtub-sized government agenda, they also love to ignore the many big and little things that government does to improve our quality of life. For example, without a government willing and able to acquire and maintain the land, there would be no public play fields in Seattle, as the demands of the real estate market simply would not allow it. Sure, a handful of private schools might have amenities of their own, but these would be available only to the rare few who could afford it, rather than the thousands of children and adults who enjoy Seattle Parks and Recreation facilities everyday.

There is a reason Seattle voters approve nearly every local levy that comes our way: we want and enjoy the services and amenities these levies provide, and while we all have our quibbles, we generally believe we are getting value for our dollars compared to the alternative. There are simply some things on which we can’t rely on the free market to provide… and my daughter’s soccer game was certainly one of them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGv_d0mk6Q[/youtube]

It’s an open thread, which I don’t know how to say in German.

I just had to watch Glenn Beck here in the 11 AM Pacific Hour, because some in the right-wing Twitterverse were all abuzz about a “big announcement.”

Beck complained about accusations that he is a McCarthyist, because he’s “not a Senator” and doesn’t have subpoena power, which of course is utterly true and utterly beside the point as he and the rest of the right continue their smear campaigns. Beck and the right have decided to repeat ad nauseam that there is some kind of secret “socialist” agenda at work by defining those who disagree with him as commies or whatever, so his crocodile tears are pretty transparent.

Beck then gave a rambling, nearly twenty minute speech in which he essentially compared Washington, D.C. to the swine flu and called for a “quarantine” of the city. I use the qualifier “essentially” because Beck goes all over the place in his little talks, earnestly professing his love for country and insisting that it’s not about partisanship, when in fact Beck has become the de facto leader of the kind of insane right wing partisanship that was last dominate when Bill Clinton was president.

It was all pretty awesome, with Beck standing in front of a big-screen graphic as the swine-flu-corruption disease spread across a map of the U.S, with Beck asking the computer controller to go back and start at the beginning of the outbreak for dramatic effect. He’s standing in front of a graphic! OMG!

Beck really wasn’t clear about his proposed “quarantine” of the seat of government, although at one point he seemed to be repeating something like “nothing in, no legislation out.” So it appears he’s not actually calling for a physical quarantine of D.C. Whew!

Then Beck moved into something of an Elmer Gantry act, promising redemption to members of both parties who would expose corruption, and asking for 56 “re-Founders” of the Republic, the same number as originally signed the Declaration of Independence. I’d imagine he might just get that number, seeing there are at least that number of far-right Republicans left in Congress who would likely have no compunction about hitching their wagon up to Beck.

Beck hit the corruption theme hard, naming mostly Democrats and liberal organizations but also at least one Republican. Beck promised his viewers (always leave them wanting more!) that on Monday he would tell members of Congress how to become a re-Founder, and promising to forgive members if they did the right thing. It’s a fascinating amalgam of populist rhetoric, Christian-like redemption talk and high-tech blinky lights that Beck uses.

Oh, it’s worth noting that Beck delivered his emotional appeal against corruption on the Rubert Murdoch-owned Fox Noise Channel, on the day that the 9-12 event Beck created was being sponsored by the following earnest grass roots organizations: (admittedly selective list, you can click through to see all of them)

Freedom Works
National Taxpayers Union
Grassfire.Org
The Club for Growth
The Ayn Rand Center
NARLO
Americans for Tax Reform
Senate Conservatives Fund
etc.

So yeah, corruption is bad, Glenn. Definitely bad.