Turns out Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on Massachusetts Health Care Reform (of course). In particular, the Outcomes section has some good numbers.

There is a “safety net” that is supposed to help low income residence pay their out-of-pocket expenses. To do that, it reimburses the providers for copays, deductibles, etc. Apparently, the payouts from the state have gone down recently. That’s probably part of the larger budget shortfall, but it points to a bigger problem with the system paying for itself (which it certainly isnt).

All in all, I’m glad that Massachusetts tried something. But I’m not sure it’s a good model for the rest of the country. And I certainly don’t think we have enough data to make a judgement yet.

At our annual 4th of July gathering, the topic of healthcare reform came up and I was asked about the state of the Massachusetts health insurance initiative. Since the national healthcare plan is looking a lot like ours - individual mandate, subsidized plans for lower-income families, tax on small businesses who don’t offer insurance (though that one was removed from by Romney) - it seemed like I should dig up some info on that. So here are a few quick facts and links to recent Boston Globe articles on the subject.

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There are some things about President Obama’s track record so far (vast as it is) that concern me: legal stances on state secrets and habeus corpus, questionable handling of the economic situation, and possibly accountability for torture (I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet).

But one man can’t be all things to all people, and there is one area where Obama has been reminding me of why I was so excited about him in the first place: science.

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Ben Goldacre has released a chapter that was originally missing from his book Bad Science. It’s about Matthias Rath, AIDS “dissident”. It’s well worth a read. I have not read Dr. Goldacre’s book (I hope to at some point), but I do read his blog regularly and it is always worth a read, as well. A brief taste:

The United Nations has condemned Rath’s adverts as “wrong and misleading”. “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence,” said Eric Goemaere, head of Médecins sans Frontières SA, a man who pioneered anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa. Rath sued him.

The whole thing is below the fold.

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So let’s look at this “center right” thing.

I’m no statistician. I’m no political expert. But I can read a map and I have a passing familiarity with numbers. So on we go:

In the wake of the election, you heard a number of people say, essentially “Obama has to watch his ass ’cause America is a center-right country”. Some others pushed back on that idea (Jon Stewart threw it back at O’Reilly recently), but lots of people are still saying it. Based on what, I don’t know.

If only we had some way of measuring the leanings of the entire country on political issues… Wait, didn’t we just have a big-ass election? Boy, that’s convenient.

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In a piece for Salon, Can Republicans come back from their “thumpin’”?, Thomas Schaller talked to three conservative experts about the future of the Republican party. Their responses revealed (unintentionally) why the Republican party isn’t coming back unless someone a hell of a lot smarter comes along fast. Some gems:

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I have taken the liberty of creating a list of stuff that Obama/congress should address as quickly as possible in order to undo the seeping, sucking, craphole we’ve been pushed into by the still president:

Foreign
Get out of Iraq
Fix Afghanastan
Close Guantanamo (and charge/try the detainees)
Stop torturing people

Domestic
End domestic surveillance
Put science back in the EPA
Put science back in science (see NASA, Fish & Wildlife Service, FDA, etc.)

This is just the stuff that needs to get done to get us back to square (I’m not even gonna talk about the economy, healthcare,  or public education). Not necessarily in order of priority. Feel free to suggest additions.

But it’s finally here. And it feels good. I’m looking forward, years from now, to telling people that I voted for this guy.

PZ Myers has a good post on Pharyngula about a recent Palin speech in which she simultaneously called for more scientific research and demonstrated her complete ignorance of it. I’m tired of politicians decrying spending on research that to them sounds silly but to intelligent people is reasonable, even vital. Just shut up and let the people do the work that’s going to save your life someday.

Sarah Palin: Ignorant and anti-science

This past week, On the Media did a segment on the real-time feedback on CNN during the debates. They spoke to Sam Schechner, media reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

He spoke about the effect of audience reaction on the opinion of observers - that our opinion of something is affected by seeing the reaction to it by others. I suppose this isn’t too surprising, but it is pretty interesting. Dr. Steven Fein of Williams College has been studying this for years, apparently. He’s documented the significant correlation between people’s opinions of a candidate in a debate and the audience’s reaction to them. If the audience likes a candidate, you are far more likely to like them, too (and vice versa). This applies to CNNs dial group squigglies.

On the Media did a nice job of pointing out that a) the 24-person panel of undecided voters is statistically useless and b) the visual of their dial reaction will influence people watching CNN at home. Underscoring that political opinion is a social dynamic, not a rational determination.

Schechner’s article in the WSJ. Is an interesting read, and has a good summary of Dr. Fein’s work.

The paper about the 1984 debate is Social Influence on Political Judgments: The Case of Presidential Debate (Political Psychology, Volume 28 Issue 2, Mar 2, 2007). (Not free).

And if you’re not listening to On the Media, you really should be:
iTunes Podcast
On the Media web site