Here are several video responses from White House staff debunking some of the hysteria:

Get the facts about the stability and security you get from health insurance reform | Health Insurance Reform Reality Check

There is also this really great Frank Rich column (here) from the New York Times yesterday that talks about the troubles facing the White House and the need for a less insane GOP.

Conservatives aren’t doing themselves any favors by choosing to act like the brownshirts they’ve accused others of being. o

Necessary Reform, Absurd Attacks:

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

o

This is a good link:

The Health Care Status Quo

From my state of Utah:

“Ending the Hidden Tax – Saving You Money: Right now, providers in Utah lose over $316 million in bad debt which often gets passed along to families in the form of a hidden premium ‘tax’.¹ Health insurance reform will tackle this financial burden by improving our health care system and covering the uninsured, allowing the 41 hospitals² and the 6,588 physicians³ in Utah to better care for their patients.”

And

• Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 101 percent in Utah.⁴
• Household budgets are strained by high costs: 22 percent of middle-income Utah families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care.⁵

Go check out your state stats by clicking here. It’s time for change. We can’t let thugs and hooligans with corporate sponsorship steal this from the U.S.! o

FOOTNOTES:

1. Hospital uncompensated care cost is estimated using a GAO model and the Hospital Cost Reports. Total uncompensated care is computed as hospital uncompensated care divided by 63% (Hadley and Holahan’s study on “The Cost of Care for the Uninsured” for Kaiser in 2004 found that hospitals account for 63% of total uncompensated care). Data expressed in 2009 dollars using Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “National Health Expenditure Data.”↩
2. 2007 AHA Annual Survey Copyright 2009 by Health Forum LLC, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, special data request, March 2009. Available at http://www.ahaonlinestore.com.↩
3. American Medical Association, Physicians Professional Data, year of data 2008, copyright 2008: Special Data Request. ↩
4. Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, AHRQ, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – Insurance Component, 2000, Table II.D.1. Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, AHRQ, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – Insurance Component, 2006, Table X.D. Projected 2009 premiums based on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “National Health Expenditure Data,” available at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/nationalhealthexpenddata/. ↩
5. Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, 2006. ↩

This is fantastic:

How to Think Constructively About Healthcare – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org

Particularly the charts and graphs. He asks good questions as well. Seems to take a middle ground, which I’d love to see more conservatives take.

o

This article on Salon.com is lovely at debunking the talk radio/tea party/scremer cotillion:

Obama wants to kill your grandma | Salon News

I love that the only thing conservatives are offering on a street level is screaming. And look stupid, rabid and hypocritical doing it:

Effective? Sure. Is it going to solve healthcare? Nope. Is it naked corporate shilling? Yes:

Crooks and Liars: When Liberals protest it’s “fascism,” when Conservatives astroturf-protest it’s “democracy”

Think Progress: Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests

And more Maddow:

This is your conservative media end result: shilling for corporations under the guise of “real protest”. It’s astroturf all the way, baby. o

The labor story, part three | dooce®

go. go. go. go.

So proud! o

For those who are not addicted to nerd shit I give you:

From PC World: Apple Tablet Prototype is Real, Nov. Launch Expected, says Report

From AppleInsider.com: Report: Hon Hai to build Apple tablets as soon as September

From Engadget: Apple tablet rumored for launch early next year, for serious this time: seriously

The Register: Apple tablet unveiling brought forward

In short, he rumor mills are going crazy about a potential new product from Apple. I’ve got no juice or insider anything on whether or not Apple is going to release a tablet in the next 1-12 months. However. Let me make a case for where the best use of a tablet that can play HD video (and have iPhone like apps) might be.

Since Marlo came into our lives and I’ve spent countless hours in a position that is not laptop or desktop computing friendly, I’ve spent a lot of time on my iPhone using it as my main computer. During supervised naps (we’re sticklers about SIDS) I’ve been reading Infinite Jest on my Kindle and on the Kindle app for iPhone ¹

I’ve also been reading and approving comments on blurbomat using the WordPress app as well as Tweetie, facebook, Email, etc. The iPhone is perfect for the space between 1 – 3am where Marlo has been on my chest as I burp and soothe her back to sleep. The iPhone is perfect for these moments where my hands are semi-tied. I think a larger screen with a touch interface with a Kindle app on it would make a killer reader, one that I could lay beside me and flip pages as I hold my baby. It would also be awesome for those times when I wasn’t holding a baby.

Back in 1999, I remember the first rush of ReplayTV and Tivo to market and seeing Tivo in operation. I remember having big conversations with colleagues about how you’d be able to pause TV while watching a show like Friends and hit a “Shop” button and your remote control would turn into a mouse while a shopping overlay floated above clothes, furniture, knick knacks and other stuff onscreen. It would take product placement to a whole new level and offset advertising losses from people fast forwarding through traditional ads.

At the same time, WiFi was beginning to appear in consumer form thanks to first generation iBooks/Airport Base Stations and it didn’t take long for me to see that rather than relying on a set top box and clunky remote to navigate an overlay, we’d have our WiFi laptop nearby so that when we paused TV, we could have the overlay sent to the laptop where we’d be able to purchase the shirt that Ross had on or Rachel’s top or the couch in the coffee shop. Except that none of that has come to pass. Yes, we can fast-forward through commercials and pause TV. Cool. But we can’t do much more than use a web browser to schedule recordings on our DVRs in terms of the technologies interacting.

With a tablet from Apple and an AppleTV, things could get interesting in this regard, however, I think we’re a long way from being able to order Dr. House’s shoes while we’ve got the episode paused. At least a long way from using the show itself to provide the linkage to the product.

YouTube has done some very interesting things with tagging and commenting on video content while that content is playing, but we’re still in the beginning of this kind of technology and user fluency.

Currently, “Video on Demand” usually means a timed window to watch something and requires a broadband connection even if you already are getting 2 (or more) HD streams from a satellite or a higher end cable box from your cable company.

However, being able to have a screen big enough to tell me what’s on my TV without having to cover up the content on my TV is somewhere we could be tomorrow. The iPhone and iPod Touch have a slick Remote app that displays art from whatever library is being controlled as well as a great way to search for stuff and play music and video from the connected library. That functionality on a larger screen would be cool and open up a lot of possibilities for new ways to interact with content.

One scenario that pops up quite frequently at our house is a “Where have I seen that actor before?” question that requires a pausing of the program and a laptop or iPhone imdb.com search. Having a tablet talk to my media player and have cast & crew info already in front of me means I can check it during commercial breaks without stopping the action. Which, while super nerdy, would be cool.

The other scenario that is perhaps the best reason for a tablet is this one. Right now, Marlo is sleeping with us in our bed. We’re slowly introducing a standard “this is bedtime” environment to get her to sleep. However, Heather and Marlo usually nod off before I can get to my Daily Show or Colbert Report. I break out my laptop and stream stuff on Hulu, but the laptop/bed posture is sucky. Watching stuff in bed on a laptop isn’t the best. If I had a simple tablet I could hold (which, admittedly, I do with my iPhone, but it’s not the best for watching long form content), I think that is an interesting use case and one that might be far more likely on things like flights and long mass transit commutes; watching video.

So:

• Touch screen tablet would be great for reading books (better than Kindle)
• Touch screen tablet would be better than laptop or iPhone for watching stuff in bed
• Touch screen tablet would be a good way to watch video while flying, traveling or commuting

o

1. By far superior for the footnotes in Infinite Jest ↩.

These were Heather’s birthday roses.

Since Marlo, I haven’t been taking as many photos. I know. Lame. Because I need to be taking about 7 million pictures of her. o

“At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare.’ The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, ‘wasn’t having any of it.’”

LINK: Health Care Realities

“Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will. To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage.

Now Mr. Obama basically proposes using additional regulation and subsidies to make decent insurance available to all of us. That’s not radical; it’s as American as, well, Medicare.”

We’ve got a long few months ahead as we argue about healthcare in the U.S.

Thanks, Torrie, for sending in this link. o

FINALLY, the White House turns it UP:

Health Insurance Consumer Protections

o