Tag: Premium

Readers continue to debate the topic:

Private insurance companies will fight tooth and nail to deny any surgery performed by a plastic surgeon. I just put down $8,000 of my own and raised $4,500 from friends and family to pay for a breast reduction that I’ve been denied three times in 10 years by three different insurance companies. And ask parents how hard cleft palate surgeries are to get covered. In a time where skyrocketing costs are cutting into insurance profits, they will do whatever they can get away with to reduce their payments to providers. If they can call it cosmetic (in my case this determination was done with no transparency by a board of non-physicians) they can deny it, and the popular opinion of plastic surgery gives them cover.

Personally I think it all comes back to how fucked up our health paradigm is. We treat illness instead of treating for wellness. We ask whether you are sick enough to need intervention instead of asking what wellness would look like for you and trying to get there. Plastic surgeons don’t really fit the paradigm, with one notable exception: reconstruction after mastectomy. Unpack that one alongside trans top surgery and tell me you don’t see a double standard.

Another has a very different perspective:

Andrew, I find it hard to believe you (a conservative?) could even remotely consider transgender surgery a “health condition” that society should consider worthy of financial support. Never mind the lazy (but valid) arguments about where the trans justification leads us: “I really feel that I was born a big dick kind of guy; unfortunately, my testosterone levels were a bit low during puberty. My HMO should pay for my enlargement surgery.” We need to narrow the definition of healthcare, not expand it, in order to ensure basic coverage for everyone.

Many readers voice their skepticism:

Having watched that video I was strongly impacted by the imagery and claims of higher rates of birth defects, especially the claim that the levels are 14 times that of those that were observed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. So I decided to look for estimates on what those levels would be, and found that the level hadn’t changed in those Japanese cities. Here’s the link I found, which includes sources in scientific literature. I’m a bit baffled why Democracy Now would relate these.

The soldier’s story could have been true though, as a heavy metal uranium is very toxic, especially to the kidneys. He might have inhaled a lot of it. (Full disclosure: I work as a research scientist in nuclear fusion computations.)

Another:

Seriously, whenever you see the name Dahr Jamail, you need to be very skeptical of the assertions that follow. Briefly, Jamail has blamed  depleted uranium for health problems without any evidence at all. But it’s not hard to find actual research linking birth defects in Fallujah to the more prosaic but plenty nasty elements lead and mercury. “Uranium” and “Hiroshima” probably get more pageviews than plain old lead, but I would think that these recent victims of our past warfare would be better served by accurate reporting than by an anti-nuclear ideologue’s sensationalism.

Another wonders:

Is there really an increase in birth defects, or just an increase in reporting?

Do Iraquis traditionally just kill babies with birth defects, as is true in many parts of the world, but have recently publicized the defects for some reason? What mechanism of action is proposed to explain these effects?

There is natural uranium virtually everywhere; it’s one of the three NORM materials (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials) that occur in rocks and soil worldwide, a product of the earth being formed of material produced in a supernova explosion more than 4.5 billion years ago.  Everyone is exposed to it every day, more so in certain locations than in others.  Depleted uranium (DU) is actually only very slightly radioactive; the uranium decay products (which are themselves much more radioactive than the uranium itself) have been removed in the uranium mining/production/enrichment process and only slowly grow back in.

If there are birth defects occurring at 14 times the rates observed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then it’s not because the DU is radioactive – folks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were truly HEAVILY exposed to radiation.    If Fallujah itself has a high rate of birth defects, which has not been established, then why?  Why not other sites where DU munitions are tested?  For example, are there high rates of birth defects in the communities surrounding Fort Irwin, California, or other areas where DU munitions are commonly tested in the continental US?  How have the “tracers” who linked the putative increase in birth defects to DU, eliminated chemical contamination from other sources as the cause of the birth defects?

If birth defects are indeed caused by DU, perhaps it’s because of the chemical action of uranium somehow interfering with development (rather than due to radiation, which truly is not an issue with DU).  In which case, testing on mice or other mammals would show up that effect quickly.   The only way to learn anything in medicine is by randomized, double-blind testing.  I’m not proposing testing on people, of course, but on animal surrogates.  Why isn’t Democracy Now advocating for such testing?  Could it be that their “issue” is really anti-war activism, rather than concern for the Iraqui citizenry?

It’s possible to be anti-war without being unscientific.  Of course, agitprop is more effective than reason; quoting Mark Twain, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Adam Alter explores the importance of colors in online dating profiles:

Several years ago, Andrew Elliot, a professor at the University of Rochester, and his colleagues began by asking heterosexual male undergraduates to spend five seconds looking at the photo of a young female stranger, and to rate her attractiveness on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all attractive) to 9 (extremely attractive). All of the undergrads saw the same woman wearing the same clothes—but the experimenters randomly changed the color of the thick border that framed the photo, alternating among white, red, blue, and green. …

Across five experiments, the results were always the same.

The male undergrads who rated the photo bordered in red, found the woman more attractive, were more interested in asking her on a date, and willing to spend more money during the date. The researchers were also careful to show that the effect was specifically tied to sexual interest. They showed, for example, that when heterosexual women rated the attractiveness of the same female stranger, they weren’t swayed by the border’s color. In addition, men didn’t believe the red-bordered woman was more likable, kind, or intelligent—only that she was more attractive and sexually appealing.

Judge William Sylvester recently ruled that if Aurora mass-shooter James Holmes wants to plead insanity, he has to undergo narcoanalysis, “in which defendants are injected with drugs to lower their inhibitions and presumably be more willing to tell the truth about their alleged crimes under questioning by prosecutors.” Vaughan Bell delves into the history of the dubious practice:

This was born in the 1920s where the gynaecologist Robert House noticed that women who were given scopolamine to ease the birth process seemed to go into a ‘twilight state’ and were more pliant and talkative. House decided to test this on criminals and went about putting prisoners under the influence of the drug while interviewing them as a way of ‘determining innocence or guilt’. Encouraged by some initial, albeit later recanted, confessions House began to claim that it should be used routinely in police investigations.

This probably would have died a death as a dubious medical curiosity had Time magazine not run an article in their 1923 edition entitled “The Truth-Compeller” about House’s theory – making him and the ‘truth drug’ idea national stars. These approaches became militarised: firstly as ‘narcoanalysis’ was used to treat traumatised soldiers in the World War Two, and secondly as it was taken up by the CIA in the Cold War as a method for interrogation and became a centrepiece of the secret Project MKUltra.

Bell’s conclusion:

There is no evidence that ‘narcoanalysis’ actually helps in any way, shape or form, and at moderate to high doses, some of the drugs may actually impede memory or make it more likely that the person misremembers. I suspect that the actual result of the bizarre ruling in the ‘Colorado shooter’ case will just be that psychiatrists will be able to give a potentially psychotic suspect a simple anti-anxiety drug without the resulting evidence being challenged.

Update from a reader:

The order from the Colorado Court does not state that James Holmes will be given a truth serum; it states “It shall also be permissible to conduct a narcoanalytic interview of you with such drugs as are medically appropriate”.  See item #13 here (pdf) . This part of the judge’s order simply quotes verbatim Colorado Statute 16-8-106(3)(b). The judge and the statute leave it up to the physicians to determine what drugs are “medically appropriate”.  I think the mainstream media, including Time magazine, which you cited as your source, has sensationalized this order and read something into it that it does not say.  If in fact the physicians do decide that it would be medically appropriate to administer a “truth serum” (and I doubt they will), they will still have to be justify to the court that their procedure meets the Daubert Test of being reliable and accepted by the scientific community.

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Readers relay a few customs from other countries:

Just wanted to add my two cents to this thread. In a lot of Hispanic cultures like Cuba (where I’m from), you take both your mother’s maiden name and your dad’s name. It’s not hyphenated – you just kind of have two last names. The assumption though is that when your son gets married, his wife will take only the father’s name. However, even if your kids ultimately don’t take this approach, I like the idea of the double last name. If your concern about taking your spouse’s last name has to do with whether your name will live on, you can give your kids both names and then both parents have, on average, more than 20 years to convince the kid to pass on one or the other’s last name.

Another reader:

Iranian women, on the whole, do not change their surnames after marriage. By the way, Happy Persian New Year (Norooz Mobarak!)

Another:

Québec long ago came up with the answer.

By law, no names change in marriage. All women keep their own name.  If you want to change your name, that is a different legal function – a legal name change, like anyone else who wants to change their identity. When I first moved here, I did not know this, and hearing all the politicians and their wives introduced I thought “Is everyone shacking up?” But Québec – which for 40 years has had some of the most progressive civil law in North America – was an early bulwark of feminism, and for pure equality and consistency’s sake this makes logical sense.

Update from a reader:

I’m not sure your reader from Quebec is highlighting anything different than in the US. A name change is not some integrated part of a marriage in any State that I’m aware of. I happened to get my marriage license in North Carolina (hardly a bastion of progressive civil rights) and there was nothing about a name change included. We just filled out the paperwork and mailed it in. There was no assumption (other than culturally) that her name would change and we didn’t have to opt-out of anything to prevent it from happening. In fact, from what my friends have told me it’s quite arduous to get your name legally changed.

A name change is a formal legal function independent of marriage here just as in Quebec and I’m sure it’s been that way for plenty of decades. Sorry to rain on his holier-than-thou parade.

But another clarifies:

Here in Quebec, women are not allowed to take their husbands last name. My wife and I married last summer and though I had no expectation that she should take my name, she would have liked to on account of her own conflicted feelings about her family name. Since 1981, however, Quebec law has specifically prohibited it, although one can apply to change it after a few years if one can provide evidence that one is commonly known by another name.

Not surprisingly, I see a higher percentage of hyphenated names here than elsewhere. Although there are many great things about living in Quebec, this refusal to accept people’s choice of whether to change their names or not reflects the heritage of the French nanny state that I could certainly do without.

Beinart thinks Obama’s speech today was “a great, even profound, speech”:

It was a great speech because Obama rejected the Jewish right’s endless rhetoric about Israel having “no partner.” He defended Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, and told Israelis what their own security officials know: that Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, at political risk to themselves, have in recent years helped save countless Israeli lives. It was a great speech because Obama asked Israelis to “look at the world” through the eyes of a Palestinian child who sees her parents controlled and humiliated by a foreign army. Contrast that to Benjamin Netanyahu, who when referring to the Palestinians’ “plight” and how much “they have suffered,” in his 2000 book, A Durable Peace, put those phrases in quotation marks, as if to suggest that real Palestinian suffering does not exist.

Yossi Klein Halevi calls it perhaps ” the most passionate Zionist speech ever given by an American president”:

Of course, his embrace had an explicit message for Israelis: Don’t give up on the dream of peace and don’t forget that the Palestinians deserve a state just as you do. But as the repeated ovations from the politically and culturally diverse audience revealed, these are messages that Israelis can hear when couched in affection and solidarity. After four years of missed signals, Obama finally realized that Israelis respond far more to love than to pressure.

Elliott Abrams remains convinced that Israel has no partner for peace:

Obama was most persuasive when discussing American-Israeli bonds, and least persuasive in his descriptions of the Arab Middle East. In his remarks today he pictured an Arab world, and a Palestinian political system, yearning for peace with Israel through negotiated compromises. This ignores the vast ocean of anti-Semitism in the Arab world, and the inculcation of hatred of Jews and Israel in generation after generation of Arabs—including Palestinians. And it ignores the rising tide of Islamism in the region, which threatens to engulf all those political figures who would really like a compromise peace. The Arab world Obama described is a place far more desirous of, and far closer to, peace with Israel than the one Israelis actually see around them.

Goldblog was at the scene:

I spoke to several members of the audience, who confirmed my impression that Israelis just wanted to know that he liked them. It’s hard to understand this from the U.S., but the idea really did take hold here that Obama genuinely hated Israel. So this whole trip is a bit of a revelation for ordinary Israelis. On the other hand, I’ve run into people who were surprised President Obama took it too strong to Bibi (one conservative-leaning Israeli I just ran into suggested that Obama was interfering in Israeli politics as payback for Netanyahu’s alleged meddling in the American election).

Chait’s analysis:

Here is the progression of his speech. Having demonstrated empathy for Israel, Obama then asked Israelis to feel empathy for Palestinians. Of course there is only so much Obama can do. He can’t make Netanyahu negotiate peace, nor can he make Palestinians accept one. But as much as he could do with a speech, Obama did today. He probably wishes he gave it a long time ago.

iFixit’s Kyle Wiens makes the case that being locked out of our technology is an issue that goes beyond smartphones:

Who owns our stuff? The answer used to be obvious. Now, with electronics integrated into just about everything we buy, the answer has changed. We live in a digital age, and even the physical goods we buy are complex. Copyright is impacting more people than ever before because the line between hardware and software, physical and digital has blurred. The issue goes beyond cellphone unlocking, because once we buy an object — any object — we should own it. We should be able to lift the hood, unlock it, modify it, repair it … without asking for permission from the manufacturer. …

This isn’t an issue that only affects the digerati; farmers are bearing the brunt as well. Kerry Adams, a family farmer in Santa Maria, California, recently bought two transplanter machines for north of $100,000 apiece. They broke down soon afterward, and he had to fly a factory technician out to fix them. Because manufacturers have copyrighted the service manuals, local mechanics can’t fix modern equipment. And today’s equipment — packed with sensors and electronics — is too complex to repair without them. That’s a problem for farmers, who can’t afford to pay the dealer’s high maintenance fees for fickle equipment. Adams gave up on getting his transplanters fixed; it was just too expensive to keep flying technicians out to his farm. Now, the two transplanters sit idle, and he can’t use them to support his farm and his family.

“There is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be. If our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out,” – the Growth and Opportunity Project report on the problems facing the GOP.

In the latest polling, 81 percent of those under 30 favored marriage equality. I was shocked by the number, but shouldn’t have been. What we can all forget is that this is the first generation who went through their childhood and teens knowing that civil marriage was an option for gay couples. That generation included gay kids and teens who, for the first time, could see an integrated future for themselves in their own families and society. I have no doubt this has made that generation the least fucked-up, sanest gay generation in history – seeing from the get-go a real and equal and dignified future for themsleves. And their greater self-confidence and self-esteem has been infectious. Their straight peers know them and their orientation and simply find it baffling that they would be denied what every heterosexual has always accepted as a given in their own lives.

That can only mean that, for the young generation, and all those who follow it in the future, the GOP’s aggressive stance and brutal rhetoric against marriage equality simply identifies them as bigots. Some may not be. But that is what they will be seen to be. The report does not advocate changing policy on marriage equality. But I think the premise that it can win the next generation simply by ignoring the question is untenable.

Which is to say, I would go a little further than the always insightful Tom Edsall, who wrote:

There is at least one crucial problem that the authors, all members of the establishment wing of the party, address only peripherally and with kid gloves: the extreme conservatism of the party’s primary and caucus voters — the people who actually pick nominees.

The over-60, predominantly white, Fox News watching, fundamentalist base cannot budge an inch on gays. Because it’s a religious and not a political position. And so it may soon be a truly fateful day for the GOP: drop the anti-gay policies or become the even angrier old white man party.

How amazing that marriage equality, once wielded by Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove as their key weapon in winning Ohio and the presidency in 2004, now threatens to kill the GOP as a national brand. With every year that passes, every attack on gays is now felt by growing numbers of their own family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors. There’s a multiplier effect here. And gerry-mandering has enabled the GOP to control the House without ever having to grapple with those voters.

If I were Karl Rove, I’d be praying for Anthony Kennedy to write the gay Loving vs Virginia. It would take the issue off the political table for good, and leave them a nice juicy judicial tyranny argument instead. But a mixed verdict – say one that allows for federal recognition of civil marriages in the nine states and DC that has them, and that mandates that civil unions with all the substantive benefits of civil marriage must be called marriage – would keep the issue alive, violate no federalist principles, and leave the GOP’s fundamentalist intransigence in place – as a dead weight around their necks as they try to stay afloat.

Watching ideologues confront reality is always entertaining for a real conservative. But it’s going to be excruciating for today’s Republicans.

(Photo: Getty images.)

A reader quotes me:

This feels like an academic debate. But it isn’t. I have blood on my hands. However many times I try to wash them, the blood will not come off.

Can you and all your fellow pundits spare us the self-flagellation about Iraq? I say this as a former Army officer who served in west Baghdad just after the civil war there cooled off. We get it. We know what a charlie-foxtrot it was. We also know we need to constructively talk about the lessons learned and strategic and policy failures. Folks like Tom Ricks and Rajiv Chandresekaran are doing that quite well right now. I would much rather have Paul Wolfowitz (see Bacevich) come to terms with Iraq than you give us your very own “hathos alert”.

Another piles on:

Let your self-importance go already! Blame the blamable, not the lemmings. You are a blog writer. You comment. You don’t wage wars. You fell for their BS. Nothing more.

Another takes issue with the visual part of the post:

Once again with the pictures of dead children. Was it absolutely necessary to post one of a child with his scalp tearing forward and a pacifier in his grandfather’s hand?  I paid up my $20 to get my regular dose of the Dish, but I cannot stand it when you post these pictures of dead children.  What is the purpose?  Sensationalism?  Trying to make the point that the war in Iraq was wrong?  You can do that with the many essays you have written, without including the broken bodies of dead children. Please. The next time you think you will … don’t.

Another doesn’t go quite that far:

I’ve emailed about this on a number of occasions and I know you have a very “if you don’t like it, stop reading my blog” attitude sometimes but, as you are a clearly a very empathetic person, I would like you to try to put yourself in the shoes of parents with young children.  As a father of two young kids, unexpectedly seeing something as horrifying as what you have posted today can be more traumatic that you realize.  And I don’t expect anyone who isn’t a parent to truly understand what I’m talking about because having children literally changes your brain.  And no, having dogs doesn’t fucking count.

Before having kids (I have a six and two year-old) I could see a photo like that and feel an appropriate amount of pain/empathy without it fucking up my brain for an extended period of time.  Not so anymore.  For example, just hearing Rachel Maddow talk about Sandy Hook again the other day almost had me in tears and made me depressed/distracted for most of the day.  Am I hyper-sensitive relative to many others about this stuff?  YES… because I have little kids.  But I’m also a big jock of a guy and can tell you that my reaction is not half as severe as what most mothers would experience if they saw what you posted today.

I very much understand why you show these pictures.  I actually applaud you for putting them out there because most Americans don’t see the horror of war, and we need to.  In fact, I’ve threatened to send pictures of dead children to my father because he can be very callous about the murders we’re committing overseas in the name of “The War on Terror.”  I’ve threatened to do this because I want him to see pictures and think about those dead kids as if they were HIS grandchildren.  But ultimately I don’t send them because I’m not an asshole who will traumatize someone just to make a point.

So, PLEASE put photos like that below Read On with a warning of graphic images.  This will at least allow your readers to choose what they are seeing and give them the opportunity to prepare themselves.  That can make a huge difference.

Another differs:

I think that the photo you posted is the most disturbing and graphic photo you’ve ever posted on your blog.  I wasn’t sure that I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing until I made the photo larger.  I imagine you will get some complaints about it.  But I’m glad you posted it.  We can’t be reminded often enough of the real consequences of any war.

I feel no satisfaction that I was 100% opposed to the war from the very beginning.  The very idea of it was devastating to me.  It made no sense to me at all, and I was appalled that the America I loved was going to start a war under circumstances that I considered unjustified.  It felt like a betrayal of the principles I strongly believed in and thought were absolutely sacrosanct.  I hated that people around the world hated us and saw us as bullies.

Shortly before the war started, I went with my husband and baby son to Spain for a vacation.  I was saddened by the hatred I felt from many people simply because I was American.  We had an encounter with an airline employee at the airport in Madrid that left me shaken for days.  Despite being an employee in a service position dealing with international travelers, she did not even attempt to hide her contempt for my little family, simply because we were American.  She took pleasure in saying “Americans are terrible people.”  I wanted to report her to her boss. I wanted to explain to her that I didn’t support the war, that a lot of Americans didn’t support the war, that I didn’t vote for Bush, that the America that would do this was not my America.  But I love my country, and I respect the office of the President, even if I didn’t respect the President, and I suffered mostly in silence.  She’d made her mind up, anyway.

I’m glad I didn’t read you then.  I don’t think I would have stuck with you.  But I don’t think you have blood on your hands.  In my America, you are always allowed to say what you feel, to give your opinion, which is all you did, even if you were wrong.

George Bush and Dick Cheney are the ones with blood on their hands.

I do not mean to exaggerate my infinitesimal influence on decisions made by others. I was trying to express as clearly as possible how sorry I am. As for the graphic photos: this is the blood on my hands. I posted it not for shock value, but as a reality check against precisely the kind of solipsism one can fall into in this kind of thing. I also see one of the defining qualities of the Dish is that we will publish photos other mainstream outlets will not, for the reasons articulated by readers.

Someone, in my view, needs to get some of the brilliant but sometimes disturbing photography of some of the world’s best photo-journalists out there. If you can’t put them on your own blog, who will ever see them? And who will see them in their minds the next time we entertain something like invading a Middle East country.