The Kudzu Files

All the recent noise about revisiting the 14th Amendment got me thinking about how we love the Constitution. Not how as in “we really love our Consti”, but how as in “What exactly do we mean when we say we love the Constitution”. Or revere it, or honor it. Choose your own [...]

The Tea Party idea springs from the Boston Tea Party, which protested taxation without representation. The modern-day Tea Partiers see themselves as inheritors of this independent American spirit - indeed, they like to don the tri-corner hats and wave “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, and walk around in patriot costumes. So I wondered [...]

Back again, after a brief pause for recovery from reading the Health Care Reform/Socialist Takeover Of Amerika bill. And there have actually been other things hopping around since then, not counting Easter bunnies.

I had several emails/Facebook notifications wondering whether I (not me specifically, except in one case) missed George W. Bush yet. [...]

We keep hearing that this bill shouldn’t have been passed because “a majority of Americans oppose it”. But, like all statistics, you have to understand what the responses really said. CNN’s poll released Monday, had it like this:
Based on what you
have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor it or [...]

Just to make it easier to follow my posts, here they are in order:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Wrap-Up

So, I’ve finished reading the bill. Did I miss some things? Certainly. Did I miss something important? Probably. No surprise, it’s a massive bill. Often the language repeats, the same qualifications and requirements applying to different situations. But I have a much better grasp of what the Senate [...]

Picking up at page 2005 - simple cafeteria plans for small businesses are established. I have to admit, I don’t grasp the significance of this, there must be something in existing laws that makes this difficult. Moving on to Title X, the act prohibits the imposition of lifetime or annual dollar limits on coverage. And [...]

Starting around page 1760, there is an act within an act - the Elder Justice Act, which has the goal of preventing, detecting, and treating abuse of the elderly. I certainly don’t make light of it, but I’m not going to delve into that part of the act. This is followed by a section on [...]

Page 1413, Subtitle F - this part is concerned with increasing access to primary care and general surgery services. The first thing it does is increase the money paid to primary care physicians and general surgeons, by providing for a 10% bonus for those services from 2011 until 2016. As my physician friend Alan points [...]

On page 1244, the act addresses increasing the health care workforce - a good thing since the purpose of this is to get more patients into the system. One of things it does is allow nurse-managed primary-care clinics (page 1310); I wonder how physicians will feel about that. It attempts to enhance education and training [...]