Government-sponsored quackery

I like state Senator Christine Kaufmann (D-Helena). I really do. She has done some good work in the legislature and sponsored some worthwhile bills. Kaufmann has introduced a bill (SB-27) to “Provide for acupuncturist on board of medical examiners“. The bill goes before the Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee on Wednesday. The governor appoints 12 members to the medical board, including five members who hold Doctor of Medicine degrees. The rest are professionals in the medical field and two are from the general public.

I’m sorry, but acupuncture is quackery pure and simple, and not medicine. Scientific studies have found that positive results from acupuncture are the result of the placebo effect or are a conditioned response. Acupuncture has been used to treat almost any form of illness or disease including cancer, AIDS, asthma, colds, PTSD, headaches and breast enlargement. Acupuncture reportedly acts by disrupting the flow of “chi” energy through the body although nobody knows what exactly “chi” is. You don’t need to hold an MD to practice acupuncture. Most practitioners have taken a class at the local community college and just want to play doctor. Many studies have shown that acupuncture is no more effective than treatment by sham acupuncture where no needles are inserted, needles are inserted at non-traditional sites or the needles are improperly inserted. Can sticking needles in your body do some good? Probably, if you believe it will. There are many, many reports of the practice easing pain, but I repeat, it’s not medicine.

If we are to have a practicing acupuncturist on the Board of Medical Examiners, what next? Do we include an aromatherapist, homeopath, a faith healer and maybe a Chippewa medicine man? I’m sorry, but this is a really bad, if well-meaning, idea.

Remove Foot – Place Money

Republican congressman Dennis Rehberg has been named chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee. In that position, he is responsible for overseeing spending on health care and human services. As his first act in the new position, Rehberg has vowed that, “I’m going to fulfill my promise to the people of Montana that to the best of my ability I will defund Obamacare if we’re not able to repeal it,” Rehberg believes “These issues are far too important to be overrun and ruined by government ineptitude and inefficiency,“.

In keeping with his view that anything and everything run by the government (except congressman Rehberg) is inept and inefficient, Montana Democratic Party chairman Jim Elliot is asking that Denny give up the inept, inefficient government-sponsored health care plan that he receives as a member of Congress in good standing. As one of the richest members of Congress, Rehberg certainly doesn’t need to subject himself and his family to such a poorly run and extravagant program paid for by Montana taxpayers. “After months of railing against common sense health insurance reform with no solutions of his own, Congressman Rehberg ought to put his money where his mouth is and stop having taxpayers foot his health care bill,” Elliot said.

The Bugle agrees with Jim Elliot that it is time for Rehberg to stand on principle and drop his government-sponsored health care plan in favor of a much more efficiently run private insurance program. If you agree, please drop Congressman Denny a polite note and encourage him to do what is right for Montana. Tell Denny it’s time to remove his foot and place his money where his mouth is.

You can email Congressman Rehberg or, contact his Washington D.C. office at:

2448 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC, 20515
phone: (202) 225-3211
fax: (202) 225-5687

If you prefer to drop by one of his Montana offices, his website has full information on where they can be found.

Politics, Policy or Idiocy?

The “fiscal responsibility” tea baggers in Helena are on a tear currently to oppose implementation of the federal new health care law. Why? “There is a heavy toll if  ‘Obamacare’ is implemented and it comes to Montana, all those mandates carry a cost for Montana,” said Sen. Bruce Tutvedt of Kalispell. “Senator Jason Priest R-Red Lodge, says “it will cost the state millions to implement the health care law once programs like Medicaid, which require state matching money, have been expanded.“

Let’s examine these claims a little closer. There are more than 150,000 non-elderly uninsured Montanas. Who do the Republicans think pays for their health care? Do they just get free medical treatment when they show up at the emergency room? Well, not exactly; According to Families USA,

By 2010, health insurance premiums for families in Montana with private, employer-sponsored coverage will be $2,190 higher due to the unpaid cost of health care for the uninsured. Premiums for individual health insurance coverage in Montana will be $807 higher in 2010.

That works out to a cost to you and me of almost $250 million a year and that doesn’t include ridiculous hospital costs. You are the one who pays for health care for the uninsured. Just because it doesn’t show up on your tax bill doesn’t mean that you don’t pay the cost. The Affordable Health Care for America Act will reduce what you pay for health insurance by increasing the number of folks paying into the insurance pool and it will improve the health care you receive. It is much cheaper to pay a small subsidy to those who can’t afford insurance than to pay their full bloated medical bills. Here are just a few of the health care benefits that Republicans don’t think you deserve;

• If you are elderly on Medicare part D, you got a $250 drug rebate in 2010. This year, if you are in the “doughnut hole” you will get a 50% discount on brand-name drugs.
• Got kids just starting out who can’t afford health insurance? The law lets you keep your children on your health insurance plan to age 26.
• The law requires insurance companies to justify unreasonable insurance rate increases.
• Provides a tax credit to small businesses to provide employer-sponsored health insurance.
• Provides grants to small employers to establish wellness programs.
• Eliminates co-pays for preventive care services under Medicare and waives the deductible for colorectal cancer screening.
• Bans insurances companies from canceling your coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

The list goes on, and the law won’t become fully effective until 2014, but your Republican legislators don’t believe you deserve to get better health care at a lower cost. Does it “carry a cost”? Yes, but it will cost many times more if we fail to fully implement the bill. Medicaid costs will go up, but the federal government will pick up 95% of the increase. Remember that Montana already receives about $1.50 from the government for every dollar that we pay in. Also, remember that we are already paying these costs and more, they are just paid via your insurance premiums and $200 hospital band-aids.

In the Congressional Budget Office analysis for new House speaker John Boehner, they estimated that it will cost $230 billion over ten years to repeal the health care bill. Nationwide, 32 million people would loose health insurance that they receive under the plan. In Montana, it would mean that about 75,000 folks would go back to getting you to pay their health care costs rather than having their own insurance. Your health insurance costs will go up and you will get less coverage. You will loose all the benefits listed above and many more when the bill is fully implemented. The cost of repealing the health care act would balloon the federal deficit, which Republicans have promised not to do.

Of course, the repeal, or not allowing implementation in Montana will never happen. This is all just a big show to placate the far-far right wing of the Republican party. For a party that campaigned on fiscal responsibility, they don’t seem to be very averse to using your hard-earned tax dollars and the valuable time of our legislature just to play stupid political games. Hopefully they will eventually get down to actually doing the business of the state and stop with the senseless social engineering, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

We all saw that one coming

Well, certainly no surprise here, but disturbing none the less. Since Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden suggested last week the use of poultry and indentured servitude to pay medical bills, the idea has been hot on every source of liberal media. Finally, the good folks over at TPM have done the “fowl math” to test the hypothesis of a chicken-based health care economy.

Foghorn Leghorn appears courtesy of Warner Brothers

Converting U.S. health care costs to world-wide barnyard output, they have discovered that even using every single clucker on the planet, the cost of U.S. health care alone will fall more than 400 billion pullets short next year. We are still awaiting the Rhode Island Red vs. Plymouth Rock medical deduction comparison. The GOP was somehow quick to blame Harry Reid for interjecting farm animals into this serious political debate. As to how we will cover the fearful cock-a-doodle-deficit, TPM could only speculate; “What would really help here is if there were some kind of single, universally accepted commodity, which could be used as a medium of exchange for all the others…“

Total U.S. health care costs in 2008: $2.3 trillion
US population: About 300 million
Average cost of health care per person: $7,681
Average weight of a chicken: 5.9 lbs
Market price per pound: 85 cents
Average spot price per chicken: $5.02
Average number of chickens per resident needed to cover health care costs: 1,530 chickens
Total number of chickens needed to cover United States health care costs: 459 billion chickens
Estimated worldwide chicken population: 16 billion chickens
Current worldwide chicken shortage to cover U.S. health care: 443 billion cluckers

Otter Control Costs

I don’t want to talk more about Otter Creek. I’m burned out, but they won’t leave me alone. I’m not sure why the members of the State Land Board who voted to destroy the Tongue River Valley and sicken and kill their neighbors want to keep justifying their decision to me, but they do. I just got an over-long absolution note from Secretary of State Linda McCulloch explaining her vote.

McCulloch: “If Otter Creek coal is not mined and burned, some other coal somewhere else will be burned and mined in its place.“

I’m really sick and tired of this “all-the-other-kids-are-doing-it” justification. My Mom always had the same reply to that argument. “If everybody decided to jump off a cliff, would you just follow them?” But, the best reply came from Dr. Steve Running in pleading for the Land Board to lead by example. “If not now, when? If not us, who?” If we don’t kill our citizens, someone else will.

McCulloch: “The sole purpose of mining the Otter Creek coal was for the benefit of Montana schools.“

And then, a few lines later she answers her own statement in talking about the bonus bid money. “The state should receive this money in about a month and the next Legislature will determine how this money will be spent.” Sure, here’s how it works. The Legislature will put the coal money into the school trust fund and in the next breath, turn right around and remove the same amount of General Fund money leaving no net gain for schools and instead spend the money debating whether or not human sperm should be allowed to vote.

McColluch: “At the peak of mine production, budget estimates project the state will be receiving approximately $500 million per biennium, not counting what local governments will receive.“

By my calculation that amounts to about 4-5% of the annual budget. What does this money really cost the State of Montana? A study by West Virginia University found that:

Looking at statistics from 2005 (the latest for which mortality rates are available) the researchers found that though coal mining brought in about $8 billion to the state coffers of Appalachian states, the costs of the shorter life-spans associated with coal mining operations were nearly $17 billion to $84.5 billion.

Coal mining areas in Appalachia were found to have nearly 11,000 more deaths each year than other places in the nation, with 2,300 of those attributable to environmental factors such as air and water pollution.

A study by the American Journal of Public Health notes that “in the 14 counties where the biggest coal mining operations are located residents reported higher rates of cardiopulmonary disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, diabetes, and lung and kidney disease.” People living near coal mines do not pay more only in taxes.

Those who are falling ill and dying are not just the coal miners. Everyone who lives near the mines or processing plants or transportation centers is affected by chronic socioeconomic weakness that takes a toll on longevity and health.

McCulloch:  “There are other economic benefits to the state, like many good-paying jobs over the estimated 40-year life of the mine.“

Hendryx makes the leap to policy prescription and says that coal companies and government try to tell people that the coal industry brings needed jobs to these regions, but that just isn’t the case. Rather, areas without coal mining in fact do far better as they develop alternative industries that don’t have the negative health and socioeconomic effects so clearly linked with coal mining.

We already have an alternative industry in the Tongue River Valley. It’s something called agriculture and people down that way seem to be pretty happy with how it has worked so far. Oh sure, coal mining jobs have been declining due to mechanization and, 12,000 coal miners died of injuries between 1972 and 2002. Black lung disease is on the rise. And of course, West Virginia coal mine death toll now at 25. But hey, these are “good-paying jobs”.

And finally, McCulloch: “Good reclamation can and will occur on any Otter Creek tracts that are mined.“

Two words: Libby, Butte. Since 1980, the good taxpayers of Montana have paid to clean up 408 abandoned coal mines in eastern Montana. For the extra 4-5% of the budget that the Otter Creek coal will bring in, it is likely that Montana taxpayers will pick up many times that amount in paying for health costs, climate costs, environmental damage and cleaning up the mess. It’s not only about the money. “If not now, when? If not us, who?“

Denny Rehberg: Montana Reject

Rehberg Rejects Health Bill

Rehberg remains firmly against the effort to reform the nation’s health care system. When the bill comes to a vote, he says he will vote ‘no’. In a teleconference Friday morning, Rehberg stated his concerns about the bill, naming cost, transparency, and hastiness.

“People really do want lasting solutions,” Rehberg said. “They want stability. And the bottom line is I just don’t think this gets us where we want to be.”

From the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce:

Benefits of Health Care Reform in Montana

In Montana, the health care reform bill will:

• Improve coverage for 564,000 residents with health insurance.
• Give tax credits and other assistance to up to 261,000 families and 34,900 small businesses to help them afford coverage.
• Improve Medicare for 162,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.
• Extend coverage to 117,000 uninsured residents.
• Guarantee that 22,000 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
• Protect 900 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
• Allow 76,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents’ insurance plans.
• Provide millions of dollars in new funding for 84 community health centers.
• Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $54 million annually.

Not where we want to be? Say What Denny?

“From the beginning…”

Why do theocons hate women? For the past several years they have been trying, without success, to legislate an end to any and all access to reproductive services for Montana women. In 2007 they introduced a bill in the legislature to amend the constitution to give “inalienable rights” to fetuses “from the moment of conception“. That attempt got nowhere, so they tried the same measure as a ballot initiative in 2008. And failed miserably. Not to be deterred, they changed the language slightly and had Dan McGee introduce SB 406 in the 2009 legislature. That proposed constitutional amendment would have given “inalienable rights” to any “human being at all stages of human development including the state of fertilization or conception…” by amending article II, section 3. The bill passed the Senate, barely, and… failed miserably in the House.

Theocons are nothing if not persistent. This is all part of a crackpot national scheme to ban abortion one state at a time. This year they have targeted all 17 states that allow citizen ballot initiatives. In Montana, the new initiative is CI-102. This time they go after article II, section 17 of the Montana constitution. This section deals with due process of law, but otherwise, the aim is the same, to redefine who is a legitimate “person” under Montana law with the aim of stopping legal abortions.

This time around, according to theoconology, a person will be defined as “all human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, physical or mental dependency or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being,“. Of course they don’t define the beginning of biological development, but we can only assume they mean to give due process of law to human eggs and fetuses, if not sperm.

If you believe that all government, in any form, is illegitimate, I guess it’s okay to screw it up however you want. Conservative crazies believe that we should return to Victorian era laws that oppose any type of sexuality, sexual behavior or sex education not sanctioned by their version of God. Under their laws, we will have no abortion, even for rape or incest, no genetic research, no in-vitro fertilization, no birth control and no stem cell research to save lives. Women will be forced to forgo medical treatment that may save or prolong their lives if there is a chance of conflict with the rights of a fertile egg that they may or may not be carrying. They could also be forced to undergo surgeries to save the fetus regardless of their own welfare.

In pursuing this Holy Grail of anti-choice groups, the fundies feel it’s fine to run roughshod over the rights of women, who are second class citizens at best. Think about it. If a fertilized egg is to have rights separate from the rights of the mother, could a woman be forced to give up cancer treatments that could harm her egg? Could a woman be legally punished for being overweight because her condition may conflict with the rights of her fetus? Up to half of all fertilized eggs are aborted spontaneously before a woman knows she is pregnant. If you have a spontaneous miscarriage, could you be dragged into court to prove that you have not committed murder? Will you be investigated for child abuse? In Montana 1,675 pregnancies were reported in 2006 among teenagers, including 18 to girls under the age of 15. Under Biblical law, no abortions allowed. Does this then make women third-class citizens, behind men and fetuses?

In California, a similar ballot initiative has been proposed. The state found fiscal impacts of the initiative relating to,

Potential increased costs for courts, law enforcement, and other agencies for criminal and civil proceedings. Potential costs and savings for health and social services programs if the courts determined that the measure restricts access to some types of birth control methods. Potential loss of state or local revenues due to reduced research activity that may be offset by reduced state spending on research. Unknown potential effects on state and local health care expenditures due to changes that may occur in medical practices.

A whole new realm of fetal law will be opened up to deal with millions of women walking around carrying “citizen fetuses” who have “inalienable rights” under the law. Of course this is all as crazy as it sounds and likely doesn’t have any more chance of getting on the ballot or passing into law than it has before, but when someone stops you on the street and asks you to sign a petition to oppose abortion, think for a minute about just how badly you want to screw up the Montana constitution and give control of your womb to the state.

And again

A study of Congressional Budget Office data by a respected MIT economist finds that the Senate health care bill will save consumers money. The new study found savings of $200 on health insurance premiums for single folks and savings of $500 for a family of four in 2009 dollars once the new plans become available. Savings would be significantly more for lower income people because they would receive tax credits to help pay for premiums. These savings come on top of more generous benefits packages that will be available through the exchanges along with protections against losing coverage and against not being able to find coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

You can bet that Republicans will continue the false drumbeat of higher costs, but then we all know that Republicans don’t believe in science in the first place and would rather you just go ahead and die.

Republicans, wrong…again

A recent poll found that 90% of Canadians support, or somewhat support the Canadian health care system. The Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy found that while the Canadian system may not be perfect, they want to keep what they have and Canadians praise President Obama for trying to reform the U.S. system. The poll found that 61% of Canadians think that the best thing about their system is that it is free and available to everyone while only 33% criticized the wait times for treatment. That doesn’t sound at all like what we are hearing from the right in this country at every opportunity.

Another poll by the same organization found that seven in ten Canadians are not at all worried, or not very worried about the H1N1 flu virus and most feel that Ottawa is doing an adequate job of distributing the vaccine. I wonder what those numbers would look like in the U.S.?

Denny the Dodger

Back in July, Denny Rehberg signed the Let Freedom Ring, “Responsible Healthcare Reform Pledge“. He pledged to not vote to enact any health care reform legislation that he has not read personally in it’s entirity and that has not been available on the internet for at least 72 hours. The good news is, that Denny has read the entire 1,990 page House health care bill that was released on Thursday. Since he left Washington almost immediately for an “emergency meeting” in Billings yesterday, we can only assume that he read the bill on the plane.

We know that he has read the entire bill, because he released a line-by-line critique to the folks at the Billings meeting. He could not, of course, have such a depth of knowledge of the bill unless he had read the whole thing. The fact that his bullet points almost exactly match those of Rush Limbaugh was surely just a coincidence.

Yes, this is the same Denny Rehberg whose brilliant legislative career includes sponsoring 25 bills, zero of which have made it into law ranking him 37th out of 440 members according to OpenCongress. Three of the 118 bills that he co-sponsored have made it into law and he votes 90% of the time with Republicans. I can’t imagine where the other 10% goes. He still wants to take a 30-day vacation before even thinking about health care. I guess it gives him a headache.

I drilled a bit deeper at the OnTheIssues website. Here’s where your Congressman stands;

• Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 21% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
• Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 31% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 25% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 0% by the CAF, indicating opposition to energy independence. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 11% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 7% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 10% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation. (Dec 2006)

That’s pretty much Denny in a nutshell. We report, you vote.