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At $109 billion in direct care, dementia costs the U.S. more than heart disease and cancer. That’s not even accounting for the unofficial costs of caring for a person with dementia, usually provided by family members, which would add an additional $50 billion to $106 billion to that number.
Why is dementia costing us so much?
Photo from Jonathan Alcorn/ZUMA/Corbis
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Cartoon of the day: Easy access
DAVID FITZSIMMONS © 2012 Cagle Cartoons
More cartoons(Source: theweek.com)
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Photo: Jamie Sabau/Getty Images
An analysis released in 2009 by Harvard Medical School researchers found that 45,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. That’s one person every 12 minutes. Other studies have put the figure lower — the Institute of Medicine estimated in 2002 that about 18,000 people die annually because they’re uninsured. Indeed, the consensus among researchers is that you run a greater risk of dying if you’re not insured.
Romney says Americans don’t die for lack of health insurance. Researchers say yes, they do.
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Check out the Bad Opinion Generator for more of history’s worst predictions and opinions.
(Source: theweek.com)
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5 ObamaCare provisions you can already take advantage of
An easy and helpful guide to what parts of the law are already in effect, and what they mean for you.
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When the Supreme Court ruled to uphold ObamaCare, Mitt Romney responded by vowing to repeal the president’s signature domestic achievement, and to replace it with his own. However, Romney has given few hints of how he would actually address the serious deficiencies in America’s health care system, which has left tens of millions of people without insurance, made medical emergencies the country’s top cause of bankruptcy, and resulted in abysmal infant mortality ratesfor a developed nation, to take just one metric of public health. Romney’s website has few specifics, but his past statements reveal a loose outline of where he stands on the issue, say Trip Gabriel and Robert Pear at The New York Times.
Here, a guide to what health care would look like under a President Romney:
- What are Romney’s health care proposals?
Romney “would give a tax break to people who buy insurance individually on the open market,” say Gabriel and Pear, so that they “would enjoy the same advantage as workers who get insurance as a benefit at work.” Romney says he would take the federal government out of the equation, and leave it up to the states to figure out how to make health care more affordable. He also supports transforming Medicaid, the joint state-federal insurance program for the poor and the disabled, into a block-grant program, which would see the federal government give the states a lump sum of money with looser requirements on how they spent it.
- Would these plans work?
It depends on what Romney’s health care goals are. A presumably similar tax-credit plan from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 was estimated to increase the number of uninsured. Democrats say turning Medicaid into a block-grant program would only encourage local governments to purge their Medicaid rolls and use the money for other purposes. However, Romney’s ideas “put more emphasis on controlling health costs and less on reducing the ranks of the uninsured, the primary goal of the Obama plan,” say Gabriel and Pear. Without more specifics from Romney, it’s impossible to calculate if his policies would result in lower health costs.
- What about patients with preexisting conditions?
Romney says he would make surethose with preexisting conditions don’t lose their coverage, but opposes a provision in ObamaCare that makes it illegal to deny them coverage. Romney also would not require insurance companies to allow children to stay on their parents’ plans until they’re 26. Those two provisions are among the most popular elements of ObamaCare.
- Why is he reluctant to put out a plan of his own?
Romney “has spent much of the presidential campaign shying away” from the subject,says Kasie Hunt at The Associated Press, because of the health care law he passed as governor in Massachusetts. RomneyCare is very similar to ObamaCare, replete with an individual mandate requiring nearly all citizens to buy health insurance. As a result, any discussion of health care invariably raises uncomfortable questions about why Romney suddenly opposes a mandate. That has left Romney with a “huge void” when it comes to replacing ObamaCare, and his campaign “calculates it can finesse until after the election,” says Albert R. Hunt at Bloomberg.
- Has RomneyCare created other political problems?
Yes. Republicans have seized on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the mandate as a tax to hammer Obama for raising taxes. (Democrats maintain that it is a penalty for failing to buy insurance, not a tax.) However, conflating a mandate with a tax would mean Romney himself raised taxes as governor of Massachusetts. On Monday, Romney’s top aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, argued that the mandate is not a tax, straying “wildly from the coordinated comments” of Republicans in Congress, says Michael D. Shear at The New York Times.
- What are Romney’s health care proposals?
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Whoever wins the presidency in November will be looking at a high court with several elderly justices. Most of them are liberals: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who has battled cancer) is 79. Stephen Breyer is 73. And Anthony Kennedy, usually the court’s swing vote, is 75. The oldest true conservative: 75-year old Antonin Scalia.
Let’s say Obama wins a second term. Ginsburg, Breyer, or both could choose to retire, confident that the president would pick someone of a similar ideological bent. (On the other hand, isn’t that what Bush thought of Roberts?) Obama has already picked two justices. If he were to serve another four years, it is not inconceivable that he could select four, perhaps five justices in total — setting his philosophical stamp on the court for decades to come.
But the stakes are probably even higher if Romney were to win. Those liberal justices would still be the oldest and most likely to go (one way or the other), though none have indicated that they’re thinking of stepping down. Could they outlast a potential eight-year Romney tenure? If he were to replace a liberal justice or two, the court would swing decisively to the right.
So if you think the stakes are high this November and for the next four years, consider this: Whoever you cast your ballot for — Mitt Romney or Barack Obama — you’re really casting a vote that could resonate for 30 or 40 years. If that’s not reason to show up the polls, then nothing is.
— Paul Brandus, How the ObamaCare ruling will shape U.S. politics… for the next 40 years.(Source: theweek.com)
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Chief Justice John Roberts just became liberals’ new best friend.
The conservative justice — who in the past has led the charge to allow unlimited corporate spending in elections, strike down city gun laws, and dismantle affirmative action programs — came up big for President Obama on Thursday by providing the crucial fifth vote to largely uphold Obama’s 2010 overhaul of the health care system.
Most critically, Roberts sided with the court’s four liberal justices to uphold the individual mandate, the centerpiece of ObamaCare that requires most Americans to buy insurance or pay a fine. The move stunned court observers, many of whom had predicted that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a more-regular swing vote, would be the conservative who wavered. (Instead, Kennedy voted to overturn the entire law.)
So, why did Roberts vote with the liberals?
(p.s. this is a photo of Roberts administering the oath of office to Obama in 2009. But it kind of looks like they’re high-fiving.)
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Cartoon of the day: An American schism
TOM TOLES © 2012 Universal Press Syndicate(Source: theweek.com)
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In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts initially said that the individual mandate was not a valid exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. CNN reported that fact, but then wrongly reported that therefore the court struck down the mandate as unconstitutional. However, that was not the whole of the Court’s ruling. CNN regrets that it didn’t wait to report out the full and complete opinion regarding the mandate. We made a correction within a few minutes and apologize for the error.
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Today, the Supreme Court is expected to finally hand down its monumental decision on ObamaCare. And based largely on the strong skepticism that the court’s conservative justices expressed about the law’s constitutionality during oral arguments in March, the conventional wisdom is that the court will strike down part or all of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Of course, many notable figures, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have predicted that the court will uphold the law, but only 10 percent of Americans share her view, according to one poll. However, oral arguments are famously poor predictors of how the court will rule, and there is some evidence to suggest the law will survive.
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Cartoon of the day: In absence of ObamaCare
DAVID FITZSIMMONS © Cagle Cartoons(Source: theweek.com)
