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Book Blogging: National Book Festival, Sept. 26

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Via The Washington Post, a guide to this Saturday’s readings and signings. For years I’d hoped to see John Irving — here’s my shot!

Here is the Library of Congress’s official Book Fest page and a link to the press release for the event. Wonderfully, everything is free, except for the concessions, which are rarely worth the wait anyway.

 (Photo Credit: 2009 Festival Artist Charles Santore.)

Cutting Against the Grain in Journalism

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Here’s an excellent example of cut-against-the-grain journalism.

Patrick Boyle, editor of Youth Today, Huffington Post blogger, and colleague of mine, levels with us about the realities many of us don’t want to face about sex offenders. And he probably knows more about the subject than just about anyone, having written a book about sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts.

The piece is an eye-opening, valuable, and mature contribution to a subject that’s rarely approached with clear eyes and common sense. (Read all of his columns here and check out Youth Today here.)

 

Survey: Doctors Support Public and Private Health Care Options

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A new survey of more than 5,000 physicians published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the majority of doctors support a public and private option in health care insurance and expansion of Medicare to people as young as 55 as part of health reform. From the report:

Overall, a majority of physicians (62.9%) supported public and private options (see Panel A of graph). Only 27.3% supported offering private options only. Respondents — across all demographic subgroups, specialties, practice locations, and practice types — showed majority support (>57.4%) for the inclusion of a public option (see Table 1).

 Many charts and graphs illuminate the results. More here.

Science Friday: 9/11 and the Strange Story of the Mini-Golfers

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The Science Friday video below (and here), having to do with mini golf, is actually a sort of strange (and, frankly, comical) remembrance to that terrible Tuesday in 2001. Everyone — just everyone — remembers where they were. I was at my house on Capitol Hill, watching the events unfold on TV, wondering if I should go into the basement to avoid the planes supposedly heading my way. Practically everyone I knew called me — uncles, sister, parents — trying to make sense of it all. But I could not catch up with the boyfriend. Where was he? Cell phones were jamming; not all calls were coming in or going out.

Turns out, for the better part of the morning, he was blissfully unaware of what was going on, having met his brother at a mini golf course (instead of, like, working). Keep in mind, these are two adult males, gainfully employed and supposedly sentient, mini-golfing in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region on the morning of 9/11. Mini-golfing — an activity most people associate with the worst vacations of their childhood or the worst part of the fraternity hazing. People rarely mini golf when it’s the only activity choice, let alone opt for it during work hours. It’s absurd. It’s even offensive. But finding out that the man I love and his brother (did I mention the brother is a married father of two?), paid good money to play putt-putt on the most tragic day in American history made me realize that life would — someday — go on. (Oh, it also made me realize, not for the first time, that I shared a home with a total goofball, quite possibly from a family of goofballs, but no amount of reflection can ease the tragedy of that knowledge.)

Support Science Friday.  Serve and remember. Send a soldier care package. Help stitch a wounded warrior. Just don’t, for all our sakes, play mini golf on 9/11!

Medicare Advantage: What’s the Deal?

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Subsidies to private insurance companies under Medicare Advantage (MA), the privately run version of Medicare, would be scaled back under President Obama’s health care plan. (When he talks of “unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies” he’s referring to MA.)

Health care journalist Maggie Maher, in 2008, reviewed the Republican-backed program on the Health Care Blog. By most accounts, this extremely costly initiative, which purports to offer “choice” and “savings,” is draining essential dollars away from traditional Medicare and is not always reducing out-of-pocket costs to beneficiaries.  The U.S. Government Accountability Office generated much news when it reviewed MA in 2008 and found:

In 2006, the federal government spent about $59 billion on Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, an alternative to the original Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) program. Although health plans were originally envisioned in the 1980s as a potential source of Medicare savings, such plans have generally increased program spending. Payments to MA plans have been estimated to be 12 percent greater than what Medicare would have spent in 2006 had MA beneficiaries been enrolled in Medicare FFS. Some policymakers are concerned about the cost of the MA program and its contribution to overall spending on the Medicare program, which already faces serious long-term financial challenges.

PolitiFact.com has more on the president’s claim that eliminating this subsidy would save billions of dollars. The St. Petersburg Times service also fact checks last night’s speech.

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