This Sunday, a historic vote in the House may clear the way for the often dogged health care bill, the guts of which have been presented in various forms for decades. Here are some of the main points of the legislation, which makes changes to the version of the bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve:
COST: $940 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.HOW MANY COVERED: 32 million uninsured. Major coverage expansion begins in 2014. When fully phased in, 95 percent of eligible Americans would have coverage, compared with 83 percent today.
INSURANCE MANDATE: Almost everyone is required to be insured or else pay a fine. There is an exemption for low-income people. Mandate takes effect in 2014.
INSURANCE MARKET REFORMS: Starting this year, insurers would be forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions, and from canceling policies because someone gets sick. Parents would be able to keep older kids on their coverage up to age 26. A new high-risk pool would offer coverage to uninsured people with medical problems until 2014, when the coverage expansion goes into high gear. Major consumer safeguards would also take effect in 2014. Insurers would be prohibited from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more. Insurers could not charge women more.
MEDICAID: Expands the federal-state Medicaid insurance program for the poor to cover people with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, $29,327 a year for a family of four. Childless adults would be covered for the first time, starting in 2014. The federal government would pay 100 percent of costs for covering newly eligible individuals through 2016. A special deal that would have given Nebraska 100 percent federal financing for newly eligible Medicaid recipients in perpetuity is eliminated. A different, one-time deal negotiated by Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu for her state, Louisiana, worth as much as $300 million, remains.
TAXES: Dramatically scales back a Senate-passed tax on high-cost insurance plans that was opposed by House Democrats and labor unions. The tax would be delayed until 2018, and the thresholds at which it is imposed would be $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. To make up for the lost revenue, the bill applies an increased Medicare payroll tax to investment income as well as wages for individuals making more than $200,000, or married couples above $250,000. The tax on investment income would be 3.8%.
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: Gradually closes the "doughnut hole" coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug benefit that seniors fall into once they have spent $2,830. Seniors who hit the gap this year will receive a $250 rebate. Beginning in 2011, seniors in the gap receive a discount on brand name drugs, initially 50 percent off. When the gap is completely eliminated in 2020, seniors will still be responsible for 25 percent of the cost of their medications until Medicare's catastrophic coverage kicks in.
EMPLOYER RESPONSIBILITY: As in the Senate bill, businesses are not required to offer coverage. Instead, employers are hit with a fee if the government subsidizes their workers' coverage. The $2,000-per-employee fee would be assessed on the company's entire work force, minus an allowance. Companies with 50 or fewer workers are exempt from the requirement. Part-time workers are included in the calculations, counting two part-timers as one full-time worker.
SUBSIDIES: The proposal provides more generous tax credits for purchasing insurance than the original Senate bill did. The aid is available on a sliding scale for households making up to four times the federal poverty level, $88,200 for a family of four. Premiums for a family of four making $44,000 would be capped at around 6 percent of income.
HOW YOU CHOOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE: Small businesses, the self-employed and the uninsured could pick a plan offered through new state-based purchasing pools called exchanges, opening for business in 2014. The exchanges would offer the same kind of purchasing power that employees of big companies benefit from. People working for medium-to-large firms would not see major changes. But if they lose their jobs or strike out on their own, they may be eligible for subsidized coverage through the exchange.
GOVERNMENT-RUN PLAN: No government-run insurance plan. People purchasing coverage through the new insurance exchanges would have the option of signing up for national plans overseen by the federal office that manages the health plans available to members of Congress. Those plans would be private, but one would have to be nonprofit.
ABORTION: The proposal keeps the abortion provision in the Senate bill. Abortion opponents disagree on whether restrictions on taxpayer funding go far enough. The bill tries to maintain a strict separation between taxpayer dollars and private premiums that would pay for abortion coverage. No health plan would be required to offer coverage for abortion. In plans that do cover abortion, policyholders would have to pay for it separately, and that money would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money. States could ban abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange. Exceptions would be made for cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother.
Best of the week: A report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences follows up on the discovery of a gene that regulates regeneration in mammals. So one day, everyone can be like Wolverine...the healing factor, not the mutton chops.
Back in 1996, scientists were running an experiment using a strain of mice that, it turns out, lacked a p21 gene. The mice each had an ear pierced with an identifying mark, and a few weeks later, the experiment was ruined when all the identifying marks had healed without a scar - the mice all looked exactly the same again.“While we are just beginning to understand the repercussions of these findings, perhaps one day we’ll be able to accelerate healing in humans by temporarily inactivating the p21 gene,” and you can quote them on that. That gene is tightly controlled by another gene, p53, which is a well-known cell division regulator and tumour suppressor. Defective p53 can lead to many types of cancer. In normal adult cells, p21 acts as an anti-cancer safety mechanism, blocking out cell division in the event of DNA damage, said the biologists.
What this study found was that there was no cancer surge in mice lacking the gene. Rather, there was an increase in apoptosis (”cell suicide”) causing dysfunctional cells to shut down rather than dividing out of control. But before all you fellas with tiny junk lop of those tips, there's not word whether or not the regeneration and be scaled or sized.
Plus: Despite heavy promotion, the ratings for Jessica Simpson's VH1 reality show The Price of Beauty were, wait for it...pretty ugly!
The premiere attracted just 1 million viewers, and around 487,000 people tuned in for the encore later in the night - thought it is unclear if some of the same people we so dumbfounded by the program they watched it again to figure out why it was even being aired.
The show got beat by a rerun of NCIS, a TruTV series called Operation Repo and History Channel's Pawn Stars, the Los Angeles Times was keen to point out. Even former American Idol contestant and has-been Fantasia Barrino had a stronger debut for her VH1 reality show, Fantasia For Real. (Her show premiere nabbed 2.3 million viewers for real.)
Reviews for The Price of Beauty - which featured Simpson and her pals traveling around the world to learn how other cultures define beauty - were mixed, but overall not terribly positive. The New York Post called it "dopey and clueless," while the San Diego Union Tribune said it was "sweet on the outside and a little empty on the inside." It's nice to see the clock run on on the Simpson family's fame. They're average in so many ways.
Also: Indonesian conservationists said they had caught red-handed a 92-year-old man who had admitted to killing dozens of critically endangered Sumatran tigers over a lifetime of hunting. How hard could that have been?"We caught him while he was sailing a traditional wooden boat in a river in Kuala Cinaku with evidence of skin, skull and 8.3 kilos of bones from a tiger." The man, named Wiryo, told conservationists that he started hunting tigers for a living when he was 17 on Java island. He moved to Sumatra in 1960 as the population of Javan tiger decreased. According to him, he has killed more than 50 Sumatran tigers in Riau province alone.
Authorities say the poacher could be jailed for up to five years. Wiryo explained that he managed to sell the tiger parts in Singapore. Without his contribution, how will men get their extract of tiger penis to help their libido? I sense a market void that needs to get filled! There are fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, so for those keeping score, that makes Wiryo one of the greatest tiger murderers of their kind. If you killed close to 15% of the human population, it would be impressive too.
And: A doctor who questioned an unusually high fare is credited with touching off a widespread investigation into cabbie rip-offs. Dr. Mitchell Lee was riding home from NYU Medical Center in Manhattan in August when he noticed an extra $2 on his usual $5 fare. And if anybody knows about overbilling, it's doctors!
When he complained, the driver offered a discount. Instead, Lee paid the full fare, with a credit card, then complained to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. The TLC said last week that thousands of cabbies had illegally raised rates on about 1.8 million trips over two years, overcharging riders a total of $8.3 million by setting their meters at a rate that was supposed to be used for trips to the suburbs.
Lee said that New Yorkers — and tourists — are "smarter than cabbies think." Though those cabbies are also New Yorkers, so they're smarter than themselves, right? Unless those cabbies are from New Jersey...
Best picture of the week:
the 12 symbols of the Chinese zodiac...carved in crayon by Diem Chau
• Inside The World Of Childhood Schizophrenia - The 20/20 program from the 12th is finally streaming on their site. It's incredible and sad and you have to watch it.
• Plane Kills Jogger In SC Beach Emergency Landing - The odds are so incredible, they're awesome! Aside from proving exercise is bad for you, it's one of the most baller ways to go out...I mean, if you have too.
• Study: U.S. Prison Rate Remains Near One In 100 Americans - Look at the person on your left and on your right. If one of you in not in jail, there there's 97 other people who could be. (and for more prison links check out No Prison For Ex-Jailer In Girls Gone Wild Case In Nevada and Ex-Coach Dungy Speaks To Inmates In South Carolina)
• Army Drops Bayonets, Busts Abs In Training Revamp - Cross-training and circuit work may lead to glistening sixpacks for the don't-ask-don't-tell crowd, but you can't stab an enemy soldier in the face when moving through trenches with a set of crunches.
• Ex-NY Bank President First Accused Of TARP Fraud - One down, thousands to go. But at least it's a start.
• The Top Ten Anti-Gay Activists Caught Being Gay - Certainly you have to join them if you can't beat them.
• Make Your Own 3D Video Camera With Stabilizer For $300 Or Less - Eliminating another excuse why you can't make those naughty films with your girlfriend interesting for me.
• Boeing Accelerates Production Of 747, 777 Models - Three-quarters of a million models? That's a lot of babes to make. and just in time for swimsuit season! Oh wait, they mean plane models, not a number.
• Top 5 Things I Learned From My Cab Driver Last Night - There's knowledge to be had, even if you don't take cabs.
• Dutch Furious At U.S. General For Blaming Gay Soldiers - Perfect response to the senile retired general who said gays made the Dutch weak in Bosnia.
• Fan Attacks KHL Goalie With Stick On Team Bench - I'm close enough to the ice to make that happen here in America, but really, only in Russia...
• Brewing Tensions Between The Tea Party And GOP - Watching the Republican lunatics battle inwardly is wonderful fun. It's like watching the rotten cream separate from the sour milk.
• Porsche Takes Top Spot In Dependability Study - It ranked number one in consistently pulling tail, impressing buddies, and having valets sit the longest in. Those are dependable stats!
• Court: Anna Nicole Smith Gets None Of Oil Fortune - And you thought the humiliation and shame ended at death. Moded in the afterlife!
• Sandstorms Turn China Into Earthly Arrakis - He who controls the MSG, controls the universe!
• Die Antwoord To Sign With Interscope, Neil Blomkamp To Direct Next Video - They made it to the big time. Zef style wins.
• A Massive Collection Of Superhero De-Motivational Posters - Heroes never quit, unless they're losers...and there's certainly a set of them here.
Worst of the week: It's a bad time to be a celebrity in a relationship.First, Jennifer Love Hewitt got dumped by Jamie Kennedy after dating. I guess he's looking to get off The Ghost Whisperer, and she no longer has to be known as the "formerly skinny girl who was dating the guy from Malibu's Most Wanted".
Then Kate Winslet realised she was enough of a star that she didn't need to bang a director to get parts in movies. She and Sam Mendes decided to divorce after two kids and seven years of marriage. For all the playing down of her looks and the insistence for women to be liked and accepted on their own and not by society's standards, she is guaranteed to look the best she ever has in the near future. That's how the lady spider will catch her next male fly.
But the worst of the bunch is Sandra Bullock's literal blind siding by the not-really-outlaw Jesse James. Apparently, while she was out making the film, her husband was knocking tattoed boots with Michelle "Bombshell" McGee, a gal who would be prettier if she wasn't covered in stupid ink.The story goes Michelle sent James' West Coast Choppers a friend request on line because she hoped to snag a modeling gig there. She said she was surprised that it was actually Jesse who wrote back to her and told her to e-mail him at his personal e-mail. A week after he got in touch, Michelle drove from San Diego home to West Coast Choppers garage in Los Angeles.
After taking Michelle on a tour of his garage, Jesse brought her into his office and locked the door. Assuming he and Sandra were separated, Michelle said she and Jesse had sex "two or three times," that night, and began what she believed was a serious relationship, meeting up for sex at least twice a week for the next five weeks.
To top it all off, McGee has a bunch of white power tats and models Nazi costumes. I'm not a huge Sandra Bullock fan, but this just sucks for her. I mean, he really found the worst human being you could cheat with.
Plus: DXM has a take on the South rising again...though their idea to attack through scholastic means only means they'll never read it.
A Selection of Chapter Titles from Texas's Newly Revamped, Conservative-Friendly High School Textbooks:
• From Adam to Earl: The Real Story of the "Evolution" of Man (from the geography-science book 6,000 Years of World History)
• The War of Northern Aggression: How the Arrogance of Invading Liberal Elitists Ruined Free Room and Board for Millions of Negroes
• FDR and the Rise of Socialism in America
• Great Presidents of the United States: From Reagan to Reagan
• Joseph McCarthy: American Hero or Misunderstood Genius?
• Remember the Alamo (edited by guest contributor Lou Dobbs)
• Wall Street of Dreams: From Ben Stein to Lloyd Blankfein, Them Jews Sure are Good with Money
• Why We Rule (from the history book America, Fuck Yeah!)
• Fossil Fools: Debunking the Jurassic Myth (or "How To Train Your Dinosaur")
• Vietnam: The Forgotten Victory
• 9/11: God's Wrath Against Secular-Humanist America or Just a Bunch of Murderous Muslims?
• Philistines, Palestinians and the Inevitable Rapture: Why the U.S. Must Support Israel
• Stonewall: The Tragic Legacy of the Sodomite Uprising of 1969
• 2 + 2 = Jesus!
• "Don't do it." (single page of the book Sex Education: Everything You Need To Know)
• Barack Hussein Obama and the End of America
• What's Next?: Sarah Palin and Beyond
She runs her own website where people pay to watch her eat, or see her wash (*puke*) her mammoth body. The cash helps fund the family’s $750 a week food shopping bill, which Simpson carries out in her mobility scooter. Website subscribtions reportedly earn her $3000 a month. FML! “I’d love to be 1,000lb,” she said. “It might be hard though. Running after my daughter keeps my weight down.” If you're scooting around the market, your fat ass isn't chasing your daughter around, even if she had an ice cream sundae covered in bacon bits. I sincerely hope this morbidly obese blob croaks during a webcast. That would be worth paying for.
And: Last fall, as swine flu cases mounted and parents desperately sought to protect their kids, the hard-to-get vaccine was handed out in some surprising places: the Royal Caribbean cruise line, the headquarters of drug giant Merck, the Johnson Space Center and a Department of Energy office in Idaho.
In some cases, financial institutions and other recipients got doses before some county health departments and doctors' offices. These records were obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request. Yes, it's that simple to find out how hard your government is screwing you.
Even though the federal government spent more than $1.6 billion to manufacture and distribute the vaccine, there is no complete record of where it went. At least 85% of the doses given in the first six weeks went to groups most at risk for flu complications — children and other young people, pregnant women and those with certain health problems, according to an estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Wall Street banks and cruise ship companies stil got theirs in the opening salvo.
The CDC decided how many doses would go to each state, and state and local health departments decided where the vaccine was sent. Doctors' offices, large employers and even federal offices were among those that applied for vaccine. Health officials told them to give it to at-risk people first, but there was no enforcement of that. It's clear that at many sites, lower-risk people got precious doses in the first two months:
• When a U.S. Department of Energy office in Idaho Falls, Idaho, got about 200 doses in October, officials there offered it to higher-risk employees for four hours. When hardly anyone came, any worker who wanted it was vaccinated, a facility spokesman said.
• Royal Caribbean got 2,100 doses in October and November, vaccinating low-risk crew members along with staffers who care for children on Florida-based ships. The rationale? Employees aboard ships work with the public and would probably come into contact with people in priority groups.
• NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston got about 800 doses in October and 1,400 more in November, some of which were sent on to other NASA operations. At Johnson, doses were offered first to employees in priority groups, but NASA also set aside doses for healthy astronauts and their families.
• Some doctors' offices gave it to healthy patients if people at risk didn't show up, said Dr. Jim Lederer, an official with Novant Health, a North Carolina-based hospital system.
• Merck got 200 doses in October and 200 in November at its corporate headquarters in New Jersey. A Boeing Co. site in Washington state received 100 doses in mid-October and 100 more the next month. A Hovensa oil refinery in the Virgin Islands got 500 doses in early November, a Nucor Steel plant in South Carolina was given 100, and Hallmark Cards Inc. in Kansas City received 100.
Some of the eyebrow-raising shipments to Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs came to light last year. The New York Stock Exchange got 200 doses by late October. Morgan Stanley in Purchase, N.Y., received 1,000 doses by early November, though the company said it turned over its entire supply to local hospitals when it learned it got shipments before some area hospitals. In Georgia, nine prisons and jails got 2,300 doses in October and November. Corrections officials were worried that swine flu would spread fast in crowded lockups.
Basically, the Center for Disease Control didn't quite control the disease best. Better luck this year!
Worst picture of the week:
a tampon chandelier? super absorbent but dim.
Worst bonus links:
• Afghanistan: Taliban Chops Off Nose, Ears Of 19-Year-Old Girl For Shaming Her In-Laws - The shame of not being content as an abused woman who was married off at the age of 10. Sure, our country steals and creates opportunity in the Middle East, but there are some just reasons for going to war with those animals, and this is one of them.
• Charlie Sheen Back At Work On Two And A Half Men - Moving the doomsday predictions of 2012 closer to happening.
• Florida Family Policy Council Accidentally Uses Wrong Photo Of Lesbian Parents - Accidentally would have been in quotes if you could write completely unbiased news copy. Florida, of course.
• Designer Favored By Michelle Obama, Oprah Closes - Because how many black middle aged women are there that can afford those fashions?
• Posner Says He Failed To Source Material for Book - Ahhh, the hazzards of plagerism. Another good way to avoid being caught? Don't be a high profile writer who doesn't write their own material.
• Thai Red Shirts Hurl Own Blood At PM's House - I think you're going to make your point a little better if you use your words and not your plasma. Unless your point is "I want you to be drenched in our blood".
• Grenade-Shaped Lighter Forces Airport Evacuation - Remember the old days when this would be a real laugh? Explosive-themed smoking accessories jsut don't get the laughs they used to...
• AP Exclusive: Pentagon Gun Was From Tennessee Police - I know there's a Gifts For Guns exchange, but I thought the guns come in from the streets, not go back out.
• Kirstie Alley: I'm 'A Good A Sexual Mate... I'm Down For Whatever' - As long as your kink involves food. Kirstie Alley and sex are as heinous a thought as concentration camps - disturbing and horrifying.
• IRS Sends Out Two Agents To Collect $0.04 In Back-Taxes From Car Wash - It may not be a lot, but they had to check in-between the cushions for change.
• Heidi Montag To Fire Psychic Manager / Jennifer Aniston On Co-Starring With Heidi Montag: 'That's Interesting & Fun!' - Both of these are too stupid and pridictable to even comment on.
• Obama Effigy Hung At Rhode Island School With Fired Teachers - Yes, that'll inspire a comitment to education and learning!
• Paula Abdul Headed To 'Star Search' Remake - And she should hope she gets a spot the first contestant, judging by her actual talent and depths of her career.
• Walmart Fires Employee With Inoperable Brain Tumor For Legally Using Marijuana Outside Of Work / Wal-Mart Probing Racist NJ Store Announcement - The nation's largest company is an easy target, but they're setting themselves up time and again with their own stupidity.
• Massachutteses Dentist Used Paper Clips In Root Canals - He did not except most health plans, but did have a corporate account at Office Depot.
• British Poet Laureate Pens Ode To Injured Beckham - This is why nobdy takes poetry seriously anymore. When your renouned poets are musing about Posh Spice's husband's bad tendon, it's safe to say the art form may no longer have a pulse.
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