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A Modest Proposal for Reforming the Health Care System

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By John Lawrence

The best antidote for a degenerative disease is a regenerative lifestyle

The health care system, what I call the medical-industrial complex, is in reality a disease management system. It does little to promote health and makes money only when people get sick or injured. Doctors only make money when they treat a sick patient. They make nothing for keeping them well. This is the so-called fee for service model and it stinks. It drives up disease care costs. Pharmaceutical corporations create drugs and advertise them on TV in order to get as many people as possible hooked on them. Doctors do little to treat underlying diseases but willingly prescribe drugs to ameliorate symptoms. The big money is in surgery.

Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, while it has placed into law important provisions such as disallowing rescission, disallowing kicking people off of health insurance policies due to preexisting conditions, providing for not quite universal coverage etc, it does little or nothing to actually make health care affordable. Hospitals charge exhorbitant rates according to their Chargemasters. In some cases they won’t accept a patient’s insurance coverage, demanding upfront payment in cash instead. Obamacare does little to keep pharmaceutical costs, health insurance costs or hospital costs down.

I have written a number of critical articles about the health care system. But I don’t want to leave the impression that all I’m doing is to just tear this leviathan down in a critical and negative way and have nothing positive to say regarding the health care system. I do have some positive suggestions about how it could be improved.   [Read more…]

The Elephant in the Room: Militarism

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It’s arguably our country’s biggest problem — and the mainstream media won’t acknowledge it exists.

By Jeff Cohen / Alternet

I spent years as a political pundit on mainstream TV – at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I was outnumbered, outshouted, red-baited and finally terminated. Inside mainstream media, I saw that major issues were not only dodged, but sometimes not even acknowledged to exist.

Today there’s an elephant in the room: a huge, yet ignored, issue that largely explains why Social Security is now on the chopping block. And why other industrialized countries have free college education and universal healthcare, but we don’t. It’s arguably our country’s biggest problem – a problem that Martin Luther King Jr. focused on before he was assassinated 45 years ago, and has only worsened since then (which was the height of the Vietnam War).

That problem is U.S. militarism and perpetual war.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Republicans Reject ‘Civil Rights Issue of Our Time’, Affirm Anti-Gay Marriage Stance

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By Doug Porter

At least nobody’s been arrested with hookers yet.

That’s the good news coming out of the national GOP quarterly confab going on in Hollywood, Taxifornia this weekend.

The bad news is that it appears as though the Party faithful are going to reaffirm the party’s official position that marriage should be solely between one man and one woman.

It is expected to pass overwhelmingly, proving that evangelicals and social conservatives are still a force to be reckoned with, despite pleas from establishment leaders to focus on party mechanics and stay away from social issues likely to generate negative impressions for the party.

INSIDE: More GOP #Fail, UT-SD Gets National Shout Out, Rhee Gets Unwanted Exposure, GITMO Hunger Strike, Anti-Exxon Video   [Read more…]

The State of District 2

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Councilman Faulconer says things are looking good here in San Diego

By Mic Porte

Wednesday April 10, 2013, Paradise Point Resort – Sounds like the name of the sequel of a sci-fi film, but it was actually a fantasy island dream moment with our San Diego district 2 elected official, Councilmember Kevin Faulconer, and his team, at beautiful Paradise Point Resort in the middle of beautiful Mission Bay in beautiful San Diego, on a beautiful evening and with all the beautiful people around, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

And according to Councilmember Faulconer, things are looking pretty beautiful around here, and with a little more bi-partisan effort on the part of the city council and everybody else in San Diego and the great state of California, and regional funding, we might even be able to finally get the crumbling oldest part of the seawall in front of Belmont Park repaired in time for the rising ocean levels, and balance the city budget too, and get back to pursuing happiness, something we do great here in San Diego.

Boys and girls, are we lucky? Yes, thank you.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Death by Street Planning on El Cajon Boulevard

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By Doug Porter

It was late Wednesday night on the 2800 block of El Cajon Boulevard. A 53 year old man jaywalked as he walked out from a Wendy’s fast food restaurant and was struck by a white Nissan sedan. Despite attempts by EMTs called to the scene, the man died. Police say alcohol was not a factor in the accident and that charges are unlikely to be filed against the driver of the vehicle.

This might seem like a straightforward argument against jaywalking, but it is actually indicative of a much larger problem. El Cajon Boulevard is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly streets in San Diego.

The place where the jaywalker died lacks pedestrian crossings at nearby intersections. It’s unsafe at any speed for pedestrians and, at 40 miles per hour (the speed most people, including me, drive on EC Blvd), a pedestrian has only a 15% chance of surviving an accident.

Inside: Cindy Marten’s Laptop Stolen, Burning Down Kansas, Gun Control and Hollyweirdness   [Read more…]

Pacific Beach Planning Group and Local Residents Fight Bar Expansions

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By Sub-committee

Wednesday, April 10, Bill Allen – owner of the Crystal Pier Motel – and other residents called a press conference at the pier to help expose a simmering problem in Pacific Beach to the larger community. Allen and many other concerned residents have over the last while voiced their complaints about Scott Slaga – owner of the 710 Club (ex-Blind Melons) near the Crystal Pier – in his efforts to obtain a sidewalk encroachment variance for his establishment.

Allen and the complaining residents have issues caused, they contend, by encroachments for bars, problems such as the high crime stats and high noise impact, to lowered property values to no room on the sidewalks for people to walk to the beach.

This is all in preparation for the city council vote today, April 11, on whether or not to allow Slaga to obtain his sidewalk encroachment variance.
  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Unregulated, Unsafe, Unfair – the GOP Vision for California

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By Doug Porter

One of the favored propaganda ploys of conservative pundits over the past year or so has been the ‘everybody’s leaving California for Texas’ meme. This all started with an article in the ultra conserve National Review by former assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who left the Golden State for the Lone Star State after finishing third in the 2010 GOP primary race for US Senate.

“California may be dreaming, but Texas is working” said DeVore, who went on to tell a tale of woe including high taxes, burdensome regulations and a bloated bureaucracy that stood in sharp contrast to the lean, mean Texas machine.

And so it began. Thousands of businesses were fleeing “Taxifornia” for the freedom offered by Rick Perry’s Republican mecca, so we were told. By early in 2013, media accounts of a minor ad buy urging businesses to consider relocation to Texas painted a picture of a grand exodus underway.

Today’s report on National Public Radio by Wade Goodwin on the construction industry in Texas paints a sad portrait of the real costs of the GOP’s prosperity paradise.   [Read more…]

‘State of Cycling in San Diego County’ – A Snapshot of the Region and Plans for the Future

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by John Anderson

Last Saturday, April 6, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition (SDCBC) hosted a ‘State of Cycling in San Diego County’ event in the Balboa Room of the historic Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard in North Park.

This event was held to mark the one-year anniversary of the 5-Year Strategic Plan the group adopted in 2012 and discuss progress and goals for the coming years. Every seat in the room was taken, plus some standing in the doorways. I counted approximately 60 people. A bicycle valet service was provided outside the hotel for attendees – a service the SDCBC also offered at the Padres home opener on Tuesday, April 8.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Coachella Hipsters Won’t Be Shot, Yet. Guantanamo ‘Party’ to be Renamed

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By Doug Porter

For those of you who are terminally uncool, the next two weekends are the time of year when tens of thousands of (mostly) otherwise sane people take to the desert for a time out to enjoy the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival.

The Indio, California shindig features music from a variety of genres playing from stages located throughout the Empire Polo Club. People have been known to get stoned and occasionally naked, but the real reason to go is to say you’ve been there, done that. It’s cooler than a tramp stamp.

Lots of auxiliary (not officially sanctioned) events occur because the crowd is large and mostly affluent. One of them caught my attention yesterday, and it really rattled my cage. Some fashionistas have decided that it would be appro to throw a Gitmo themed party, I guess because human rights violations and torture are such ‘groovy’ ideas. This is stupider than stupid.   [Read more…]

Definitely Not Business As Usual at City Hall

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Filner commited to changing the culture of city government

By Andy Cohen

Last spring, then mayoral candidate Bob Filner promised anyone who would listen that should he be elected Mayor of San Diego after 20 years in Congress, business as usual would no longer be tolerated by his office. The “Downtown Special Interests,” he said, had controlled San Diego for too long, and it was time to put it to an end.

In his mind, the “special interests” controlled the agenda in San Diego. From the big developers to the big hoteliers, the perception has long been that the wealthy and powerful of this city have enjoyed an outsized influence over City Hall. The City Council and the Mayor’s office have often been viewed as nothing more than a rubber stamp for their agenda, which has focused primarily on Downtown for at least the last 20 years.

That would change under a Bob Filner administration, he promised. The focus would be placed on what was good for the city as a whole, not just what worked best for private business interests. It was an interesting campaign promise that many believed was nothing more than lip service; the kind of things politicians often say in order to impress the voters. But we all knew once in office the power brokers would once again resume their place at the top of the hierarchy. That’s the way it’s always been done. No real reason to expect that to change.   [Read more…]

Keys to the Kingdom: Using San Diego’s Open Government Web Site

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By Norma Damashek

For the first time ever, the San Diego public has been awarded the Keys to the Kingdom.

The grantor of this unique gift to the people of San Diego is former councilmember Donna Frye and her Open Government project, developed during her three-month stint in the office of Mayor Bob Filner.

Finally, regular citizens and ordinary folk (you and I) have ready access to just about everything we wish to know about the ins-and-outs of City Hall. Come on inside to see how it works.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘AdRateGate’ Inquiry Underway; UT-San Diego Accused of Offering Illegal Political Discounts

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By Doug Porter

Our local daily newspaper continues to ignore the story about themselves, rolled out last Friday by inewssource/KPBS, concerning deep discounts in advertising rates given to GOP candidates Brian Bilbray and Carl DeMaio during last fall’s electoral contests.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission has confirmed that an investigation of the ad rates offered to various candidates and ballot measures by the UT-San Diego is under way.

A group opposing Bob Filner paid $25,000 for 16 full-page ads, according to campaign disclosures, or about $1,560 per ad. Brian Bilbray’s campaign got an even better deal, paying $25,000 for 27 full-page ads, or about $926 per ad.  And a pro-Proposition 32 group calling itself the Small Business Action Committee ran at least 20 full-page ads in the U-T during the fall campaign and reporting $26,000 in costs for print advertising.

Campaigns not favored editorially by UT-San Diego uniformly reported being quoted $8000 per page.    [Read more…]

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