Category Archives: Health

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Next ObamaCare Lie

5 Comments

The Dems don’t really want to “fix it.” Every attempt to make a legislative change has been blocked in the Senate. Don’t let them get away with it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hey, remember when Dems thought that the VA was a great model for government health care?

But they continue to pine for single payer, and surreptitiously or otherwise hope that the ObamaCare debacle will push us in that direction.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More problems and arguments lie ahead:

…the vast middle ground of “modify the law without repealing it” is terra incognita. It is as accurate as Burns’s formulation, and no less precise, to say that those who want to leave the law as it is are outnumbered more than 5 to 1 by those who want to repeal or change it.

There’s an additional ambiguity: What does it mean to leave the law “unchanged” when the Supreme Court has already struck down parts of it and the administration has declined to follow or enforce others? That’s not a salient question for immediate electoral purposes; in terms of voting intention, “left unchanged” can be taken as a statement of support for the Democrats. But even if the statutory language proves resistant to any effort at modification, there will be a new administration after 2016. That could mean more discretionary (or extralegal) changes and perhaps the end of ObamaCare as we know it.

“ObamaCare as we know it” is also an ambiguous turn of phrase, to say the least, for what do we know of ObamaCare? A few provisions are relatively straightforward, such as the expansion of Medicaid eligibility (in those states that have gone along with it) and the mandate that family insurance plans cover 23-, 24- and 25-year-old children of policyholders.

But the whole of ObamaCare is an insanely complicated scheme that even experts are still struggling to understand. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it–away from the fog of the controversy,” then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said in March 2010. We’ll be finding out for many years to come, and there’s no reason to think that “fog” will ever lift.

The only way to lift the fog is to blow it all away.

[Update a few minutes later]

And then there’s this:

“The IRS isn’t likely to bring such proceedings to earn a pittance,” Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, tells McIntyre. Then again, it wasn’t money the Obama IRS was after when it embarked on a campaign of harassment against conservative nonprofit organizations. These ObamaCare penalties may be too draconian to be applied generally, but applied selectively, they could be a powerful weapon of an abusive administration.

This administration is nothing if not abusive of the weapons at its disposal.

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Why People Are Getting Fatter

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New thinking:

One reason we consume so many refined carbohydrates today is because they have been added to processed foods in place of fats — which have been the main target of calorie reduction efforts since the 1970s. Fat has about twice the calories of carbohydrates, but low-fat diets are the least effective of comparable interventions, according to several analyses, including one presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association this year. A recent study by one of us, Dr. Ludwig, and his colleagues published in JAMA examined 21 overweight and obese young adults after they had lost 10 to 15 percent of their body weight, on diets ranging from low fat to low carbohydrate. Despite consuming the same number of calories on each diet, subjects burned about 325 more calories per day on the low carbohydrate than on the low fat diet — amounting to the energy expended in an hour of moderately intense physical activity. . . . If this hypothesis turns out to be correct, it will have immediate implications for public health.

Actually, it’s only “new” thinking for people who’ve been paying no attention.

Business, Culinary, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Big Fat Latest Review

3 Comments

Ancel Benjamin Keys may be responsible for more premature death and suffering of Americans than anyone in history.

As someone said on Twitter:

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s probably the ultimate review, from Michael Eades:

I want to write a review so good it inspires everyone to buy the book immediately and read it. Why? Because I think it is one of the most important books on nutrition ever written. Maybe the most important. And I feel a responsibility to inspire as many people as I can to get their hands on it.

…this book is so brimming with valuable information that I was almost paralyzed in trying to figure out which parts to excerpt. A book review always comes with excerpts, and this book presented me with such a bounty of choices, it took me forever to decide which to use.

Considering the source, that’s pretty high praise.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Nutritional Ignorance

4 Comments

On a bi-partisan basis:

The federal government has excluded only one fresh vegetable from the WIC program: the fresh white potato. This makes no sense and, in fact, ignores the latest nutritional science.

Because some people don’t differentiate between french fries and baked potatoes, the potato has gotten a bad rap. We believe a balance can be found that preserves the integrity of programs such as WIC while also ensuring that the most updated facts are being used to determine the best nutrients for Americans — including from the potato.

Sorry, senators, but this is nonsense. The problem with french fries isn’t the fat (particularly if it’s saturated fat, though unfortunately McDonalds got mau maued into ending the use of tallow decades ago): It’s the potatoes themselves, which are high glycemic.

Business, Culinary, Health, Science And Society, Technology and Society, Weird

Soylent

7 Comments

A New Yorker reporter gives it a try.

I haven’t read the whole thing yet.

[A while later]

OK, I did read it. I was amused to learn that he was hawking it at my own local Whole Foods. One concern I have is his use of seed oils. Canola has too much omega 6 for my health. I’d use olive instead, though it costs more. If you don’t use virgin, though, it doesn’t have to cost that much.