Health care for the fetus

One of the blogs I read reminded me that the Bulwer-Lytton contest winners were announced several months ago. This contest, named in honor of the guy who coined, “It was a dark and stormy night,” awards those who come up with the worst opening sentence for a novel. A few of this year’s winners or dishonorable mentions:

From the Purple Prose category, submitted by Eric Mellinger of New York, NY:

Despite being a German, vegan book-cataloger from rural and upscale Connecticut, Marion was quite ignorant and overly opinionated about almost everything, except for Atlas Shrugged and atheism, which made her the embodiment of an Arian, vegetarian, ultracrepidarian-contrarian, non-sectarian, libertarian, librarian agrarian from Darien.

From Vile Puns, by David Franks, Fayetteville, AR:

Being a man of perspicacity, Alexander Graham Bell was able to treat his own stomach-ache (caused by eating three dozen raw oysters and a warm crock of sauerkraut on a bet) without the aid of his assistant, and when asked how he became ill, he would say only "Alimentary dare, Watson."

The winner of the Western category, by Stephanie Karnosh, Springboro OH

"Yeehaw, boys, and so long," called Eugene 'Bullettooth Dynamite' Jones as he rode off into the torrential downpour on his 32-inch-tall miniature horse, Kevin, hiding a frown because he knew deep down in his heart he had yeed his last haw.

On to serious matters.

The news magazine The Week has named Moscow Mitch the decade’s most consequential politician. That’s even over the nasty guy and President Obama. Their reasons:

* His refusal to do anything that might be seen as giving Obama a win. That includes refusing to allow a vote for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

* His work in holding federal judge positions empty under Obama and then rapidly filling them with far-right judges, several of them rated as not qualified.

* He has done nothing about foreign interference in our elections, and by his inaction he is inviting more of it.

Perhaps removing Moscow Mitch is more important to democracy than removing the nasty guy.



Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported on a study done by ProPublica and Vox about Texas having the highest rate of women without health insurance and the highest death rates for pregnant women and new mothers. One expert, Eugene Declercq at Boston University School of Public Health described it as…

the extreme example of a fragmented system that cares about women much more in the context of delivering a healthy baby than the mother's health in and of itself.

Some numbers: In Texas a woman qualifies for Medicaid if she makes less than about $320 a month. If she is pregnant she qualifies for Medicaid if she makes less than $3520 (if a family of three). But once the baby is born she likely loses Medicaid and then can’t afford to handle any complications a few months after birth.

In Texas a woman is only worth insuring if she’s pregnant. Put another way, the health care is for the fetus, not the woman.



Senator John Cornyn revealed what he and the GOP think about health insurance. He tweeted:

In 2017, the prices paid to hospitals for privately insured patients averaged 241 percent of what Medicare would have paid.

He was asked, so what’s the solution?

His answer: “Not Medicare for All.”

Translation: The GOP has no solution. Because the health care industry, his donors, would make less money. Because they would not be able to put their profits over the lives of their patients.



I had written about an editorial in Christianity Today in which they called for the removal of the nasty guy because of his bad character. Yeah, the lost subscribers. And gained three times the number they lost.